Intruder in the Dust (1948)

Eu procurava um livro para ler essa semana quando li esse trecho na contracapa de Intruders in the Dust:

"Some things you must always be unable to bear. Some things you must never stop refusing to bear. Injustice and outrage and dishonor and shame. No matter how young you are or how old you have got. Not for kudos and not for cash: your picture in the paper nor money in the bank either. Just refuse to bear them."

Eu me lembrei de como dizem que um bom livro muitas vezes consegue por em palavras o que o leitor reconhece como algo que ele sempre pensou e nunca soube expressar. Há uma semana, eu estava discutindo um caso terrível e isso era exatamente o que eu queria dizer, mas não fui capaz de expressar.


A linguagem de Faulkner me fascina desde o primeiro livro que li, e Intruder in the Dust não é exceção. A primeira vista, a história parece conhecida: um homem negro (Lucas Beauchamp) é injustamente acusado de um crime e um adolescente branco (Chick Mallison) acredita nele e tenta salvá-lo. Porém, o negro não é o passivo objeto dessa defesa, e o menino não é escolhido por ser inocente, mas porque quem quer que algo seja feito deve pedir sempre às crianças e às mulheres - por esse motivo ele é ajudado por um adolescente negro e uma velha senhora. Além disso, Beauchamp e Mallison há anos trocam favores, depois que aquele salvou o menino durante uma caçada, e não aceitou retribuição por se recusar a agir como um negro da época deveria.
Uma novela brilhante sobre as cicatrizes da escravidão e sobre o preconceito na sociedade sulista, escrito por alguém que ama essa sociedade, mas também sobre a injustiça em qualquer época e lugar. ( )

William Faulkner rarely gives us a character easily described as “admirable”. But in Intruder in the Dust, we meet Lucas Beauchamp, a black man whose integrity, strength and moral soundness we simply must admire. He is the focus of the mystery that forms what plot there is in this novel. After being discovered standing over the dead body of a white man, with his recently fired Saturday pistol in his pocket, Lucas is assumed to be the killer of one of the Beat Four Gowries, a seriously bad lot. Enter 16-year-old Charles “Chick” Mallison, who had an enlightening encounter with Lucas when he was 10 or 11 which he has never forgotten, and which has left him considerably unsettled in his mind about Southern culture, race, and his own place in the society he’s about to inherit. Lucas sees Chick and the boy’s uncle, the over-educated lawyer Gavin Stevens, as his only hope of proving the he did not shoot Vinson Gowrie. There follows a grim, nearly farcical, round of grave openings and closings as Chick and his accomplice, Miss Eunice Habersham, attempt to uncover evidence that will prevent either the townspeople or the Beat Four crowd from lynching this man who is the source of so much of his own angst. Faulkner introduces elements of the bildungsroman, as Chick moves through days and nights without sleep or food, (taking pains to avoid his mother who he assumes would stop him in his tracks) on a quest he doesn’t even fully understand, We actually see surprisingly little of Lucas, but what we do see is very revealing. He is composed, resigned to placing his fate in the hands of a confused boy and an old woman, but somehow above the commotion stirred up by his arrest. For anyone who questions Faulkner’s stance on race relations in Southern society, this book has many of the answers. Like all of his work, it gets better every time I read it. ( )

I thought it advisable before becoming completely senile that I read at least one of William Faulkner’s many famous novels. I selected Intruder in the Dust because its plot line intrigued me. Having finished the book this morning, I have decided to rate this Pulitzer Prize and Nobel Prize winning author’s book four stars.

The rating has everything to do with personal preference. I appreciate fiction that is imaginative, that is willing to take risks, that is character-driven, and that has something thought-provoking to say about the human condition. This book does all of that. I don’t mind having to work to attempt to discern what an author wishes to convey if I am rewarded mostly for the effort. This book stretched me beyond my limits of patience.

Faulkner’s stream-of-consciousness narration can be quite effective when its page-long sentences replete with back-to-back subordinate clauses provide interesting detail about objects seen, people observed, and events recalled. When these sentences delve into abstract thoughts that require my mind to translate to enable me to attempt to understand, evaluate, and assign relevance, Faulkner expects of me much more than I am able or want to accomplish.

The mystery element of the story – the unearthing of the bodies, why the victims had been murdered, and who had been the murderer – kept me reading. Even more so did my appreciation of Faulkner’s portrayal of Southern Whites and their cultural connection with Southern Blacks.

Expressed by the lawyer uncle of the sixteen year old third-person narrator, Faulkner tells us that if the black man is to be truly free, he must be set free by white men of the South. “Someday Lucas Beauchamp can shoot a white man in the back with the same impunity to lynch-rope or gasoline as a white man; in time he will vote anywhen and anywhere a white man can and send his children to the same school anywhere the white man’s children go and travel anywhere the white man travels as the white man does it. But it won’t be next Tuesday.” In the meantime there will be lapses. Outrages. Actions that generate shame. Locked into the White Southerner psyche is the imperative of racial superiority. Misconduct by blacks can be forgiven if only they acknowledge by their words and behavior that they are “niggers.” Lucas Beauchamp’s “crime” was his refusal to do so. The enormity of the crime that the crackers of the county were about to commit is averted only when they recognize that the murderer is not Lucas but one of their own. They will assuage their sense of shame by providing him ten-cent cans of tobacco. “So Lucas will get his tobacco. He wont want it of course and he’ll try to resist it. But he’ll get it …”

The liberal white uncle asserts that he defends “Sambo from the North and East and West – the outlanders who will fling him decades back not merely into injustice but into grief and agony and violence too by forcing on us laws based on the idea that man’s injustice to man can be abolished overnight by police. … The injustice is ours, the South’s. We must expiate and abolish it ourselves. … We owe it to Lucas whether he wants it or not … for the simple indubitable practical reason of his future: that capacity to survive and absorb and endure and still be steadfast.”

As for the Southern man tormented by conscience, “Some things you must never stop refusing to bear. Injustice and outrage and dishonor and shame. … Just regret it: don’t be ashamed.”

I’m satisfied that I read this novel. It has much to offer. I can’t say that I will read another Faulkner novel. ( )

Faulkner is not easy to read (at least, that is my assessment after reading just two of his novels.) However, he is worth every ounce of effort expended to understand what is occurring because the density of his approach helps build the full story that is being told. (Again, from reading two of his novels.) So, it is with Intruder in the Dust. Stream of consciousness writing combined with the southern prose, if the reader is willing to make the effort, places that reader deep in the south in a time of fear and prejudice.

This is a story set in the pre-world war south of a black man unjustly accused of a murder. Unjustly, even though he was found with the gun in hand. He turns to a boy to help clear his name – a boy who owes him a debt from the past. On the surface, this story is about the boy, his black friend, and an old lady taking the steps necessary (including digging up a grave) to prove the man’s innocence. But interwoven are the fear, hypocrisy, and bigoted viewpoints that existed in the south in such abundance at that time in history.

The richness of the story, the background, the intertwined themes, make this a book worth spending time with. ( )

Powerful characters, simple and exciting story. ( )