Franzia Runners of Yoknapatawpha County

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.


With nary a deathcamp to be found between Mississippi and Memphis, The Reivers seemed outside our usual wheelhouse, and for what critics have characterized as "more simple and accessible stylistically", Faulkner's love of languid, digressive, gargantuan sentences proved to be a challenge. But we loved the book all the same, and after some initial discussion of sentences and semi-colons and how they work, we quickly descended to sharing favorite passages, exchanges, characters, moments, and scenes. The pissing match between Lucius' grandfather and Colonel Sartoris (one of Faulkner's treasured Snopeses) that brings the first car to Yoknapatawpha County. The absurd horror of such early technology ("at the cost of only one or two forearm bones"). The tangled web of honor Boon disrupts by demanding a gun in the novel's opening, and his ineptness at using it. Ned's labyrinthine plan, and his laconic way of sharing it. The pride Minnie takes from her gold tooth, the fascination it holds over everyone, and Ned's smooth pick-up line. Hilarious asshole Mr. Binford. Though we briefly touched on how atypical, but generous Faulkner's treatment of black characters is, that didn't dampen the mood. The Reivers had no starvation, war, prison camps, nor operatic loves ripped apart. It was a romp, and so was our time together. Genius.