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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 September 2009
Edward McDonald. “Violent World of Faulkner in These Thirteen.” Philadelphia Record, October 4, 1931, p. 14-B.
What, another book by William Faulkner! Yes, just that–his fifth since 1929, the year in which Mr. Hoover became President of these States.
Howsoever things have recently stood with the rest of us, all has been well with Mr. Faulkner. He has in the last three years just about walked off with the literary show. In an amazingly short time he has with breathless speed risen to fame–or, if you will, to notoriety at least. And These Thirteen, a first collection of short stories, will in nowise do discredit to the eminent position Mr. Faulkner has so rapidly attained.
Six of the stories in the present volume are already known to Faulkner readers; seven are here published for the first time.
But whatever their background, all of these stories are alike in this: all are composed out of their author's apparently inexhaustible literary resources, namely, his haunting knowledge of the frustrations, the perversions, the imbecilities, in a word, the compulsions of all sorts which drive his men and women into behavior which swings distractedly from the uttermost in heroism to the uttermost in degradation. The world of these stories is, then, like the world of Faulkner's novels: violent, disordered, cataclysmic. If any reader objects to the presentation, however brilliant, of such a world he had better give free rein to his inner check and leave These Thirteen alone. Certainly this is no book for humorists.
Since These Thirteen is the first opportunity to appraise Faulkner's short stories as a whole, we may expect to hear endless conjecture about the Hemingway influence upon Faulkner. There has been much of this already; there will be more.
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