Collins Carvel - Ole Miss Juvenilia

OLE MISS JUVENILIA

William Faulkner

Introduction by

Carvel Collins

DOVER PUBLICATIONS, INC.

MINEOLA, NEW YORK

DOVER THRIFT EDITIONS

GENERAL EDITOR: SUSAN L. RATTINER

EDITOR OF THIS VOLUME: JANET B. KOPITO

Bibliographical Note

This Dover edition, first published in 2018, is an unabridged republication of the work originally published by Jonathan Cape, London, in 1963 under the title and subtitle William Faulkner, Early Prose and Poetry. Inconsistencies in the spelling of William Faulkners name that appeared in the original source have been retained to preserve the authenticity of this work.

International Standard Book Number

ISBN-13: 978-0-486-82243-3

ISBN-10: 0-486-82243-5

Manufactured in the United States by LSC Communications

82243501 2018

www.doverpublications.com

To the amiable members of the Faulkner Seminar, University of Tokyo, 1961-62, the compilation of this volume is warmly dedicated.

Preface

WHEN William Faulkners University of Mississippi prose and poetry first came to the compilers knowledge several years ago, it seemed well not to reprint such early, apprentice work. At that time Faulkners great, mature books had not yet won the Nobel Prize; and though readers were admiring them in increasing numbers, many established critics still held them in low regard. But now Faulkner, widely recognized as a major world writer, has such stature that even his earliest works are of interest to many. And it seems well to reprint them now in the hope of avoiding confusion like that which some time ago accompanied the various reprintings of the sketches which Faulkner had written in 1925 for a New Orleans newspaper, The Times-Picayune, as the first fiction for which he received payment. During the same year in which I came upon and postponed reprinting these University of Mississippi pieces I had come upon those sixteen New Orleans sketches and had thought it best, because of their apprentice quality, also to postpone reprinting them. But before long other admirers of Faulkner found and published eleven of them and later found and published two more. It then seemed that it was proper to bring out the complete set of sixteen New Orleans sketchesand that postponing their reprinting had clearly not been a service to Faulkner studies after all. The situation has begun to repeat itself with Faulkners University of Mississippi prose and poetry, fragments of which are already being reprinted. So, with close students of Faulkner all over the world interested in the whole body of his work, it now seems proper to publish this compilation.

In addition to the works which Faulkner prepared for publication at his University, this volume reprints not only a poem which he published in the New Orleans Double Dealer during 1922 while he was still at the University of Mississippi but, in an appendix, four works which he published in that same literary magazine during 1925 shortly after leaving the University for New Orleans : two critical essays which bear on his University writings, and two poems"Dying Gladiator and The Faun"which he published before his first novel and which are not included among the poems he later collected in A Green Bough. These pieces from the Double Dealer were among the items reprinted in 1932 by Mr. Paul Romaine in Salmagundi, which is unfortunately no longer in print.

The preparation of this British edition has given me, fittingly enough, an opportunity to correct in the introduction an erroneous statement, which has been severely pointed out, concerning the name of the British military aviation service at the time of Faulkners enlistment. Shortly before that time the Royal Flying Corps and the Navys air arm had been combined and renamed the Royal Air Force, but because his first uniform in 1918 had borne the words Royal Flying Corps at the shoulder and because a photographic studio in Toronto had put those same words at the base of a portrait which Faulkner mailed home to Mississippi, I assumed that Royal Flying Corps was still a name in official use when Faulkner enlisted. It is pleasant to have this opportunity to correct that mistake as well as to correct the previous editions reversal of one of the portraits. But the pleasantest aspect of this edition for me is that it will be brought out by a firm which bears the name of a man most generous through the years with information and help : the late Mr. Jonathan Cape, who in 1929, with his equally perceptive partner in the firm of Jonathan Cape and Harrison Smith, published Faulkners firstand possibly finestmasterpiece, The Sound and the Fury.

The many people whose reminiscences, advice, and general assistance have made possible the gathering of these and similar materials already know my full awareness of the debt I owe them, which I look forward to acknowledging in detail elsewhere. Here I will take the opportunity to thank only those who supplied the documents, sanctions, and professional services on which this compilation immediately depends : the staffs of The Mississippian newspaper and the Ole Miss annual for their generosity and cooperation; Mr. George W. Healy, Jr., and the late Dr. Raymond B. Zeller, former Editors of The Scream, and Mr. Branham Hume, former Business Manager of that magazine, for their support and openhanded offering of drawings and details of publishing history; Mrs. Lillian Friend Marcus, Managing Editor of the Double Dealer, for her kind permission to reprint three of William Faulkners poems and two of his essays from that magazine; Dr. Leon Picon of the United States Embassy in Japan, who contributed so much in 1955 to the success of the Nagano seminar, for information and advice; Mrs. William Ferguson for perceptive critical judgments about the relation between some of Faulkners poems and their French sources; Mr. Robert Sprich for effective research assistance; Mrs. John Pilkington for generous and efficient checking of Mississippi documents; the staffs of the libraries at the University of Mississippi, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Texas, Harvard University, and Yale University for help of many kinds; Mr. Peter Scott and his staff of the Microreproduction Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for reproductions of illustrations and for skillful photographic salvaging of burned manuscript pages; the staff of the office which registers the deeds of Lafayette County, Mississippi, for unflagging patience during my examination of their file of Oxford newspapers; as well as the staff of the Oxford Eagle for assistance far beyond the call of hospitality. And because it was a great pleasure to assemble the original edition of this volume, from materials taken to Japan in 1961 as seminar illustrations with no thought of publishing them there as a book, I want to thank those Japanese students who urged its immediate publication out of their admiration for William Faulkner.

c. c.

Cambridge, Massachusetts

April, 1963

Contents

OLE MISS JUVENILIA

Faulkner at the University of Mississippi

WILLIAM FAULKNER drew a picture for the 1916-1917 annual of the University of Mississippi. It began a series of contributions he was to make during the next eight years to that annual, to the University newspaper, and to a University humor magazine. By 1925 these three publications had brought out at least sixteen more of his drawings, sixteen of his poems, his first published short story and prose sketch, and six of his reviews and literary articles the artistic explorations of a young man who would become the best novelist his country has produced in this century.