George Snell

It is quite probable that Faulkner's reputation will rest largely upon
his great short stories, and that These Thirteen ( 1931), Doctor Martino
( 1934), The Unvanquished ( 1938) and Go Down, Moses ( 1942), together
with a body of still uncollected tales, are the books by which his name
will be remembered. A score of these stories are among the finest written
in America; two or three are unquestionably on a par with those of Hem-
ingway and hence the best short stories written in the world in the twen-
tieth century. An examination of them will provide the best key to Faulk-
ner's genius, when it is operating at its optimum.

Among the earlier stories " A Rose for Emily" and "That Evening Sun
Go Down" are the masterpieces, while "The Bear" may be taken as an
excellent example of his later style. Not since Poe has an American pro-
duced a horror tale to match "A Rose for Emily," which is a perfect story
from the technical point of view, and one of the most effective and violent
stories even Faulkner himself has written. Its gradual unfolding of the
/97/ character of Miss Emily, its fully acquiescent gifts of revelation,
the carefully sown clues and the well-prepared yet shocking climax and
denouement, are among the marvels of the Faulkner virtuosity. Let us
recount the incidents in their narrative (not chronological) order. We
learn, at the outset, that Miss Emily had died, that she was somehow
queer and a recluse, "a fallen monument," and the object of the towns-
people's curiosity. Then we begin to get the touched-in canvas; we see
that Emily Grierson was of the Southern aristocracy, that she had fallen
upon lean days, and yet had eked out her decadent respectability with
that force of character and will which is sometimes the alleged attribute
of Southern aristocracy. When called upon by a committee of aldermen

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