Soldiers’ Pay by William Faulkner (digital e reader txt) 📕
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Soldiers’ Pay is William Faulkner’s first published novel. It begins with a train journey on which two American soldiers, Joe Gilligan and Julian Lowe, are returning from the First World War. They meet a scarred, lethargic, and withdrawn fighter pilot, Donald Mahon, who was presumed dead by his family. The novel continues to focus on Mahon and his slow deterioration, and the various romantic complications that arise upon his return home.
Faulkner drew inspiration for this novel from his own experience of the First World War. In the spring of 1918, he moved from his hometown, Oxford, Mississippi, to Yale and worked as an accountant until meeting a Canadian Royal Air Force pilot who encouraged him to join the R.A.F. He then traveled to Toronto, pretended to be British (he affected a British accent and forged letters from British officers and a made-up Reverend), and joined the R.A.F. in the hopes of becoming a hero. But the war ended before he was able to complete his flight training, and, like Julian Lowe, he never witnessed actual combat. Upon returning to Mississippi, he began fabricating various heroic stories about his time in the air force (like narrowly surviving a plane crash with broken legs and metal plates under the skin), and proudly strode around Oxford in his uniform.
Faulkner was encouraged to write Soldiers’ Pay by his close friend and fellow writer Sherwood Anderson, whom Faulkner met in New Orleans. Anderson wrote in his Memoirs that he went “personally to Horace Liveright”—Soldiers’ Pay was originally published by Boni & Liveright—“to plead for the book.”
Though the novel was a commercial failure at the time of its publication, Faulkner’s subsequent fame has ensured its long-term success.
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- Author: William Faulkner
Read book online «Soldiers’ Pay by William Faulkner (digital e reader txt) 📕». Author - William Faulkner
By William Faulkner.
Table of Contents Titlepage Imprint Soldier Soldiers’ Pay I I II III IV V II I II III IV V III I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X XI XII XIII XIV IV I II III IV V VI VII V I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X XI XII XIII XIV XV VI I II III Nine-Thirty Ten O’Clock Ten-Thirty Eleven O’Clock IV V VII I II III IV V VI VII: Voices VIII IX X XI XII XIII VIII I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX I II III IV V VI VII VIII Colophon Uncopyright ImprintThis ebook is the product of many hours of hard work by volunteers for Standard Ebooks, and builds on the hard work of other literature lovers made possible by the public domain.
This particular ebook is based on a transcription produced for Faded Page Canada and on digital scans available at the Internet Archive.
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Soldier“The hushèd plaint of wind in stricken trees
Shivers the grass in path and lane
And Grief and Time are tideless golden seas—
Hush, hush! He’s home again”
Lowe, Julian, number ⸻, late a Flying Cadet, Umptieth Squadron, Air Service, known as “One Wing” by the other embryonic aces of his flight, regarded the world with a yellow and disgruntled eye. He suffered the same jaundice that many a more booted one than he did, from Flight Commanders through Generals to the ambrosial single-barred (not to mention that inexplicable beast of the field which the French so beautifully call an aspiring aviator); they had stopped the war on him.
So he sat in a smoldering of disgusted sorrow, not even enjoying his Pullman prerogatives, spinning on his thumb his hat with its accursed white band.
“Had your nose in the wind, hey, buddy?” said Yaphank, going home and smelling to high heaven of bad whisky.
“Ah, go to hell,” he returned sourly and Yaphank doffed his tortured hat.
“Why, sure, General—or should I of said Lootenant? Excuse me, madam. I got gassed doing K.P. and my sight ain’t been the same since. On to Berlin! Yeh, sure, we’re on to Berlin. I’m on to you, Berlin. I got your number. Number no thousand no hundred and naughty naught Private (very private) Joe Gilligan, late for parade, late for fatigue, late for breakfast when breakfast is late. The statue of liberty ain’t never seen me, and if she do, she’ll have to ’bout face.”
Cadet Lowe raised a sophisticated eye. “Say, whatcher drinking, anyway?”
“Brother, I dunno. Fellow that makes it was gave a Congressional medal last Chuesday because he has got a plan to stop the war. Enlist all the Dutchmen in our army and make ’em drink so much of his stuff a day for forty days, see? Ruin any war. Get the idea?”
“I’ll say. Won’t know whether it’s a war or a dance, huh?”
“Sure, they can tell. The women will all be dancing. Listen, I had a swell jane and she said, ‘for Christ’s sake, you can’t dance.’ And I said, ‘like hell I can’t.’ And we was dancing and she said, ‘what are you, anyways?’ And I says, ‘what do you wanta know for? I can dance as well as any general or major or even a sergeant, because I just win four hundred in a poker game,’ and she said, ‘oh, you did?’ and I said, ‘sure, stick with me, kid,’ and she said, ‘where is it?’ Only I wouldn’t show it to her and then this fellow come up to her and said, ‘are you dancing this one?’ And she said, ‘sure, I am. This bird don’t dance.’ Well, he was a sergeant, the biggest one I ever seen. Say, he was like that fellow in Arkansaw that had some trouble with a nigger and a friend said to him, ‘well, I hear you killed a nigger yesterday.’ And he said, ‘yes, weighed two hundred pounds.’ Like a bear.” He took the lurching of the train limberly and Cadet Lowe said, “For Christ’s sake.”
“Sure,” agreed the other. “She won’t hurt you, though. I done tried it. My dog won’t drink none of it of course, but then he got bad ways hanging around Brigade H.Q. He’s the one trophy of the war I got: something that wasn’t never bawled out by a shavetail for not saluting. Say, would you kindly like to take a little something to keep off the sumniferous dews of this goddam country? The honor is all mine and you won’t mind it much
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