The Reivers by William Faulkner

توضیحات

William Faulkner The Reivers: A Reminiscence, published in 1962. It is the last novel by the American author William Faulkner as it was published a month before his death. The bestselling novel was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1963. Faulkner previously won this award for his book A Fable, making him one of only four authors to be awarded it more than once. Unlike many of his earlier works, William Faulkner The Reivers: A Reminiscence is a straightforward narration and eschews the complicated literary techniques of his more well-known works. It is a picaresque novel, and as such may seem uncharacteristically lighthearted given its subject matter.

For these reasons, The Reivers is often ignored by Faulkner scholars or dismissed as a lesser work. He previously had referred to writing a “Golden Book of Yoknapatawpha County” with which he would finish his literary career. It is likely that The Reivers was meant to be this “Golden Book”. The Reivers was adapted into a film of the same name directed by Mark Rydell and starring Steve McQueen as Boon Hogganbeck.

In the early 20th century, an 11-year-old boy named Lucius Priest (a distant cousin of the McCaslin/Edmonds family Faulkner wrote about in Go Down, Moses) somewhat unwittingly gets embroiled in a plot to go to Memphis with dimwitted family friend and manservant Boon Hogganbeck. Boon steals (reives,^[2] thereby becoming a reiver) Lucius’ grandfather’s car, one of the first cars in Yoknapatawpha County. They discover that Ned McCaslin, a black man who works with Boon at Lucius’ grandfather’s stables, has stowed away with them (Ned is also a blood cousin of the Priests).

When they reach Memphis, Boon and Lucius stay in a boarding-house (brothel). Miss Reba, the madam, and Miss Corrie, Boon’s favorite girl, are appalled to see that Boon has brought a child. In fact, Corrie’s nephew Otis, an ill-mannered and off-putting boy about Lucius’ age, is already staying there. In the evening, Otis reveals that Corrie (whose real name is Everbe Corinthia) used to prostitute herself in their old town, and he would charge men to watch her through a peephole. Outraged at his conduct, Lucius fights Otis, who cuts his hand with a pocketknife. Boon breaks up the fight but Corrie is so moved by Lucius’ chivalry that she decides to stop whoring. Later, Ned returns to the boarding-house and reveals he traded the car for a supposedly lame racehorse.