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Available
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Publication
Vintage (1972), Mass Market Paperback, 247 pages
Description
At once an engrossing murder mystery and an unflinching portrait of racial injustice in the Reconstruction South, Intruder in the Dust stands out as a true classic of Southern literature. A classic Faulkner novel which explores the lives of a family of characters in the South. An aging black who has long refused to adopt the black's traditionally servile attitude is wrongfully accused of murdering a white man.
User reviews
LibraryThing member wunderkind
My second Faulkner after The Sound and the Fury, which was better. Intruder in the Dust is about a black man accused of murder in a small southern town in the 1940s, told from the perspective of a 16-year-old white boy who for complicated reasons feels the need to help him prove his innocence. If
There are also some views expressed in Intruder in the Dust on the relationship between the South and the rest of the country that are complicated and probably wrong, but they are mostly expressed by the obviously flawed character of the lawyer, so I don't know if they are Faulkner's beliefs or not. He said, among other things, that the North couldn't get rid of the racial prejudices of the South, and that only the South could end its own history of racial subjugation, which its black citizens would totally understand because it would mean more to them to have their historically former masters be the ones to set them free instead of complete strangers, and until that happens they would just be happy to wait and be poor and subservient, or some such bullshit. Even if that is Faulkner's opinion, he does a pretty decent job (for a white dude of his generation) of trying to explain the racial situation of the setting, but it is a fault of this book that the black characters are mostly defined against white characters rather than as characters in their own right, so any points he's making about race issues are maybe slightly hampered by the fact that there's only one black character in here who isn't completely a cypher or a stereotype.
ETA: In one of the other reviews on LT, there's a quote from one of Faulkner's letters on the theme of the novel: "the premise being that the white people in the south, before the North or the Govt. or anybody else owe and must pay a responsibility to the negro". So it looks like that really was Faulkner's opinion, the problem being that he seems to have thought that it was okay for the white people in the south to take their sweet time finding their collective conscience while black people in the south continued to be second-class citizens.
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that sounds a bit like To Kill a Mockingbird it's because it really is, but I think Faulkner does the story in a more believable and interesting way in that his characters are much more morally gray. Chick, the semi-heroic boy, initially has a respect/hate relationship with the accused man, Lucas, that's based entirely on a history of each one refusing to be in debt to the other--Chick (and the rest of the town) resents that Lucas refuses to play the typical subservient role of a black man in the south. There's also an educated, genteel lawyer who at first seems to be a prototype for Atticus Finch until you find that he immediately assumes Lucas' guilt and, even when he joins in to help prove his innocence, continues to blame Lucas for bringing the whole situation on himself by being too proud for a black man. So basically I really liked that the characters who were doing the right thing still showed evidence of their culture and upbringing, which is something I never really got when I read To Kill a Mockingbird--I mean, why was Atticus Finch such a great guy? Where did that come from?There are also some views expressed in Intruder in the Dust on the relationship between the South and the rest of the country that are complicated and probably wrong, but they are mostly expressed by the obviously flawed character of the lawyer, so I don't know if they are Faulkner's beliefs or not. He said, among other things, that the North couldn't get rid of the racial prejudices of the South, and that only the South could end its own history of racial subjugation, which its black citizens would totally understand because it would mean more to them to have their historically former masters be the ones to set them free instead of complete strangers, and until that happens they would just be happy to wait and be poor and subservient, or some such bullshit. Even if that is Faulkner's opinion, he does a pretty decent job (for a white dude of his generation) of trying to explain the racial situation of the setting, but it is a fault of this book that the black characters are mostly defined against white characters rather than as characters in their own right, so any points he's making about race issues are maybe slightly hampered by the fact that there's only one black character in here who isn't completely a cypher or a stereotype.
ETA: In one of the other reviews on LT, there's a quote from one of Faulkner's letters on the theme of the novel: "the premise being that the white people in the south, before the North or the Govt. or anybody else owe and must pay a responsibility to the negro". So it looks like that really was Faulkner's opinion, the problem being that he seems to have thought that it was okay for the white people in the south to take their sweet time finding their collective conscience while black people in the south continued to be second-class citizens.
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LibraryThing member figre
Faulkner is not easy to read (at least, that is my assessment after reading just two of his novels.) However, he is worth every ounce of effort expended to understand what is occurring because the density of his approach helps build the full story that is being told. (Again, from reading two of his
This is a story set in the pre-world war south of a black man unjustly accused of a murder. Unjustly, even though he was found with the gun in hand. He turns to a boy to help clear his name – a boy who owes him a debt from the past. On the surface, this story is about the boy, his black friend, and an old lady taking the steps necessary (including digging up a grave) to prove the man’s innocence. But interwoven are the fear, hypocrisy, and bigoted viewpoints that existed in the south in such abundance at that time in history.
The richness of the story, the background, the intertwined themes, make this a book worth spending time with.
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novels.) So, it is with Intruder in the Dust. Stream of consciousness writing combined with the southern prose, if the reader is willing to make the effort, places that reader deep in the south in a time of fear and prejudice.This is a story set in the pre-world war south of a black man unjustly accused of a murder. Unjustly, even though he was found with the gun in hand. He turns to a boy to help clear his name – a boy who owes him a debt from the past. On the surface, this story is about the boy, his black friend, and an old lady taking the steps necessary (including digging up a grave) to prove the man’s innocence. But interwoven are the fear, hypocrisy, and bigoted viewpoints that existed in the south in such abundance at that time in history.
The richness of the story, the background, the intertwined themes, make this a book worth spending time with.
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LibraryThing member laytonwoman3rd
William Faulkner rarely gives us a character easily described as “admirable”. But in Intruder in the Dust, we meet Lucas Beauchamp, a black man whose integrity, strength and moral soundness we simply must admire. He is the focus of the mystery that forms what plot there is in this novel. After
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being discovered standing over the dead body of a white man, with his recently fired Saturday pistol in his pocket, Lucas is assumed to be the killer of one of the Beat Four Gowries, a seriously bad lot. Enter 16-year-old Charles “Chick” Mallison, who had an enlightening encounter with Lucas when he was 10 or 11 which he has never forgotten, and which has left him considerably unsettled in his mind about Southern culture, race, and his own place in the society he’s about to inherit. Lucas sees Chick and the boy’s uncle, the over-educated lawyer Gavin Stevens, as his only hope of proving the he did not shoot Vinson Gowrie. There follows a grim, nearly farcical, round of grave openings and closings as Chick and his accomplice, Miss Eunice Habersham, attempt to uncover evidence that will prevent either the townspeople or the Beat Four crowd from lynching this man who is the source of so much of his own angst. Faulkner introduces elements of the bildungsroman, as Chick moves through days and nights without sleep or food, (taking pains to avoid his mother who he assumes would stop him in his tracks) on a quest he doesn’t even fully understand, We actually see surprisingly little of Lucas, but what we do see is very revealing. He is composed, resigned to placing his fate in the hands of a confused boy and an old woman, but somehow above the commotion stirred up by his arrest. For anyone who questions Faulkner’s stance on race relations in Southern society, this book has many of the answers. Like all of his work, it gets better every time I read it. Show Less
LibraryThing member laytonwoman3rd
William Faulkner rarely gives us a character easily described as “admirable”. But in Intruder in the Dust, we meet Lucas Beauchamp, a black man whose integrity, strength and moral soundness we simply must admire. He is the focus of the mystery that forms what plot there is in this novel. After
Show More
being discovered standing over the dead body of a white man, with his recently fired Saturday pistol in his pocket, Lucas is assumed to be the killer of one of the Beat Four Gowries, a seriously bad lot. Enter 16-year-old Charles “Chick” Mallison, who had an enlightening encounter with Lucas when he was 10 or 11 which he has never forgotten, and which has left him considerably unsettled in his mind about Southern culture, race, and his own place in the society he’s about to inherit. Lucas sees Chick and the boy’s uncle, the overeducated lawyer Gavin Stevens, as his only hope of proving the he did not shoot Vinson Gowrie. There follows a grim, nearly farcical, round of grave openings and closings as Chick and his accomplice, Miss Eunice Habersham, attempt to uncover evidence that will prevent either the townspeople or the Beat Four crowd from lynching this man who is the source of so much of his own angst. Faulkner introduces elements of the bildungsroman, as Chick moves through days and nights without sleep or food, (taking pains to avoid his mother who he assumes would stop him in his tracks) on a quest he doesn’t even fully understand, We actually see surprisingly little of Lucas, but what we do see is very revealing. He is composed, resigned to placing his fate in the hands of a confused boy and an old woman, but somehow above the commotion stirred up by his arrest. For anyone who questions Faulkner’s stance on race relations in Southern society, this book has many of the answers. Like all of his work, it gets better every time I read it. Show Less
LibraryThing member AliceAnna
I like what he has to say, but I hate the way he says it. Breathe! Stop a sentence occasionally. It's just annoying. It truly makes me appreciate Kurt Vonnegut's brevity even more than I already did.
I was intrigued by the concept that only the south could fix the south and salvage something
I was intrigued by the concept that only the south could fix the south and salvage something
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civilized out of race relations ... the change couldn't come from without or be mandated by law in order to be accepted by those who had to live with it. Show Less
LibraryThing member The_Hibernator
Intruder in the Dust is about a 16-year-old white boy in Mississippi who (for complex reasons) decides to help a black man who has apparently murdered a white man. As I understand it, Faulkner's message is that the white people of the South need to make right their own wrongs--that the North can't
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solve the problems of the South. Like most books about racial tension written by Southerners before the mid 20th century, it may insult the modern reader's racial sensibilities. Such readers should possibly consider when it was written and how the readers of THAT time would respond to it. Show Less
LibraryThing member fourbears
Rereading this one I realized why I’ve never liked To Kill a Mockingbird (which I read after this one) as much as most people. Not that I don’t like Harper Lee’s novel, just that I see it as simpler, more straight forward and less ambiguous than Faulkner’s. Early in the 40ies Faulkner wrote
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to his publisher about a book he had in mind which would be a “blood-and-thunder mystery novel, original in that the solver is a negro, himself in jail for the murder and is about to be lynched, solves murder in self defense.” The main characters are Lucas Beauchamp—descended from white men as well as black—and Charles (Chick) Mallinson who’s 16 at the time of novel. Chick has been trading favors with Lucas for several years—ever since he fell through the ice one winter and Lucas gave him shelter, a fire to dry his clothes and some food. Chick has attempted to pay him—assuming it only right that a white man pay a black man for favors, but Lucas wouldn’t accept the money. Thereafter whenever Chick tried to reward Lucas, Lucas returned the favor until Chick was downright frustrated with his own attempts to do what he thought the code of his people required him to do. Lucas, because he’s white as well as black though, refuses to be “taken care of” by whites. Time and again in the novel someone tells him “if you’d only behave like a black man”…. Lucas, though, absolutely refuses to “act like a black man” in a time when codes were clear and black and white coexisted pretty well as long as both played their proper roles. The novel is at base a mystery novel, with Lucas accused of murder and the family of the dead man determined to burn him alive—but the same code that keeps black and white behavior in sync (and allows retaliation if a black man kills a white man) requires that they not do it on the Sabbath. Lucas is cursed for having committed a murder on a Saturday and making them wait. (There’s some humor in all these codes and breaking of codes!) Chick—on the brink of manhood but still a child so that Lucas’ code allows him to talk to him where he won’t talk to his uncle, the attorney—recognizes both the possibility that Lucas is innocent and the essential “rightness” that he be treated as any other man before the law.I have always bought into Faulkner’s sense that righting racial wrongs in this country is everyone’s responsibility (I’m thinking primarily of The Bear here), whether they’re Southern or not, even whether they’re new immigrants whose ancestors never lived here during slavery. His main idea in this novel has to do with the “code” that developed in the South—pre- and post-Civil War—and which required the white man to “take care” of the black man but which resisted any interference from outside the South, on the theory that, in its own time, the South (meaning of course the white South) would solve the discrimination problem without interference from the North or from the government. (Of course it didn’t play out the way that Faulkner would have liked—Northerners did “invade” the South in order to jump start the Civil Rights movement—and they met with violent resistance. But that was 20 years after the publication of this novel). Show Less
LibraryThing member Shaksper
An honest to goodness edge of your seat thrilling whodunit with massive moral overtones from the man in Mississippi
LibraryThing member HankIII
My review: This one would provide good fodder for those who support the burning of books.What I learned from this book: how to suffer in silence and maintain a delusional interest for so long.
LibraryThing member HaroldTitus
I thought it advisable before becoming completely senile that I read at least one of William Faulkner’s many famous novels. I selected Intruder in the Dust because its plot line intrigued me. Having finished the book this morning, I have decided to rate this Pulitzer Prize and Nobel Prize winning
The rating has everything to do with personal preference. I appreciate fiction that is imaginative, that is willing to take risks, that is character-driven, and that has something thought-provoking to say about the human condition. This book does all of that. I don’t mind having to work to attempt to discern what an author wishes to convey if I am rewarded mostly for the effort. This book stretched me beyond my limits of patience.
Faulkner’s stream-of-consciousness narration can be quite effective when its page-long sentences replete with back-to-back subordinate clauses provide interesting detail about objects seen, people observed, and events recalled. When these sentences delve into abstract thoughts that require my mind to translate to enable me to attempt to understand, evaluate, and assign relevance, Faulkner expects of me much more than I am able or want to accomplish.
The mystery element of the story – the unearthing of the bodies, why the victims had been murdered, and who had been the murderer – kept me reading. Even more so did my appreciation of Faulkner’s portrayal of Southern Whites and their cultural connection with Southern Blacks.
Expressed by the lawyer uncle of the sixteen year old third-person narrator, Faulkner tells us that if the black man is to be truly free, he must be set free by white men of the South. “Someday Lucas Beauchamp can shoot a white man in the back with the same impunity to lynch-rope or gasoline as a white man; in time he will vote anywhen and anywhere a white man can and send his children to the same school anywhere the white man’s children go and travel anywhere the white man travels as the white man does it. But it won’t be next Tuesday.” In the meantime there will be lapses. Outrages. Actions that generate shame. Locked into the White Southerner psyche is the imperative of racial superiority. Misconduct by blacks can be forgiven if only they acknowledge by their words and behavior that they are “niggers.” Lucas Beauchamp’s “crime” was his refusal to do so. The enormity of the crime that the crackers of the county were about to commit is averted only when they recognize that the murderer is not Lucas but one of their own. They will assuage their sense of shame by providing him ten-cent cans of tobacco. “So Lucas will get his tobacco. He wont want it of course and he’ll try to resist it. But he’ll get it …”
The liberal white uncle asserts that he defends “Sambo from the North and East and West – the outlanders who will fling him decades back not merely into injustice but into grief and agony and violence too by forcing on us laws based on the idea that man’s injustice to man can be abolished overnight by police. … The injustice is ours, the South’s. We must expiate and abolish it ourselves. … We owe it to Lucas whether he wants it or not … for the simple indubitable practical reason of his future: that capacity to survive and absorb and endure and still be steadfast.”
As for the Southern man tormented by conscience, “Some things you must never stop refusing to bear. Injustice and outrage and dishonor and shame. … Just regret it: don’t be ashamed.”
I’m satisfied that I read this novel. It has much to offer. I can’t say that I will read another Faulkner novel.
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author’s book four stars.The rating has everything to do with personal preference. I appreciate fiction that is imaginative, that is willing to take risks, that is character-driven, and that has something thought-provoking to say about the human condition. This book does all of that. I don’t mind having to work to attempt to discern what an author wishes to convey if I am rewarded mostly for the effort. This book stretched me beyond my limits of patience.
Faulkner’s stream-of-consciousness narration can be quite effective when its page-long sentences replete with back-to-back subordinate clauses provide interesting detail about objects seen, people observed, and events recalled. When these sentences delve into abstract thoughts that require my mind to translate to enable me to attempt to understand, evaluate, and assign relevance, Faulkner expects of me much more than I am able or want to accomplish.
The mystery element of the story – the unearthing of the bodies, why the victims had been murdered, and who had been the murderer – kept me reading. Even more so did my appreciation of Faulkner’s portrayal of Southern Whites and their cultural connection with Southern Blacks.
Expressed by the lawyer uncle of the sixteen year old third-person narrator, Faulkner tells us that if the black man is to be truly free, he must be set free by white men of the South. “Someday Lucas Beauchamp can shoot a white man in the back with the same impunity to lynch-rope or gasoline as a white man; in time he will vote anywhen and anywhere a white man can and send his children to the same school anywhere the white man’s children go and travel anywhere the white man travels as the white man does it. But it won’t be next Tuesday.” In the meantime there will be lapses. Outrages. Actions that generate shame. Locked into the White Southerner psyche is the imperative of racial superiority. Misconduct by blacks can be forgiven if only they acknowledge by their words and behavior that they are “niggers.” Lucas Beauchamp’s “crime” was his refusal to do so. The enormity of the crime that the crackers of the county were about to commit is averted only when they recognize that the murderer is not Lucas but one of their own. They will assuage their sense of shame by providing him ten-cent cans of tobacco. “So Lucas will get his tobacco. He wont want it of course and he’ll try to resist it. But he’ll get it …”
The liberal white uncle asserts that he defends “Sambo from the North and East and West – the outlanders who will fling him decades back not merely into injustice but into grief and agony and violence too by forcing on us laws based on the idea that man’s injustice to man can be abolished overnight by police. … The injustice is ours, the South’s. We must expiate and abolish it ourselves. … We owe it to Lucas whether he wants it or not … for the simple indubitable practical reason of his future: that capacity to survive and absorb and endure and still be steadfast.”
As for the Southern man tormented by conscience, “Some things you must never stop refusing to bear. Injustice and outrage and dishonor and shame. … Just regret it: don’t be ashamed.”
I’m satisfied that I read this novel. It has much to offer. I can’t say that I will read another Faulkner novel.
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LibraryThing member bontley
Well you can't say I haven't tried.
LibraryThing member jwhenderson
Intruder in the Dust, his fourteenth novel, is a good introduction to Faulkner's inimitable "stream of consciousness" style. The story is fairly straightforward although with Faulkner the narrative is never simple and you have to pay close attention to get all the details.
Intruder is particularly
The characters include a spinster, Miss Habersham (shades of Dickens) and a young black boy, Aleck Sander, along with Chick's uncle Gavin Stevens. Some of the characters had previously appeared in Go Down, Moses and The Hamlet. I enjoyed rereading this Faulkner novel and found that, as with all of his oeuvre, I continued to learn more about Faulkner's special fictional world.
Intruder is particularly
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good when focusing on the character and psychology of young Chick Mallison, the protagonist and sometimes narrator of the story. We see his growth through his confrontation with the black farmer Lucas Beauchamp and his subsequent actions in Lucas's behalf. And we experience the tension in the small town as Lucas is wrongfully accused of murder. As always there were moments of shear poetry that took my breath away with their power and beauty. Intruder was written as Faulkner's response as a Southern writer to the racial problems facing the South. In his Selected Letters, Faulkner wrote: "the premise being that the white people in the south, before the North or the Govt. or anybody else owe and must pay a responsibility to the negro".The characters include a spinster, Miss Habersham (shades of Dickens) and a young black boy, Aleck Sander, along with Chick's uncle Gavin Stevens. Some of the characters had previously appeared in Go Down, Moses and The Hamlet. I enjoyed rereading this Faulkner novel and found that, as with all of his oeuvre, I continued to learn more about Faulkner's special fictional world.
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LibraryThing member gypsysmom
I have always been intimidated by William Faulkner, that Pulitzer and Nobel Prize winner from the deep south, who never learned (or maybe didn't care about) the lessons of concise writing (Strunk and White would be rolling in their graves) that include things like not piling clauses within clauses
Intruder in the Dust tells the story of a black man in Mississippi shortly after WWII who was charged with shooting a white man in the back. Lucas Beauchamp has always been proud. Some folks think that if he had behaved "like a nigger should" he would not have found himself in this fix. Young Charley Mallison met Lucas about four years previously when Lucas fished him out of a creek and took him home, dried his clothes and gave him a hot meal. Charley tried to pay Lucas with all the money he had but Lucas just dashed the coins to the ground saying "What's that for?" Ever since Charley has been trying to find some way to discharge his debt. When it looks like Lucas might be lynched by an angry mob Charlie is determined to prevent it even though he is still considered a child by most folks.
This is a powerful story. This is what the South was like before the days of desegregation and equal rights told by someone who lived there. About the book Faulkner said "the premise being that the white people in the south, before the North or the Govt. or anybody else owe and must pay a responsibility to the negro." I would love to know if Southerners who read it when it was published changed their attitudes.
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in a single sentence or breaking a thought with another thought or, and I don't think this ever crossed his mind because it seems like he thinks the more words the better, not using unnecessary words. Whew, that's as long as I can sustain that Faulknerian style. I don't know how he did it page after page and chapter after chapter. I have to confess that his style does make you pay close attention to what he is saying and what he says is worth paying attention to.Intruder in the Dust tells the story of a black man in Mississippi shortly after WWII who was charged with shooting a white man in the back. Lucas Beauchamp has always been proud. Some folks think that if he had behaved "like a nigger should" he would not have found himself in this fix. Young Charley Mallison met Lucas about four years previously when Lucas fished him out of a creek and took him home, dried his clothes and gave him a hot meal. Charley tried to pay Lucas with all the money he had but Lucas just dashed the coins to the ground saying "What's that for?" Ever since Charley has been trying to find some way to discharge his debt. When it looks like Lucas might be lynched by an angry mob Charlie is determined to prevent it even though he is still considered a child by most folks.
This is a powerful story. This is what the South was like before the days of desegregation and equal rights told by someone who lived there. About the book Faulkner said "the premise being that the white people in the south, before the North or the Govt. or anybody else owe and must pay a responsibility to the negro." I would love to know if Southerners who read it when it was published changed their attitudes.
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LibraryThing member Garrison0550
I guess I'm not a Faulkner fan...I know I should be, but...but...
LibraryThing member CareBear36
As much as I try, I don't think I will ever be a true Faulkner fan. This novel had an interesting plot, but I think his writing style caused me to lose interest and it was difficult to stay focused on the text.
LibraryThing member EnockPioUlle
This is stream of consciousness at full speed, the story instersped in between, what makes it very hard to read, and unless you're a hardcore Faulkner's fan you'll feel tempted to give it up. That said it's fair to notice the masterful storytelling tecnique by the author, to be amazed at how
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resourceful his work is, a trademark of arguably America's greatest writer. However I do advise taking his classics like "Moonlight in August", "Absalom, Absalom!", "As I Lay Dying" first and leave this for later. Show Less
LibraryThing member bekkil1977
"Intruder in the Dust" is a darkly humorous murder mystery. A black man, Lucas Beauchamp, is accused of shooting a white man in the back. Lawyer Gavin Stevens' nephew Chick is racing against the lynch mob clock to prove Lucas is innocent. The ending is brilliant and dry, and I loved how the
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murdered man's grave was robbed three separate times in the same night. Show Less
LibraryThing member margaretfield
young white boy fights to defend a black man accused of murder in 1950s South
LibraryThing member laytonwoman3rd
William Faulkner rarely gives us a character easily described as “admirable”. But in Intruder in the Dust, we meet Lucas Beauchamp, a black man whose integrity, strength and moral soundness we simply must admire. He is the focus of the mystery that forms what plot there is in this novel. After
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being discovered standing over the dead body of a white man, with his recently fired Saturday pistol in his pocket, Lucas is assumed to be the killer of one of the Beat Four Gowries, a seriously bad lot. Enter 16-year-old Charles “Chick” Mallison, who had an enlightening encounter with Lucas when he was 10 or 11 which he has never forgotten, and which has left him considerably unsettled in his mind about Southern culture, race, and his own place in the society he’s about to inherit. Lucas sees Chick and the boy’s uncle, the overeducated lawyer Gavin Stevens, as his only hope of proving the he did not shoot Vinson Gowrie. There follows a grim, nearly farcical, round of grave openings and closings as Chick and his accomplice, Miss Eunice Habersham, attempt to uncover evidence that will prevent either the townspeople or the Beat Four crowd from lynching this man who is the source of so much of his own angst. Faulkner introduces elements of the bildungsroman, as Chick moves through days and nights without sleep or food, (taking pains to avoid his mother who he assumes would stop him in his tracks) on a quest he doesn’t even fully understand, We actually see surprisingly little of Lucas, but what we do see is very revealing. He is composed, resigned to placing his fate in the hands of a confused boy and an old woman, but somehow above the commotion stirred up by his arrest. For anyone who questions Faulkner’s stance on race relations in Southern society, this book has many of the answers. Like all of his work, it gets better every time I read it. Show Less
LibraryThing member laytonwoman3rd
William Faulkner rarely gives us a character easily described as “admirable”. But in Intruder in the Dust, we meet Lucas Beauchamp, a black man whose integrity, strength and moral soundness we simply must admire. He is the focus of the mystery that forms what plot there is in this novel. After
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being discovered standing over the dead body of a white man, with his recently fired Saturday pistol in his pocket, Lucas is assumed to be the killer of one of the Beat Four Gowries, a seriously bad lot. Enter 16-year-old Charles “Chick” Mallison, who had an enlightening encounter with Lucas when he was 10 or 11 which he has never forgotten, and which has left him considerably unsettled in his mind about Southern culture, race, and his own place in the society he’s about to inherit. Lucas sees Chick and the boy’s uncle, the overeducated lawyer Gavin Stevens, as his only hope of proving the he did not shoot Vinson Gowrie. There follows a grim, nearly farcical, round of grave openings and closings as Chick and his accomplice, Miss Eunice Habersham, attempt to uncover evidence that will prevent either the townspeople or the Beat Four crowd from lynching this man who is the source of so much of his own angst. Faulkner introduces elements of the bildungsroman, as Chick moves through days and nights without sleep or food, (taking pains to avoid his mother who he assumes would stop him in his tracks) on a quest he doesn’t even fully understand, We actually see surprisingly little of Lucas, but what we do see is very revealing. He is composed, resigned to placing his fate in the hands of a confused boy and an old woman, but somehow above the commotion stirred up by his arrest. For anyone who questions Faulkner’s stance on race relations in Southern society, this book has many of the answers. Like all of his work, it gets better every time I read it. Show Less
LibraryThing member nbmars
For the first one hundred pages or so, I thought I was going to say this was the best novel I had ever read. I still think it is in the top five, but Faulkner’s complicated writing style can begin to pall after a while. For example, one stream-of-consciousness sentence contained a parenthetical
The story takes place in the Jim Crow South (in fictional Yoknapatawpha County, in Mississippi) in the mid-twentieth century. It is ostensibly the tale of a reclusive black man accused of shooting a redneck in the back, and the efforts of a young white boy and his uncle, a Harvard educated lawyer, to save the “stubborn old nigger” (Faulkner’s term, not mine) from being lynched by the victim’s very large extended family. More importantly, it is an in-depth analysis of the minds of typical (at that time) bigoted, uneducated Southern whites and a persecuted, but dignified and proud black man unjustly accused of a heinous crime. Faulkner succeeds admirably in capturing the feelings of the whites, but I’m not sure he is as accurate in describing blacks, to whom he attributes almost preternatural powers of perception, understanding, and endurance. Nonetheless, the book is a tour de force of the first magnitude. And the final scene is side-splitting hilarious.
(JAB)
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musing within a parenthetical remark, and ran on for more than two pages before mercifully coming to a close. The story takes place in the Jim Crow South (in fictional Yoknapatawpha County, in Mississippi) in the mid-twentieth century. It is ostensibly the tale of a reclusive black man accused of shooting a redneck in the back, and the efforts of a young white boy and his uncle, a Harvard educated lawyer, to save the “stubborn old nigger” (Faulkner’s term, not mine) from being lynched by the victim’s very large extended family. More importantly, it is an in-depth analysis of the minds of typical (at that time) bigoted, uneducated Southern whites and a persecuted, but dignified and proud black man unjustly accused of a heinous crime. Faulkner succeeds admirably in capturing the feelings of the whites, but I’m not sure he is as accurate in describing blacks, to whom he attributes almost preternatural powers of perception, understanding, and endurance. Nonetheless, the book is a tour de force of the first magnitude. And the final scene is side-splitting hilarious.
(JAB)
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LibraryThing member zojo
Strangely this was one major book of Faulkner's that I didn't read at college - have remedied that now. Follows his usual style which it was good to get reaccustomed to, as well as some of the old characters like Lucas.
LibraryThing member m.belljackson
Polemically and poetically dense, Intruder will take many readings to completely absorb.
A few years ago when I was reading later Faulkner novels, a friend said to stop because he was a racist.
I recently read and now agree that INTRUDER IN THE DUST proves that he was not a racist
Faulkner forever had
Readers may hope that the descendants of the 16 year old hero followed his courage and inspiration.
A few years ago when I was reading later Faulkner novels, a friend said to stop because he was a racist.
I recently read and now agree that INTRUDER IN THE DUST proves that he was not a racist
Faulkner forever had
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faith that the South would fare best if whites resolved their own racism - if only that had been true!!!Readers may hope that the descendants of the 16 year old hero followed his courage and inspiration.
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Subjects
Awards
Language
Original publication date
1948
Physical description
247 p.; 7.2 inches
ISBN
0394717929 / 9780394717920