In June of this year I wrote a piece on my Ana the Imp blog marking the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird, high among the greats of modern American literature. At the time another blogger suggested that there might be some similarities here with themes earlier examined in the work of William Faulkner. After a little exploration we both agreed that there were possible parallels between To Kill a Mockingbird and Intruder in the Dust, a novel published in 1948. I agreed to read this with a view to discovering if there was.First of all, my apologies to Ike Jakson, the blogger who brought this book to my attention. I bought it soon after - I even took it on vacation to Central America with me as part of my holiday reading – but I got sidetracked along the way, ambushed by other demands and other writers! Second, I would like to thank him for raising this; otherwise I might have bypassed not just this novel but Faulkner altogether.The thing is first impressions are really important with me; if writers do not engage me almost immediately I’m likely to shunt them off to a sideline, there to remain neglected, possibly indefinitely. In my late teens I read Soldier’s Pay, Faulkner’s first novel, published in 1926, which left me dissatisfied and unimpressed. I may never have read any more. But now I’ve finished Intruder in the Dust, a reading and a discovery.Is there any comparison with To Kill a Mockingbird? Yes, on a superficial level, there certainly is. Both are set against the background of the segregated American South, the South where black people existed on the margins of society, and even there on sufferance. They are both about black men accused of crimes they did not commit. Much of the observation is from the point of view of a young person and the accused are both aided by lawyers of commendable virtue and liberal instinct. Towards the end of chapter ten of Faulkner’s novel the sheriff complains about the racket a nearby bird is making, interrupting his rest and doubtless filling his head with murderous thoughts, thoughts of killing a mockingbird!I have no doubt at all that Harper Lee read this book and I feel sure that she would acknowledge its influence, but beyond the general themes of racial tension and potential injustice there is much more that divides than unites the two books. To Kill a Mockingbird is really the story of Atticus Finch, the paternalistic lawyer, a sort of American Cicero. Intruder in the Dust isn’t really the story of anyone, or if it is it’s the story of Lucas Beauchamp, the elderly black man accused of killing one Vinson Gowrie, the scion of a local hillbilly clan. Beauchamp is a particularly memorable character, stiff, proud, himself almost senatorial in bearing, a man who refuses to “act like a nigger”, as his defenders complain.At once simpler and yet more complex than To Kill a Mockingbird, Faulkner’s novel is in essence a mystery thriller. Beauchamp’s defence is clear: in jail and threatened with a particularly horrible form of lynching from the outraged hillbillies (fortunately for him the crime was committed late on a Saturday and decent folks don’t lynch other folks, even niggers, on a Sunday) he says that it was not his pistol that was used to kill Vinson. The only way this can be proved is for the body to be dug up in secret, a task he ‘delegates’ to sixteen year old Charles Mallison, the nephew of the lawyer, whose life he once saved from a freezing river. Mallison, despite the danger of the mission, agrees to act, assisted by a reluctant black teenager and the elderly Miss Habersham, a name I simply refuse to believe is not a nod in passing to Charles Dickens’ Miss Havisham from Great Expectations! No matter; like her near namesake she is also a highly memorable character.There is an interesting ambiguity in Faulkner’s book on the question of race relations that is unlikely to appeal to modern sensibilities. He’s against the entrenched racism of his native South but he is also proud of a Southern tradition, of a Confederate tradition, hostile to the interference of outsiders, of ‘moral carpetbaggers’ from the North, an expression, incidentally, that I just invented! The problem of the ‘nigger’ is their problem and they should be left to solve it themselves in a gradual, undemonstrative and paternal fashion. History does not work like that; history did not work like that.Intruder in the Dust is really quite a simple story, as I have said, no more than a mystery thriller (I’m not going to tell you who killed Vinson, just that it wasn’t Lucas!) But then there is the language, the style and the literary presentation. I had fun looking over other reviews because this book one of those rare love-or-hate additions to the literary cannon, a book that cannot be passed with indifference.The ‘hate’, if that’s really the right word, can be put down most often to confusion and incomprehension. Intruder in the Dust, you see, is a stream of consciousness novel, though whose consciousness is being streamed is not always easy to tell! Some of the sentences are prodigiously long, going on for pages. But I quickly picked up on the cadence and the poetic rhythms, the rise and fall of words.I just love this sort of thing, the kind of playfulness with language I so much admire in James Joyce, Virginia Woolf and, above all, in Malcolm Lowry, for me the greatest English novelist of the twentieth century. Here is an example from Faulkner taken quite at random, in full flow from mid-passage;…strolling timeless and in no haste since they were going nowhere since the May night itself was their destination and they carried that with them walking in it and (stock-auction day) even a few belated cars and trucks whose occupants had stayed in for the picture show too or to visit and take supper with kin or friends and now at last dispersing nightward sleepward tomorrow-ward about the dark mile-compassing land…Yes, for me this is poetry in prose, a form of writing based on a love of words for the sake of words. I enjoyed this book in some ways more than I enjoyed To Kill a Mockingbird. Much more than that, I have enjoyed discovering Faulkner anew, knowing ahead of me lie such books as The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, Absalom! Absalom! and Light in August, the great landmarks of his literary life.
Wm. Faulkner has a writing style all his own. The hero of Intruder in the Dust (1948) is a 16-year-old white boy who, along with his boy, Aleck Sander (same age as our hero, his friend, and black), and a spry elderly lady, Miss Habersham, set out to disprove the accusation of murder against one, Lucas Beauchamp.The boy’s name is Chick (his mother calls him Charlie) Mallison, but he’s always referred to in the 3rd person throughout the book. Part way through, his mother calls him by name when addressing him, and toward the end, his uncle, Gavin Stevens, refers to him as Chick, and mentions his family name. His uncle is referred to as just that, “his uncle”, and his name is only used a couple of times in the story. It takes a bit of getting used to at first, but you catch on.This is first of all, a great murder mystery, made more so by shenanigans in the cemetery in the middle of the night, disappearing corpses, and the tension throughout the region caused by the belief that a black man has killed a white man and maybe there’ll be a lynching. But the story is also a psychological study of life in a small southern town, how people act, why they act that way, and how it’s all seen first by a boy when he’s twelve, and then when he’s 16 and just starting to make some connections.Lucas Beauchamp is the grandson of a white landowner and a black slave. He’s sometimes referred to by Chick’s uncle as a “Sambo”. The Oxford Dictionary says Sambo is a racial term, an obsolete term for a person with African heritage that is now considered offensive.) The landowner, Edmonds, acknowledged his son, and somewhere along the way a house and land on top of a hill was deeded to him and his descendants in perpetuity, 10 acres in the middle of the plantation. Lucas is variously described as being calm, disinterested, inflexible, not scornful, not even contemptuous, slow moving, and deliberate. When he speaks to boys, he expects them to oblige; when he speaks to white men, he expects them to not listen — and that’s what happens. White men think he acts 'uppity'. Chick says,We got to make him be a nigger first. He’s got to admit he’s a nigger. Then maybe we will accept him as he seems to intend to be accepted.Lucas is caught standing over a dead white man who's been shot in the back, with a gun on him that has been fired. He’s arrested but doesn’t tell anyone the facts. He tries to hire Chick’s uncle to do something for him, but Uncle Gavin is too busy being the white man telling Lucas what’s going to happen and thinking how he’ll have him plead guilty to manslaughter. So Lucas confides only in Chick, and Chick believes him and has the courage, or the foolhardiness to act upon the information. His unlikely accomplice in his furtive mission is Miss Habersham who knows and trusts Lucas and also believes in him. Chick remembers old Ephraim telling him once,. . . a middle-year man like your paw and your uncle, they cant listen. They aint got time. They’re too busy with facks. In fact, you might bear this in yo mind; someday you mought need it. If you ever needs to get anything done outside the common run, dont waste yo time on the menfolks; get the womens and children to working at it.I don’t know if people have the patience to read a novel like this today, when everything is instant gratification and the internet is never fast enough. The stream of consciousness is hard to stick with at times, no matter how interesting — sometimes a whole page will be no more than two or three sentences and it's all written and spelled in dialect. This is a great story, and a great follow-up to Harper Lee’s books, To Kill a Mockingbird and Go Set a Watchman; but it’s not an easy read, not a quick read. What it is, is a worthwhile read.
What do You think about Intruder In The Dust (1996)?
In this, my third Faulkner I finally found a way to adopt his style for a easier reading: I just read the words out loud inside my head (like reading to yourself). This way Faulkner's poetic powers and all that stream of living of his prose works for me.In this particular book crime story itself wasn't that interesting. Which is probably not very good for a crime novel, but it seemed to me that Faulkner himself only used it to tell other things. Among which one thought was very important for me. It was an idea that white people from the South HAD TO bear whole responsiblity for post-slavery afroamerican population by themselves. They had to find among themselves, among successedors of slaveholders some people who will bring former slaves to a normal life.A nd niether North, nor strict laws or any other thing outside can do that job for those people. Interesting, isn't it, in a light of current world-wide problems...And regarding crime story - interconnections with "To kill a mockinbird" are kind of obvious. Young person is trying to save innocently accused black man from a gallow or even gibbet law. He (or in the case of "To kill a mockinbird" - she) hardly knows that man.Since vast majority of my goodreads friends didn't read the book, I won't give away the ending and won't start to compare it with "To kill a mockinbird" , but what I have to say is that while Harper Lee's book is narrated from a 6 years old point of view and is an easy read, with "Intruder in the Dust" you are going through a process of growing-up of a 16 years old boy, which I guess can be a slightly more complicated thing.
—Pavel
At some point you may have asked yourself what would happen if someone like William Faulkner were to write a Hardy Boys mystery novel or something similarly trivial. This book could well be viewed as an answer to that, and the results are pretty well mixed. As you might imagine, there are multiple levels in this book. I'll concern myself with two: the storyline and the implications of the associated events as understood through a historically self-aware and pedagogical moral force, with particular reference to the teleology of the people of the South. It is no accident that one of these factors is an easily understood concept, present in virtually all novels, while the other is a long winded and somewhat ambiguous sentence that might be so much hot air.Storyline: A guy gets shot, an innocent man is the apparent killer. Two teenagers and an old lady clear his name by digging up a grave. There's a little more to it, but that's the gist of it.Implications: The innocent man in the case of the novel is a proud black man (Lucas Beauchamp), and the victim is a member of one of the backwoods clans. Faulkner packs a lot of punch into his exegesis, mostly delivered by a progressive lawyer who intends to represent Lucas. The thrust is one of historical progression, the futility of violent intervention, and the necessity of willing atonement of a populace. Reference is made to the civil war and the well-meaning but misguided meddling of Northerners. I found it a difficult argument to swallow, and I'm not sure that Faulkner himself more than half believed it. There's a somewhat disturbing thread that considers the condemnation of the populace of Lucas for his pride. This thread is part of what initially draws the protagonist into the story (Lucas does him a good turn and refuses to be paid). The reason I say disturbing is that, while Faulkner seems to reject the sentiment that Lucas needs to act with the gratitude and subservience of a freed slave before he can be accepted as part of the society, this seems close kin to the idea that the South needs to work out its own problems without external interference.Just in case these themes were going to be too easy, Faulkner wraps storyline, moral interpretation and occasional unrelated anecdotes into a stream-of-consciousness narrative that makes reading this book fairly challenging. Also, he uses a number of innovations for dialogue which seem to serve no purpose other than further confusing the reader. Aside from Lucas, the characters aren't particularly memorable, which is not surprising as Faulkner is trying to make general statements about Southern society. Statements that seem dubious half a century later.However, even if I don't agree with his conclusions, I have to respect the force of the argument. Further, even if we've moved beyond the point in race relations that this book was concerned with, we're a long way from this view being irrelevant to our current issues. Whether I agree with him or not, Faulkner brings a perspective of the problem which is worth trying to understand.
—Mike Moore
Intruder in the Dust by William Faulkner is one of the hardest books I've ever read. I hated every moment reading it, but I have to tell you it's one terrific story and I wound up loving it. There are quite a few difficult reads (Moby Dick for one) that I am perfectly willing to admit are great literature and tell a good story--but I hated them. I'm not going to tell anybody, "You've just got to read Moby Dick!" If you want to and wind up loving it, then fine. But don't expect me to do any advertising for Melville. Just not gonna happen. Intruder in the Dust, now that's different. You really should read this one.What is sad about Intruder is that it could have been an absolutely brilliant book if Faulkner hadn't been all caught up in that stream of consciousness thing. If he hadn't had to have the characters want to tell you all about what they're thinking and by the way that reminds me of something else and while we're at it let me tell you this and no I don't think I'll use any punctuation for this three page sentence because well that might help or make it clearer or something and I certainly don't want that. I haven't missed puntcuation marks so much since Lord of Misrule and all that was missing there were the quotation marks for dialogue. I'm sure that Faulkner has lost a lot of readers just because they didn't want to slog through the stream.The story itself is a pretty simple one. It is both a murder mystery [that's one of the things that caught my eye] and a straightforward picture of racial injustice. Lucas Beauchamp is a local black man who has refused to play the "nigger" for the white man and now finds himself falsely accused of shooting Vinson Gowrie, a white man. There are rumors of a planned lynching and time is short if Beauchamp is to proved innocent. Beauchamp's pride makes things even more difficult. He calls for the services of a white lawyer, Gavin Stevens, but then refuses to answer his questions about the night of the murder. The only comment he makes is to Chick Mallison, the lawyer's nephew. It falls upon Chick, a young black boy named Aleck, and an elderly white woman named Miss Habersham to find the evidence that will set Lucas Beauchamp free.In some ways this book brings to mind To Kill a Mockingbird (and it's obvious that Intruder must have had influence on Harper Lee). You have the black man falsely accused; you have have the white lawyer defending him; and you have a lot of the narrative given through the eyes of a central young character. I think Faulkner does a much better job of implying that fighting injustice is everybody's job--not just the lone lawyer who does what he feels is right even though the whole town seems to be against him (a la Mockingbird). It is underlined in Gavin Stevens' comment to Chick at the end of the book:Some things you must always be unable to bear. Some things you must never stop being unable to bear. Injustice and outrage and dishonor and shame. No matter how young you are or how old you have got. Not for kudos and not for cash: your picture in the paper nor money in the bank either. Just refuse to bear them.You will notice above that I used the n-word. It was deliberate. Intruder is a book of its time. It is sprinkled with that word and with descriptions and attitudes that are not politically correct. That is the whole point. There is injustice in that word and there is injustice in the book. The whole town and even the sheriff are willing to believe that this black man murdered a white man just because he was there and just because he is black. No one really looks at the evidence at all. It is not right any more than the use of derogatory language about another race is right. Whitewashing the story and refusing to use or even acknowledge the word won't change history. All we can change is ourselves....and be like Chick and his uncle and Miss Habersham--refuse to bear the injustice.Four stars out five--I'm deducting one whole star for the stream of consciousness that made my brain hurt.
—Bev
