William Faulkner

It was on this day, September 25, in 1897 that William Faulkner was born.

One of the greatest of US born novelists, Faulkner's most characteristic trope was the simple doggedness of so many of his central characters.

"The jury said 'Guilty' and the judge said 'Life' but he didn't hear them. He wasn't listening." So begins one of Faulkner's greatest novels, The Mansion, the third part of the Snopes trilogy. Although Faulkner is renowned, and oft ridiculed, for byzantine sentences, those two are strikingly simple, and place us directly into a situation we can understand without having read either of the two earlier novels of the trilogy.

The protagonist who has just received a life sentence was thinking about something else? What? or who?

The character, Mink Snopes, is in this fix, has just been sentenced, due to the machinations of Flem Snopes, and he was convinced up to the moment of sentencing, the moment when the novel begins, that the aforesaid Flem would arrive in court at the last minute to save the day.

Of course, Flem has no intention of saving Mink, and Mink's distracted focus on the courtroom door during that hearing at last allows this fact to sink in, and trust turns into a desire for vengeance, a desire that continues to burn and deepen through the coming four decades of imprisonment.