and moral theme. The reader is often aided in this task by the
presence of witness-figures who are themselves psychological and
sociological investigators. In "The Bear" (Go Down, Moses) the
reader looks over Ike McCaslin's shoulder as this scion of aristocrats
discovers in family records the source of family guilt and works out
a means for expiation. It is significant that Faulkner has published
an orthodox detective novel, Intruder in the Dust, as well as a collec-
tion of detective stories, Knight's Gambit. But whether a real detec-
tive is supplied or not, the reader of Faulkner's novels is encouraged
to correlate significant details and to uncover underlying themes and
patterns of symbolism.

Hawthorne says of the prose romance that impaling the story
with a moral is like "sticking a pin through a butterfly"; the work is
deprived of life and stiffens in an ungainly rigor mortis. ⁷ When a
romance fails to capture the reader's imagination the stylized charac-
ters are likely to prove far more disturbing than the equivalent
characters of a bad novel. It would be foolish to claim that the
artistry of a Faulkner novel is always successful, that the weak-
nesses of characterization are always compensated for by narrative
skill and rhetorical brilliance. But Faulkner has written more excel-
lent novels than any other American novelist, with the possible
exception of Henry James, and he has demonstrated an extraordi-
nary diversity in his literary career. His present importance in the
history of the twentieth-century novel is unlikely ever to be seriously
questioned.

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