Flesh and blood Book

I continue on my quest to read all of William Faulkner's works. Along the way I learned that the book titled Sartoris was really a publishers' creation and that Flags in the Dust is as close as possible to the book that Faulkner originally submitted to that publisher in 1927. I am very glad for my education in all things Faulkner (tip of proverbial hat to Mike Sullivan of On the Southern Literary Trail).

Perhaps the most amazing thing to me as I read this novel was the extent to which the vision of his own personal place and people had already formed with this his fourth novel. Of course Jefferson is the central town, but the Snopes incursion and proliferation has also been mentioned (as well as their general seediness). The themes are there: war, be it The War, or the more recent Great War; life and death; strong women and weak or beaten down men; what passes for "hospitality"; relations between black and white or master and servant.

As always, Faulkner's writing is often riveting. He hasn't reached the stream of consciousness technique he will use in the next book, The Sound and Fury. This book actually moves linearly and is very approachable. (The publication date of 1973 is for the resurrected copy published after Faulkner's death.)

Here Faulkner creates an indelible image of place for me.


Then with sudden decision he quitted the room and
tramped down the hall. At the end of the hall a stair mounted
into the darkness. He fumbled the light switch beside it and
mounted, following the cramped turnings cautiously in the
dark, to a door set at a difficult angle, and opened it upon a
broad, low room with a pitched ceiling, smelling of dust and
silence and ancient disused things.
The room was cluttered with indiscriminate furniture ---
chairs and sofas like patient ghosts holding lightly in dry and
rigid embrace yet other ghosts --- a fitting place for dead
Sartorises to gather and speak among themselves of glamorous
and old disastrous days. the unshaded light swung on a single
cord from the center of the ceiling. He unknotted it and drew
it across to a nail in the wall above a cedar chest. He
fastened it here and drew a chair across to the chest and sat
down.
The chest had not been opened since 1901, when his son John
Had succumbed to yellow fever and an old Spanish bullet-wound.
There had been two occasions since, in July and in October of
last year....Thus each opening was in a way ceremonial,
commemorating the violent finis to some phase of his family's
history, and while he struggled with the stiff lock it seemed
to him that a legion of ghosts breathed quietly at his
shoulder.... (pp 86-87)


And then Faulkner can produce more simple (for him!) snapshots of nature. There are many spread throughout the novel.


Water chuckled and murmured beneath the bridge, invisible
with twilight, its murmur burdened with the voice of cricket
and frog. Above the willows that marked the course of the
stream gnats still spun and whirled, for bullbats appeared
from nowhere in long swoops, in midswoop vanished, then
appeared again against the serene sky swooping, silent as
drops of water on a window-pane; swift and noiseless and
intent as though their wings were feathered with twilight and
with silence. (p 139)


Then there is young Bayard and his driving:


Nowadays he drove the car into town to fetch his
grandfather from habit alone, and though he still considered
forty five miles an hour merely cruising speed, he no longer
took cold and fiendish pleasure in turning curves on two
wheels or in detaching mules from wagons by striking the
whiffle-trees with his bumper in passing. (p 211)


Flags in the Dust offers so much to the reader. To those who are unsure about tackling Faulkner, it offers a story which runs a fairly normal narrative course, while touching on Faulkner's favorite themes. For those who already know and appreciate Faulkner, it's a look back on where so much was growing and developing.

Strongly recommended.