Pulitzer Project: The Reivers, a Reminiscence

Okay, I didn't wait. I grabbed The Reivers off the shelf when I returned The Edge of Sadness. Considering that I've had to request most of the Pulitzer fiction winners through Interlibrary Loan, I figured I could move up the list a little faster if I didn't pause long this time. It probably helped that I'm a Faulkner fan. This was a book I was looking forward to reading. In fact, I was wondering how I'd managed to miss it before.

Like most of Faulkner's work, The Reivers, a Reminiscence is set in  Yoknapatawpha County, a mythical place in Mississippi. Faulkner references characters introduced in his other works also set in Yoknapatawpha County, like Colonel Sutpen  (Absalom, Absalom) and Miss Reba (Sanctuary). The story is told in the form an old man recalling a youthful misadventure that happened when he was eleven years old. The year was 1905 when Lucius found himself helping one of his father's employee's steal his grandfather's car for a road trip to Memphis that quickly evolved to include his first visit to a whorehouse, a stolen horse, and lessons in how to fix a horse race.

Lucius's parents and grandparents have had to go out of town to attend a funeral in Bay St. Louis, which is at the other end of the state from Yoknapatawpha County, and Lucius and his younger siblings are supposed to stay with a relative who has a farm a few miles out of town. That doesn't happen. Without even talking about it, Lucius finds himself collaborating with Boon Hoggenbeck, a fellow who is technically an adult but seems to have gotten stuck mentally at about ten years old. Boon works at Lucius's father's livery stable as a driver and stable hand, but his true passion is automobiles. He fell in love with the first car he saw. When Lucius' grandfather, a local banker, buys the second automobile to be seen in their town, Boon becomes the chauffeur. Boon loves the car; if it were up to him, it would be in constant motion instead of spending most of its time in a locked carriage house. When he realizes that the car's owner won't be around for at least a week -- the funeral may have been in Bay St. Louis, but Boon knows that Lucius's grandfather will not be able to resist spending a few days in New Orleans before coming home -- he immediately plans to borrow the vehicle for a quick trip to Memphis.

Of course, there's no such thing as a quick trip anywhere in an automobile in Mississippi in 1905. Standard equipment in any car at the time included a couple of shovels, a block and tackle, and cable. It was more or less guaranteed that once you got out of town, you would end up in a mudhole. Memphis might have been a mere 80 miles away, only a little over an hour by train, but it was a two-day trip in a car. Still, they do eventually get to Memphis, having discovered along the way that another Priest family employee, Ned, had managed to stowaway in the back seat. They're happy to have Ned along when they hit some rough spots along the road; they're a little less thrilled when Ned trades the car for a race horse. That's when things start to get a little complicated, at least for Boon and Lucius.

From the reader's perspective, however, it's all pure fun. Boon, Lucius, and Ned are in constant motion, snatching a few minutes sleep here and there as they try to figure out how to get the horse to where it will do a match race with another horse -- a horse that has already beaten this particular horse multiple times so why Ned seems to think that a rematch is a good idea is a mystery, but Boon and Lucius don't have much choice but to go along with Ned's scheme if they want to get the car back and get home before anyone realizes they were gone. Boon's quick temper lands him in trouble with local law enforcement, Ned's attempts to fix the horse race have interesting results, and Lucius, to the surprise of everyone involved, manages to persuade a Memphis whore to stop whoring. Unfortunately, his good influence happens at just the wrong time. Right when they would all benefit from the use of some feminine wiles, the whore decides to get out of the business.

This is, in short, a comic novel. It is really funny. It has the usual Faulkner style -- the run-on sentences, the descriptions that go in circles and turn back on themselves, the hints at Southern weirdness and eccentricity -- but it's also laugh out loud funny. It was made into a film, The Reivers, starring Steve McQueen that was released in 1969. I'd like to see it. 

The Reivers was made into a film starring Steve McQueen as Boon. The movie was released in 1969, and I have a vague memory of hearing about it but never saw it. As soon as I finished the book, I checked online to see if I could find someplace. Amazon has it for sale, but only as DVDs or VHS, no streaming version. Netflix doesn't list it; neither does Hulu. It's possible it's hiding out there somewhere, but I haven't found it yet. There are clips, but no full-length film.

As for the book itself and the usual question -- would I recommend it to other readers? Yes. Because it's Faulkner, some people may find it awkward (all those run-on sentences, for example) but overall it's definitely up on the high end of the scale for a Pulitzer winner. Not quite a 10, but close to it.

Next up, another obscure one: The Keepers of the House by Shirley Ann Grau. It could be a little trickier to get than usual because according to the online catalog only three libraries in the consortium have it, and not all libraries are particularly eager to send books out on Interlibrary Loan. They're like people: happy to borrow but not too keen on lending.

Pulitzer Project: A Fable

This cover illustration is deceptive. The
soldier's helmet is WWII; the book is set
during World War I. It does definitely
signal the author's intent, though. 

William Faulkner wrote A Fable in the 1940s during World War II. The book did not get published until almost ten years later, and it's easy to see why. It is, to say the least, anti-war. The book is one long rant about war being a racket contrived by the munitions industries and the generals. The arms manufacturers need war in order to keep their businesses profitable; the generals need war because it's the only reason for their existence. When there's a possibility peace will break out without it being officially negotiated, the generals on both sides kill their own troops in order to keep the war going.

This was probably the most difficult to read book by Faulkner that I've encountered so far, and I've read a lot of Faulkner. In fact, I was happy to see it come up on the list. I like Faulkner. I find some of the Southern Gothic soap opera that Faulkner indulges in a bit odd -- I am, after all several generations younger than Faulkner so have trouble getting my head around some of the bizarre prejudices common 100 years ago -- but usually the language flows so smoothly that Faulkner's books come close to qualifying as easy reading. A Fable was definitely an exception.

I'm not sure if it was the setting -- France during the final months of World War I -- the plot, or the sentence structure. The underlying narrative in A Fable parallels the narrative in the New Testament. A child is born in a stable in the Middle East with an unknown father who turns out to be a powerful person; he grows up in obscurity, ends up with 12 followers (one of whom betrays him), apparently preaches a message of peace, and ends up being executed while being lashed to a post between two criminals. Miraculous (or semi-miraculous) events occur around him, and it appears he's close to convincing the ordinary enlisted men on both sides in the war to just lay down their guns and walk away from the conflict. I don't know if there was much controversy about the book when it was published. It does strike me, though, as having the capability to get some people riled up much in the same way some people freaked out over The Last Temptation of Christ or The Satanic Verses. 

Then again, given that the book was written by Faulkner, an author noted for a convoluted style, and is written in a way that lets the reader draw his or her own conclusions rather than coming right out and saying explicitly that if Christ were to appear on a battlefield we'd kill Him, maybe most readers never picked up on the parallels at all. It's quite possible this is one of those books that a lot of people bought because it was a Book of the Month Club selection (does Book of the Month still exist?) and that they then gave up on after the first few pages. Faulkner's usual tendency to indulge in run-on sentences is in full flower here. I swear one sentence ran on for at least 3 pages. Three pages! One sentence. Unreal. Do you know what type of nightmare that is for a former copy editor to wade through? I'm moderately amazed I actually read the entire book.

A Fable actually has several narrative threads running through it. There's the story of a former horse groom, now a British soldier, who loved and lost a horse and is now running a scam that may or may not be a scam. There's the story of a disillusioned man who had enlisted, been promoted to an officership, realized he hated being an officer, and deliberately engaged in conduct that got him kicked back down to enlisted status. Various paths cross and recross, there are flashbacks, unexplained coincidences, characters knowing things they shouldn't have any way of knowing. There's a distinct hallucinatory quality to much of the book. Faulkner's books usually get pigeon-holed as "Southern Gothic;" this novel has more akin with authors whose work is labeled "magical realism."

This book won the Pulitzer in 1955. I think it happened to fall at just right the time -- it came out in 1954, just as Americans were recovering mentally from fighting a war in Korea that they had been unable to win. World War II left people with a good feeling. Sure, a lot of people died but we took care of Hitler, and, following the war, things were looking pretty good. Then the conflict in Korea came along. A book saying war is a racket had to resonate with the Pulitzer judges. If it had come out earlier, it would have flopped because World War II had everyone too hyped about how the U.S. had rescued the world. A few years later and it's probable the reaction would have been, "Holy shit, doesn't Faulkner have a decent editor?" or "Wow. Time to send Bill to detox again."  As it was, the book won prizes.

Then again, maybe there just weren't very many semi-literate books in the running. There were several years in the 1950s where no prize was awarded. Maybe the judges decided that even strange Faulkner was better than the other stuff publishers were pushing. I don't know. . . given a choice between No Time For Sergeants (also published in 1954) and A Fable, I guess A Fable at least looks like serious literature.  

Would I recommend it to other readers? I'm not sure. I have a hunch the book would have come across better if I read slower or if I'd been reading it out loud. As it was, those long, long run-on sentences, the solid blocks of text that went on for multiple pages, were a distinct problem. One of the things I learned when an old pro taught me layout and pagination was a reader's eyes need to take an occasional break. You have to have some white space -- paragraph breaks -- on the page or readers' attention drifts. There isn't much white space in A Fable. If you like Faulkner and enjoy a challenge, go for it.

Next up on the list? Andersonville, which I've already read so I'll skip ahead to A Death in the Family by James Agee. Odds are I won't get to it until September, though, as (what a surprise, she said sarcastically) the L'Anse Public Library does not have it in its collection. We're about to hit the road in the Guppy, and by the time we get back the Interlibrary Loan program will have shut down for the summer. They quit taking requests around May 1 and don't start up again until after Labor Day. It'll wait. Going by the title, I'm going to guess it's not exactly a comedic novel.