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 They meet a scarred, lethargic, and withdrawn fighter pilot, Donald Mahon, who was presumed dead by his family.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
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Though “nice” people no longer spoke to him on the streets he was, after a fashion, cared for and protected by casual acquaintances and friends both black and white, as in the way of small towns particularly and of the “inferior” classes anywhere.
He sat glassy-eyed among fried smells, among noises, at an oilcloth-covered table.
“Clu—hoverrrrrr blarrrr—sums, clo—ver blarrrr—summmzzzz,” sang a nasal voice terribly, the melody ticked off at spaced intervals by a small monotonous sound, like a clock-bomb going off. Like this:
Clo (tick) ver (tick) rrr (tick) (tick) bl (tick) rrs (tick) sss (tick) umm (tick) zzz.
Beside him sat two of his new companions, quarreling, spitting, holding hands and weeping over the cracked interminability of the phonograph record. “Clo—verrrr blar—sums,” it repeated with saccharine passion; when it ran down they repaired to a filthy alley behind the filthier kitchen to drink of George Farr’s whisky. Then they returned and played the record through again, clutching hands while frank tears slid down their otherwise unwashed cheeks. “Cloooooooover blaaaaaarsummmssss. …”
Truly vice is a dull and decorous thing: no life in the world is as hard, requiring so much sheer physical and moral strength as the so-called “primrose path.” Being “good” is much less trouble.
“Clo—ver blar—sums. …”
… After a while his attention was called to the fact that someone had been annoying him for some time. Focusing his eyes he at last recognized the proprietor in an apron on which he must have dried his dishes for weeks. “What’n ’ell y’ want?” he asked, with feeble liquid belligerence, and the man finally explained to him that he was wanted on the telephone in a neighboring drugstore. He rose, pulling himself together.
“Clu—hoooooooover blar—sums. …”
After a few years he languished from a telephone mouthpiece holding himself erect, watching without interest a light globe over the prescription desk describing slow concentric circles.
“George?” There was something in the unknown voice speaking his name, such anguish, as to almost shock him sober. “George.”
“This George … hello. …
“George, it’s Cecily. Cecily. …”
Drunkenness left him like a retreating wave. He could feel his heart stop, then surge, deafening him, blinding him with his own blood.
“George. … Do you hear me?” (Ah, George, to have been drunk now!) (Cecily, oh, Cecily!) “Yes! Yes!” gripping the instrument as though this would keep her against escape. “Yes, Cecily? Cecily! It’s George. …”
“Come to me, now. At once.”
“Yes, yes. Now?”
“Come, George, darling. Hurry, hurry. …”
“Yes!” he cried again. “Hello, hello!” The line made no response. He waited but it was dead. His heart pounded and pounded, hotly; he could taste his own hot bitter blood in his throat. (Cecily, oh, Cecily!)
He plunged down the length of the store and while a middle-aged clerk filling a prescription poised his bottle to watch in dull amazement, George Farr tore his shirt open at the throat and thrust his whole head beneath a gushing water tap in a frenzy of activity.
(Cecily, oh, Cecily!)
XHe seemed so old, so tired as he sat at the head of the table toying with his food, as if the very fiber of him had lost all resilience. Gilligan ate with his usual informal appetite and Donald and Emmy sat side by side so that Emmy could help him. Emmy enjoyed mothering him, now that she could never have him again for a lover; she objected with passionate ardor when Mrs. Powers offered to relieve her. The Donald she had known was dead; this one was but a sorry substitute, but Emmy was going to make the best of it, as women will. She had even got accustomed to taking her food after it had cooled.
Mrs. Powers sat watching them. Emmy’s shock of no particular color hair was near his worn head in intent devotion, her labor-worried hand seemed to have an eye of its own, so quick, so tender it was to anticipate him and guide his hand with the food she had prepared for him. Mrs. Powers wondered which Donald Emmy loved the more, wondering if she had not perhaps forgotten the former one completely save as a symbol of sorrow. Then the amazing logical thought occurred to her that here was the woman for Donald to marry.
Of course it was. Why had no one thought of that before? Then she told herself that no one had done very much thinking during the whole affair, that it had got on without any particular drain on any intelligence. Why did we take it for granted that he must marry Cecily and no other? Yet we all accepted it as an arbitrary fact and off we went with our eyes closed and our mouths open, like hounds in full cry.
But would Emmy take him? Wouldn’t she be so frightened at the prospect that she’d be too self-conscious with him afterward to care for him as skilfully as she does now; wouldn’t it cause her to confuse in her mind to his detriment two separate Donalds—a lover and an invalid? I wonder what Joe will think about it.
She looked at Emmy impersonal as Omnipotence, helping Donald with effacing skill, seeming to envelop him, yet never touching him. Anyway, I’ll ask her, she thought, sipping her tea.
Night was come. Tree-frogs, remembering last night’s rain, resumed their monotonous molding of liquid beads of sound; grass blades and leaves losing shapes of solidity gained shapes of sound: the still suspire of earth, of the ground preparing for slumber; flowers by day, spikes of bloom, became with night spikes of scent; the silver tree at the corner of the house hushed its never-still never-escaping ecstasy. Already toads hopped along concrete pavements drinking prisoned heat through their dragging bellies.
Suddenly the rector started from his dream. “Tut, tut. We are making mountains
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