A review by graywacke
Flags in the Dust by William Faulkner

reflective slow-paced

4.0

Faulkner's 3rd novel, and first set in his Mississippi world. It sets the backdrop of Snopes and I think much or most of his other work going forward. It's an odd novel in that I kept wondering why he was telling me about what he was telling me, even as he goes on and on. And even after I book the book down, I kept wondering this. But I took in the characters, adapted his take on this post-WWI world and its mixture of modern and backward, black and white, moneyed and poor, ambitious and passive. What strikes the reader are the affections made, how much white characters can feel for each other, and absence of any normal warmth these same characters send to their black servants, their affections there, but paternalistic. The racial aspect is disturbing, and uncomfortable, as in all Faulkner. He creates his own version of black characters, always an other, and tries to romantically blend these mysterious characters into his world. So, it's both elegant and awful.