WILLIAM FAULKNER AND AVIATION:
THE MAN AND THE MYTH
by
Walter I. Bostwick
A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of the
College of Humanities in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of
Master of Arts
Florida Atlantic University
Boca Raton, Florida
August 1981 WILLIAM FAULKNER AND AVIATION :
THE MAN AND THE MYTH
by
Walter I. Bostwick
This thesis was prepared under the direction of the candidate's thesis advisor, Dr. William T. Coyle, Department of English. It was submitted to the faculty of the College of Humanities and was accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts.
SUPERVISORY COMMITTEE:
of English
So. /9?:1 anced Studies
ii ABSTRACT
Author: Walter I. Bostwick
Title: William Faulkner and Aviation: The Man and the Myth
Institution: Florida Atlantic University
Degree: Master of Arts
Year: 1981
In the years following World War I, William Faulkner implied to his family and acquaintances that he had been a pilot in the RAF. Some people even thought that he had flown combat missions in France and had been wounded. He maintained this fictitious persona throughout his life, and it was accepted by most scholars and biographers. Several of
Faulkner's early works featured aviators as central charac- ters, and he treated them as romanticized, tragic heroes as he did Confederate cavalry officers. Pylon, which was written after he had actually started flying, reflects an awareness of the psychology of flying not seen in his earlier works.
Faulkner's "wounded pilot" persona was only one facet of his imaginative and creative personality, but knowledge of this persona is necessary to the understanding of the man and thus . his art.
iii TABLE OF CONTENTS
page
ABSTRACT ...... iii
INTRODUCTION 1
CHAPTER I Faulkner's Actual Flying Experience...... 2
CHAPTER II Faulkner's Mythical Flying Experience...... 9
CHAPTER III Faulkner's Pilots ...... 21
CONCLUSION ...... 44
BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 48
iv INTRODUCTION
William Faulkner was interested in aviation for all of
his adult life. His first published prose was about flying,
and between 1926 and 1935, three of his novels and several of
his short stories featured aviators as central characters.
Faulkner was a licensed pilot, and at one time during the mid-1930's all four Faulkner brothers were actively fly
ing. Over the years, however, a legend grew about Faulkner's flying experience until many people, the public and scholars alike, believed it included combat in France during World
War I. Some even believed that he had been wounded.
This paper documents Faulkner's actual flying experience based on biographical research and data provided by the U.S.
Federal Aviation Administration. His mythical flying back ground is also traced from its beginning in 1918. Theaviation characters in his earlier works are analyzed to illustrate his initial concepts of flying and pilots. A detailed analysis of Pylon, the only work written after Faulkner had started flying and had been exposed to experienced pilots, points out the change in his attitudes. Finally, the impact that Faulkner's mythical pilot persona may have had on his life and career is considered.
1 CHAPTER I
Faulkner's Actual Flying Experience
William Faulkner's association with aviation began in the summer of 1918. He joined the Royal Air Force and reported 1 for duty in Toronto, Canada, on July 10, 1918. As a "Cadet
For Pilot," he was first assigned to a Recruits' Depot, and then, about two and a half weeks later, he was posted to a
Cadet Wing for basic military training. On September 20, 1918,
Faulkner was assigned to the No. 4 School of Military Aero- nautics located on the campus of the University of Toronto.
He was still assigned there when the war ended on November 11,
1918. The exact date of his departure from Toronto is unknown, but he returned to Oxford, Mississippi, before the middle of
December, and was officially demobilized on January 4, 1919
(BL I p. 227). On March 9, 1920, he was gazetted Honorary 2nd
Lieutenant in the RAF, effective on the date of his demobili- zation (BL I p. 289).
There is a great deal of confusing and contradictory information about Faulkner's RAF experience. The confusion includes differing reports as to exactly what organization he was a member of. In his article "Faulkner and the Royal Air
1 Joseph Blotner, Faulkner, A Biography (New York: Random House, 1974), I, p. 211. Hereafter cited as BL I in the text.
2 3
Force," Gordon Price-Stevens illustrated that the organiza-
tional misunderstandings were primarily the result of
administrative changes that took place within the English ' 2 establishment. During the first years of World War I,
England's primary combat aviation unit was the Royal Flying
Corps (RFC). It was to this organization that most of
England's famous flying heroes were assigned. On April l,
1918, the RFC was combined with the Royal Naval Air Service
and the Royal Air Force (RAF) was born. A Canadian Air Force
was established in 1920. This organization applied for and
received consent to add the Royal prefix in 1924, thus creat-
ing the RCAF. In the span of only a few years, the military
flying unit in Canada was known as the RFC, the RAF, the CAF,
and the RCAF. All of Faulkner's service was in the RAF.
The type of training Faulkner received in the RAF has
also been a subject of conflicting reports. Michael Millgate,
in "William Faulkner, Cadet," reported on Faulkner's training 3 in great detail. Recruits arriving in Toronto went through
several stages of training. At the Recruits' Depot, where
they spent about two weeks, they were issued uniforms and
lectured on basic military discipline and personal hygiene.
2 Gordon Price-Stevens, "Faulkner and the Royal Air Force," Mississippi Quarterly, Vol. 17 (1964), 123-128. Here after cited as P-S in the text.
3Michael Millgate, "William Faulkner, Cadet," The Uni versity of Toronto Quarterly, Vol. 35, No. 2 (Jan. 1966), 117-32. 4
The next stage was posting to the Cadet Wing at Long Branch,
Ontario. Millgate quoted from Alan Sullivan's Aviation in
Canada to describe the routine at the Cadet Wing:
Drill, physical training, wireless, topography and air force law were in the curriculum, but the essential and psychological duty of this unit was to impress on the new recruit those funda mental precepts of military discipline, honour and self respect on which his future career alone could be successfully based. (Millgate, p. 118)
Training in the Cadet Wing took approximately eight weeks, after which cadets were sent to the School of Aeronau- tics. The duration of training at the School of Aeronautics is unknown; however, training was disrupted to some extent while Faulkner was there because of an influenza epidemic.
After completing training at the School of Aeronautics in which cadets were taught the basics of aircraft engineering, aeronautical theory, navigation and associated subjects, the cadets proceeded to the Armament School. Only after the Arma- ment School would actual flying training begin. After basic flight training, cadets would have to attend two more courses, the School of Artillery Cooperation and the School of Aerial
Fighting, before they would earn their wings as RAF aviators.
Did Faulkner receive any flying training with the RAF?
Records at the time of his demobilization indicate he had completed 70% of required ground training (BL I p. 228). He was never assigned to a training airfield. Faulkner had four roommates while he was assigned to the School of Aeronautics. 5
One of these, Durla Bushell, from India, died from an injury
he received while playing rugby during training. Millgate
interviewed the surviving three. While their recollections of
Faulkner differ, the three agree that neither they nor
Faulkner received any flying training while in the RAF in
1918.
Faulkner was issued a student pilot certificate by the
U.S. Department of Commerce while he was living in Oxford in 4 January, 1931. This certificate permits a person to fly, either solo or with an instructor, while gaining the knowledge and expertise required to pass the tests for the next level of certification, the private pilot certificate. There is no indication that he flew during 1931 or 1932, but in Memphis, on February 2, 1933, Faulkner started taking formal flying lessons from Vernon Omlie (BL I p. 795). He soloed on April
20, nearly fourteen years after he had entered the RAF. On
June 26, two days after the birth of his daughter, Faulkner bought a bright red, 210 h.p. Waco C aircraft. The aircraft's identification number was NC 13413. (This is the aircraft in which Faulkner's youngest brother, Dean, was killed in 1935.)
Flying with George A. Wiggs, a Federal flight examiner, he passed the flight check required for the issuance of the pri- vate pilot certificate on December 14, 1933, and he was sub- sequently issued certificate number 29788. This certificate
4 Letter received from Mark Weaver, Federal Aviation Administration, April 29, 1981. 6 authorized him to fly single-engine, land aircraft of from 0 5 to 150 horsepower. Technically, Faulkner was not licensed to fly his own aircraft.
Faulkner apparently flew with some regularity for the next several years. By late 1935, he had logged approximately
150 flying hours (BL I p. 909). In 1934 and 1935, all four
Faulkner brothers were flying: Jack (Murry) while he was working with the F.B.I., and John and Dean professionally 6 with the Memphis Air Service. William Faulkner was accepted into the New York "Hanger" of the Quiet Birdman association on July 1, 1935, shortly after the publication of Pylon. The
QB's, as they are frequently called, are a social organiza- tion of aviators. Faulkner was very proud of his membership and wore the QB lapel pin often for the rest of his life and when he sat for his last formal portrait which was taken by 7 Jack Cofield in 1962.
In letters to Robert K. Haas in 1940 and 1941, Faulkner 8 mentioned that he was actively flying. Pilot certificates were issued annually when Faulkner was flying and his last
5 Letter received from Mark Weaver, FAA. 6 John Faulkner, My Brother Bill (New York: Trident Press, 1963), pp. 167-70. Hereafter cited as MBB in the text.
7Jack Cofield, William Faulkner: The Cofield Collection (Oxford, Miss.: Yoknapatawpha Press, 1978), p. 11. 8 Joseph Blotner, ed., Selected Letters of William Faulkner (New York: Random House, 1977), pp. 136-39. Here after cited as SL in the text. 7
9 certificate was issued on February 4, 1942. There is no evidence that he flew after World War II, and considering his age and health, it is unlikely that he did.
Apparently Faulkner was neither an adept nor an aggres- sive pilot. A typical beginning pilot requires 8 to 10 hours of dual instruction before soloing, and Faulkner required 17.
Omlie, his flying instructor, told another pilot about
Faulkner's ability. "I had trouble with Bill. He had trouble getting the feel of the controls. He had to learn to use the instruments, not the seat of his pants" (BL I p. 797). Al- though as part of his flying training he would have had to learn how to stall an airplane and recover from a spin, he did not care for aerobatics and preferred straight and level flight. In My Brother Bill, John Faulkner described his brother's flying ability:
In the 1930's when I knew him as a pilot, he had lost his touch. He said himself, in those days, that he was not much good .... every time he was out in his Waco by himself and went into some strange field he did something to it. Usu ally it never amounted to more than wiping off a wing tip or blowing a tire but he did it nearly every time .... Bill used to come up and fly our Waco but he always wanted me along. He never took it out by himself. (MBB p. 168)
Faulkner's flying career spanned a maximum of 12 years, from the issuance of his student pilot certificate in 1931 until the lapse of his private pilot certificate in 1943. It
9 Letter received from Mark Weaver, FAA. 8
is more likely, however, that he was actively flying for
about eight years, from the time he started taking flying
lessons in 1933 until the start of World War II. Quantitative
information, that is, total flying time, is not available.
Basically, Faulkner's flying career was rather mundane, but
the perception of that career that developed over the years was another story entirely. CHAPTER II
Faulkner's Mythical Flying Experience
When Malcolm Cowley was working on The Portable Faulkner,
he referred to what he considered a useful reference work for
biographical information, Twentieth Century Authors (1942),
edited by Stanley J. Kunitz and Howard Haycraft, which con-
tained the following information:
Biographers who say he got no nearer France than Toronto are mistaken. He was sent to France as an observer, had two planes shot down under him, was wounded in the second shooting, and did not return to Oxford until after the Armistice.1
Faulkner's mythical flying career began while he was still in Canada. In letters to his mother, Maud, he wrote that he had gone on a "joy ride" in an airplane in August,
1918, and that later he had gotten rides with other friends.
He had finished ground school on November 13, he wrote, and had begun to fly at more regular intervals. He wrote that he went aloft on November 22, a day so cold that he had to be helped from the cockpit, and that by November 30, he had four hours solo flying time to his credit (BL I pp. 223-24).
1 Malcolm Cowley, The Faulkner-Cowley File (New York: Viking Press, 1966), p. 72. Hereafter cited as F-C File in the text.
9 10
John Faulkner remembered his brother's homecoming from
Canada and wrote of it in My Brother Bill:
Bill got off the train in his British officer's uniform -- slacks, a Sam Browne belt, and wings on his tunic .... A part of the British uniform was a swagger stick and Bill had one, and across his arm a trench coat .... When he got off we saw that he was limping. As soon as we greeted him and got him in the car he told us that some of the graduating class had gone up to celebrate getting their wings and he had flown his Camel halfway through tne top of a hanger. The tail of his ship was still outside and they got Bill down from the inside of the hanger with a ladder. (MBB 138-39)
John also recalled his brother's account of his flying training in Canada:
They sent Bill to primary training in Toronto on Canucks, ships about like the Jennies we used to train our pilots. He graduated from them and went on to fighter training on Sopwith Camels, the orneriest airplane ever built .... The war ended before Bill could finish his training. But the British government told him and some others that if they wanted to stay and finish their course they'd get their wings and commission. Bill and a few others stayed. They lacked only a few weeks. (MBB p. 135)
Although he had been wounded while serving as a Marine in France and did not return to Oxford until March, 1919,
Murry (Jack) Faulkner also recalled his brother's account of his time in Canada:
[He] entered training in that country [Canada] and eventually, just before the termination of the war, obtained his pilot's rating and was commissioned a second lieutenant. He never got any farther toward the war, which quit on him 11
before he could do anything about it; but he must have enjoyed himself a lot ... I can almost hear him now as he chuckled in recounting how, to celebrate the Armistice, he fortified him self with some good drinking whiskey, took up a rotary motored Spad and spun it through the roof of a hanger.2
A photograph taken in December, 1918, shows Faulkner in an RAF officer's uniform, complete with pilot's wings and a slim cane. He wore the uniform from time to time for the next two years.
Working in New York in 1921, Faulkner met Mr. John K.
Joice and his French-born wife. At a dinner party he made a vivid impression on the wife. She remembered the following details. "He was just back from the war and, in fact, he had a cane and walked with a limp." Had he been wounded, she asked, and his reply was that "he had just been released from the hospital and had a metal disc close to his hip" (BL I p. 324).
In September, 1924, when the Four Seas Company was pre- paring to publish Faulkner's first book of poetry, The Marble
Faun, he provided them with a brief and accurate statement of his wartime service: "Served during the war in the British
Royal Air Force" ( BL I p. 361).
However, in the winter of 1924-1925, Faulkner's "wounded
2 Murry C. Faulkner, "The Wonderful Mornings of our Youth," in William Faulkner of Oxford, ed. James W. Webb and A. Wigfall Green (Nashville, Tenn.: Parthenon Press, 1965), p. 20. 12
pilot" persona was in evidence in New Orleans. With other
aspiring writers, he was occasionally entertained by Sherwood
Anderson and his wife. He made the following impression :
The limp that Johncy had noticed ... had apparently returned, and it was much worse. Nor was it the extent of his injuries. Most of the new friends he made in New Orleans remained convinced for years that his airplane accident had left him with a silver plate in his head. They could see that he drank heavily. Soon the impression was general that this alleviated the pain from these wounds. (BL I p. 369)
Faulkner contributed, primarily as a reviewer and critic,
to the New Orleans magazine "Double Dealer." In the January-
February, 1925 issue, the following comments about him were
in the "Notes on Contributors" section:
Although in his twenties, he has served in a wide variety of capacities. He has worked in turn as clerk in a book-store, postmaster and dishwasher. During the war he was with the British Air Force and made a brilliant record. He was severely wounded. (BL I p. 390)
Anita Loos recalled Faulkner in 1925 as living the life of a war hero. "You can't expect much of Bill," she heard others say, "because he has that plate in his head and he
isn't very smart" (BL I p. 411). Other associates of his,
Margery Kalom Gumble and Harold Levy, remember him carrying a
cane, speaking with a British accent, and mentioning his
flying and his wound. Levy had the impression that he was receiving a pension from the RAF (BL I pp. 420-21). 13
William Hoffman met Faulkner in Paris in the late summer
of 1925. With Hoffman he talked occasionally about his ex
perience in the RAF and humorously demonstrated how each of
' the fliers walked to his plane carrying an iron stove lid
upon which he sat in the plane to protect him from bullets
from below. He also described bringing in liquor from the
Caribbean islands and flying a plane for New Orleans boot
leggers (BL I p. 464).
By the time Faulkner returned from Europe in December,
1925, the "wounded pilot" persona was apparently accepted by
most of the people he had met away from Oxford. In 1926,
Soldier's Pay was published and reviewers were including their
concept of the persona in their critical appraisals of the
novel. E.C. Beckwith wrote in the Literary Review that
Soldier's Pay "stood alone among novels of disillusioned
veterans." In Literary Digest, Louis Kronenberger remarked on
the book's "rich compound of imagination, observation, and
experience" ( BL I p. 505).
Faulkner's name first appeared in Who's Who in America
in the 1928-1929 volume. Biographical information, which he
apparently supplied, had only a simple statement in reference
to his wartime service: "Served with the British Royal Air
Force, 1918" (P-S p. 126).
However, in 1930 when Forum published his story "A Rose
for Emily," he provided the following humorous account of
himself for their notes on contributors: 14
War came. Liked British uniform. Got commission R.F.C. Crashed. Cost British gov't 2000 pounds. Was still pilot. Crashed. Cost British gov't 2000 pounds. Quit. Cost British gov't $84.30. King said, 'Well done' ... (P-S p. 126)
In the academic world, the first serious misrepresenta-
tion of Faulkner's RAF experience came in 1932. In an article
in the Sewanee Review, A. Wigfall Green included the following
information:
Although he has two enemy planes to his credit and several times barely escaped death, he says, with the customary attempts to scoff at the heroic, that he crashed twice, costing the British government more than four thousand pounds. (P-S p. 127)
In 1951, Professor Green's article was reprinted in William
Faulkner: Two Decades of Criticism, which was edited by
Frederick J. Hoffman and Olga W. Vickery.
In 1932, Henry Nash Smith interviewed Faulkner for the
Dallas Morning News. According to Smith, Faulkner "didn't have much to say" about his service "with the British air
force in France." Smith had heard that Faulkner had twice been dragged "more dead than alive" from wrecked airplanes.
Apparently Faulkner did little to confirm or deny Smith's
impression and merely told him "I just smashed them up" (P-S p. 127).
When Faulkner started taking flying lessons from Vernon
Omlie in 1933, he approached Omlie in a less than candid manner: 15
When Faulkner came to me for lessons, he told me not to say anything about it. He said he wanted to get back his nerve and learn to fly all over again before anyone knew what he was doing. (BL I p. 795)
He was unable to keep the fact that he was taking flying les-
sons private and when reporters asked why a reputed combat
veteran was taking lessons, he had a double explanation. Not
only was he trying to regain the nerve lost in two plane
crashes, but there had been so many radical changes in air-
planes since he had been a Canadian "leftenant" that he had
to learn all over again (BL I p. 795).
Public and professional acceptance of Faulkner's knowl-
edge of aviation in 1935 is illustrated by the fact that he was asked to review Jimmy Collins' book Test Pilot for the
American Mercury magazine. Collins, a leading test pilot, had been killed in a flying accident before his book had been published. Faulkner found the book lacking because he had hoped it would be a precursor of a folklore of speed and of 3 the limits of the kind of men who fly. In a tragic coinci- dence, Faulkner's brother Dean, who apparently was a good pilot, was killed in a flying accident the month the review of Test Pilot was published.
There is little information about the Faulkner persona
3william Faulkner, "The Uncut Text of Faulkner's Review of Test Pilot," Mississippi Quarterly, Vol. 33, No. 3 (Summer 1980), 385-89. 16 between the mid-1930's and -1940's. In 1943, he wrote to his nephew, James M. Faulkner, who was undergoing flying training with the U.S. Marines, wishing him good luck with his flying.
He included a good-luck piece, the rank insignia ("pip") from his RAF officer's uniform, and made the following com- ments about flying and his experience:
I would like for you to have had my dog-tag, RAF, but I lost it in Europe, in Germany. I think the Gestapo has it; I am very likely on their records right now as a dead British flying-spy. You will find something else, as you get along, which you will consider your luck. Fly ing men always do. I had one. I never found it again after my crack-up in '18. (SL p. 170)
In 1945 and 1946, an exchange of letters between Faulkner and Malcolm Cowley indicated that although the "wounded pilot" persona was well established, it was causing some problems for its creator. Based on information he found in Twentieth
Century Authors (1942), Cowley included the following in his draft of the introduction to The Portable Faulkner:
He had been trained as a flyer in Canada, had served at the front in the Royal Air Force, and after his plane had been damaged, had crashed it behind the British lines. (F-C File p. 72)
When Faulkner reviewed the draft, he suggested another open- ing which contained no reference to flying or the war. He added the following comment : "I only wish you felt it right to lead off as above, no mention of war experience at all"
(F-C File p. 74). In response to another letter from Cowley, 17
Faulkner brought the subject up again:
If you mention military experience at all (which is not necessary, as I could have invented a few failed RAF airmen as I did Confects) say 'belonged to RAF 1918.' (F-C File p. 77)
In a third letter in the span of only a few weeks, Faulkner
reiterated his concern about references to the war in The
Portable Faulkner:
You're going to bugger up a fine dignified distinguished book with that war business. The only point a war reference or anecdote could serve would be to reveal me a hero, or (2) to account for the whereabouts of a male my age on Nov. 11, 1918 in case this were a biography. If, because of some later reference back to it in the piece, you cant omit all European war reference, say only what Who's Who says and no more:
Was a member of the RAF in 1918.
I'm really concerned about the war reference. As I said last, I'm going to be proud of this book. I wouldn't have put in anything at all about the war or any other personal matter. (F-C File pp. 82-83)
Cowley deleted the statement that Faulkner's plane had been damaged in combat, and to this Faulkner responded with another
long letter:
I see your point now about the war business, and granting the value of the parallel you will infer, it is 'structurally' necessary. I dont like the paragraph because it makes me out more of a hero than I was ... The mishap was caused not by combat but by (euphoniously) 'cockpit trouble'; i.e., my own foolishness; the injury I suffered I still feel I got at 18
bargain rates. A lot of that sort of thing happened in those days, the culprit unravel ling himself from the subsequent unauthorised crash incapable of any explanation as far as advancing the war went, and grasping at any frantic straw before someone in authority would want to know what became of the aero plane, would hurry to the office and enter it in the squadron records as 'practice flight.' As compared with men I knew, friends I had and lost, I deserve no more than the sentence I suggested before: 'served in (or belonged to) RAF.' But I see where your para graph will be better for your purpose, and I am sorry it's not nearer right. (F-C File pp. 83-84)
After receiving this letter, Cowley reduced the account of
Faulkner's military experience to ten accurate words: "He
had served in the Royal Air Force in 1918" (F-C File p. 85).
In December, 1949, Dayton Kohler, a professor of English
at Virginia Polytechnical Institute, published an article
about Faulkner in College English. The article, "William
Faulkner and the Social Conscience," opened with a reference to Faulkner's wartime experience:.
The war was the conditioning experience William Faulkner had in common with other writers of his generation. He had served in the British Royal Air Force, been wounded in a plane crash, drifted from one job to another after his return from France; and he wrote his first novels in the familiar idiom of postwar disillusionment and dis content.4
Although Faulkner rarely responded to or commented on
4 nayton Kohler, "William Faulkner and the Social Con science," College English, Vol. 11, No. 3 (Dec. 1949), 119-25. 19 criticism of his works, he wrote Professor Kohler thanking him for the article. As a postscript he added a note on his
RAF experience. "re opening. Am proud to have belonged to
RAF even obscurely. But had no combat service nor wound"
(SL p. 297).
Faulkner continued to talk about his flying experience for most of his life. At a class conference at the University of Virginia in March, 1957, a student asked if the short story "Death Drag" was based on an event or experience in
Faulkner's life. Faulkner's answer:
Not too much. They were -- I did a little, what they call barnstorming in the early days after the War, when aeroplanes were not too usual and people would pay a hundred dollars to be taken for a short ride in one, but I don't remember anything that was spe cifically like this.5
Although Price-Stevens, in 1964, and Millgate, in 1966, had clearly demonstrated that Faulkner had not flown with the
RAF, the myth persisted. In 1968, Robie Macauley was selected to write an afterword for a Signet edition of Soldier's Pay.
In it he included the following references to Faulkner's flying:
Faulkner learned to fly a Sopwith Camel in his six-months' course, but the war was over before he finished his flight training and
5 Frederick L. Gwynn and Joseph L. Blotner, ed., Faulkner in the University (New York: Random House, 1965), p. 68. 20
received his commission .... Later on, when Faulkner went to New Orleans, he became friends with Sherwood Anderson, who described him as a badly-wounded veteran living in "the black house of pain." ... Faulkner's four months of war were spent in Toronto. His only wound was a bad bump on one knee, received when he was celebrating his flight-school graduation -- he had taken a plane up and promptly crashed it into the roof of its hanger.6
It was not until 1980, when David Minter's biography
William Faulkner, His Life and Work, was published, that the myth was authoritatively laid aside:
Clearly compensatory, the persona of the injured pilot or, more impressively, the wounded hero brought the young cadet a taste of the glory and recognition he needed. But years later, after fame had come, Faulkner continued playing with the facts of his life; ... Like the stories he later wr6te, both the stories he told and the roles he projected possessed authority. Far from simply borrowing them, he appropriated and trans muted them.7
6william Faulkner, Soldier's Pay (New York: New American Library, 1968), p. 228. Hereafter cited as Sol. Pay inthetext.
7navid Minter, William Faulkner: His Life and Work (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1980), p. 32. CHAPTER III
Faulkner's Pilots
Faulkner wrote Cowley that he could have invented a few failed RAF pilots just as easily as he had Confederate sol- diers. Three of his first eight novels and several of his short stories featured pilots as key characters, and all with the exception of Pylon were written before he learned how to fly. When these works are analyzed in relationship to his real and mythical flying careers, an interesting insight into
Faulkner's attitudes toward flying and pilots can be attained.
"Landing in Luck" was first published in the University of Mississippi newspaper, The Mississippian, on November 26, 1 1919. This early and amateurish story should not be meas- ured against the standard of Faulkner's later writing, but it serves to reflect his earliest concept of pilots. The main character, Cadet Thompson, botched his first solo takeoff attempt, struck a cable at the end of the airfield, and the right landing gear of his aircraft was torn off. Thompson circled the airfield until his aircraft ran out of fuel and then, through sheer luck, managed to land the aircraft on its left wheel causing minimal damage and no injury to himself.
1 carvel Collins, ed., William Faulkner: Early Prose and Poetry (Boston: Little Brown, Co., 1962), p. 7.
21 22
In the story, Thompson is shown to be impetuous, brave at least to the point that he is flying solo, and (unfortunately like the author) immature. Technically the story indicates a level of knowledge about flying that is equivalent to that which Faulkner's ground school experience would have brought him.
The central character in Faulkner's first novel, Soldier's
Pay, is Donald Mahon, a pilot who has been terribly wounded in World War I. Mahon's character is only vaguely outlined in the novel, but he is clearly a mythical wounded hero return- ing home to die. He is Southern, gentlemanly, and from a good, middle-class family. As a tragic figure, he represents the terrible realities of war.
Another character in Soldier's Pay is Cadet Julian Lowe.
Just as it had for the author, the war has ended before Lowe has completed flying training. Lowe is bitter and disappointed and feels a mixture of envy and resentment toward Mahon:
To have been him! Just to be him. Let him take this sound body of mine! Let him take it. To have got wings on my breast, to have wings; and to have got his scar too, I would take death tomorrow .... Cadet Lowe turned to the wall with passionate disappointment like a gnawing fox at his vitals. (Sol. Pay p. 33)
There are obvious parallels between Cadets Lowe and Faulkner.
As a character, Lowe more or less fades from the novel, but to the extent he is developed, he is essentially an immature young man who has dreamed of glory and resents having his dream shattered. 23
The details surrounding Mahon's wounding are meager. He
is described as flying alone when he is attacked from out of
the sun by an aircraft that he has not seen. His first indi-
cation of the attack is when the shadow of the attacking
aircraft covers part of his own. Specifics related to flying
are vague and would not have required the author to have more
than a general knowledge of flying. A possible technical
fault exists in the fact that Mahon is flying alone. Almost
since the beginning of aerial combat the concept of flying
in formations of at least pairs has proved vital to survival.
The fact that Mahon is shot down by an aircraft he never sees demonstrates both the wisdom of that basic tactic and the futility of his actions just prior to the engagement:
With the quick skill of practice and habit he swept the horizon with a brief observing glance, casting a look above, banking slightly to see behind. All clear. (Sol. Pay p. 203)
"All the Dead Pilots" outlines the character of John 2 Sartoris. In the opinion of the story's narrator, who is himself a wounded pilot trying to get used to a mechanical leg, John is a semi-literate prankster. After a bizarre es- capade during which John has most of his front teeth knocked out, he is reduced in rank to second lieutenant and trans- ferred to a night-flying squadron. The story is tragic in
2 william Faulkner, "All the Dead Pilots," in The Collected Stories of William Faulkner (New York: Random House, 1950), pp. 511-31. Hereafter cited as Col. Sto~ in the text. 24
that John is killed , but he lacks the personal qualities
normally associated with tragic characters. John Sartoris
represents little more than cannon-fodder sacrified to war.
"Ad Astra" presents an array of characters, which, taken
as a composite , serve to create the "doomed hero" image which
Faulkner developed further in other works (Col. Stor.pp 407-
29). In "Ad Astra," as in "All the Dead Pilots," the war has
been a transcendental experience beyond which life has little
to offer the survivors. The Indian subadar, whom Faulkner may
have modeled after the roommate he had in Canada, soberly
pontificates in contrast to the story's other characters who
are drunkenly celebrating the war's end. "All this generation which fought in the war are dead tonight," he states, "but we do not know it yet." Bayard Sartoris maintains an aloofness from his fellow pilots although he joins them in their cele- bration. Another pilot describes him:
He never did talk much; just did his patrols and maybe once a week he'd sit and drink his nostrils white in a quiet sort of way. (Col. Stor.p. 414)
In Sartoris, Faulkner distilled the character of the
World War I pilot into the person of Bayard Sartoris. 3 When
Bayard returns from the war he is completely incapable of adjusting to life at home. He drives his car at breakneck
3 william Faulkner, Sartoris (New York: New American Library, 1964). Hereafter cited as Sart. in the text. 25
speeds and recklessly attempts to ride an unbroken stallion.
He is unsociable toward almost every other character and,
after causing the death of his grandfather, is unable to face
his responsibilities. When he is finally killed, it happens
in an aircraft that other pilots recognize as unairworthy.
His wife Narcissa sums up his general attitude:
He doesn't love anybody. He won't even love the baby. He doesn't seem to be glad, or sad, or anything. (Sart. p. 241)
Faulker does not really provide the reader with an explanation
for Bayard's malaise. Guilt about his brother John's death is
an apparent cause, but that viewpoint requires deep scrutiny.
Bayard's guilt is not so much based on the fact that he caused
or at least failed to prevent his brother's being shot down,
as much as a perverted sense that by not dying Bayard has
failed to complete the mythical lost hero role he has envi-
sioned for himself. This role in Sartoris is perfectly comple- mented by the theme of "All the Dead Pilots."
The details of John Sartoris' death are related in three ways in three of Faulkner's works, Sartoris, "Ad Astra," and
"All the Dead Pilots." In "All the Dead Pilots," John's death
is announced in a letter from his squadron commander to John's
Aunt Jenny. The letter relates that he was shot down by a superior number of enemy aircraft which had both more alti- tude and more speed. The letter also says that the engagement had been observed by another squadron member and that John had 26
jumped from his aircraft when it began to spin (Col. Stor.
p. 530). John had been flying essentially alone, with the
nearest friendly aircraft a thousand feet below him and thus
in no position to be of any assistance.
In "Ad Astra," John's death is related in an aside
about Bayard. "His twin brother had been killed in July. He was in a Camel squadron below us, and Sartoris was down there when it happened" (Col. Stor.p. 419). The aside con- tinues to explain that for the following week Bayard flew down to what had been his brother's airfield and "hunted" for the German pilot. In that week Bayard shot down three enemy aircraft, one of which was apparently piloted by the man who had shot his brother down.
In Sartoris, John's death is explained by Bayard:
He was zigzagging: that was why I couldn't get on the Hun. Every time I got my sights on the Hun, John'd barge in between us again, and then I'd have to hoick away before one of the others got on me. Then he quit zigzagging. Soon as I saw him sideslip I knew it was all over .... I couldn't tell what John was up to until I saw him swing his feet out. Then he thumbed his nose at me like he was always doing and flipped his hand at the Hun and kicked his machine out of the way and jumped. (Sart. p. 206)
The events related by Bayard are not logical from a stand- point of aerial combat tactics. There were three aircraft directly involved in the engagement, all of which presumably had forward-firing machine guns as fighter aircraft of the 27
time had no other offensive armament. Analysis of the above
passage indicates the following about the capabilities of
the aircraft and their pilots:
1. Bayard was able to "get his sights" on the German
aircraft,which indicates his performance was greater than
the German's.
2. The German pilot was able to shoot John dbwn,which
indicates his performance was greater than John's.
3. John, however, was able to maneuver his aircraft
in such a manner as to repeatedly "barge in" between Bayard
and the German. Thip indicates he had the greatest perform
ance of all and was frequently in a position to shoot the
German aircraft down.
These inconsistencies, while perhaps not obvious to a
layman, would have been noticeable to anyone who had had military flight training.
The different ways John Sartoris' death is related in the three stories might, at first, appear to be a method of telling about the event from three different viewpoints, but the discrepancies are too great to support this conjecture.
For example, a squadron commander writing a death notifica tion letter would surely mention a twin brother's presence at the time of death and burial. Secondly, it would have been virtually impossible, no matter how lax the discipline in fighter squadrons, for a pilot to take a fully armed air craft, a very dear resource in WW I, on a solo vendetta to 28
hunt for the enemy who shot down his brother. Finally, as
outlined above, the mechanics of the combat, as related in
Sartoris, are romanticized beyond the realm of the possible .
Faulkner's handling of this event indicates he had little
understanding of aerial warfare.
In "Turnabout," Faulkner also wrote about flying during
World War I, but the hero is a young English sailor, L.C.W.
Hope, rather than an aviator (Col. Stor. pp. 475-509). An
American pilot, Captain Bogard, takes Hope along on a night
bombing mission, thinking that Hope will be impressed by a close-up view of the war. Although the mission ends with the
aircraft landing with a bomb dangling oeneath its wing, only
inches from detonation, Hope maintains his boyish enthusiasm.
Hope, in turn, invites Bogard to accompany him on his boat.
Bogard accepts, thinking the trip will be little more than a cruise around the harbor. The mission turns out to be ex tremely hazardous as the boat is a torpedo boat which enters enemy harbors in search of its targets. Throughout the mis sion, Hope maintains a casual, almost joking attitude, toward the clear dangers they are facing. Hope is later killed in action, and although not an aviator, as a charac ter he shares the qual]ties of Faulkner's aviators: he is young, brave and doomed.
"Death Drag," a story about three itinerant, barnstorm ing aviators, takes place in 1931 (Col. Stor. pp. 185-205).
Neither the pilot nor the aircraft is licensed and the three 29 men travel from one small town to another flying airshows
for whatever money the traffic will bear. The main event of their show is the Death Drag, a stunt in which one of the characters transfers from the flying aircraft to an automo- bile and back. Ginsfarb, the member of the trio who performs the stunt, walks with a noticeable limp which is evidence that the maneuver is not without risk.
There are two pilot characters in "Death Drag": Captain
Warren, a resident of the town in which the airshow is held, and Jock, the barnstorming pilot. Warren, who was wounded flying during the war, is apparently a reasonably successful and accepted member of the local establishment. Jock is a physical and emotional wreck:
He had the most tragic face we had ever seen; an expression of outraged and con vinced and indomitable despair, like that of a man carrying through choice a bomb which, at a certain hour each day, may or may not explode. (Col. Sto~ p. 187)
Jock's pilot's license has been taken away because of his involvement in an accident in which all of his aircraft's passengers were killed. He and the other barnstormers are flying only out of desperation as that is the only way they can make any money.
In "Death Drag" Faulkner indicated his reverence for pilots in a passage referring to Captain Warren:
It is what we (groundlings ... ) saw, refined and clarified by the expert, the man who had 30
himself seen his own lonely and scudding shadow upon the face of the puny and remote earth. (Col. Stor. pp. 197-98)
The novels and short stories discussed thus were all written before Faulkner learned how to fly and the characters were largely inventions of his creative mind. In his article
"Some Sources for Faulkner's Version of the First Air War,"
Richard T. Dillon has pointed out that two authors, Elliott
White Springs and James Warner Bellah, both of whom had
flown combat in France, were writing about the subject at 4 about the time Faulkner was. Bayard Sartoris' earlier quoted account of his brother's death in Sartoris very closely parallels a passage in Bellah's short story "Blood," which appeared in the Saturday Evening Post a few months before
Faulkner completed Sartoris. This, plus the fact that Faulkner had no real experience to draw from, tends to support
Dillon's claim that Faulkner borrowed some details of aerial combat from other writers.
The character of the pilots in Faulkner's early works can be generalized to provide a clear portrait. They were young, and those who survived the war were wounded in either spirit or body. They were brave representatives of their country in single combat with an enemy, and yet the combat appears to have been meaningless upon their return to society.
4 Richard T. Dillon, "Some Sources for Faulkner's Version of the First Air War," American Literature, Vol. 44, No. 4 (Jan. 1973), 629-37. 31
The wartime experience has doomed them. His pilots are mod-
ernized versions of the glorified and romanticized Civil War
cavalry officers that he developed in his fiction and had
heard of while he was growing up. Aunt Jenny DuPre's tale of
Bayard Sartoris I and General J.E.B. Stuart's exploits during
the Civil War serve s to illustrate both the bravery and fu-
tility of these men. After a daring raid by the General and
his troops, Sartoris learns there are some anchovies remain-
ing in the raided Yankee camp and goes back to get them:
He rode ... right up the knoll and jumped his horse right over the breakfast table and rode it into the wrecked commissary tent, and a cook who was hidden under the mess stuck out his arm and shot Bayard in the back with a derringer. (Sart. p. 31)
Faulkner's World War I pilots are symbolic tragic heroes; a
blend of romanticized figures from the past and the persona he
had created for himself in the years following the war.
Faulkner wrote Pylon after he had started flying and the
novel represents a complete departure from his earlier works 5 relating to aviation. Faulkner had not only felt the thrill
of "seeing his shadow on the puny earth," but he had every
right to feel that he was a member of a proud elite. Based on
his pilot certificate number, less than 30,000 Americans were
5 William Faulkner, Pylon (New York : Random House, 1962). The text of this publication was reproduced photographically from a copy of the first printing by Harrison Smith and Robert Haas, Inc., which was published on March 25, 1935. Hereafter cited asPY in the text. 32
qualified as pilots. Perhaps as important as his own flying
is the fact that he came in contact with other pilots who
were the nation's best. His selection of a flying instructor
'was particularly fortunate. Vernon Omlie was a pilot of na-
tional reputation. He had started flying in 1916 and was an
intimate friend of most of the leading pilots of the early
1930's. Omlie's wife, Phoebe, was also nationally recognized
for her abilities as a pilot. She was one of America's first
female pilots and in addition to doing exhibition flying, she was also a barnstorming wingwalker and parachute jumper.
Through the Omlies, Faulkner met James R. Wedell, a leading racing pilot and designer of racing aircraft, and probably several other leading pilots of the period. From his own ex- perience and from his contact with leading pilots of the 1930s,
Faulkner learned of a unique quality of both ability and spirit which sets aviation's elite apart from the rest of so- ciety.
In The Right Stuff, Tom Wolfe described the qualities that Faulker would have sensed in people like Vern and Phoebe
Omlie and Jimmy Wedell:
As to just what this ineffable quality was ... well, it obviously involved bravery. But it was not bravery in the simple sense of being willing to risk your life. The idea seemed to be that any fool could do that, if that was all that was required, just as any fool could throw away his life in the process. No, the idea here (in the all-enclosing fraternity) seemed to be that a man should have the ability to go up in a hurtling piece of machinery and 33
put his hide on the line and then have the moxie, the reflexes, the experience, the coolness, to pull it back in the last yawn ing moment -- and then go up again the next day, and the next day, and every nexr-d~ even if the series should prove infinite ... to join that special few at the top, that elite who had the capacity to bring tears to men's eyes, the very Brotherhood of the Right Stuff itself.6
Wolfe continues to illustrate how this quality separates
pilots from society:
From up here at dawn the pilot looked down upon poor hopeless Las Vegas ... and began to wonder: How can all of them down there, those poor souls who will soon be waking up and trudging out of their minute rectangles and inching along their little noodle high ways toward whatever slots and grooves that make up their everyday lives -- how could they live like that, with such earnestness, if they had the faintest idea of what it was like up here in this righteous zone? (Wolfe pp. 38-39)
As Michael Millgate has pointed out in his article
"Faulkner and the Air: The Background of Pylon," Faulkner based most of the events in Pylon on actual events that took place during the dedication of Shushan Airport in New Orleans 7 during February, 1934. Faulkner attended the air meet that celebrated the airport's opening with Vernon Omlie, and
6 Tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff (New York: Farrar-Straus- Giroux, 1979), p. 24. 7 Michael Millgate, "Faulkner and the Air: The Background of Pylon," The Michigan Quarterly Review, Vol. 3 (Fall 1964), 271-77. 34 through him and Herman B. Deutsch, a reporter for a New
Orleans newspaper, met the major participants of the meet.
Pylon was written and published in just over a year, which some critics see as an indication that the novel did not en gage Faulkner's creative energies to the full. On the con trary, the speed with which he was able to write may be an indication of the intensity he felt toward the subject.
The central characters in Pylon can be viewed as a small solar system. Roger Shumann is the sun and his aviation
"family" the planets, planets bound to him and moving with him but never touching him. The solar system is a mote travel ing in the galaxy of modern society. The Reporter is like a comet that rushes from the galaxy, feels the pull of the sun for a few days, and then returns to the galaxy. Pylon is es sentially the story of Roger Shumann and the relationships between him and his "family," and of the relationships be tween the aviators and society.
Roger Shumann is a man both gifted and obsessed. His gift is a combination of the physical ability and the inner force required of a superb pilot. His obsession is to meet the almost infinite challenges maximum performance flying presents and prove that he is the ultimate aviator, to prove he is one of the elite who "can bring tears to men's eyes."
Society has no meaning to Shumann other than as the provider of the airplanes he needs to fly. In a book in which almost everything and everyone is vividly described in Faulknerian 35 adjectives, it is peculiar that the central character is not.
Shumann is parenthetically described as "not tall, with blue eyes in a square profoundly sober face" (PY p. 64). The only other picture of Shumann drawn for the reader is of his movement: "Shumann sprang forward and onto the curb with a stiff light movement of unbelieveable and rigid celerity, without a hair's abatement of expression or hat angle" (PY p. 79). Faulker created Shumann, not as a person, but as a pilot; not with a personality, but with an obsession. Shumann and his obsession are somehow charismatic and those with whom he comes in close contact are drawn along with him in his obsessive quest.
Lavern is a sexually exploited teenager who ran away with Shumann, the dashing barnstormer. At first their rela tionship was apparently casually intimate. However, the act of airborne copulation (pp. 195-6) essentially initiated and carried out by Lavern, shows her attempt to elevate Shumann the man over Shumann the pilot. The attempt fails. From that time on, she realizes she will never come between Shumann and flying and that she is merely an adjunct. "All I want," she states, "is just a house, a room; a cabin will do, a coalshed where I can know that the next Monday and the Monday after that and the Monday after that ... " (PY p. 165). She knows she will never have that with Shumann, yet she cannot over come his magnetism, and at the time in which the story takes place, she is trapped in a lovejhate relationship. 36
Faulkner does not reveal how Jack Holmes became in-
volved with Lavern and Shumann, but Holmes' presence further
illustrates the power of Shumann's charisma. The parachute
jumper is a man trapped in a dilemma. He loves Lavern, but
both recognizes and shares her attraction to Shumann. It is
Holmes who is furious with Jiggs after Jiggs fails to do the
proper work on the airplane and indirectly causes the crash.
It is Holmes who is jealous when he senses the Reporter's
lust for Lavern (PY pp. 103-4). Holmes' dilemma is clearly
illustrated when he tells Shumann: "I'll sleep in a cuckold's
bed but not in a pimp's. Go on. Get yourself a piece to take
to hell with you tomorrow" (PY p. 190). Finally, it is Holmes
who tries to arrange to have Shumann's body sent home with as
much respectability as possible. Shumann's charisma has placed
Holmes, like Lavern, in a love/hate situation.
Jiggs is a peripheral member of Shumann's "family." He
is an adequate aircraft mechanic when he wants to be, but is
essentially amoral. He is a Snopes within the aviation com- munity. When asked where he is from, his response tells a
loser's life story:
Anywhere. The place I'm staying away from right now is Kansas .... I would make a para chute jump and one of them would have the jack and be on the way back to town before I even pulled the ripcord. (PY p. 16)
The novel opens with Jiggs' purchase of boots, the symbol of the dashing aviator he can never be. His final act of pawning 37
the boots to buy gifts for Lavern, Holmes and Lavern's son
indicates that his problem is not one of animosity but of
personal incompetence. While he does serve to indicate the tlifference between the world of the aviators and society in general, his primary function in the novel is to serve as a source of information that would not otherwise be available.
Lavern's son, appropriately named Jack Shumann for both of his possible fathers, is the last member of the aviation family and the focal point about which Pylon's tragedy re volves. His mother has taunted him almost from birth by flaunting his illegitimacy. His legal father ignores him and he is carried, sack-like, by Jiggs or Holmes. Six-year-old
Jack Shumann serves as a constant reminder of the dehumanizing influence of Shumann's obsession.
The Reporter is as complex as he is enigmatic. The path of his involvement with Shumann and his family and his reac tions to them serve as an outline of the novel's development.
He is at first outraged by the treatment of the boy and by the way the family flouts society's rules. His next feeling is an almost masochistic sexual attraction for Lavern. Finally he, too, comes under the influence of Shumann's charisma and he becomes intensely dedicated to aiding Shumann's obsessive quest. The Reporter obviously serves as a bridge between the aviator's world and society. By writing Pylon, Faulkner was playing a similar role, and the reader can never be sure when the Reporter is speaking as the Reporter, and when he is 38
speaking for Faulkner. This dualism in the character neither
can nor need be defined exactly in order to understand Pylon.
While the story line in Pylon is straightforward, some
of the events and circumstances Faulkner included as integral
parts of the nove l are less clear in their meaning and purpose.
The strange marriage arrangement between Shumann, Lavern and
Holmes is outwardly a device to accentuate how far the avia
tors are removed from society's concepts of morality. It also
serves as a device to illustrate the strength of both
Shumann's obsession and his charismatic appeal. Because he is
obsessed with becoming the ultimate pilot, Lavern has never
been more to Shumann than a companion, and possibly a sexual
outlet-although at the time of the story there has not been
any sexual contact in the recent past. Lavern realizes her
position, but she cannot leave him. She taunts her son with
"who's your old man" in an attempt to strike out at both
Shumann and her situation, but this has little effect on
Shumann. Holmes, who has ample reason to want Shumann dead,
faithfully works on his airplane and supports the "family" through the clearly hazardous profession of parachute jumping.
Holmes, too, is held within the power of Shumann's infectious obse ssion.
The novel demonstrates the exploitation of the aviators by the management of the air meet, but the aviators, ironi cally, are "above" such ordinary concerns. Their indifference is emphasized in comments like these: 39
They aint human like us; they couldn't turn those pylons like they do if they had human blood and senses and they wouldn't want to or dare to if they just had human brains. (PY p. 45)
Because they don't need money; it aint money they are after anymore than it's glory, because glory can only last until the next race ... (PY p. 46)
At the meeting during which the air meet participants are told their prize money is being cut by two-and-a-half percent,
Shumann sits quietly and then asks, "Is that all?" When told yes, he only comments: "I better get back on my valves" (PY p. 154). To Shumann, society in the form of the air meet organizers serves only as the means and method through which he can pursue his goal.
The events leading up to Shumann's obtaining the air- plane in which he is killed and the details of his death deserve particular attention. At this point in the novel the
Reporter is completely under Shumann's influence and shares with him the obsessive drive to obtain a winning airplane for the meet's final race. Wher. Shumann and the Reporter meet with
Matt Ord to get the airplane which Ord has rebuilt but con- siders unsafe to fly, not one word is spoken by Shumann, and
Ord and the Reporter refer to Shumann, in his presence, in the third person:
"Right," Ord said. "It's tough on him. I know that. But he dont want to commit suicide."
"Yair," the Reporter said. "He aint quite got to where wont nothing else content him." (PY p. 170) 40
This scene illustrates an unspoken and almost unmentionable ritualistic courtesy between the two pilots. Ord has flown the airplane, and although he experienced some difficulty, the airplane can be flown. If he states that Shumann will not be able to fly it, he will be violating the code which de- mands that pilots' comparative abilities be demonstrated in an airplane at maximum performance, not in words. The only words Ord ever speaks to Shumann are after the race committee, over Ord's strenuous objections, decides to allow Shumann and the airplane into the race:
After a moment Ord turned quietly to Shumann. "Come on," he said. "We'd better check her over." (PY p. 228)
Shumann knows his aircraft is fast enough to finish second even if he flies a safe and conservative race. But there is no room for second place in his obsession, and he dives toward Ord in the leading aircraft:
The two aeroplanes, side by side, banked into the pylon as though bolted together, when the Reporter saw something like a light scattering of burnt paper or feathers float ing in the air above the pylontip . . .. and he saw Shumann now shooting straight forward and then a whole wastebasketfull of light trash blew out of the aeroplane. (PY p. 234)
This scene has been misread by critics seeking an image of martyrdom in Shumann. In "Bankruptcy in Time: A Reading of
William Faulkner's Pylon," George Monteiro wrote about
Shumann's death: 41
We must not forget that Shumann's dangerous pylon-turning is not done in an attempt to set speed records; rather he is trying to cope with the practical and very human needs of food and shelter for the group.8
In "Faulkner's Pylon and the Structure of Modernity," Donald
T. Torchiana also dealt with the subject:
Shumann's death also belongs to the victims. · ... So far the metaphorical structure of the novel has only suggested death as the domi nant value of Faulkner's novel. But Shumann's death denies death and affirms life, his own life and the lives of his fellow victims, Lavern, Holmes, Jiggs, and young Jack.9
These interpretations confer an aura of sacrifice that is
inconsistent with Shumann's other actions. Although he ne-
glects his child, Shumann does play a paternal role in the
novel. He is concerned about Holmes' injured leg and he
attempts to feed Jiggs and sober him up. He is also concerned
about Lavern and Holmes' forthcoming child. But Shumann's
paternity is that of a leader maintaining an effective team
in order to accomplish his aims, or that of a slav.e owner who
looks after the health of his slaves because that is the most efficient way to run a plantation. To Shumann, sacrifice would have been not to race, not to push his aircraft to the
8 George Monteiro, "Bankruptcy in Time: A Reading of William Faulkner's Pylon," Twentieth Century Literature, Vol. 4 (1958), p. 12. 9 nonald T. Torchiana, "Faulkner's Pylon and the Structure of Modernity," Modern Fiction Studies, Vol. 3 (Winter 1957- 1958), p. 303. 42
yawning limits of maximum performance. To sacrifice he would
have had to give up his obsessive quest to be the ultimate
aviator and do something else like fly with an airline.
Shumann's death is not sacrifice. It is the incontrovertible
evidence that he is not the ultimate pilot he is obsessed
with becoming: had he been, he would not have overstressed
the aircraft!
Faulkner clearly had a visceral respect for Roger
Shumann and the aviation elite he represented. However, his
admiration was not without limits, and he expressed his dis
approval of some of Shumann's characteristics in ways that
are recurring themes in Faulkner's works.
A recurring theme in Faulkner's novels is the sin of obsession. Faulkner wrote Pylon while he was writing Absalom,
Absalom! and although the two are completely different in
both form and content, the parallels between Thomas Sutpen
and Roger Shumann are clear. Both are men with obsessions to which they subordinate their humanity. Because of their ob sessions, both men dehumanize those around them. Because of their obsessions, both men sacrifice those closest to them
(in Sutpen's case, his children, and in Shumann's, his father and possibly his son). Finally, both men fail to achieve the goals toward which their obsessions drive them. In both novels Faulkner seems to be indicating that the dehumanizing effects of obsession preclude accomplishment.
Another recurring theme is the sin of repudiation. 43
Faulkner is rather ambivalent on this subject. On one hand, he appears to admire a person who can repudiate society . In
Go Down Moses, Ike McCaslin repudiates his inheritance for a life closer to the land and nature. Shumann repudiates so ciety for a life in the pure and righteous zone of high performance flying. Faulkner is initially and outwardly sym pathetic with these men as superior to their societies, but this sympathy is not complete. Repudiation of society and its evils may be an admirable act in a theoretical sense, in a vacuum. But in reality, repudiation is in many ways only the act of denying responsibility, an act Faulkner does not condone.
In comparison with Faulkner's earlier pilots, Shumann is gifted but not heroic. Shumann is not doomed by society, but by his obsession to excel. Finally, Shumann is a tangible living man while Faulkner's earlier pilots were mythical, symbolic figures. CONCLUSION
Without attempting to create a kind of psychological pro
file or assigning supposed motives, some legitimate conjecture
can be made relative to Faulkner's mythical flying persona.
In 1918, he was a smaller-than-average, not particularly
attractive young man with few if any prospects for success in
life. He was rejected by the parents of his teenage sweet
heart, who preferred a wealthy young lawyer as a prospective
son-in-law. His decision to join one of the most dangerous and
certainly the most romantic parts of the military, and publicly
risk death to seek fame and glory in the skies of France was
not an unusual one for a young man in his position.
When World War I ended before Faulkner had even started
flying training, it must have been a bitter pill for him to
swallow. The idea of ignominiously returning home in a shabby,
government-issue Cadet uniform must have been appalling. He was probably far from the only person to exaggerate his mili tary experience, although his exaggerations were somewhat extreme. A key point is that he deluded not only friends and acquaintances, but his family as well.
During the early 1920s, in New York, New Orleans and
Europe, the people with whom Faulkner associated were generally more experienced, successful and sophisticated then he was. As
44 45 he was already reputed to have been a pilot in the RAF, it was a simple step in an attempt to gain stature in their eyes to add to the myth the concept that he had flown in combat and had been wounded. These stories from 1918 until 1925, although they appear dishonorable when considered as the personal fie- tion of a Nobel Prize-winning author, do not seem so heinous when viewed as the tales of a small-town youth associating with what would have seemed to him rather fast company in the big city.
The death of Dean Faulkner on November 10, 1935, was surely one of the most traumatic events of William Faulkner's life. Dean, who had heard his big brother relate glamorous tales of flying with the RAF, was encouraged to start flying by Faulkner, and was killed while flying Faulkner's aircraft.
Faulkner was in Oxford when the accident happened and as the patriarch of the family, was required to take care of all the details associated with the death. Miss Maud, the boys' mother, wanted a final look at her youngest son, and Faulkner had a special undertaker called in to help reconstruct Dean's mangled face:
He drove to the funeral parlor and gave the photograph [of Dean] to Garner, who worked through the rest of the night. How much as sistance Faulkner gave him is not known, but the hours of that day and night were the most traumatic of his life. For months and years they would return in nightmares ... 10
10 Joseph Blotner, Faulkner, A Biography (New York: Random House, 1974), II, p. 915. Hereafter cited as BL II in the text. 46
Faulkner clearly felt de ep guilt about his brother's death and
John Faulkner tried to console him:
What happened wasn't your fault. You were n't responsible for it.
No, but I bought him the plane. I paid for his lessons. (BL II p. 916)
At some time in Faulkner's life he probably realized that he was trapped by the persona he had created. He could not repudiate it without causing shame and pain to his family, embarrassment to his friends, and, to some extent, disapproval from critics and others in literary circles. He could not con- firm the persona, however, because it was a complete fabrica- tion which relatively simple research would reveal as a fraud.
His 1950 letter to Professor Kohler is the only available document in which he denies seeing combat and being wounded, but even this letter does not deny that he flew with the RAF in 1918.
As the years passed, Faulkner became increasingly jealous of his privacy. In 1946 he wrote to Malcolm Cowley on the subject:
I'm old fashioned and probably a little mad too; I don't like having my private life and affairs available to any and everyone who has the price of the vehicle it's printed in .... (F-C File pp. 77-78)
From about 1949 until 1953 , Life magazine tried to write an article on Faulkner's private life. Faulkner discouraged the project. An article was printed in October, 1953, without his 47
permission or assistance. Faulkner was very irritated by this
invasion of his privacy and wrote an article, "On Privacy --
the American Dream: What Happened To It," which was published
in Harper's in July, 1955. A preliminary draft of the article
expressed his opinion even more vehemently. In the draft he wrote:
[It was] my belief that only a writer's works were in the public domain, ... until the writer committed a crime or ran for public office, his private life was his own and not only had he the right to defend his privacy but the public had the duty to do so. (F-C File p. 132)
It is impossible to state that Faulkner's fervent desire for personal privacy was based on a desire to prevent his persona from being exposed as fradulent, but it is equally impossible to exclude that motive as a factor.
The fact that Faulkner created a mythical persona as a young man and maintained it relatively intact for the rest of his life is only one more complexity in the complex make-up of an inventive and creative author. Its impact on his works is purely conjectural. However, an understanding of the persona is necessary to the understanding of the whole man, and thus to the understanding of his art. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Blotner, Joseph. Faulkner: A Biography. 2 vols. New York: Random House, 1974.
Blotner, Joseph. ed. Selected Letters of William Faulkner. New York: Random House, 1977.
Cofield, Jack. William Faulkner: The Cofield Collection. Oxford, Miss.: Yoknapatawpha Press, 1978.
Collins, Carvel. ed. William Faulkner: Early Prose and Poetry. Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1962.
Cowley, Malcolm. The Faulkner-Cowley File. New York: Viking Press, 1966.
Dillon, · Richard T. ·"Some Sources for Faulkner's Version of the First Air War." American Literature, Vol. 44, No. 4 (Jan. 1973), 629-637.
Faulkner, John. My Brother Bill. New York: Trident Press, 1963.
Faulkner, Murry C. "The Wonderful .Mornings of our Youth." In William Faulkner of Oxford. Ed. James W. Webb and A. Wigfall Green, Nashville, Tenn.: Parthenon Press, 1965.
Faulkner, William. Absalom, Absalom! New York: Random House (Vintage Books Ed.) 1972.
Collected Stories of William Faulkner. New York: Random House, 1950.
Go Down Moses. New York: Random House (Vintage Books Ed. ) 1973 .
------. Pylon. New York: Random House, 1962. Text reproduced photographically from copy of first printing by Harrison Smith and Robert Haas, Inc., March 25, 1935.
Sartoris. New York: New American Library, 1964.
Soldier's Pay. New York: New American Library, 1968.
48 49
. "The Uncut Text of William Faulkner's Review of -----,;,-----;--Test Pilot." Mississippi Quarterly, Vol. 33, No. 3 (Summer 1980), 385-389.
Gwynn, Frederick L. and Blotner, Joseph L. Eds. Faulkner in the University. New York: Random House, 1965.
Kohler, Dayton. "William Faulkner and the Social Conscience." College English, Vol. 11, No. 3 (Dec. 1949), 119-125.
Millgate, Michael. "Faulkner and the Air: The Background of Pylon." The Michigan Quarterly Review, Vol. 3 (Fall . 1964)' 271-277.
"William Faulkner, Cadet." The University of Toronto Quarterly, Vol. 35, No. 2 (Jan. 1966), 117-132.
Minter, David. William Faulkner: His Life and Work. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1980.
Monteiro, George. "Bankruptcy in Time: A Reading of William Faulkner's Pylon." Twentieth Century Literature, Vol. 4 (1958), 9-20.
Price-Stevens, Gordon. "Faulkner and the Royal Air Force." Mississippi Quarterly, Vol. 17 (1964), 123-128.
Torchiana, Donald T. "Faulkner's Pylon and the Structure of Modernity." Modern Fiction Studies, Vol. 3 (Winter 1957-1958), 291-308.