Voice and Eye in Faulkner's Fiction by Hugh M. Ruppersburg (review)

240Reviews Starting from those recognitions, Wolford builds to show that Crane's fiction included, among the enormous repudiations that H.G. Wells noted, an understanding of and reaction against the epic tradition. Inevitably Wolford goes too far, his focus on one aspect of Crane's work obscuring the rest that is there. He also commits some minor blunders along the way, such as taking Crane's schoolmate Harvey Wickham seriously and thinking Crane's "An Experiment in Misery" and "An Experiment in Luxury" experimental fiction. Wolford's accomplishment, however, makes his lapses pale into relative insignificance. In this book he traces an important aspect of Crane's Realistic vision—the ire he felt at the way tradition of any kind interferes with people who either must confront life as it is or perish. What Wolford does is important, and he does it well. University of South CarolinaJoseph Katz Ruppersburg, Hugh M. Voice and Eye in Faulkner's Fiction. Athens: Univ. of Georgia Press, 1983. 189 pp. Cloth: $16.00. "Out of the metaphor of individual perception blossom his innovations in point of view, one of the most important and distinctive elements in his writing" (p. 8); "Narrative structure reflects meaning. It also becomes meaning" (p. 28). These sentences identify the focus and the thesis of this study of William Faulkner's narrative structure. In his first chapter, Hugh M. Ruppersburg labels and defines a series of terms that provide a vocabulary for discussing Faulkner's techniques and narrative structure. Though the Faulkner scholar will encounter no new insights, the chapter is a useful and informative description of various types of narrators that appear in the fiction. These include characters who serve as narrators, focal characters through whose consciousness the narrative is developed, and a number of other narrator variations that make point of view in Faulkner's fiction integral to its meaning. In individual essays the narrative techniques of Light in August, Pylon, Absalom, Absalom', and Requiem for a Nun are described effectively and in great detail. The choice of Pylon and Requiem for a Nun and the absence of essays on The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying, the more obvious choices in a study of narrative structure, raise the question of Professor Ruppersburg's rationale. Anticipating such a question, he states in his introduction that the choice of these particular novels is "arbitrary, reflecting my own personal interests." His disclaimer that consideration of more than these "four novels would quickly lead to redundancy" does not erase the impression that the dictates of a thesis had little to do with determining the structure of this book. The author aptly identifies his study as primarily descriptive, and, when he is describing , he provides a valuable discussion of Faulkner's narrative techniques and structure. When he digresses into interpretation, he tends to intrude upon the narrative process. He stresses, for example, that Faulkner's use of unreliable narrating characters in such novels as Light in August "leave all 'facts' in doubt" (p. 28). Nevertheless, he accepts as fact that Joe Christmas is black. With that creative leap into unknowable truth, he can conclude that this novel illustrates Faulkner's belief that the "individual derives his identity from his participation in society, even if that society is hostile to him. Joe Christmas's quest for identity proves self-destructive because he seeks to live outside his community" (p. 152). I suppose that means that if Joe had just admitted that he was black and accepted the status that his society accorded blacks, he would not have been a misanthrope "who tries both to ignore and to flagrantly violate community values" (p. 152). Studies in American Fiction241 In the essay on Pylon, Ruppersburg is so eager to support the idea that Laverne is a sacrificial heroine that he undercuts much of his presentation about the role of narrators and the absence of an authoritative authorial voice. "External narrative," he states, "free of biased character perspectives, portrays Laverne objectively." The "'real' Laverne" is presented to us in chapter one as a traditional woman with "numerous 'feminine' traits: modesty, neatness, cleanliness, for example." Because she has a "conventional desire for hearth and...