Uncollected Stories of William Faulkner (108 page)
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Authors: William Faulkner
Faulkner made extensive use of his brief R.A.F. experience, most notably in short stories such as “All the Dead Pilots” and his novel
A Fable
. He said that this story had its inception about the time of “Turn About,” which was published in
The Saturday Evening Post
for 5 March 1932. “With Caution and Dispatch” was still unsold in 1939, however, when Faulkner rewrote at least part of it on the back of pages of the typescript setting copy of
The Hamlet
. An incomplete forty-seven-page typescript of the story which may date from that time supplies a bridge in the activities of young John Sartoris between his early R.F.C. service and his fatal mission as related in “All the Dead Pilots” and
Sartoris
. This forty-seven-page version has elements in common with a hundred-page unproduced film script entitled
A Ghost Story
which Faulkner wrote for Howard Hawks, particularly in its treatment of Sartoris’s wartime love affairs, carried out for the most part in competition with brother officers who outrank him. Faulkner revised the forty-seven-page version chiefly by means of judicious cutting (though he did add a little over a page of new material), eliminating a detailed description of Sartoris’s efforts to evade Flight Commander Britt, an account of their visit to a country home in Kent, and then Sartoris’s unauthorized excursion to London for a farewell to a girl named Kit, as well as the immediate aftermath. The forty-seven-page fragment breaks off as Sartoris’s Camel is about to crash on the ship’s deck in the Channel. The typescript of the revised version, printed here, is divided into two segments, each numbered sequentially beginning with the number 1. Part 1 of the story consists of seventeen typed pages. Parts 2 and 3 of the story comprise a twenty-one-page typed segment of the story, the first page of which bears the story’s title together with Faulkner’s name and address, as though he had concluded that the whole of “With Caution and Dispatch” was too long for magazines such as the
Post
and
Collier’s
unless divided into two installments. Faulkner’s agent, Harold Ober, offered the story for sale but had to inform Faulkner on 23 April 1940 that it had been rejected as “too dated.”
Repositories: FCVA, 47-pp. ts. Estate of Howard Hawks, 100-pp. ts. JFSA, 38-pp. ts.
Faulkner’s trip to Europe in 1925 with William Spratling provided him with useful material for later work. In “Mistral,” which may have been written not long after his return home, a first-person narrator and his friend, Don, tried to solve an Alpine murder case. No magazine bought
it, and so Faulkner included it in his short-story volume
These 13
(1931). At some time during that year Faulkner used the two principals of “Mistral” in another mystery story, “Evangeline.” These factors suggest that Faulkner may well have thought of the present story of love and death in the Alps as early as the time of “Mistral,” perhaps even written it, tried unsuccessfully to sell it, and later revised it, principally by an updated introduction, although there is at present no concrete evidence to support this conjecture. (The portraits of the Prussian general and his fiancée will remind some readers of Caddy Compson and her German general as Faulkner sketched them in October of 1945 in the Appendix, “The Compsons,” which he wrote for Malcolm Cowley’s
The Portable Faulkner
[1946].) Harold Ober’s records reveal that he received a twenty-one-page version of “Snow” on 17 February 1942. Ober wrote back that it was a beautiful story but he was afraid that it was suited only for a literary magazine. The next day, when he wrote Faulkner that
Harper’s
had rejected “Knight’s Gambit,” he said that both that story and “Snow” would have a much better chance of selling if Faulkner could simplify them. On 21 February, Faulkner replied that he could probably simplify “Snow” although it did not seem too obscure to him. Ober submitted it as it was, and on 15 April, when he wrote Faulkner to say that
The American Mercury
had declined it, he quoted a paragraph of detailed criticism from editor Edward Weeks. Busy with other work, Faulkner did not revise it. On 6 May, Ober informed him that one editor had called the story an example of Faulkner’s writing at its “elliptical worst” and another had declared it “confused.” It was 22 July when Ober received another version of “Snow” consisting of eighteen typed pages. “It is rewritten,” Faulkner told Ober, “simplified, still an implied story as before, but I have tried to fill the gaps, etc. and make it explicit as well.” The most noticeable change was from third-person narration to first, so that the form of this story now followed that of “Mistral” and “Evangeline.” The deletions included peripheral descriptions of Don’s appearance and his efforts to speak French as well as a sketch of the train that he and the narrator boarded. The anti-Nazi sentiments were still clear but more effective because less heavy-handed. The revision was to no avail. Ober could not sell it, and the story appears here for the first time.
22
Repositories: FCVA, 21-pp. ts. and 18-pp. carbon ts. JFSA, 18-pp. ts.
1
In an undated letter to Goldman, Faulkner said he had finished the novel “yesterday.” The last page of the ms. of
Pylon
bears the date “25 November 1934.”
2
James B. Meriwether, “Faulkner’s Correspondence with
The Saturday Evening Post
,” pp. 466–67.
3
See James B. Meriwether, “Sartoris and Snopes: An Early Notice,”
The Library Chronicle of The University of Texas
, VII (Summer 1962), 36–39.
4
This sketch was first published by James B. Meriwether with an introduction and editorial corrections in “Nympholepsy,”
The Mississippi Quarterly
, XXVI (Summer 1973), 403–9.
5
NOS,
pp. 3–14.
6
NOS
, pp. 86–91
7
The sketch was first published by James B. Meriwether with an introduction and editorial corrections in “The Priest,”
The Mississippi Quarterly
, XXIX (Summer 1976), 445–50.
8
ESPL
, pp. 30–31.
9
Collected Stories of William Faulkner
, pp. 475–510, 407–30, and 511–31.
10
See James B. Meriwether, “Two Unknown Faulkner Short Stories,”
Recherches anglaises et américaines
(Strasbourg), IV (1971), 23–30.
11
See James B. Meriwether, “Two Unknown Faulkner Short Stories,”
Recherches anglaises et américaines
(Strasbourg), IV (1971), 23–30.
12
“Books and Things: American Drama: Inhibitions,”
EPP
, pp. 93–98.
13
“The Hill,”
William Faulkner: Early Prose and Poetry
, ed. Carvel Collins, Boston, Little Brown, 1962, pp. 90–92.
14
ESPL
, pp. 7–8.
15
Letters of Sherwood Anderson
, ed. Howard Mumford Jones, with Walter Rideout, Boston, Little, Brown and Company, 1953, pp. 162–64.
16
See also Walter B. Rideout and James B. Meriwether, “On the Collaboration of Faulkner and Anderson,”
American Literature
, XXXV (March 1963), 85–87.
17
NOS
, pp. 46–54, 104–7.
18
James B. Meriwether,
The Literary Career of William Faulkner
, p. 87.
19
See James B. Meriwether, “Faulkner’s Correspondence with
Scribner’s Magazine,
”
Proof,
3 (1973), 253–82.
20
For further commentary, see Béatrice Lang, “An Unpublished Faulkner Story: ‘The Big Shot,’ ”
The Mississippi Quarterly
, XXVI (Summer 1973), 312–24.
21
For detailed treatments, see Thomas L. McHaney, “The Elmer Papers: Faulkner’s Comic Portraits of the Artist,”
The Mississippi Quarterly,
XXVI (Summer 1973), 281–311, and Cleanth Brooks,
William Faulkner: Toward Yoknapatawpha and Beyond
(1978), pp. 115–20.
22
For further commentary, see Frank Cantrell, “An Unpublished Faulkner Short Story: ‘Snow,’ ”
The Mississippi Quarterly
, XXVI (Summer 1973), 325–30.
For biographical, bibliographical, and textual material in the notes to these stories I have drawn principally upon these sources:
Joseph Blotner,
Faulkner: A Biography
, New York, Random House, 1974.
———, Selected Letters of William Faulkner
, New York, Random House, 1977.
James B. Meriwether,
The Literary Career of William Faulkner: A Bibliographical Study
, Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Library, 1961; revised edition: Columbia, S.C., University of South Carolina Press, 1971.
———, “The Short Fiction of William Faulkner: A Bibliography,”
Proof: The Yearbook of American Bibliographical and Textual Studies
, I (1971), 293–329.
Each of these works is fully indexed, and the interested reader will find them convenient to use for further study of Faulkner’s short stories.
The Literary Career of William Faulkner
reproduces a schedule of Faulkner’s submission of stories to magazines and his agent, Ben Wasson, in 1930 and 1931. A useful essay in conjunction with this material is Max Putzel’s “Faulkner’s Sending Schedule,”
The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America
, 71 (First Quarter, 1977), 98–105.
The following works are cited in the Notes. Faulkner works referred to by abbreviations and unannotated Faulkner works are not listed here.
Brooks, Cleanth,
William Faulkner: Toward Yoknapatawpha and Beyond
, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1978.
Cantrell, Frank, “An Unpublished Faulkner Short Story: ‘Snow,’ ”
The Mississippi Quarterly
, XXVI (Summer 1973), 325–30.
Faulkner, William.
Mayday
, South Bend, Ind., The University of Notre Dame Press, 1976, Afterword by Carvel Collins.
Jones, Howard Mumford, ed., with Walter B. Rideout,
Letters of Sherwood Anderson
, Boston, Little, Brown and Company, 1953.
Lang, Béatrice, “An Unpublished Faulkner Short Story: The Big Shot,”
The Mississippi Quarterly
, XXVI (Summer 1973), 313–24.
McHaney, Thomas L., “The Elmer Papers: Faulkner’s Comic Portraits of the Artist,”
The Mississippi Quarterly
, XXVI (Summer 1973), 281–311.
Meriwether, James B., “Faulkner’s Correspondence with
The Saturday Evening Post
,”
The Mississippi Quarterly
, XXX (Summer 1977), 461–75.
———, “Faulkner’s Correspondence with
Scribner’s Magazine,” Proof,
3 (1973), 253–82.
———, “Frankie and Johnny,”
The Mississippi Quarterly
, XXXI (Summer 1978), 453–64.
———, “Nympholepsy,”
The Mississippi Quarterly
, XXVI (Summer 1973), 403–9.
———, “The Priest,”
The Mississippi Quarterly
, XXIX (Summer 1976), 45–50.
———, “Sartoris and Snopes: An Early Notice,”
The Library Chronicle of The University of Texas
, VII (Summer 1962), 36–39.
———, “Two Unknown Faulkner Short Stories,”
Recherches anglaises et américaines
(Strasbourg), IV (1971), 23–30.
Polk, Noel, “ ‘Hong Li’ and
Royal Street:
The New Orleans Sketches in Manuscript,”
The Mississippi Quarterly
, XXVI (Summer 1973), 344–45.
Rideout, Walter B., and James B. Meriwether, “On the Collaboration of Faulkner and Anderson,”
American Literature
, XXXV (March 1963), 85–87.
The following works deal with William Faulkner’s short stories and his techniques of revision, especially in the cases of stories in this volume which were later revised to become parts of books.
Brooks, Cleanth, “A Note on Faulkner’s Early Attempts at the Short Story,”
Studies in Short Fiction
, 10 (Fall 1973), 381–88.
Burggraf, David Leroy, “The Genesis and Unity of Faulkner’s
Big Woods
,” Ph.D. dissertation, Ohio University, 1976.
Carothers, James B., “William Faulkner’s Short Stories,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Virginia, 1970.
Cox, Leland Holcombe, Jr., “Sinbad in New Orleans: Early Short Fiction by William Faulkner: An Annotated Edition,” Ph.D. dissertation, 1978.
Creighton, Joanne V.,
William Faulkner’s Craft of Revision: The Snopes Trilogy
, “
The Unvanquished
”
and
“
Go Down, Moses
,” Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1977.
———, “Revision and Craftsmanship in the Hunting Trilogy of
Go Down, Moses,” Texas Studies in Language and Literature
, XV (Fall 1973), 577–92.
Early, James,
The Making of “Go Down, Moses
,” Dallas, Southern Methodist University Press, 1972.
Gregory, Eileen, “Faulkner’s Typescripts of
The Town
,” in
A Faulkner Miscellany
, Jackson, University Press of Mississippi, 1974, pp. 113–38.
———, “A Study of the Early Versions of Faulkner’s
The Town
and
The Mansion
,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of South Carolina, 1975.
Grimwood, James Michael, “Pastoral and Parody: The Making of Faulkner’s Anthology Novels,” Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University, 1977.
Harter, Carol Ann Clancey, “The Diaphoric Structure and Unity of William Faulkner’s
Go Down, Moses
,” Ph.D. dissertation, State University of New York at Binghamton, 1970.
———, “The Winter of Ike McCaslin: Revisions and Irony in Faulkner’s ‘Delta Autumn,’ ”
Journal of Modern Literature
, 1 (1970), 209–25.
Hochberg, Mark R., “The Unity of
Go Down, Moses
,”
Tennessee Studies in Literature
, 21 (1976), 58–65.
Holmes, Edward M.,
Faulkner’s Twice-Told Tales: His Re-Use of His Material
, The Hague, Mouton, 1966.
Kibler, James E., Jr., “A Study of the Text of William Faulkner’s
The Hamlet
,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of South Carolina, 1970.
Klotz, Marvin, “Procrustean Revision in Faulkner’s
Go Down, Moses
,”
American Literature
, 37 (March 1965), 1–16.
Lisca, Peter, “
The Hamlet:
Genesis and Revisions,”
Faulkner Studies
, 3 (Spring 1954), 5–13.
Meriwether, James B., “The Place of
The Unvanquished
in William Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha Series,” Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University, 1958.
Millgate, Jane, “Short Stories into Novels: A Textual and Critical Study of Some Aspects of Faulkner’s Literary Method,” M.A. thesis, University of Leeds, 1962.
Momberger, Philip, “A Critical Study of Faulkner’s Early Sketches and
Collected Stories
,” Ph.D. dissertation, Johns Hopkins University, 1972.
Ploegstra, Henry A., “William Faulkner’s
Go Down, Moses:
Its Sources, Revisions, and Structure,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 1966.
Roth, Russell, “The Brennan Papers: Faulkner in Manuscript,”
Perspective
, 2 (Summer 1949), 219–24.
Serruya, Barbara B., “The Evolution of an Artist: A Genetic Study of William Faulkner’s
The Hamlet
,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of California at Los Angeles, 1974.
Simpson, Hassell Algernon, “The Short Stories of William Faulkner,” Ph.D. dissertation, Florida State University, 1962.
Tick, Stanley, “The Unity of
Go Down, Moses
,”
Twentieth Century Literature
, 8 (July 1962), 67–73.
Watkins, Floyd C., and Thomas Daniel Young, “Revisions of Style in Faulkner’s
The Hamlet
,”
Modern Fiction Studies
, 5 (Winter 1959), 327–336.
Wills, Arthur, “A Study of Faulkner’s Revisions,”
Exercise Exchange
, 10 (March 1963), 14–16.
Winn, James A., “Faulkner’s Revisions: A Stylist at Work,”
American Literature
, 41 (May 1969), 231–50.