Flags in the Dust

“For a time the earth held him in a smoldering hiatus that might have been called contentment.” But only for a time, as no man called Sartoris is ever truly content until he's dead.

Is there a family more depressing than the clan of Sartoris? Even Faulkner's other unbelievably depressing families, even the Compsons, can't match the misery that Old Bayard and Young Bayard drag around behind them their entire lives. One can't even be led to feel sorrow when Young Bayard finally dies. He's better off. So is Narcissa. So is the baby.

Faulkner's prose is, as always, sparkling – this to me is the chief reason to press on through a Faulkner tome. He is also a deft world-builder, and a character seemingly useless here will be the root of one more useful later (in this case, weird Byron Snopes) in a Yoknapatawpha book. So while one might wish, perhaps beg, to read the cut-up edition entitled Sartoris, the additional pages reward you with the deft style and the promise of more to come.