1. Soldiers' Pay by William Faulkner
OPD: 1926
format: 350 pages within an ebook anthology: William Faulkner: Novels 1926-1929: Soldiers' Pay / Mosquitoes / Flags in the Dust / The Sound and the Fury
acquired: January 1 read: Jan 1-7 time reading: 10:12, 1.7 mpp
rating: 4
genre/style: 1920’s Fiction theme: Faulkner
locations: mainly Charleston, Georgia, 1919
about the author: 1897-1962. American Noble Laureate who was born in New Albany, MS, and lived most of his life in Oxford, MS.

Faulkner's first published novel, one that no one read. 1200 copies sold before he became famous and this wasn't the first one anyone read once he got famous either. It's also a little unusual in that the setting is small town Georgia, not Mississippi (and that he wrote it while living in New Orleans, not in Oxford, MS). It's an interesting and complex novel, doing lots of things. It's also drawn out a bit and Faulkner clearly had trouble letting his characters go.

He's working within post-war America. WWI soldiers are returning home to wives, fiancés, and widows, and not everyone has been true, or wants to be. The soldiers are wild and girls have are working through a lot. The plot is a love-tangled story. A hot-headed veteran, Joe Giligan, takes to a seriously wounded air force veteran who is dying, and also going blind, and who has a nasty facial scar. The pilot has a fiancé waiting at home. Joe decides to help the pilot home, and gets help from a war widow he falls for; but feelings are kind but not mutual and she might have more interest in the dying man. Once they reach Charleston, GA, where the pilot was reported dead, we meet the wounded soldier's father, a rector who can't see that his son is dying, and his fiancé, who is young, gorgeous, and runs around in thin white silk dresses attracting and toying with a number of men, some pushing to uncomfortable lengths. It's a sexually charged novel throughout until it wraps itself up in a different way. It's also a southern culture charged novel, with "negroes" filling various roles, including as servants, drivers and musicians. They are always something foreign, other and mysterious, but never threatening. Faulkner seems to like African Americans in their second-class citizen roles.

But it's not simply a sex-charged and uncomfortably racist novel. Faulkner is doing a lot of different things. Most obvious is that he is straining normal prose styles, but not breaking them. He's itchy to jump around, become impressionistic, sketchy, curious. He spends many pages on various micro-dramas at a dance. But he also holds mostly to normal prose and always clearly designated speakers. His characters live and breathe and they grew on me and will hang around for me. I liked them. They are often funny, men literally fist-fighting over women, jealousy oozing, but often talking about it politely, before and after, and sometimes with a lot of humor.

I feel this is a novel that will reward rereading. There is a lot built it. A lot of subtext and richness that I'm sure I went right over, not knowing what he was doing. This is an interesting if forgotten and overshadowed immature work. (An OK first read of my year.)

2024
https://www.librarything.com/topic/356616#8348434 ( )

Though not as accomplished as his later novels, Soldiers' Pay still has moments of revelation, which reveal Faulkner willing to bend language to get at a feeling.

"They greeted him with the effusiveness of people who are brought together by invitation yet are not quite certain of themselves and of the spirit of the invitation; in this case the eternal country boys of one national mental state, lost in the comparative metropolitan atmosphere of one diametrically opposed to it. To feel provincial: finding that a certain conventional state of behavior has become inexplicably obsolete over night."

Like a rough house Proust. The vocabulary he pulls from doesn't suck either. At times, I couldn't tell if I wasn't getting a phrase because I was intellectually inferior or just not Southern. At other times, his stylistic daring worked better than others. He seems to be going along with the whole "make it new" dictum of the postwar period yet not fully buying into it.

There are amateur moments in the book as well. A lot of gorgeous descriptions of sunset... but like, a LOT of them. Many characters who don't fully flesh out and so become intellectual exercises, instead of insights into the human experience. The more moments like this I read, however, the better I felt. He's human, this Faulkner, and perhaps writing a novel can be learned after all.

I only recommend this book to Faulkner fans and those horrified at how paltry their first novel has turned out. ( )

Though not as accomplished as his later novels, Soldiers' Pay still has moments of revelation, which reveal Faulkner willing to bend language to get at a feeling.

"They greeted him with the effusiveness of people who are brought together by invitation yet are not quite certain of themselves and of the spirit of the invitation; in this case the eternal country boys of one national mental state, lost in the comparative metropolitan atmosphere of one diametrically opposed to it. To feel provincial: finding that a certain conventional state of behavior has become inexplicably obsolete over night."

Like a rough house Proust. The vocabulary he pulls from doesn't suck either. At times, I couldn't tell if I wasn't getting a phrase because I was intellectually inferior or just not Southern. At other times, his stylistic daring worked better than others. He seems to be going along with the whole "make it new" dictum of the postwar period yet not fully buying into it.

There are amateur moments in the book as well. A lot of gorgeous descriptions of sunset... but like, a LOT of them. Many characters who don't fully flesh out and so become intellectual exercises, instead of insights into the human experience. The more moments like this I read, however, the better I felt. He's human, this Faulkner, and perhaps writing a novel can be learned after all.

I only recommend this book to Faulkner fans and those horrified at how paltry their first novel has turned out. ( )

O primeiro romance de Faulkner é menos uma obra-prima do que um romance decente e altamente legível. Sua sinopse já soa fantástica: Donald Mahon foi declarado morto, abatido nos céus durante a Primeira Guerra Mundial. Porém, ao voltar para casa e a família, ao descer do trem local, surpreende os pais e a ex-noiva, Cecília. Não está morto - e ainda assim não está exatamente vivo. É mais um destroço do que qualquer outra coisa: seu rosto, uma grotesca confusão de pontos; seu cérebro, semi-ausente - literalmente. Este pontapé inaugural já promete uma peculiar história de desilusão com a guerra, incluindo comentários prosaicos que cairiam como uma luva em qualquer ficção contemporânea sobre o consumismo e a vida suburbana - digamos, à la John Cheever. A maior parte do livro, particularmente as cenas com Cecília, são excessivamente poéticas, especialmente quando estamos loucos para saber: o que irá ela fazer? Sofrer com sua vocação altruísta e casar-se com esse alquebrado herói de guerra prestes provavelmente a morrer? O dilema é o foco principal de Soldiers Pay. [Spoiller alert] Donald morre e Cecília casa-se com o vice-pretendente de plantão, gritando para todos que não era mais a pessoa boa que já fora. Sherwood Anderson disse a Faulkner, em 1925: "Olhe, escreva um livro e eu prometo publicá-lo". Foi exatamente o que o discípulo fez. Assim que o manuscrito lhe chegou às mãos, Anderson se recusou a revisá-lo ou sequer ler uma linha antes de o deixar com os editores com a maior das recomendações. O livro foi publicado em 1926 e nenhuma alma teve qualquer coisa de boa a dizer sobre ele - era apenas mais um romance derivativo do pós-guerra, etc. e tal, que rapidamente desapareceria do prelo. Devo dizer que não se fez justiça. Soldier's Pay é realmente bom. ( )

La gran novela del autor que marcó un hito en la evolución de la moderaran literatura americana.
Es la historia de Mahón, quien, como legado de las batallas, vuelve a su pueblo lisiado, ciego, amnésico y a punto de morir, en contraposición a su aventura amorosa de juventud con la criada Emmy.
La narración, cuidadosamente elaborada, sigue una simetría bipolar: de una parte, los combatientes de la guerra; de otra, los habitantes de la pequeña aldea de Georgia que reciben a los combatientes.
La incapacidad de Mahón para vestirse, comer, etc., le da un matiz lastimoso, efecto de la guerra, sumado a la inconsciencia y a la falta de memoria de este. Mahón llega para casarse pero su prometida lo abandona al verlo en tales condiciones. Margaret Power toma su sitio en el altar para confortar al reverendo Mahón, padre del soldado, y para retar los comentarios del pueblo puesto que ella se había casado antes del inicio de la guerra, pero su esposo pereció allí. ( )