William Faulkner. The Portable Faulkner. 1946; Edited by Malcolm Cowley, Viking, 1963.

The Portable Faulkner belongs to the well-known series of “Portable” anthologies by Viking Press. Readers may recognize the editor Malcolm Cowley as a well-known critic in his own right. Anyone who is studying Faulkner seriously should read his introduction and various commentaries in this book.

There are a total of eighteen selections in this book. All relate in some way to Yoknapatawpha County or the Mississippi Delta which is the setting of most of Faulkner’s tales. They are arranged historically—not by when the stories were written but by when the stories take place.

The first story, “A Justice,” then, is set in 1820 and describes in some detail the early settlement of Faulkner’s county by the Compson family. In it we meet the Native Americans who lived there before the European settlers and African slaves came. One of the important recurring characters is Sam Fathers.

The last story, “Delta Autumn” is set around 1940. The main character is Isaac “Ike” McCaslin, who in 1940 is about eighty years old. We first read about him when he is around ten in The Bear, a short novel that also appears in this collection.

The Bear has been published in three different versions. The one in this collection is the longest and the one Faulkner preferred. It does have an effective stream of consciousness narrative, but its density may make the reader miss some of the main ideas. The shorter version is more focused and ends with Ike’s father talking to him about the Keats’ poem “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” That powerful ending gets a buried in the longer version—though Faulkner uses italics to try to set it off—but the longer version is still worth reading.

The other novel-length story (some might say novella) is Old Man. It is a somewhat wild story set in the 1927 Mississippi River flood. Historically, much of the Mississippi Delta (about a quarter of the state) was flooded. In our story we have a convict from the notorious Parchman Farm penal colony who, when the prison farm is flooded, escapes in a skiff. One of the wardens instructs him to rescue a woman and a man in another place. Much of the story is about the adventures the convict and the woman, who turns out to be pregnant. The ending may be making a statement about life in an institution, whether a prison or some other place.

Although there are many interesting characters in these stories, the main character is really the American South. We have strong-willed characters, rugged farmers making something out of nothing, people conscious of manners and propriety, those prejudiced against Indians and blacks, swindlers, carpetbaggers, former Confederate soldiers, slaves and ex-slaves, Native Americans, those who fit in, and those who do not. But they all reflect the character of those from the South.

F. Scott Fitzgerald called irony the Holy Ghost of the twentieth century. If that is the case, then Faulkner is one of the most inspired writers. Occasionally, the irony is funny. There is a certain amount of humor in stories like “Spotted Horses” and “Death Drag.” With “Spotted Horses” we are reminded that before there were used car salesmen, there were horse traders. “Death Drag” is an almost silly story set in the 1920s when a small airplane lands in the county.

Even some of the more serious stories contain strangely humorous images. In “A Justice” we are to imagine a grounded steamboat towed on land over a dozen miles so an early settler could have a bigger house on his “plantation.”

One especially striking tale is the fairly well-known “A Rose for Emily.” It is the most gothic story in the collection and could be compared to other tales by Southerners Poe or O’Connor.

My favorite story in the collection is probably my favorite Faulkner story of the ones I have read. It ends his collection Go Down Moses and it ends this collection as being the most recent chronologically as noted above. “Delta Autumn” ties the Faulkner mythos and major themes together. The boy in The Bear, Ike McCaslin is now an old man. He has to travel much farther to find wilderness for his traditional November hunt. Others come with him including younger men representing the current generation of Edmonds and Legates. There are observations about the wilderness, speculations about the purposes of God, and powerful reflections on race relations. It is a gem. It helps to know the background of the McCaslin and Edmonds families, and the black descendants of the Beauchamps and Tomie’s Terrell, but if this were the only story Faulkner wrote, he would be remembered for it.

The introduction and chapter headings by Malcolm Cowley are well worth reading. Cowley knew most of the Lost Generation writers and personally worked with Faulkner putting this collection together. He shows a lot of understanding and some very acute observations. He notes, for example, that the title Light in August has nothing to do with illumination. A pregnant woman was said to be “light” after she delivered her baby. In other words, it refers to Lena Grove and her due date.

I would like to end the review with what Cowley wrote about “Delta Autumn” in this book:

Old Ike McCaslin…is the most admirable of Faulkner’s characters in his life as a whole and in his relations to the Negroes. Through Sam Fathers, his master in woodlore, he had also become the spiritual heir of the Chickasaws; and therefore it is right that he should give the final judgment on the Yoknapatawpha story from the beginning. “No wonder,” he thinks on his last trip into the wilderness, “the ruined woods I used to know don’t cry for retribution! The people who have destroyed it will accomplish its revenge.” (652)

As another famous Southerner, Pogo, so profoundly put it, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”