William Faulkner: An Economy of Complex Words (review)
or structural integrity to Go Down, Moses stands as both a formal example of Faulkner's work's openness and as a complement to this novel's racial thematics. Such fragmentation serves "an intractable racial problem that continues to trouble American history" (232) in that, rather than furnish even a provisional end or containing wholeness, Go Down, Moses remains, in important ways, unfinished. Or at least it remains in need of persuasive narrators and a believing, faithful reader who, like Faulkner's characters—or like adherents to the confidence man—continues to "make" meaning in our own time. Looking ahead is something that Evans sees James and Faulkner imploring us to do but that many readings of Faulkner avoid. In so doing they risk consigning Faulkner—and their own critical positions—to a rearguard position, or at least one identified more narrowly with its critical or cultural moment. Another way of saying this is to submit that the stakes in reading Faulkner through James may not be limited to proving the relevance of the latter or serving the needs of the former. Approaching Faulkner as Evans does assures a new sense of the future, and not only for Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha County, but for those of us who, professionally or otherwise, continue to need him.