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was accomplished by such writers as Malraux and Sartre in France and
O'Donnell and Warren among ourselves. For most American readers the
decisive event was probably Malcolm Cowley's
Portable William Faulk–
ner,
an anthology which was a first-rate effort of criticism. Mr. Cowley
introduced us to Faulkner's meanings as Sam Fathers in
Th e Bear
in–
itiates Isaac McCaslin into the wilderness. He showed that Faulkner's
South was no mere regional setting but a "mythical kingdom"; that his
novels could be read as a "connected story," and that his story could be
construed as a "moral parable" of Southern history.
In
recognition of its
limited locale and wide interest he called Faulkner's work a "saga" of
Yoknapatawpha County.
The force of Mr. Cowley's conception may be judged by the ex–
tent to which it has influenced Mr. Howe, although the latter makes
the conception his own by elaborating it.
If
he cannot come to Faulkner
as a discoverer, he can come as a settler and make his efforts in this kind
as vivid and rewarding as the efforts of the first arrivals. Where they
were fragmentary, he is thorough, breaking down Faulkner's achieve–
ment into analyzable units and creating standards for determining its
worth. Some books on living writers are tentative and complimentary
to the point of being useless. Some others are so comprehensive as to
broadly hint that the author is safely dead. Mr. Howe's book succeeds
in being comprehensive without striking this mortuary note.
It
does not,
in my experience of it, communicate much personal feeling. A rift in
the logic, a show of prejudice, a small mad smile would be welcome
now and then. On the other hand, it has the invaluable qualities of
awareness and flexibility.
It
is the product of a mind that works hard
at its tasks. A certain obsessive clairvoyance is to be felt among other
critics of Mr. Howe's generation as they contemplate a half-century of
brilliant achievement and instructive error. This compulsion is foreign
to Mr. Howe, no doubt because he is so determined to salvage one strain
of the past-its liberalism-and make it continue to work for him. His
insights come to him in usable quantities; he looks no farther than he
needs to in order to define a literary issue or identify an imagined char–
acter. This reserve is still in itself a virtue even though it will be sug–
gested later on that he might in some respects look farther. For him
liberalism is not merely a system of ideas but an economy of the mind
and a method of criticism.
In
the first half of the book, Faulkner's work is considered in the
light of his situation as a modern Southerner; in the succeeding half,
the major writings are examined in some detail; and there is a con–
cluding note in which Faulkner is compared with the classic modern
