He couldn’t tell when he first began to hear the sound, because when he became aware of it, it seemed to him that he had been already hearing it for several seconds—a sound as though someone were hammering a gun-barrel against a piece of railroad iron, a sound loud and heavy and not rapid yet with something frenzied about it, as the hammerer were not only a strong man and an earnest one but a little hysterical too. Yet it couldn’t be on the log-line because, although the track lay in that direction, it was at least two miles from him and this sound was not three hundred yards away. But even as he thought that, he realised where the sound must be coming from: whoever the man was and whatever he was doing, he was somewhere near the edge of the clearing where the Gum Tree was and where he was to meet Boon. So far, he had been hunting as he advanced, moving slowly and quietly and watching the ground and the trees both. Now he went on, his gun unloaded and the barrel slanted up and back to facilitate its passage through brier and undergrowth, approaching as it grew louder and louder that steady savage somehow queerly hysterical beating of metal on metal, emerging from the woods, into the old clearing, with the solitary gum tree directly before him. At first glance the tree seemed to be alive with frantic squirrels. There appeared to be forty or fifty of them leaping and darting from branch to branch until the whole tree had become one green maelstrom of mad leaves, while from time to time, singly or in twos and threes, squirrels would dart down the trunk then whirl without stopping and rush back up again as though sucked violently back by the vacuum of their fellows’ frenzied vortex. Then he saw Boon, sitting, his back against the trunk, his head bent, hammering furiously at something on his lap. What he hammered with was the barrel of his dismembered gun, what he hammered at was the breech of it. The rest of the gun lay scattered about him in a half-dozen pieces while he bent over the piece on his lap his scarlet and streaming walnut face, hammering the disjointed barrel against the gunbreech with the frantic abandon of a madman. He didn’t even look up to see who it was. Still hammering, he merely shouted back at the boy in a hoarse strangled voice:
“Get out of here! Dont touch them! Dont touch a one of them! They’re mine!”
EDITORS’ NOTE
“Spotted Horses,” is taken from The Hamlet, which began as a group of sketches and fragments about the Snopes clan written early in Faulkner’s career (probably the mid-192os) and elaborated in a series of short stories over the next decade or so. First begun by Faulkner in 1927, various versions of “Spotted Horses” were entitled “As I Lay Dying,” “Aria con Amore,” and “The Peasants.” The Hamlet was eventually published by Random House on April 1, 1940. Although the editors did not make the kind of revisions they had made in other works by Faulkner, the text was marred by many typographical and compositional errors. Copy-text for “Spotted Horses” is the ribbon typescript setting copy at the Alderman Library of the University of Virginia (other relevant documents consulted were the holograph manuscript, also at the University of Virginia, and two sets of uncorrected galleys, one privately owned and the other at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History in Jackson).
“Old Man” was originally published as alternating sections with “The Wild Palms” in the novel The Wild Palms (and subsequently republished by The Library of America as If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem, Faulkner’s original title). All evidence from the typescripts and manuscripts in the Alderman Library of the University of Virginia, from which the current text is derived, indicates that Faulkner did not take two separate stories and interweave them, but rather, wrote, in alternating stints, for a “Wild Palms” section, then an “Old Man” section.
“The Bear” first originated as a 1935 short story, “Lion,” about a dog who tracked a bear. The central character of “Lion,” however is not Isaac McCaslin, but Quentin Compson, who had committed suicide in The Sound and the Fury (1929), and whom Faulkner was resurrecting at the same time he was writing “Lion,” for his role in Absalom, Absalom. “Lion” was the central story around which he collected a number of stories he had been working on since the 1930s, which he incorporated into Go Down, Moses. Throughout 1940, Faulkner apparently worked on revising this story into the long complicated chapter that eventually became “The Bear,” though it was still called “Lion” on the typescript he submitted to Random House. In the fall of 1941, needing money as usual, Faulkner reduced the narrative materials of “Lion” to a twenty-page version (published in The Saturday Evening Post, May 4, 1942). Faulkner then carefully revised each story in Go Down, Moses and sent to Random House a completely revised and retyped typescript, which the editors pushed through with a minimum of intervention that amounted to virtual indifference. The problems are mostly typographical errors, things that should have been caught by a careful proofreader. The typescript submitted by Faulkner is the copy-text for this edition.
American English continues to fluctuate; for example, a word may be spelled more than one way, even in the same work. Commas are sometimes used expressively to suggest the movements of the voice, and capitals are sometimes meant to give significances to a word beyond those it might have in its uncapitalized form. Since standardization would remove such effects, this volume preserves the spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and wording of the text as established by Noel Polk, which strives to be as faithful to Faulkner’s usage as surviving evidence permits.
The following notes were prepared by Joseph Blotner and are reprinted with permission from Novels 1936–1940, (1985) and Novels 1942–1954 (1994) in the edition of Faulkner’s collected works published by The Library of America. Numbers refer to page and line of the present volume (the line count includes chapter headings). No note is made for material included in the eleventh edition of Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary. For further information on these three works, consult the appropriate portions of Joseph Blotner, Faulkner, A Biography, 2 vols. (New York: Random House, 1974); Joseph Blotner, Faulkner, A Biography, One- Volume Edition (New York: Random House, 1984); Selected Letters of William Faulkner (New York: Random House, 1977), edited by Joseph Blotner; and Calvin S. Brown, A Glossary of Faulkner’s South (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976).
Spotted Horses
1 frail] Variant of flail.
Old Man
2 sandboils] Places where water mixed with sand comes up though the landward side of a levee, forced up by the pressure of water contained in the levee.
3 Ahenobarbus’] The paternal name of Nero (A.D. 37–68), first called Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, later Nero Claudius Caesar.
4 Mound’s Landing] Two miles west of Scott, Mississippi, and 14 miles north of Greenville.
5 Carnarvon] Carnarvon, on the eastern bank of the Mississippi, 14 miles south of New Orleans, where the levee was dynamited on April 29, 1927, to ease the strain on the levee at New Orleans.
The Bear
6 frail] Variant of flail.
WILLIAM FAULKNER
(1897–1962)
William Cuthbert Faulkner was born in 1897 in New Albany, Mississippi, the first of four sons of Murry and Maud Butler Falkner (he later added the “u” to the family name himself). In 1904 the family moved to the university town of Oxford, Mississippi, where Faulkner was to spend most of his life. He was named for his greatgrandfather “The Old Colonel,” a Civil War veteran who built a railroad, wrote a bestselling romantic novel called The White Rose of Memphis, became a Mississippi state legislator, and was eventually killed in what may or may not have been a duel with a disgruntled business partner. Faulkner identified with this robust and energetic ancestor and often said that he inherited the “ink stain” from him.
Never fond of school, Faulkner left at the end of football season his senior year of high school, and began working at his grandfather’s bank. In 1918, after his plans to marry his sweetheart Estelle Oldham were squashed by their families, he tried to enlist as a pilot in the U.S. Army but was rejected because he did not meet the height and weight requirements. He went to Canada, where he pretended to be an En
glishman and joined the RAF training program there. Although he did not complete his training until after the war ended and never saw combat, he returned to his hometown in uniform, boasting of war wounds. He briefly attended the University of Mississippi, where he began to publish his poetry.
After spending a short time living in New York, he again returned to Oxford, where he worked at the university post office. His first book, a collection of poetry, The Marble Faun, was published at Faulkner’s own expense in 1924. The writer Sherwood Anderson, whom he met in New Orleans in 1925, encouraged him to try writing fiction, and his first novel, Soldier’s Pay, was published in 1926. It was followed by Mosquitoes. His next novel, which he titled Flags in the Dust, was rejected by his publisher and twelve others to whom he submitted it. It was eventually published in drastically edited form as Sartoris (the original version was not issued until after his death). Meanwhile, he was writing The Sound and the Fury, which, after being rejected by one publisher, came out in 1929 and received many ecstatic reviews, although it sold poorly. Yet again, a new novel, Sanctuary, was initially rejected by his publisher, this time as “too shocking.” While working on the night shift at a power plant, Faulkner wrote what he was determined would be his masterpiece, As I Lay Dying. He finished it in about seven weeks, and it was published in 1930, again to generally good reviews and mediocre sales.
In 1929 Faulkner had finally married his childhood sweetheart, Estelle, after her divorce from her first husband. They had a premature daughter, Alabama, who died ten days after birth in 1931; a second daughter, Jill, was born in 1933.
With the eventual publication of his most sensational and violent (as well as, up till then, most successful) novel, Sanctuary (1931), Faulkner was invited to write scripts for MGM and Warner Brothers, where he was responsible for much of the dialogue in the film versions of Hemingway’s To Have and Have Not and Chandler’s The Big Sleep, and many other films. He continued to write novels and published many stories in the popular magazines. Light in August (1932) was his first attempt to address the racial issues of the South, an effort continued in Absalom, Absalom! (1936), and Go Down, Moses (1942). By 1946, most of Faulkner’s novels were out of print in the United States (although they remained well-regarded in Europe), and he was seen as a minor, regional writer. But then the influential editor and critic Malcolm Cowley, who had earlier championed Hemingway and Fitzgerald and others of their generation, put together The Portable Faulkner, and once again Faulkner’s genius was recognized, this time for good. He received the 1949 Nobel Prize for Literature as well as many other awards and accolades, including the National Book Award and the Gold Medal from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and France’s Legion of Honor.
In addition to several collections of short fiction, his other novels include Pylon (1935), The Unvanquished (1938), The Wild Palms (1939), The Hamlet (1940), Intruder in the Dust (1948), A Fable (1954), The Town (1957), The Mansion (1959), and The Reivers (1962).
William Faulkner died of a heart attack on July 6, 1962, in Oxford, Mississippi, where he is buried.
“He is the greatest artist the South has produced.… Indeed, through his many novels and short stories, Faulkner fights out the moral problem which was repressed after the nineteenth century [yet] for all his concern with the South, Faulkner was actually seeking out the nature of man. Thus we must turn to him for that continuity of moral purpose which made for the greatness of our classics.”
—RALPH ELLISON
“Faulkner, more than most men, was aware of human strength as well of human weakness. He knew that the understanding and the resolution of fear are a large part of the writer’s reason for being.”
—JOHN STEINBECK
“For range of effect, philosophical weight, originality of style, variety of characterization, humor, and tragic intensity, [Faulkner’s works] are without equal in our time and country.”
—ROBERT PENN WARREN
“No man ever put more of his heart and soul into the written word than did William Faulkner. If you want to know all you can about that heart and soul, the fiction where he put it is still right there.”
—EUDORA WELTY
ALSO BY WILLIAM FAULKNER
ABSALOM, ABSALOM!
One of Faulkner’s finest achievements, Absalom, Absalom! is the story of Thomas Sutpen and the ruthless, single-minded pursuit of his grand design—to forge a dynasty in Jefferson, Mississippi, in 1830—which is ultimately destroyed (along with Sutpen himself) by his two sons.
AS I LAY DYING
As I Lay Dying is the harrowing account of the Bundren family’s odyssey across the Mississippi countryside to bury Addie, their wife and mother. Told by each of the family members—including Addie herself—the novel ranges from dark comedy to deepest pathos.
A FABLE
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, this allegorical novel about World War I is set in the trenches of France and deals with a mutiny in a French regiment.
FLAGS IN THE DUST
The complete text, published for the first time in 1973, of Faulkner’s third novel, written when he was twenty-nine, which appeared, with his reluctant consent, in a much cut version in 1929 as Sartoris.
LIGHT IN AUGUST
A novel about hopeful perseverance in the face of mortality, Light in August tells the tales of guileless, dauntless Lena Grove, in search of the father of her unborn child; Reverend Gail Hightower, who is plagued by visions of Confederate horsemen; and Joe Christmas, an enigmatic drifter consumed by his mixed ancestry.
THE REIVERS
One of Faulkner’s comic masterpieces and winner of a Pulitzer Prize, The Reivers is a picaresque tale that tells of three unlikely car thieves from rural Mississippi and their wild misadventures in the fast life of Memphis—from horse smuggling to bawdy houses.
REQUIEM FOR A NUN
The sequel to Faulkner’s most sensational novel Sanctuary, was written twenty years later but takes up the story of Temple Drake eight years after the events related in Sanctuary. Temple is now married to Gowan Stevens. The book begins when the death sentence is pronounced on the nurse Nancy for the murder of Temple and Gowan’s child. In an attempt to save her, Temple goes to see the judge to confess her own guilt. Told partly in prose, partly in play form, Requiem for a Nun is a haunting exploration of the impact of the past on the present.
THE SOUND AND THE FURY
One of the greatest novels of the twentieth century, The Sound and the Fury is the tragedy of the Compson family, featuring some of the most memorable characters in American literature: beautiful, rebellious Caddy; the man-child Benjy; haunted, neurotic Quentin; Jason, the brutal cynic; and Dilsey, their black servant.
THE UNVANQUISHED
The Unvanquished is a novel of the Sartoris family, who embody the ideal of Southern honor and its transformation through war, defeat, and Reconstruction: Colonel John Sartoris, who is murdered by a business rival after the war; his son Bayard, who finds an alternative to bloodshed; and Granny Millard, the matriarch, who must put aside her code of gentility in order to survive.
Snopes Trilogy
THE HAMLET
The Hamlet, the first novel of Faulkner’s Snopes trilogy, is both an ironic take on classical tragedy and a mordant commentary on the grand pretensions of the antebellum South and the depths of its decay in the aftermath of war and reconstruction. It tells of the advent and the rise of the Snopes family in Frenchman’s Bend, a small town built on the ruins of a once-stately plantation. Flem Snopes—wily, energetic, a man of shady origins—quickly comes to dominate the town and its people with his cunning and guile.
THE TOWN
This is the second volume of Faulkner’s trilogy about the Snopes family, his symbol for the grasping, destructive element in the postbellum South. Like its predecessor The Hamlet, and its successor The Mansion, The Town is completely self-contained, but it gains resonance from being read with the other two. The story of Flem Snopes’ ruthless struggl
e to take over the town of Jefferson, Mississippi, the book is rich in typically Faulknerian episodes of humor and of profundity.
THE MANSION
The Mansion completes Faulkner’s great trilogy of the Snopes family in the mythical county of Yoknapatawpha, Mississippi, which also includes The Hamlet and The Town. Beginning with the murder of Jack Houston and ending with the murder of Flem Snopes, it traces the downfall of the indomitable post-bellum family who managed to seize control of the town of Jefferson within a generation.
Three Famous Short Novels: Spotted Horses Old Man The Bear (Vintage) Page 31
