Over the course of an impressive career, William Faulkner achieved some of the most playful and dexterous writing of the early 20th century. With a fascination on the south, he detailed centuries of families overcoming a changing America while creating some of the most labyrinthian tales imaginable. A few sentences could convey hours of thought and nowhere is that seen better than in his gargantuan collection "Collected Stories." While it may seem like an overstuffed tribute to a writing legend, it actually works at conveying the themes that most interested him. Over the course of 42 short stories, he manages to reflect the way that humanity relates to itself, detailing the efforts for history to keep its traditions alive, and presenting them with humor and insight in such a way that each page has its own riveting accomplishments. While it's true that some of the tales have aged better than others, having these handpicked by the author himself allows for a peek inside a mind that was clearly never short on ideas. It's the study of a country as well as the study of a man. You just have to know how to look at it.
For the sake of brevity, there won't be a detailed exploration of each story. The one thing that should be known is that Faulkner was such a complicated writer that he broke this up into five sections. This is crucial to appreciating what he's doing, as they help to depict his ideas of the Antebellum south, World War I, and even racial tensions. With these divides, the reader is able to process how themes overlap with each other. Sometimes the simple placement of a story next to another allows for complementary ideas to take form. While one can get just as much pleasure out of reading each one individually, those wanting a greater appreciation of Faulkner will do good with taking time to notice how the 900+ form its own journey through the writer's mind. Even with a well-built history, it's not a collection that feels burdened by seeing the thread. In fact, it might actually strengthen it.
To be completely honest, what a reader puts into this is what they'll get out of it. For those who want to study each story, they'll find a wealth of knowledge about how Faulkner's environment shifted over time. In touchstones like "A Rose For Emily," he details the changing south in such a way that it leaves one to think about how tragic nostalgia can be for Pre-Civil War ethics. Elsewhere he attempts to explore the dignity of slaves and the inhumanity of slave owners in such ways that it becomes harrowing. While some stories here may feel too indebted to one another, there's still room for each to have entertainment value of their own, even occasionally getting into metaphysical landscapes that can be seen as religious or spiritual depending on the passage.
In what may be the most brilliant move of them all, the final section "Beyond" features some of his most obtuse work in his career. The pages are the ones that make the least sense but work at bringing the journey to an end. The reader is treated to "El Carassone," the final entry and one that details a corpse rotting away in the sun waiting for angels to take him away. On its own, it's a staggering, poetic accomplishment. It's nothing special. However, for those who have seen the way Faulkner has progressed through history and the human experience in the previous pages, the decades-long journey of these passages actually reveals that this is the exact place it should end. Everyone dies and we'll be forced to face our judgment. It may even come suddenly. Faulkner's introspective is mature and profouund in that way while often existing within a secular plane of literature.
For those wanting another side to Faulkner, "Collected Stories" does more than enough to win over the reader. With several masterpieces that transcend the author's lifetime, this anthology manages to serve as a useful compendium to any literature collection. There's no shortage of stories that present a unique eye on what it meant to be an American alive in the early 20th century, reflecting on the past and dreaming of the future. While some themes are probably better aged than other - such as the complicated view of indigenous characters - there's still enough there to love. He was a meticulous writer who put his heart into every story, and it makes the journey all the more rewarding. He obviously left behind a portfolio much more dense than this, but for those obsessively reading every word, it's almost essential to have this at your side to connect a few dots. He built his own world and it's the reader's job to understand how it's built. This, in a lot of respects, is a useful cornerstone to a very impressive career.
No comments:
Post a Comment