Title: The Unvanquished
Author: William Faulkner
Source: Grandma Rose's eclectic book collection passed on to me because she enjoyed it recently
Faulkner resides securely in my mind with other well known authors who default into the category (in my mind) of "familiarity breeds contempt." Often referenced, and ruined perchance for me by being unhappily pieced together into an American Lit anthology which I perused to pass a quiz whilst taking too many units a semester.
This happened to me with Dickens; only because my mom was such a passionate devotee. I, absorbed a familiarity by proxy that somehow removed all desire to read the works for myself. Or maybe it was my portrayal of Scrooge in our family's Christmas Play - adapted and directed by my talented and charismatic mother when I was 11 years old (complete with dry ice to accompany the ghosts of Christmas pasts.) I humbly confess that it was a brilliant performance and should have hinted to an acting career if right time and place had permitted? The oil derrick hills of western Kern County are not the spawn of great connections for acting (apart from my mom's christmas plays? which far transcended any provincialism that surrounded us.)
Late but perhaps just when I was ready, (she begins to trust destiny at last,) she encounters Faulkner. (not an excerpt) but a complete novel. I just read that some contest the "novelneess" of his novel; it being apparently a series of short stories.)
It reads to me like a sort of stream of consciousness form of storytelling. I didn't find it easy to follow, but I will say I was bewitched by the characters and the spirit of southern pride and rebellion that seemed to resonate from deep within my ancestral strain. In the quagmire of the story, there is brotherhood that transcends race, malevolent racism that is part of the social construct, valour and pride that is not kind, the travesty of war and its bitter repercussions, also the addictive quixotic call of warfare and battle, (this is seen in Drusilla and John Sartoris when they return from battle.)
Defending one's family honor was definitely one of the highest values conveyed in this tale. Narrated, in the first person, Bayard Sartoris has to dig deep to muster up moxy that would match that of his renowned and gutsy pater. His resilience and courage seem tenuous compared to his brother in arms Ringo whom he admits is more intelligent and seemingly capable (exhibited in his shrewd partnership with Granny in the enterprise of re-selling mules to the very Yankees whom they once belonged to. Ringo is destined to be his status inferior, being black, yet Faulkner has no qualms in conferring on him a powerful quality. The boys had grown up together, played together, slept in the same room, fates intertwined...
Maybe I like Faulkner so much because he's ahead of his time. He's no pawn of hierarchy. Granny is one of the more iconic characters in the story along with young cousin Drusilla who manages to be romantic, alluring, and tomboyish - riding off to battle and demanding to fight in John Sartoris' troop until the end of the war. The author implies that the impending election drew her attention far more than her mother's orchestration of her marriage to John Sartoris (the widowed husband of her cousin.) She had (after all) presumably shared a tent with him for two years across the battlefields of dixie. Drusilla claimed they were laser focused on the war.... yet... After her marriage, she also passionately elicits a kiss from young Bayard whilst married to his father; walking a tightrope of southern aristocracy and yet courting the risk that she was missing from the battlefield?
I always admired Bayard's determination, but I felt worried for him, like I felt for Dickens' characters. I felt they were vulnerable somehow, sensitive souls. The women felt solid; wild and intrepid somehow. He satisfies his family honor and avenges his father's death, just enough? but not enough to please her of the verbena "filling the room, the dusk, the evening with that odor which she said you could smell along above the smell of horses." Drusilla wore verbena in her hair to overshadow the smell of battle, sweat, unwashed bodies. In the end, she departed before he returned from his duel. Was she disappointed that he had only wounded his adversary instead of killing him? Was she avoiding the complexity of her attraction to her dead husband's son?
Sartoris.... I'm obsessed with that last name. Bayard Sartoris. Ok. Faulkner. You got me. It's been a long time coming...
