group of barn stormers whose lives are thoroughly unconventional ( )

As much as I love Faulkner, I cannot summon any enthusiasm for this one. I don't think I've ever managed to read it all the way through before, and I did so this time just because I felt I ought to. It's a mess...the kind of thing people write when they're trying to mock Faulkner, full of rambling incoherent thoughtsentences and words like "thoughtsentences". The action takes place during "Moddy Graw" in a city that is obviously New Orleans, but which Faulkner inexplicably calls "New Valois". He even changes the name of the state to "Franciana". It just screams at the reader every time it's mentioned. Giving Oxford, Mississippi, a fictitious name and creating a county called Yoknapatawpha in his large body of work makes sense...Jefferson and its environs could be in any number of places in the deep south. There's only one New Orleans, and there is nothing else remotely like it in the country. The main character in [Pylon] is a man without a name, "the reporter", who becomes obsessed with a threesome of air show performers and their young child. (One woman, two men, nobody really knows which one is the child's father, although the woman is married to one of them. Speculation is that there was a coin toss involved.) Most of the men are drunk most of the time, and plain stupid the rest of it. The woman is flat, unaffected and a significant slug of ammunition in the war over whether Faulkner was a misogynist. Only the child has any redeeming qualities, and he is probably doomed, even after he's sent to live with his supposed paternal grandparents, one of whom has no more sense than to burn money in the kitchen stove because of where he thinks it came from. For a handful of authentically funny moments, I give this novel a reluctant single star. I cannot recommend it to anyone. ( )

As much as I love Faulkner, I cannot summon any enthusiasm for this one. I don't think I've ever managed to read it all the way through before, and I did so this time just because I felt I ought to. It's a mess...the kind of thing people write when they're trying to mock Faulkner, full of rambling incoherent thoughtsentences and words like "thoughtsentences". The action takes place during "Moddy Graw" in a city that is obviously New Orleans, but which Faulkner inexplicably calls "New Valois". He even changes the name of the state to "Franciana". It just screams at the reader every time it's mentioned. Giving Oxford, Mississippi, a fictitious name and creating a county called Yoknapatawpha in his large body of work makes sense...Jefferson and its environs could be in any number of places in the deep south. There's only one New Orleans, and there is nothing else remotely like it in the country. The main character in [Pylon] is a man without a name, "the reporter", who becomes obsessed with a threesome of air show performers and their young child. (One woman, two men, nobody really knows which one is the child's father, although the woman is married to one of them. Speculation is that there was a coin toss involved.) Most of the men are drunk most of the time, and plain stupid the rest of it. The woman is flat, unaffected and a significant slug of ammunition in the war over whether Faulkner was a misogynist. Only the child has any redeeming qualities, and he is probably doomed, even after he's sent to live with his supposed paternal grandparents, one of whom has no more sense than to burn money in the kitchen stove because of where he thinks it came from. For a handful of authentically funny moments, I give this novel a reluctant single star. I cannot recommend it to anyone. ( )

Un meeting aérien est organisé pour fêter l'inauguration de l'Aéroport Femman. Le reporter chargé de « couvrir » la réunion, remarque dans la troupe des aviateurs participants, un quatuor qui le fascine. Il s'agit du pilote Shumann, de sa femme Laverne, du parachutiste Jackson et du mécanicien Jiggs; ils ont avec eux un enfant, le petit jack. Malheureusement ces personnages n'intéressent pas son rédacteur en chef. Qu'importe alors au lecteur que Jiggs ait dépensé l'argent gagné par Jackson pour s'acheter des bottes qui ne sont même pas de sa pointure; que Shumann ne puisse pas toucher le prix de sa victoire et n'ait pas de quoi payer leur chambre d'hôtel ni les réparations de son vieux zinc, ce qui l'élimine des autres courses? C'est pourtant cela qui conduit le reporter à jouer dans leur existence un rôle que symbolise son aspect décharné d'évadé de cimetière, selon la pittoresque description de Jiggs, fantôme d'homme attiré par l'aura charnelle de Laverne et réduit à n'être que l'instrument d'un destin impitoyable.

“I wish I could write well enough to write about air-craft. Faulkner did it very well in Pylon but you cannot do something some one else has done though you might have done it if they hadn’t.”
Letter to Harvey Breit, 1956
Selected Letters, pg. 863.