At this gathering, the Franziacs assembled around a so-called lesser work of William Cuthbert Faulkner; our focus was
The Reivers, his last novel, published the year of his death, for which he was awarded the 1963 Pulitzer post-posthumously, the final story of Yoknapatawpha County (taking place, as it does, in 1905, but commenting on 1961), a work of less intense style and subject than
The Sound and the Fury,
As I Lay Dying, or
Go Down Moses, a tale of early cars, America's first grease monkey, a black man three steps ahead of his white employers, and a young boy coming of age. And while Lucius Priest learned about being a man, we learned when a genius shares some fun, there are no lesser works.
