ABSTRACT

Faulkner is as good a White source as I am familiar with to inquire into the contradictions of the past and, more particularly, into the constructed fictions of tradition. With its legendary myth of hospitality, sweeping oaks, and large pillared plantations, fleshed out by the image of gentlemen in linen suits, the South would like to live as a frozen tableau of elegance in the White imagination. But, Faulkner refuses the reader the luxury of that belief. Instead, his work is deliberately tangled, convoluted, and contradictory. My brother called Faulkner’s style a “game” played with (against?) the reader, Faulkner even going so far as to tack on a genealogy filled with intended inconsistencies (Aswell, 1984). To

believe that truth can be determined if it comes straight from the horse’s mouth is to take mere sayings literally. For the reader, the challenge Faulkner poses is extreme: Faulkner questions not only who we are as readers, but who we have been taught to think we are as members of a race, a class, a gender. Teaching Faulkner, however, offers the opportunity for opening discussion into the basic fictions of history, like “tradition,” “Southern gentility,” or “American Dream.”