Uncollected stories of William Faulkner Book

William Faulkner is one of those writers I initially shunned and altogether dismissed almost 20 years ago when I first picked up the difficult maze of words that is The Sound and the Fury.

I didn't pick up another Faulkner novel until about 10 years later when I tried reading Absalom! Absalom! Although the first half of the novel was very enjoyable, I found the 2nd half very hard to follow. It wasn't until I read The Unvanquished, Flags in the Dust, Wild Palms and the brilliant Light in August that I realised what a great writer he really was.

At some point I moved onto the Snopes trilogy with its unforgettable characters and drama centered around a small town.

I eventually moved onto his short stories, first The Collected Stories of William Faulkner, and now this volume. Although I don't always like his style of writing, I have to say that he really knows how to tell a story in his own atmospheric manner. He is very subtle and if your attention wanders for a second, you will lose important threads that you will need to put the yarn together, which is what he is asking us, as readers, to do.

In this collection, we have short stories that were either revised later on or expanded into novels such as The Unvanquished and Go Down, Moses. Then there are some stories that had previously been published but heretofore not been in any collection - let's call them 'orphans.' Finally, there are some unpublished stories which had not seen the light of day before this publication. You had to visit one of the Faulkner repositories if you wanted to read them. And there are some real gems.
My favourite stories in this collection were Hog Pawn (featuring the wily and cunning Flem Snopes), Nympholepsy (a beautiful poetic prose piece), Once Aboard the Lugger (about bootlegging and written during Faulkner's stay in New Orleans), and then finally what are probably the 2 best stories in the whole book, Evangeline and A Portrait of Elmer.

What I learned from this book was not only a very interesting way to build a story by gradually releasing clues and letting the reader put the dots together (essentially Faulkner's method) but also how short stories can be lengthened out into novels if the writer thinks there is enough scope and material to work with. For any aspiring writer wishing to write but struggling to write a novel (including myself), I suggest trying this method as a starting point. Faulkner applied this technique in an unusual way in Go Down Moses, when he juxtaposed several short stories seemingly unrelated, except for the one point they all had in common: they're all centred around the same families and family trees.

Finally, what I walked away with was a great admiration for Faulkner, a writer who was wholly committed to his art and the craft of writing. According to the editor of this volume, his biographer Jospeph Blotner, Faulkner would constantly revise his stories until he was happy with them. These stories do not emerge fully formed; like a sculptor, you need to chip away slowly and slowly until the beauty hiding within the stone emerges. Faulkner worked hard at this until what he had on paper reflected as closely as possible the beautiful visions that must have been spinning around in his mind.

Highly recommended for anyone interested in story writing in general, and especially for all Faulkner fans out there. Go get this one. It's a keeper.