Initial Impressions: Go Down, Moses, by William Faulkner – May 2023

[Tom, "Big Daddy"]

Comments on this board should be written with the assumption that not all readers have finished the book. Please take care not to reveal information that might lessen other readers’ enjoyment.

[Diane, "Miss Scarlett"]

I plan on reading this one again, but it might have to be later in the month.

[Steve]

Three days ago Ole Miss announced the new project at the Faulkners' Greenfield Farm. https://news.olemiss.edu/university-p...

Quite the coincidence that we are reading Go Down Moses, the setting for which is slightly north of Greenfield and some of the stories northwest of Greenfield. You can gauge the proximity by looking at Brother Will's map of Yoknapatawpha

[Sara]

Thanks for the article, Steve. How appropriate that the farm would be used for this purpose.

[Lexy]

That’s wonderful!

[Steve]

Yoknapatawpha map as reference that shows location of Go down Moses stories.

Updated to show the Digital Yoknapatawpha source page instead per Cheryl Carroll's suggestion.

http://faulkner.iath.virginia.edu/med...

[Diane, "Miss Scarlett"]

Great article, and what a perfect use of the site. Mississippi is full of great writers.

[Cheryl Carroll]

Steve wrote: "Yoknapatawpha map as reference that shows location of Go down Moses stories.

https://www.openculture.com/2015/10/w..."

Thanks for providing the group with a resource to get us started. I'm going to recommend alternate sources though, that are directly maintained by Faulkner scholars. For instance, the YT video at the webpage is an unauthorized clip from audio archives maintained by the UVA. (And I only know this bc I shared it to a WF book club page, and was contacted by Stephen Railton to advise me of such.)
The archives can be found at Railton's UVA page "Faulkner in Virginia: An Audio Archive". https://faulkner.lib.virginia.edu/

Another resource created by Railton is the Digital Yoknapatawpha site. That webpage is PACKED with information! From the home page, select Go Down, Moses. You'll see a big map that I personally found really confusing at first. Look at the long box to the left of the map that is labeled "Display Controls". Down at the bottom is "Other Resources", and those links are where the fun is at! Manuscripts, McCaslin Genealogies, Audio Clips, and the Location-Character Graph.

Now, the graph can be confusing so I'll only write more about that if you all are interested. Here is the DY homepage http://faulkner.iath.virginia.edu/

[Cathrine ☯️]

I've finished the first 2 stories. Some thoughts (no spoilers) on the 1st one. Need to ponder the 2nd one a bit more.

Was

This had me off balance and confused immediately. Like I was in a foreign country with only the rudiments of the language. At the same time I was interested in what was going on and how it would develop; hard to keep characters and their attachments straight, and not like anything I've read concerning southern relations. In the end I was not confused but surprised, not what I was expecting.

[Cheryl Carroll]

Cathrine ☯️ wrote: "I've finished the first 2 stories. Some thoughts (no spoilers) on the 1st one. Need to ponder the 2nd one a bit more.

Was

This had me off balance and confused immediately. Like I was in a foreig..."

I would venture to say that metaphorically speaking, you were in fact in a foreign country 😉😄, as the story is set pre-Civil War and deals with issues of human ownership of other humans, lineage, and family responsibility. So, the first story is about how things "was" (used to be).

One thing that impresses me about Faulkner's writing in this story, is that he slyly reminds readers that what "was" is that one person's life, as it was owned by others, could be gambled away in a poker game. ☹ Faulkner also presents a very real, historic family dynamic in the fraternal relationship of the twins and Tomey's Turl. Which for me prompts the question - if Turl wasn't their brother, would his apprehension have been more aggressive? "Aggressive" might not be the right word, as WF actually wrote these two men as more racially sensitive characters.

From Chapter Two - "Retreat"

There was more to Uncle Buck and Buddy than just that. Father said they were ahead of their time; he said they not only possessed, but put into practice, ideas about social relationship that maybe fifty years after they were both dead people would have a name for.

I'll skip adding additional quotes from this novel, as we already have more than enough to tackle with GDM. But, more content from The Unvanquished and another novel, will surely be applicable as we continue our read. 🧡📚

For context of time, here are publication dates:

1938 -- The Unvanquished (collection of short stories, most published in The Saturday Evening Post)

1942 -- Go Down, Moses

1948 -- Intruder in the Dust

[Cheryl Carroll]

I don't think there are any real spoilers here, but you can safely scroll through and 🛑 before the title of the story that you haven't read yet. This page from Digital Yoknapatawpha shows how the McCaslin family genealogies are revealed, story by story, in GDM.
https://faulkner.drupal.shanti.virgin...

[Randall]

Cathrine ☯️ wrote: "I've finished the first 2 stories."

"Was" is, of course, a comic story ... on its surface. Uncle Buck, Uncle Buddy, and Mr. Hubert are all comic characters. And Miss Sophonsiba is not only comic, but pathetic as well ... on the surface. (view spoiler)[ She has no agency. Her future can be gambled on just as Tomey's Turl's future can be. But I was struck by a brief passage in the story: Tomey's Turl (I like how his very name robs him of his individual identity. He's somebody's child, specifically a Black woman's child, which identifies him (a man half white and half Black) as a slave.) tells McCaslin Edmonds "anytime you wants to git something done ... just get the womenfolks to working on it. Then all you needs to do is sit down and wait." The story then continues but there's no indication of any plan put into action by any women. Faulkner, I believe, isn't telling us the whole story. And what he doesn't tell us, I believe, is what the story is really about. Anyway, the story proceeds. Uncle Buck fails to catch Tomey's Turl and has to spend the night in Mr. Hubert's house. He and McCaslin have to find a vacant bedroom. Uncle Buck figures that Miss Sophonsiba's bedroom would be in the rear of the house, close by the kitchen (which probably is detached from the house in its own small building in the back yard). So he enters the bedroom at the front of the house--only to find Miss Sophonsiba in the bed he crawls into. Which sets in motion the rest of the story. But, what if Uncle Buck was right, that Miss Sophonsiba's bedroom was in the rear, but she switched bedrooms to catch Uncle Buck in her bed? So he'd have to marry her (which, due to Uncle Buddy's card-playing reputation, doesn't happen). If they did marry, she'd likely take Tennie with her to the McCaslin place and Tennie and Tomey's Turl could get married. And so, Tomey's Turl problem is solved because the women "worked on it." And even when Uncle Buddy wins his brother's freedom, part of the deal is that Tomey's Turl still gets his woman. Of course, nobody knows what Faulkner doesn't tell us, but I'm sure something like this--a scheme hatched by Miss Sophonsiba and Tennie (they are the only "womenfolk" in the story)--lies behind and drives the action of the story. This makes "Was," on the surface a comic tale of white male hijinks and female and Black powerlessness, a rather subversive tale of female, and slave, soft power. (hide spoiler)]

"The Fire and the Hearth" has a similar, though explicit, combination of the comic and the subversive.

[Cathrine ☯️]

Randall, the comedy was the surprise.
Also, the almost casual approach to "hunting" down Turl as you mention Cheryl, and that the fraternal tie seems to make a difference to how they interact.
I listened to some commentary on YouTube suggesting that the reason the brothers didn't want Turl and Tennie to get married (I wondered about that) was to keep the "shadow side" of their heritage from reproducing.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list...

[Cathrine ☯️]

The Fire and the Hearth

It didn't escape my notice that WF dedicated this book to Caroline Barr, his Mammy in childhood (I know next to nothing about the man) and thought the character of Molly an homage to her?

Lucas is quite a rich character, full of surprises, all the money unclaimed. He wants what's his by birthright, yet wants to be a self-made man.

Original log cabin quilt blocks from this period used a red center square to symbolize the hearth of the home, a yellow center to represent light shining through the window. Its design speaks to me regarding this story in particular, the symbolism, lights and darks, great contrast and interest, and the way they can be combined to make multiple patterns.

[Sam]

Cathrine ☯️ wrote: "Randall, the comedy was the surprise.
Also, the almost casual approach to "hunting" down Turl as you mention Cheryl, and that the fraternal tie seems to make a difference to how they interact.
I l..."

I also recommend the youtube video Cathrine linked if you are a beginner with Faulkner or this volume.

[Cathrine ☯️]

Thanks much for those links Steve & Cheryl.

[Cheryl Carroll]

@Cathrine -- I love Codex Cantina! Save for Absalom, their analyses of Faulkner work is spot on and entertaining!

Shadow families -- there is the rumor of black Faulkners, fathered by his g-great and/ or great grandfather. Don't have my biographies at hand, but it's definitely covered in Judith Sensibar and Carl Rollyson books.

[Lexy]

Thanks for leading me to Codex Cantina! I was waiting until after the Alamo to start GDM but that got me enthused! Great thoughts!

[Cathrine ☯️]

Lexy, it got me enthused to learn more about WF himself, not to mention getting to more of his work.

[Cheryl Carroll]

@Cathrine -- before I forget again, let me thank you for that image of the quilt. It is relevant not just to GDM, but to a short story in Welty's The Wide Net And Other Stories called "Livvie".

@Lexy -- there are just so many Faulkner biographies. The easiest to start with are Myself and the World: A Biography of William Faulkner by Robert Hamblin, and Becoming Faulkner: The Art and Life of William Faulkner by Phillip Weinstein. The audio for the latter is available on Hoopla. Hamblin is a well-known authority on WF, having studied his work and personal life since the 1970s (approximately). He also worked closely with L.D. Brodsky, to build one of the most important collections of Faulkneria (which is located at a college in Missouri). You might enjoy visiting the webpage for this school, particulary the "Faulkner Sightings" section that has a list of WF appearances in pop culture... including in the Simpsons, as all the greats are!
https://semo.edu/faulkner-studies/sig...

[Cathrine ☯️]

Thanks Cheryl. I'll have to check that out.

Just completed stories 2 & 3. I loved Pantaloon In Black.
Can someone speak to the title?
Also in the following quote, the section in bold, am I interpreting that to mean Rider is putting his final say on it? There were a few terms that stumped me a bit but this one stood out; also the sublime prose.

“It was empty at this hour of Sunday evening—no family in wagon, no writer, no walkers churchward to speak to him and carefully refrain from looking after him when he had passed—the pale, powder-light, powder-dry dust of August from which the long week's marks of hoof and wheel had been blotted by the strolling and unhurried Sunday shoes, with somewhere beneath them, vanished but not gone, fixed and held in the annealing dust, the narrow, splaytoed prints of his wife's bare feet where on Saturday afternoons she would walk to the commissary to buy their next week's supplies while he took his bath; himself, his own prints, setting the period now, as he strode on, moving almost as fast as a smaller man could have trotted, his body breasting the air her body had vacated, his eyes touching the objects—post and tree and field and house and hill—her eyes had lost.”

The Old People had me thinking of Genesis and the Table of Nations. I admit all the names were tripping me up but it came together in the end. Really liked the character of Sam.

[Sam]

Cathrine ☯️ wrote: "Thanks Cheryl. I'll have to check that out.

Just completed stories 2 & 3. I loved Pantaloon In Black.
Can someone speak to the title?
Also in the following quote, the section in bold, am I interp..."

You might know Pantaloon better as Pantalone and he is a stock character from Commedia dell'arte, a type of Italian comic theater with various stock characters who would appear in different skits dressed in stock costume and mask.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Pant...

I believe Faulkner uses this title ironically, punning the black to mean both racially and comically.

[Cathrine ☯️]

Following the Kentucky Derby, was reading an article about Secretariat this morning and came across this. I haven't read it yet, but was surprised Faulkner wrote a couple of articles for Sports Illustrated. But then who wouldn't be inspired by that horse?

https://vault.si.com/vault/1994/05/09...

[Cheryl Carroll]

Cathrine ☯️ wrote: "Following the Kentucky Derby, was reading an article about Secretariat this morning and came across this. I haven't read it yet, but was surprised Faulkner wrote a couple of articles for Sports Ill..."

I am one of the admins for the WFBC on fb, and this is the kind of information I only discovered after I joined! This essay can be found in Essays, Speeches & Public Letters.

Another thing I didn't know before, was that he spoke in the Philippines and Japan as an "ambassador" for the US. I'll link to a fun to read article from Slate magazine below, titled Put Someone in Charge of His Liquor" and Other Foreign Service Rules For Handling William Faulkner by Greg Barnhisel 02/26/2015. From the article: "He and other traveling luminaries like Martha Graham, John Updike, and Louis Armstrong were living proof that America wasn't just Mickey Mouse and chewing gum."

Another notable essay in the collection (which I'll quote from closer to the end of our group's reading) was for Ebony magazine in 1956. Original title was "If I Were a Negro", but was later changed to "A Letter to the Leaders in the Negro Race".

For now, while re-reading GDM I am keeping in mind - Faulkner's ⚫time (this publication date of 1942)
⚫location (Oxford, MS... the deep south... Nina Simone's song "Mississippi Goddamn" (1963) for further context
⚫personal relationships - the dedication of the book to Mammy Callie, as you yourself have previously noted 😊

Slate article: https://slate.com/human-interest/2015...

[Cheryl Carroll]

Steve wrote: "Yoknapatawpha map as reference that shows location of Go down Moses stories.

Updated to show the Digital Yoknapatawpha source page instead per Cheryl Carroll's suggestion.

http://faulkner.iath.vi..."

Thanks, Steve! DY posts to IG and FB pretty much daily. The one for today, links to one of the UVA audio clips, and it is 😄. Faulkner was a funny dude. His response to a student asking about Flem Snopes's moral character, his "mask of respectability"... Faulkner: He had never heard of respectability...
😄😄😄
https://www.facebook.com/digyok

[Cathrine ☯️]

Sam, thank you for your reply. That was new information for me.

[Diane, "Miss Scarlett"]

I thought I would get a chance to reread this with y'all, but it's not going to happen. Really enjoying the discussion and links though.

[Cheryl Carroll]

Diane wrote: "I thought I would get a chance to reread this with y'all, but it's not going to happen. Really enjoying the discussion and links though."

Bummer. 🙁
A couple of the stories I'm not giving a true read, as I recently covered them in this YMCA class. So for those I'm just looking back at my notes.

[Cheryl Carroll]

@Steve, Randall, and Sam - it appears that you all have read GDM before. This is actually my first, chronological story by story, full read. As mentioned in my last comment to Diane, I recently took one of those low-cost lit. classes, and that one covered the first three stories. I've covered "The Bear" (both versions) with the WFBC fb group. Never read the last two, though.

By going in exact order, I just noticed the time shifts.
Was = pre-Civil War
Fire and Hearth, Pantaloon = post-Civil War
The Bear = pre-Civil War
Delta Autumn and GDM are tbd (in my case)

Do you think that it was necessary for Faulkner to start the novel with a pre-Civil War era story, perhaps to make the racial themes being explored more palatable to white readers of the time? And then after setting that foundation, he was able to more "comfortably" discuss Reconstruction era tensions?

[Cheryl Carroll]

Cathrine has been plowing through this read and offering some great commentary. 💜 For those who are also new to this novel, I wanted to share some thoughts that will hopefully motivate more to join the read.

As you all know, William Faulkner is my favorite novelist but sometimes, on the first and second read of a work, I am bored and/or impatient for him to get to the point 💯. I personally have had the most fun and success on learning to read his work with others, and now reread something that he's written almost daily. "Fire and the Hearth" and "The Bear" are the longest stories, but long and confusing can understandably result in a DNF. 😟 If everyone interested in this read has finished the first three stories by Sunday the 14th, those same readers might enjoy a structured reading schedule to get through Fire / Hearth and The Bear (through Sunday the 28th, but hopefully before that date).

For those who enjoy books on audio, Hoopla has Thomas Merton on William Faulkner. This particular audio is how I discovered who Thomas Merton was. His analysis of "The Bear" and Faulkner as a humanist (or naturalist?) is wonderful. Plus, he's funny. (Hoopla also has audio of his lectures on other authors, such as Kafka.)

[Steve]

Cheryl Carroll wrote: "@Steve, Randall, and Sam - it appears that you all have read GDM before. This is actually my first, chronological story by story, full read. As mentioned in my last comment to Diane, I recently too..."

No, I don't jump to that interpretation.  GDM as its title indicates has a biblical foundation.  WAS represents to me  the Genesis book in particular by laying out in circuitous fashion who begat whom.  
Also, He dedicated GDM to his Mammy, so if there's an audience he has in mind, perhaps Mammy is a clue?

Also, we should note that  some of these stories were published independently in literary mags before assembled as a collection under GDM title.  
For more criticism from a professional, check out Rollyson's work.In Carl Rollyson's recent bio  about Faulkner(volume 2 page 175),  Rollyson writes referring to GDM   "... bringing together every aspect of his biography, family, regional, national and world history in a series of concatenating chapters that recover a past that suffuses the present, beginning with "Was"" More clues there in Rollyson's interpretation for the placement of Was.

[Cathrine ☯️]

I finished The Bear . . . sort of.
I loved it up until that 4th section when WF the grizzly showed up. I decided to stop and listen to what CodeX Cantina had to say about it, not much surprisingly, but was encouraged to skip it and read the final section 5 thinking I would go back to it, maybe, or just read more summary perhaps. It may be too much for me. I had a horrendous week of solving tech problems, then mistakenly, and permanently wiped all my files off my desktop, and just could not face that 4th section.
Taking a short break until I finish the final chapters as I'm in a timely buddy read with friends on another book this week.

[Sam]

Cheryl Carroll wrote: "@Steve, Randall, and Sam - it appears that you all have read GDM before. This is actually my first, chronological story by story, full read. As mentioned in my last comment to Diane, I recently too..."

Like Steve, I don't feel Faulkner startted the novel with pre-war to make things platable. First, I doubt that Faulkner tried to make anything palatable. He constantlly challenged, almost force-feeding his ideas down the throats of us readers without much regard for our tastes IMO, and that is one reason I admire him.Also Time is a major theme with Faulkner. I see him treating it almost like a character. You get a good introduction to that in this book but I think you get a better sense after reading several more novels.

I am game for a more structured reading of the longer pieces and will follow if it happens.

[Diane, "Miss Scarlett"]

I've read The Bear twice now, and it seems almost otherworldly to me. The bear and the hunters almost like prehistoric creatures. It put me under a spell. But then a lot of Faulkner does that to me.

[Cathrine ☯️]

Sam wrote: "I doubt that Faulkner tried to make anything palatable. "

I have to agree with Sam and Steve. I know little about him but from what I do know Sam's comment is what was going through my mind when I read the question.

[Cheryl Carroll]

Cathrine ☯️ wrote: "I finished The Bear . . . sort of.
I loved it up until that 4th section when WF the grizzly showed up. I decided to stop and listen to what CodeX Cantina had to say about it, not much surprisingly..."

Cathrine, as Steve said most of the stories for GDM were first published in popular literary magazines of the time. Per the WF bibliography page on Wikipedia, "Go Down, Moses" was a short story first in Collier's (1941), "Delta Autumn" was in Story (1942), and "The Bear" was in The Saturday Evening Post (1942). I wasn't able to get through the novel's version of "The Bear" until 1. I read the original short story of about 10 pages, which renewed my interest and 2. I listened to Thomas Merton's lectures (which again, are funny as well as informative!).

One thing that attracted me to the original short story was the inclusion of "Ode on a Grecian Urn" by Keats. I wasn't very familiar with the poem, and had to hit the Google machine and YT to dissect it's meaning and cultural importance. To avoid spoilers, I'll skip some of the build up to the conclusion of the story -- BUT I love that the rug in Ike's father's office is a bear pelt. Spoiler tag used for length, plus Saturday Evening Post photos -- no actual spoilers!
(view spoiler)[

But he didn't answer, and his father didn't wait for him to, rising and crossing the room, across the pelt of the bear which they had killed two years ago and the larger one which his father had killed before he was born, to the bookcase beneath the mounted head of the boy's first buck. It was the room which his father called the office, from which all the plantation business was transacted...

He would hear it, not talking himself, but listening -- the wilderness, the big woods, bigger and older than any recorded document of white man fatuous enough to believe he had brought any fragment of it or Indian ruthless enough to pretend that any fragment of it had been his to convey...

His father returned with the book and sat down again and opened it. "Listen," he said. He read the five stanzas aloud, his voice quiet and deliberate in the room...

The boy watched him. "All right," his father said. "Listen." He read again, but only the second stanza this time, to the end of it, the last two lines, and closed the book and put it on the table beside him. "She cannot fade, though thou hast not not thy bliss, forever wilt thou love, and she be fair," he said.

"He's talking about a girl," the boy said.

"He had to talk about something," his father said. Then he said, "He was talking about truth. Truth doesn't change. Truth is one thing. It covers all things which touch the heart -- honor and pride and pity and justice and courage and love. Do you see now?"






(hide spoiler)]

[Cheryl Carroll]

@Diane -- I absolutely agree! And, "The Old People" is the perfect warm up to "The Bear". At first there was nothing... So Sam departed. He owned so little that he could carry it. He walked.... It was only the boy who returned, returning solitary and alone to the settled familiar land,... the tremendous gums and cypresses and oaks where no axe save that of the hunter had ever sounded, between the impentrable walls of cane and brier - the two changing yet constant walls just beyond which the wilderness whose mark he had brought away forever on his spirit...

@Steve -- I took a screenshot of your nod to Carl and sent it to him! 😊 I have read and reviewed his 2022 , but not the 2020 two volume set yet, because -- I still haven't read all of Faulkner's work! As you know, the two volumes are so in-depth with background info about Faulkner's life as he was writing each piece, and plot elements of the work are often included. So, I read the sections as I become familiar with the work.

As a "student" of Faulkner's work (not an academic, but a huge fan) I agree that he pushed boundaries regarding narrative techniques. However, his presentation of blacks and Native Americans as being "equal to" was kind of risky. In TSTF we have Dilsey, the mammy figure that southern whites could identify with, so in her case maybe not the biggest of risks? But then in novels like and , he has to make the "equal to" statement in a more circuitous fashion. For instance, in The Unvanquished, he can't flat out say that when given equal scholastic training, black people can be as intelligent as their white counterparts. Instead, Faulkner illustrates that capability with passages like this, where the father figure, the head of household, the greatly admired Confederate officer John Sartoris says:

That's how Ringo and I were. We were almost the same age, and Father always said that Ringo was a little smarter than I was, but that didn't count with us, anymore than the difference in the color of our skins counted.

Also here: Ringo had drawn it (Father was right; he was smarter than me; he had even learned to draw, who had declined even to try to learn to print his name when Loosh was teaching me; who had learned to draw immediately by merely taking up the pen, who had no affinity for it and never denied he had not but who learned to draw simply because he had to.)

[Randall]

Cheryl Carroll wrote: "@Steve, Randall, and Sam - it appears that you all have read GDM before. "

Yeah, I have. (Not to be pedantic .... okay, being pedantic ... The Bear is post Civil War, in the 1880s to be precise.

(view spoiler)[One observation: Sam = Ike = Old Ben. They all live to a ripe old age. Sam and Old Ben are described as father figures and Ike is "Uncle" to half the county, yet they all are childless.

Some questions (I have my guesses, but anybody's guess is as good as mine): Why didn't Sam or Ike shoot the giant buck at the end of The Old People? Was it really a buck, or something else?

Why didn't Sam or Ike shoot Old Ben when the little fyce cornered it? (Faulkner returns to this point a couple of times. He even has McCaslin Edmonds ask Ike this question.)

Boon has to be the least likely person to kill Old Ben. So why does Faulkner choose him? And why does Faulkner end the story on a tragic/comic note, with Boon desperately trying to fix his gun so he can shoot at (and likely miss) a bunch of squirrels in a tree?

When Ike yells at McCaslin to leave Boon alone, when McCaslin asks Boon if he killed a dying Sam, to put him out of his misery, does that mean Ike killed him?

Why doesn't Major DeSpain go to his hunting camp the next year after Old Ben is killed? Then he sells the whole wilderness area to a lumber company, which spells the end of that land as a hunting ground. Is that a coincidence? (I don't think so.) (hide spoiler)]

As for Faulkner's portraits of Blacks. I think Faulkner sometimes overplays certain Black characters' loyalty to the "quality" white folks (worst case example for me is Ringo in the Unvanquished). But he, more than any of his white contemporaries, created Black characters as whole, complete people. Lucas Beauchamp is that rare character, white or Black, who is both comic and serious, flawed and also a man of seamless integrity. And Faulkner describes Aunt Molly with almost the exact words he uses in his dedication to Caroline Barr. (view spoiler)[(And Aunt Molly, in the last story, certainly doesn't display any excessive loyalty to white folks. Quite the contrary.) (hide spoiler)] And while the title, GDM, is a biblical allusion, it is an African-American biblical allusion, taken from the spiritual.

In his earlier masterpieces, Faulkner mostly presents the prophetic, Old Testament side of his view of the South. In GDM, he gives us his whole Bible--the New as well as the Old Testament. The Bear in particular is as much about Faulkner's gospel as it is about his broken covenant. GDM was his last masterpiece, and he didn't publish another novel for another six years (Intruder in the Dust, which borrows Lucas and Gavin Stevens from GDM). That may be his longest gap between books. GDM is, IMHO, his pinnacle.

[Cheryl Carroll]

Randall, thank you so much for these thoughts! Also, correcting the time setting isn't pedantic at all as context impacts our interpretation of the text.

I work all weekend but can't wait to take time Monday / Tuesday to really think about your post.

[Cheryl Carroll]

Thomas Merton's lectures were a game changer for my understanding The Bear, so I just wanted to recommend the audio again. I've also been using my commute time to revisit Cathrine's recommendation of the Codex Cantina series. Analysis in Panataloon was so much deeper than I'd ever read into it.
There is an audio of the short story read by a guy who adds his own humorous commentary along the way. https://youtu.be/4LCAJLwE0LI

[Cathrine ☯️]

Thanks for referencing Merton's lectures Cheryl. I'm going to check it out but Hoopla often doesn't allow access to particular chapters on audios. I want to at least check out his commentary on The Bear but don't have time for the rest of it. I'll borrow it and see what kind of access is offered.
It's been years since I've read Merton.

Randall, I was hoping someone else was wondering about those questions you posted. I particularly was struck by the one about McCaslin's question to Boon about Sam.
And half of CodexCantina seems to be in agreement with you about "GDM is, IMHO, his pinnacle."

[Sam]

I am finding the comments very interesting and varied. Great stuff. I also am a big Go Down Moses fan. I don't rank the bokk above the big four, but feel it has themes that best match contemporary issues. I think the idea of the work as a whole appeals to me far more than when I first read it, and I am impressed with how attuned Faulkner was to ideas I would later find originated or popularized by black authors like W.E.B. Du Bois and "double consciousness." Faulkner illustrates these quite well.
It is in rereading that I find Faulkner's value. I think this reread really brought out the progression of the first three stories or left me wondering whay happened to Henry Beauchamp?

[Cheryl Carroll]

At work, sneakin' on the phone to read comments... you guys *have* to know how happy I am right now! Great posts from everyone! :-D

[Cathrine ☯️]

I was able to check out the Merton talk. I have also skimmed some other summaries. There is so much potential and interesting symbolism. What I love is that whatever WF had in mind specifically, the story also takes on personal symbolic meaning to myself and my own experience and beliefs.

[Steve]

Cathrine ☯️ wrote: "I was able to check out the Merton talk. I have also skimmed some other summaries. There is so much potential and interesting symbolism. What I love is that whatever WF had in mind specifically, th..."

I second your motion re "What I love..." You have succinctly captured one immortal and universal aspect of Faulkner's genius. Granted There are other aspects, but perhaps yours is the one most personal for those of us who walk the trails and hunt within the forested river bottomlands of Yoknapatawpha.

[Cathrine ☯️]

Steve wrote: "Three days ago Ole Miss announced the new project at the Faulkners' Greenfield Farm."

I finally got a look at this link, thanks Steve. Very cool idea.
But can anyone tell me, what is/was a mule farm? I've never heard that term.

[Steve]

The mules are the workhorses. lol. Rollyson states in Volume 2 page 488 that Faulkner raised mules at Greenfield. So sounds like the Faulkners' operation included both breeding and using the mules as machinery. Though there is one famous tractor from Greenfiled in the old videos

When the Faulkner bought Greenfield, his brother John, often referred to as Johncy in the bios (an esteemed engineer, writer and painter), lived at Greenfield for a while and was likely more active than William in the first years of farm duty.

The Greenfield phase of the Faulkners' lives is chronicled in most of the biographies. Certainly Blotner 's bio is rich in material. The aforementioned Rollyson plus many more all touch on Greenfield. But for another look, brother John's My Brother Bill is must read , . John wrote this piece just after his brother's death, tragically just prior to his own.

Maybe the mule farmers among us, if there are any living, can answer your question in more detail. I'm more of a vineyard guy.

[Cathrine ☯️]

Steve wrote: "I'm more of a vineyard guy."

Now we're on familiar terra firma 🍷😍

[Sam]

I am starting my reread of The Bear today. I also had a lot of reads in May to finish before devoting my time to this. I plan a chapter a day until chapter four when I will take two days each to complete the last two chapters. I will be reading with thoughts to what has been mentioned in this discussion. Àfter reading the first four stories, I am seeing this work much more as a whole as I stated previously, and I am appreciating it as such. I was introduced to The Bear section as a story in my ninth or tenth grade. My impression at the time was much like Diane's and l value that interpretation still seeing the bear as some primordial archetypal creature which was reinforced by all the adventure and speculative fiction I read at the time . In subsequent reads over my life, I see The Bear through multiple interpretations and the creature, the story, and the novel have taken more metaphysical connotations. Faulkner seems to meld legend, with imagination, with spiritual, and there seems interdependence between them, suggesting a system as defined by science, a topic that has become very popular at present. I will also be giving thought to that concept in this read.
I love Faulkner for the thinking, reading him provokes and I feel lucky to be privy to the thoughts of you who are more advanced in your reading of him. Reading and discussing Faulkner always spurs me into wanting to read and discuss more Faulkner.

[Cathrine ☯️]

I've got the final chapter still to read.

I am going to tackle that 4th section in The Bear but need some recovery time.

I read Delta Autumn last night. 😱 What the . . . Ike?!