Returning to Faulkner’s “Two Soldiers”

Abstract

William Two Soldiers (1942) is the kind of literary critic is supposed like. It has been called embarrassing, soupy, shameless, and crass (Fiedler 385); fluffy, inferior, stereotyped, and meretricious (Karl 661-662); and slick, offensive, gushing, and cure (Volpe 259) by people who matter. Andre Bleikasten has said is worse than the worst of [Faulkner's] novels (21). Although this contempt has always been utter (Edmond L. Volpe grudgingly allows that the have redeeming qualities [260]), and while other dismissals have been less cutting (Two Soldiers just is Faulkner's best work, according Robert H. Brinkmeyer, Jr. [Democratic Crisis 82]), defenses of the in recent history are only tepid (Diane Brown Jones's it is failed story [70] is about as far as anyone has been willing go). (1) Jones speculates that general disdain for Two Soldiers may explain why there has been no critical discussion devoted explicitly its lack that engenders remarks that paint broad strokes and offer little substantive explication (69). Jones leaves unanswered the question of whether this void marks the story's fault or ours, although by raising the question she does underscore the latter possibility. As for Faulkner, he seems have especially liked the story, remarkable fact if, as James Ferguson has argued, Faulkner had a generally good sense of his own work (156) as he worked with Random House editor Robert K. Haas on the volume that would become Collected Stories of William Faulkner in 1950. In 1948 letter Haas in which Faulkner assessed the stories proposed for inclusion, he did hesitate call like Shall Perish (1943) [t]opical and not too good, but regarding Two Soldiers Faulkner typed only YES (Selected Letters 274). A handful of other stories also received this one-word endorsement, but only here does Faulkner lend the emphasis of all capital letters, leading some infer special enthusiasm.2 Not too long after the story's composition (and thus prior the period when he habitually forgot or lied about things he had written), Faulkner was asked why he liked the story. He responded this way: I like because portrays type which I admire--not only little boy, and I think little boys are all right, but true American: an independent creature with courage and bottom and heart--a creature which is vanishing, even though every articulate medium we have--radio, moving pictures, magazines--is busy day and night telling us that has vanished, has become sentimental and bragging liar. (Selected Letters 184) Seizing on the discrepancy between and critics' estimates of the story, Jones has called on us to return 'Two Soldiers,' interpretive tools in hand, see if more thorough scrutiny reveals something as yet seen only by its creator (71). That is my present purpose. Before scrutinizing the story's text, however, we should dispense with two extratextual factors that have always shaped its reception. The first is that Faulkner wrote Two Soldiers make money. As Frederick R. Karl has noted, appeared in period that marked [Faulkner's] worst financial crisis (662), one that eventuated in his desperate Warner Brothers contract. This pecuniary motive was hardly an unusual one for Faulkner, who, in addition spending freely on himself, often complained his editors of the load he was obligated carry as oldest son widowed mothers and inept brothers and nephews and wives and other female connections and their children (Selected Letters 152). (3) And, given the generally serious reputation of other Faulkner works likewise purportedly written for money, perhaps Two Soldiers might likewise have been forgiven were for the second factor, which is that succeeded so spectacularly. …