Go Down, Moses, and Other Stories

RANDOM MOUSE, $2.50

THIS is Faulkner at his best and worst — perhaps not quite his worst, for no loonies, degenerates, or gentlemen who fall in love with cows figure as major characters in these stories. The same people, black and white, appear in all of them. The chronology is obscure, the characters are vague, the interrelationships demand closer study than the casual reader can afford, and there is a great deal of what — to all but Faulkner addicts must seem to be mere maundering and verbiage. But there is enough magic, here and there, to justify this or any other book. Sometimes this splendid writer cannot help writing splendidly. “The Bear,” from page 191 to page 254 in this volume, is a superb story, perhaps an immortal one, and then it falls to pieces and degenerates into drivel. One feels that to the author the drivel is the really important message, the thing he has to say, but there is a failure in his technique. His message does not come through. It bogs down in words and confusion. “. . . feeling again and as always the sharp shocking inrush from when Isaac McCaslin long yet was not . . .” is a slovenly way of expressing one’s emotions on almost stepping on a rattler. Mr. Faulkner has always been, to this reviewer, an annoying writer. He has everything, a wealth of talents. But he lacks horse sense and discrimination. He can spoil his best work more thoroughly and quickly than any other man living. This book, I repeat, shows him at his best and his worst. R. E. D.