The Vast and Terrible Drama: American Literary Naturalism in the Late Nineteenth Century Book

Reading critical compendiums of an author when one is an author himself (or herself, as this case is not,) can be a frightening experience, because transference is a real activity that leads to nightmares. Faulkner is, in this collection of critical analyses, often damned with faint praise that usually forms around the notion that he was a genius, when what he had was genius, the genius being a comprehensive grasp of his community and the variety of people in it, while at the same time exploding with the forces within him that were formed by the circumstances of his time and place of birth, the frame of family from which there was no escape, and the atmosphere of creativity that surrounded the times of his expressions.

It was the smell and sight of these critics flaying and filleting him and his work, digging into him with the intensity of a pathologist over a corpse, that frightened this author. The scare drives me into questioning each and every word that I have and might yet summon out of my own genius, all of the elements of scene and sense that I might create out of memory and experience, that may prove too revealing, too exposing, for me to suffer.

But if the reader of these essays are kin to those pathologists, then I suppose what is my terror is their manna, and I say go for it. These critics do a pretty good job of removing Faulkner's clothes, broadcloth and buttons, as well as his flesh, his muscles and bones, with the intent of discovering the motivation and soul of a man driven to expose himself as much as necessary.