Books: Nigger in a Woodpile

LIGHT IN AUGUST—William Faulkner— Smith & Haas ($2.50).

Those who from experience expect each Faulkner tale to be more gruesomely Gothic than the last will be disappointed in Light in August. Not nearly so horrible as Sanctuary (TIME, Feb. 16, 1931).

It would still make hair-raising cinema of the Dr. Calgari model. Like the late great Joseph Conrad's method of spinning a yarn. Faulkner's is roundabout, circular: sometimes the suspense is awful, sometimes merely interminable. Like Conrad, Faulkner makes his people coherent to an unlikely and omnireminiscent degree. Unlike Conrad, Faulkner depends on madmen for his best effects. From the vasty deep of nightmares and bogeymen he can summon up ghosts that haunt nurseries and still frighten some grownups. With fewer bogeymen than usual, a happy issue out of some of its afflictions. Light in August continues the Faulkner tradition by a murder, a lynching and a good deal of morbid fornication.

Heroine is a poor-white girl who has got herself in trouble, comes to Jefferson (Faulkner's town, as Zenith is Sinclair Lewis') searching for Lucas Burch, the father of her imminent baby. People are kind to her, especially hardworking. God-fearing Byron Bunch, who compromises himself considerably by looking after her.

Her lover is in Jefferson all right, but under a different name and in jail. Miss Burden, an eccentric spinster who has lived for years under the shadow of the town's disapproval, has been murdered.

Suspicion points to Burch and his 'legger boss, Joe Christmas, who have been living in a cabin on her place. Here Faulkner drops the gravid mother, goes back & back to Joe Christmas' beginnings. Because he was a bastard with Negro blood in him. little Joe had a hard time from the start. His mad grandfather made it worse by hounding him religiously, lost the trail when Joe grew old enough to commit murder. Down a long Beale Street wandered Joe alone, passing as a white when he wanted to. but hating white and black alike. When they got him for the Burden killing his grandfather caught up with him again, went home happy when he had seen Joe's bullet-torn body. Philanderer Burch. who had hoped for the reward, missed out. but God-fearing Byron Bunch got his.