ABSTRACT
Among all the empty and witless tags attached to living American authors, perhaps the most misleading is that of Southern Realist as applied to William Faulkner. He writes about one section of the South -that much is true-and he writes in what often seems to be a mood of utter distaste. But critics have no excuse for confusing realism with revulsion, or rather with the mixture of violent love and hatred that Faulkner bears toward his native state. No, there is only one possible justification for classing him with the novelists who try to copy the South without distortion. It lies in the fact that he can and does write realistically when his daemon consents. He can and does give us the exact tone of Mississippi voices, the feel of a Mississippi landscape, the look ofan old plantation house rotting among sedge-grown fields. On occasion he even gives us Mississippi humor (like the scene between Uncle Bud and the three madams, in Sanctuary) that is as broad and native as anything preserved from the days ofthe steamboat gamblers. But Faulkner's daemon does not often permit him to be broadly humorous or to echo the mild confusions of daily life. The daemon forces him to be always intense, to write in a wild lyrical style, to omit almost every detail that does not contribute to a single effectofsomber violence and horror.
