This past December, I went to Barnes & Noble and bought a handful of books. Among them was a William Faulkner anthology called “Collected Stories.” I have personally been a fan of the author since I read “As I Lay Dying” in my early 20s and found the potential for literature cracking open. Given the girth of the volume, I knew it would be intimidating to just read the 42 short stories front to back, so instead I’ve decided to take my time. In doing so, I plan to cover one a week until completed. I will be using this space to share my opinions of each piece as well as any stray observations I may have picked up from the greater world of Faulkner mania.
The past year has given me an incredible appreciation for what William Faulkner can do as a writer. The fact that “Collected Stories” is a career-spanning collection of stories that delve deep into lore and provide clues into his personal life, there’s something amazing about reaching the end of this journey. With the “Beyond” section, he moved into a metaphysical realm that challenged the very idea of narrative, finding characters living in exile as they ponder the significance of their life. The final stretch especially has found him tackling fascism and homosexuality in ways that play to his strengths. By focusing on characters visiting other countries, there’s a sense of disconnect that works beautifully to show how these ideas as man-made and ultimately shape how we view the world.
I’ve also found that this is one of those anthologies that has built over the 900 pages to create a metaphorical worldview. I promise that if you only read “Collected Stories” you’ll have a strong idea of what matters to Faulkner. Along with subsections collecting themes, the overall layout allows for dual works to feel complementary and enhance themes from different perspectives. This raises the question of what the big takeaway at the end of everything is. We started with the classic “Barn Burner” where an economically destitute family struggled to survive their father’s arsonist behaviors. Does Faulkner bookend his with a story that shows maturity and evolution of ideas, or what exactly could compare to stories of Yoknapatawpha and World War II that give depth to humanity and show the difficulties of living a life that perpetually is moving forward?
In simplest terms, the collection ends not with a profound epic that ties everything together. Instead, it’s “Carcassonne,” which at this point caught me off guard. Clocking in at six pages, it’s the shortest work in this book and one that is fairly opaque by comparison. Sure, a lot of these stories have an ambiguity to them, but it feels like readers can get lost in the mystery of the fairly obvious, poetic sketch. It’s a story about a corpse floating through the world until being lifted to presumably heaven to meet its mother.
I will say that it’s a staggering work after 41 more conventional narratives. There’s no real dialogue, except that approaching the spiritual that Faulkner has been known to use. It’s internal, commenting on something that could be death, though I’ve seen others view it as a commentary on an artist’s struggle to have a meaningful career. When all that’s left on this earth is a corpse, what exactly will there be? Faulkner revels in details of a rotting corpse being eaten by animals and insects, where it’s a very unflattering picture. The body is decomposing and is soon to be unrecognizable. It’s a bittersweet way to end the collection, especially following the tales of deep isolation in “Mistral” and “Divorce in Naples,” but it’s exactly where things have been building all along. Whether or not it’s overtly stated, most of the stories here have been about death of some kind.
An example that I liked to use was the struggle to hold onto the Confederacy. In a majority of the pieces, I explored how the usually older men tried to wed women. While this could just be seen as typical predatory behavior, I think Faulkner is too literary to stop there. In most cases, he is finding a connection between fertility and the future. A woman can pass on the ideals of the man if the conditions are right. This has been done both in the sense of bigotry as it is interracial relationships. At every turn, the obsession over Yoknapatawpha moving through The Antebellum South and into the 20th century has been a difficult road. It’s even there in the “Wilderness” section with “Red Leaves” where three generations of Indians are seen deteriorating to the white man’s ignorance. So much of the story centers on nobility amid decay that it makes sense how we ended up with “Carcassonne.”
It's not necessarily the most jubilant finale. On Goodreads, it has a 1.8 out of 5 rating making it one of the lowest on the site. One can argue that it’s fairly anticlimactic. However, at this point of being very personally intimate with Faulkner’s work, it’s honestly the only way that this collection could end. Much like its use in “These 13,” it’s as much a standalone to brag about his style as it is a symbolic piece of the larger tapestry. Symbolically, this is the end of the book and thus our time with Faulkner. Is it his body floating along the water? It’s hard to say. Whatever this man lying to waste did with his life is over. There is peace to everything and surprisingly means that this story is one of the most conflict-free works he’s published here.
I think what’s most impressive is that this works as easily his most nature-focused story. While he’s often incorporated geography into his work, it felt more like background compared to here. With a mix of his spiritual themes and a sense of the past officially dying, everything is tied up in a cryptic fashion. He leaves us with questions he is probably worried about regarding mortality. It no longer is about individual achievement, but something much more abstract. It’s about the way that the world will move on. Our influence will one day be forgotten and all that will be left is the planet. As George Carlin once harped: the earth is fine, we’re not.
Sure, there’s a nihilism to this read, but it’s also maybe the most romantic story Faulkner has included in all of this. Everything before now reads like one of those cliché “life flashing before my eyes” tales. Everything embodies a career, a historic encapsulation of centuries of Faulkner’s life and his view of Mississippi’s evolution through that time. It’s a story of war and progress, where men find ways to stay alive and move forward. It makes sense that the final figure mentioned in this isn’t a masculine one. It’s that of a mother, likely referring to either Mother Nature or a maternal force that watches over the planet. It’s the giver of life, and only they can change nature’s course. For all the highs and lows, Faulkner ends his life as vulnerable as anyone else. It’s inevitable. Everyone will return to the earth in some form or another.
If just viewing the “Beyond” section, it’s actually a fantastic evolution of life. Starting with the child death in “Beyond,” there’s discussion of what life truly means. From there, it becomes a conversation on what it means to be a productive and happy human along with moral values and even sexual orientation. Whether intended or not, it can be argued that this is Faulkner revealing his most personal self. Everything before can be seen as world-building for his fiction. To go beyond that is to question things that were most meaningful to him. Considering that "Beyond," “Mistral” and “Divorce in Naples” were based on real life events, I’m willing to bet there’s something subliminal about this as an abstract biography.
Even if it’s not, what I love about the trajectory of “Collected Stories” has been noticing these small patterns in his work. These characters have come to mean a lot to the readers. Families come and go, taking on deeper meaning the more sides of the story you read. The fact that there’s a greater world beyond these 900 pages makes me optimistic to discover a greater relationship with his work. For now, it feels like “Carcassonne” is a perfect ending. It’s far from what I assumed he would write when first opening “Barn Burning.” He seemed more conventional then. Now, he has created a whole world and mentality that makes you see the world in a different way. He’s more than a past tense writer. He’s someone so alive in the present that his commentary is about the struggle of not becoming complacent. It’s important to keep moving forward, and that’s lovely. The fact he did it while embodying everything that his work achieved throughout “Collected Stories” is a brilliant accomplishment. To ride off on a horse (Pegasus?) sounds like the only way to say goodbye to an author like this. He’s one of a kind, and I love that I’m still far from understanding who he was or what his work means on a larger scale.
“Carcassonne” may baffle many as a concluding piece. It’s arguably not his best or most complicated work. There are whole pages where a body is simply rotting. Still, the way that he manages to give each inactive page greater purpose allows for him to flex his creative muscles one last time. It only lasts a few pages and ends suddenly, but it only helps to create one of the most ethereal reactions to his work. What does it mean that he made a story about a corpse waiting for ascension? It’s unflattering or even necessarily a great protagonist. And yet, that mystery on top of everything else makes you want to keep thinking about it. Those pages don’t last long (shorter than this) but they have so much power. It’s the only ending “Collected Stories” deserved, and for as much as I’ve loved and hated this book, it’s the perfect way to make it feel entirely worthwhile. This one last time I will say, thank you, William Faulkner. I appreciate you much more than I ever expected I would.
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