"An Error in Chemistry": The Final Typescript

The version of "An Error in Chemistry" we read today in the Vintage International edition of Knight's Gambit is the same one readers of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine (EQMM) encountered in the June 1946 issue. In setting the type for the first edition of Knight's Gambit in 1949, Random House simply used tearsheets from EQMM, and every subsequent edition of this collection, featuring Gavin Stevens's detective work, uses the text as copyedited by Frederic Dannay. Along with his cousin Manfred Bennington Lee, Dannay began writing popular detective fiction in 1928 under the pen name Ellery Queen. However, Dannay alone edited EQMM, which was established in 1941. I present here an edition of "An Error in Chemistry," based on the copyedited typescript, that restores, as nearly as possible, Faulkner's final prepublication intentions for this story. Although Dannay was an important advocate for Faulkner's fiction and introduced Yoknapatawpha County to a large postwar audience, the changes he made to "An Error in Chemistry" during copyediting point to why a scholarly edition of Knight's Gambit would sharpen our understanding of a key moment in Faulkner's career (following World War II but before Faulkner wins the Nobel Prize) when his critical reputation had ebbed. The story of Faulkner's connection to EQMM, as well as a fuller textual history of "An Error in Chemistry," form part of the larger narrative of how Faulkner entered the canon of American literature.

In the third week of September 1945, Faulkner sent his agent, Harold Ober, a revised 28-page typescript of "An Error in Chemistry" for publication in EQMM. This final typescript of the story, part of the Frederic Dannay Papers at Columbia University's Rare Book and Manuscript Library, has been largely unknown to Faulkner scholars for the last 73 years.¹ The only typescript of "An Error in Chemistry" that has been readily available is the one Faulkner had originally sent to Ober in November 1940, but this version of the story had been rejected by all of Faulkner's preferred higher-paying venues, such as the Saturday Evening Post and Collier's. In briefly describing this earlier 22-page typescript, James B. Meriwether notes, "This carbon typescript differs from the published version" (77).²

When Dannay offered to buy "An Error in Chemistry," he asked "if [Faulkner] would clear up an ambiguity in the story" (Blotner 1189). The most substantive addition Faulkner made to the 1940 typescript likely explains why other magazines had rejected the story as originally written. The key plot moment simply did not explain. Faulkner assumed that everyone knew how to make a cold toddy. As a result, Joel Flint's fatal error—putting a spoonful of sugar directly into the whiskey—does not account for Stevens's response. In the revised version of the climax, Faulkner spells it out with 19 additional typed lines of text—one must mix the sugar with water first because sugar will not dissolve in whiskey, knowledge passed down from father to son. The addition clarifies what the error in chemistry actually is so that the reader better understands why Stevens immediately leaps on Flint, the imposter, for his failure to make the toddy as Wes Pritchel surely would have. But this is not the only change Faulkner makes in revising the story. While much of the difference in page length of the two typescripts can be accounted for by the fact that Faulkner uses smaller right-hand margins in the original typescript, he introduces several new paragraph breaks and also divides certain longer sentences into smaller units. At the same time, Faulkner, prior to reaching the major addition noted above, becomes more effusive as he retypes the story, often adding new embedded phrases in his final revision. Despite these differences, around three-fourths of the sentences in the two typescripts (particularly those involving dialogue) are identical.

Why did Faulkner, who wrote disparagingly of pulp magazines in Light in August and If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem, submit his story to a mass-market genre magazine? Family responsibilities and a contract dispute with Warner...