William Faulkner: The Making of a Novelist by Martin Kreiswirth (review)

434 LETTERS IN CANADA 1983 melodrama and burlesque as characteristic play forms, and about typical character types. And he finds in these things a key to understanding the people who spent their leisure hours watching this entertainment. The lectures make fascinating reading, and those working on an aspect of the nineteenth century, or those curious about its byways, will find them provocative and enlightening, whether they are persuaded to Davies's conclusions or not. The kind of knowledge Davies brings to bear on this theatre is especially valuable because it is non-academic and hard to come by. Though he is learned on the subject in a conventionally scholarly way (as a collector and keen reader of playscripts, costume and theatre designs, pictures of actors in their great roles), and though many of his insights spring from his wide reading in psychology, especially of lung, nonetheless it is his knowledge as a playgoer and practical man of the theatre that most enriches his understanding of this neglected theatre. He speaks of seeing Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) when it was still part of the standard repertOire during the twenties; he mentions what he learned when he directed the melodrama East Lynne; but he makes no reference to the astonishing number of these plays he has seen over a lifetime of enthusiastic playgoing, no reference to his broad experience directing plays, none to the practical insights garnered from his activities as playwright. But this broad theatrical know-how gives hima perspective of particular value. It is appropriate that Davies lectured on the subject of nineteenthcentury drama, since that form allowed him to create for his audience something of the aural splendour actors once brought to the plays which now seem so barren because they are shorn of the magic of performance. For those who witnessed the lectures, Davies's oratorical gifts gave life to the arguments and perceptions in The Mirror of Nature. Indeed, this particular set of Alexander Lectures would have been most effective published as a videotape. As it is, readers will have to play them in the theatre of the mind, and feel grateful for the inclusion of the 'visual aids' drawn from Davies's private collection, for they help the reader envision last century's theatre fare. (JUDITH SKELTON GRANT) Martin Kreiswirth. William Faulkner: The Making of aNovelist University of Georgia Press. xi, 193. $15.00 Professor Kreiswirth investigates early Faulkner, the one who gradually moved from poetry to prose and from short fiction to the novel. The startling prowess of The Sound and the Fury was the result of a long and carefully planned apprenticeship and by no means so unexpected when viewed from within the author's ceaseless experiments with style, form, HUMANITIES 435 and point of view. Kreiswirth argues his thesis - that the significant elements of the major Faulkner are present in the minor poet and novelist - without blurring the importance of The Sound and the Fury as Faulkner's first great work. In other words, Kreiswirth advances his argument tactfully and economically, making use of the latest Faulkner scholarship and of a wide-ranging body of contemporary critical theory. Kreiswirth deftly and concisely fastens on Faulkner's poetry, on an imitation and transformation of a Swinburne poem and on 'The Lilacs: in order to establish quickly Faulkner's characteristic modifications of other writers' work in the course of finding his own voice. This critic never belabours pointsalready made by others or by himself in previous articles. And he consistently traces Faulkner's' fragmented organizational strategies : which were to prove so essential to his most distinguished novels. Soldiers' Pay receives a particularly instructive cliscussion that helps one to link it to The Sound and the Fury and to later works. One comes away from the chapter on Faulkner's first novel with a deep impression of how fastidious and resourceful he would be in reusing and adapting his initial themes and techniques in his subsequent prose. Faulkner's progress towards greatness was not always smooth or unerring, as Kreiswirth demonstrates in chapters on Mosquitoes and Flags in the Dust. The latter, in particular, represented a discovery of new material but no corresponding invention of...