William Faulkner. Intruder in the Dust. 1948; Vintage, 1975.

It struck me part of the way through Intruder in the Dust that William Faulkner really was the American James Joyce. Intruder in the Dust is dense. There is stream of consciousness. It is hard to tell how much of the detail will matter in the story. There is also a well-founded fear that the reader may miss something that really is important buried in the arcana of Southern Americana, just as Joyce notes details embedded in his thoughts on Irish Catholicism and politics.

Some of the characters I knew from other stories. The main character, Lucas Beauchamp, appears in Go Down Moses. From that collection of stories I recalled that a relative of Lucas called Ike McCaslin her uncle. He was, even though he was white and she was black. Lucas is black but he knows that his grandfather was an Edmonds. We understand that Lucas considers himself a man, no different, really, from the white people. I also learned that Roth Edmonds’ (“Race at Morning”) given name is Carothers.

Lucas was present when Vinson Gowrie was shot in the back. He knew he could say little—the story is set around 1940. (A few times the problems in Germany and Europe are mentioned.) He was holding a pistol which he always carried with him, but he said that his pistol was not the murder weapon. Still, he is arrested.

The Gowries are a redneck clan that live in an almost lawless part of the county. They are talking about a lynching. Talk is not just about hanging but about dousing Lucas with gasoline.

Lucas is not without friends. Four years earlier he had rescued a twelve-year-old Chick Mallison after he fell through the ice. Chick was indebted to him and tried to come up with things to repay that debt. Lucas, independent man that he was, refused any attempt. Now four years after his rescue, Chick sees a chance to help Lucas now; besides, he is certain Lucas would not murder anyone.

Chick gets his uncle Gavin Stevens who is a lawyer to try to defend Lucas. Lucas is in the county jail where the Sheriff and some others are keeping an eye on him. The Sheriff would like to see the case go to trial to avoid the vigilantism. Chick’s young black friend Alex Sander helps.

Another person persuaded of Lucas’ innocence is Miss Habersham, a seventy-year-old spinster from a respected family. She grew up with Lucas’s now deceased wife and, in some ways, might consider herself his sister-in-law.

Together they hatch an unorthodox plan to prove Lucas’ innocence. If they can exhume Vinson Gowrie’s body, they might be able to show that Lucas is telling the truth and that someone else shot Vinson. There is a detailed and even humorous description of their midnight attempt at grave robbing.

Without going into too much detail (and Faulkner provides a lot of detail), there is a surprise when they dig up the Gowrie grave. Sheriff Hampton gets involved because of the new developments. The question is simply this—will the evidence be enough to persuade a jury of Lucas’ innocence and, more importantly, keep the Gowrie clan and their neighbors from lynching Lucas?

I could not help thinking a bit of To Kill a Mockingbird. Of course, that book reads in a more straightforward manner, but it also involves a question of the guilt of an innocent black man accused of a crime against a white person. I could not help wondering if Harper Lee might have been inspired by Intruder in the Dust.

Like Go Down Moses, Faulkner is really pretty optimistic about black-white relations. He understands the history and prejudices, but he also understands the general human appreciation of justice. Intruder in the Dust, unlike To Kill a Mockingbird, does not focus on a trial, but on a mystery. Who really shot Vinson Gowrie? How do we know? What was the motive?

As is often the case with Faulkner, some of his quotable passages are the asides or the thoughts of men on the human condition or the American South. Early in the novel, Attorney Stevens is meditating on what will probably happen to Lucas:

…and now the white people will take him out and burn him, all regular and in order and themselves acting exactly as he is convinced Lucas would wish them to act: like white folks; both of them [white and black] observing implicitly the rules…no real hard feelings on either side (since Mr. Lilley is not a Gowrie) once the fury is over; in fact, Mr. Lilley would probably be one of the first to contribute cash money toward Lucas’ funeral and the support of his widow and children if he had them. (48)

He also observed, “Not all white people can endure slavery and apparently no man can stand freedom…” (146)

Part of Faulkner’s optimism comes through this meditation of Uncle Gavin:

Someday Lucas Beauchamp can shoot a white man in the back with the same impunity to lynch-rope or gasoline as a white man; in time he will vote anywhen and anywhere a white man can and send his children to the same school anywhere the white man’s children go and travel anywhere the white man travels as the white man does it. But it won’t be next Tuesday. (151-152)

That has largely come to pass. Many changes have happened since 1948 when Intruder in the Dust came out. We are well beyond next Tuesday.

Considering we recently reviewed three books that had something to do with the Battle of Gettysburg, there is this following meditation. When I was in college in the seventies, when we spoke of the War, we meant Vietnam. When our parents talked of the War, they were speaking of World War II; likewise, our grandparents, World War I. But a college friend from Tennessee told us where he came from the War was still the Civil War. This time it is our teenaged Chick Mallison thinking:

For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is that instant when it’s still not yet two o’clock on that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and furled flags are already loosened to break out and Pickett himself with his long oiled ringlets and his hat in one hand probably and his sword in the other looking up the hill waiting for Longstreet to give the word and it’s all in the balance, it hasn’t happened yet, it hasn’t even begun yet, it not only hasn’t begun yet but there is still time for it not to begin against that position and those circumstances which made more men than Garnett and Kemper and Armstead and Wilcox look grave yet it’s going to begin, we all know that , we have come too far with too much at stake and this moment doesn’t need even a fourteen-year-old boy to think This time. Maybe this time…(190)

Yes, except for the last three words, that is one sentence. Why? Because it is a single thought. The next sentence is nearly the same length. This perhaps illustrates why Faulkner is challenging to read but also why he can be rewarding.