Go Down, Moses (1942)

William Faulkner considered this cycle of seven stories to be a novel and that's good enough for me. Some of them were published separately, but even what is likely the most famous story here—"The Bear"—has a long section that has nothing to do with any bear and everything to do with themes and elements developed in the other stories. The stories are discontinuous but sequential in time, with a shifting cast of main characters. As with much of Faulkner, the themes and elements can be reduced to interbreeding among Old South settlers and natives, including of course slaves. It's the story of the McCaslin family across the generations, but it's not easy to sort out all the relations in this sizable clan, especially the brooding way Faulkner tells it, elliptically, from obtuse angles, occasionally wading deep into minutia of genealogy. I saw a chart once that made reasonably clear what is meant by first, second, and third cousins, and the "removed" business too, but I still have a hard time wrapping my head around it, especially in Faulkner's brusque linear narrative form. To make things worse, the African line of descent is of course kept secret among McCaslins (open secret, not to be discussed aloud) and marked by shame and humiliation. But character traits and physical features can emerge in any part of the clan, and they are all united in some ways. There are lots of lively anecdotes here, and Faulkner often surprises with humor, though much of it is ultimately tragic. The main character—or the unifying character—is Isaac McCaslin, a white man, gifted hunter, and lifelong bachelor who repudiates an inheritance of land and utterly bewilders everyone else here. As readers we can see that he's actually explaining himself fairly clearly, in that strangely stilted language of Faulkner that grows hypnotic. Isaac McCaslin is explaining himself—they just don't want to understand. We can understand better. So it goes. The first story tells of how Isaac's father was tricked into marriage late in life. His name is Theophilus but he's known as Buck. In the later stories Isaac is Uncle Ike and an old man. The centerpiece and best story is "The Bear," a great hunting adventure with nice exaggerations, spending a significant portion of its significant length on Isaac's explanation of himself in a somewhat arch experimental format, which is nonetheless effective. This novel, as slapped together as it feels in a way, is one of my favorites by Faulkner.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic.