Running for Your Life: Faulkner Fix II

Reading “Go Down, Moses” by William Faulkner is like coin-mining an ancient plain, ever so periodically, while stirring pools upon pools of patience that in the early pages seems beyond human capacity because so much of what is put down seems, at first, aimless, even inert, you come upon a gold doubloon, an object of such perfection that your heart skips a bit, to wit:

“Then suddenly he knew why he had never wanted to own any of it, arrest at least that much of what people called progress, measure his longevity at least against that much of its ultimate fate.  He seemed to see . . . a dimension free of both time and space where once more the untreed land warped and wrung to mathematical squares of rank cotton for the frantic old-world people to turn into shells to shoot at one another, would find ample room for both – the names, the faces of the old men he had known and loved and for a little while outlived, moving again among the shades of tall unaxed trees and sightless brakes where the wild strong immortal game ran forever before the tireless belling immortal hounds, falling and rising phoenix-like to the soundless guns.”

Next: Running for Your Life: Concrete Utopia