Old Master

(The Faulkner Project)  The Reivers, a Reminiscence from William Faulkner Novels 1957-1962. Library of America  pp. 723-921.  *****

In the summer of 1961, though he had recently written a friend that he was ready to give up writing, William Faulkner sat down to write a story he’d had in mind for some time.  He wrote the first three chapters quickly, showed them to a few people, then finished the book in an astonishing two months, sending it to his publisher in late August.  It was published on June 4^th of 1962, and on July 6^th he died of a heart attack in a drying out facility where he had stayed multiple times.  A nurse had come in around 11:00 PM the night before and said she’d see him in the morning, and he said, “I don’t think so.”  He died at 1:00 AM.    He was 65 years old.

I’d read The Reivers before—I think I’d read it twice—but this time, somewhat to my surprise, found myself wondering if it is the most enjoyable of all the Faulkner novels.  I couldn’t think of one I’d enjoyed more (having just read them all).  It was also one more example of a story about a young boy losing his innocence in a difficult circumstance.  It’s astonishing how many of Faulkner’s novels you could describe in just that way.  He seemed to love all his characters, but especially loved boys as they were coming into adolescence.  There was something about that moment for him.  It seemed to have formed him as an artist.

The boy in this case is Lucius Priest, a distant cousin of the McCaslin/Edmonds clan, and the situation is irresistible.  His paternal grandfather has bought a car—one of the first in town—not because he really wants one, but because he thinks a person in his position needs to have one, and has chosen as his driver none other than Boon Hogganbeck, the irrepressible child/man whom we met as far back as Go Down, Moses (he’s the man who finally subdued The Bear in the story of that name, not by shooting it—he once managed to miss it six times at point blank range—but by jumping on its back and knifing it, in a vain attempt to save his dog, who was locked in mortal combat with the bear).

Boon is a kind of odd job man, equally inept at everything, but he loves any vehicle, and especially loves this new car.  When Lucius’ maternal grandfather seems to be on his deathbed, all of the adults in the family go to be with him, leaving the car behind.  Lucius and Boon get the idea at the same time: they have four days to have an adventure with that car.  So instead of moving in with his cousins as he’s supposed to, Lucius adopts the path of Non-Virtue (as the older narrator calls it, looking back) and takes off with Boon.

What they don’t know is that hiding under a tarp in the back of the car is Ned McCaslin, an African American servant for the family who believes he deserves a holiday too.  And what Ned knows, and what Boon knows, though I don’t believe Lucius does at first, is that the only place to go when you have four days to be non-virtuous is the place all Faulkner characters have gone, ever since Sanctuary back in 1930.  They go to Memphis, and of course they stay at a whorehouse, the same one where Temple Drake wound up with Popeye (in a situation that was less lighthearted, to say the least).  There, of course, they encounter one of the greatest comic characters in all of Faulkner—she was funny even in Sanctuary—Miss Reba, the Madam of the house.  Lucius has no idea where he is, of course; he thinks it’s just a boarding house with a lot of women in it.  But Boon has a favorite, a “big girl” named Miss Corrie whom he’s known before.  And Lucius finds that he can’t stay in the same room with Boon, but has to sleep in the attic with Corrie’s nephew Otis, who is visiting for a week and is about as foul-mouthed and cynical a person as there is in all of Faulkner.  He’s fifteen years old, but smaller than the eleven-year-old Lucius.

The complicating factor is that Ned—who had taken off for a different bordello—almost immediately shows up with a racehorse, which he intends to run in a race with another horse, though it has lost two previous races to that horse.  And oh yes, he’s swapped the car for the horse.  He has a plan to get it back.  But that involves winning that upcoming race.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that there’s going to be a race, that Lucius will ride the horse, that they’ll win and get the car back: it would hardly be a comedy if all that weren’t true.  What I hadn’t remembered—or anticipated—was that Lucius would half fall in love with Miss Corrie himself, and be astonished when he learns how she makes a living (it is her own nephew who tells him).  Lucius will also wind up not only meeting, but actually staying with, another African American family who is helping Ned in his predicament (in any Faulkner situation that is in any way white vs. black, it is always the blacks who have more brains and common sense, and who live better, know the score, know how ultimately to win in a situation that is stacked against them).  He will do more learning and growing in these four days that most people do in a lifetime.  And the road to success is one of the most comically convoluted plots in all of Faulkner.  He had the basic idea from the start, but the man could really spin out a story.

I’m not saying that this is the best of Faulkner’s novels, just that I enjoyed it the most.  He seemed to write it on instinct alone.  I wish he had skipped A Fable and written five or six more just like it.  Faulkner was a profound writer but he was also a great creator of character and of plot, and wrote the best dialogue of any writer who ever lived.  The dialogue alone in this book is priceless.

I have to sit back at some point and assess what the whole Faulkner project has meant to me.  People have been telling me that for months.  But it sure as hell ended well.  Faulkner went out on a high note.