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21-628: The novel deals with the decay of an aristocratic southern family just after the end of World War I . The wealthy Sartoris family of Jefferson, Mississippi, lives under the shadow of its dead patriarch , Colonel John Sartoris. Colonel John was a Confederate cavalry officer during the Civil War, built the local railroad , and is a folk hero . The surviving Sartorises are his younger sister, Virginia Du Pre ("Aunt Jenny" or "Miss Jenny"), his son Bayard Sartoris ("Old Bayard"), and his great-grandson Bayard Sartoris ("Young Bayard"). The novel begins with

42-618: A dedication: "To Sherwood Anderson through whose kindness I was first published, with a belief that this book will give him no reason to regret that fact"), and the old Flags in the Dust was soon forgotten by everyone but Faulkner. Sartoris is the first of Faulkner’s tales set in Yoknapatawpha County , and introduces many of the characters that appear in his later fiction. It was also the immediate predecessor of some of his most famous and critically acclaimed novels The Sound and

63-465: A military class. It has also been common, notably in African and Oriental societies, for aristocrats to belong to priestly dynasties. Aristocratic status can involve feudal or legal privileges. They are usually below only the monarch of a country or nation in its social hierarchy . In modern European societies, the aristocracy has often coincided with the nobility , a specific class that arose in

84-423: Is the damdest best book you'll look at this year, and any other publisher". Contemporary reviews, however, were mixed; while appreciating Faulkner's writing style, they stressed the book's seeming lack of consistency and its loose plot. Literary critic Cleanth Brooks described the novel as "extremely well-written", full of literary allusions and exploring the plight of a lost generation . He compared Sartoris to

105-732: The Middle Ages , but the term "aristocracy" is sometimes also applied to other elites , and is used as a more general term when describing earlier and non-European societies. Aristocracy may be abolished within a country as the result of a revolution against them, such as the French Revolution . The term aristocracy derives from the Greek ἀριστοκρατία ( aristokratia from ἄριστος ( aristos ) 'excellent' and κράτος ( kratos ) 'power'). In most cases, aristocratic titles were and are hereditary. The term aristokratia

126-562: The Dust to several of his friends, who shared Liveright's opinion. Despite the adversity Faulkner had faced, he still believed that this would be the book that would make his name as a writer, and for several months he tried to edit it himself, sitting at his worktable in Oxford. Finally, discouraged, he sent a new typescript off to Ben Wasson, his agent in New York. "Will you please try to sell this for me?" he asked Wasson. "I can't afford all

147-547: The Fury , As I Lay Dying , Sanctuary and Light in August . The novel also introduces Byron Snopes in a minor role as a rival suitor to Narcissa Benbow. His relative Flem Snopes is at the center of Faulkner’s "Snopes trilogy": The Hamlet , The Town and The Mansion . In a letter to his publisher, Faulkner said "At last and certainly, I have written THE book, of which those other things were but foals . I believe it

168-422: The car off a bridge. During the convalescence which follows, he establishes a relationship with Narcissa Benbow, whom he marries. Despite promises to Narcissa to stop driving recklessly, he gets into a near wreck with old Bayard in the car, causing old Bayard to die of a heart attack. Young Bayard disappears from Jefferson, leaving his now pregnant wife with Aunt Jenny. He dies test-flying an experimental airplane on

189-486: The day of his son’s birth. In late 1926, William Faulkner, aged 29, began work on the first of his novels about Yoknapatawpha County . Sherwood Anderson had told him some time before that he should write about his native Mississippi, and now Faulkner took that advice: he used his own land, and peopled it with men and women who were partly drawn from real life, and partly depicted as they should have been in some ideal mythopoeic structure. A year later, on September 29, 1927,

210-559: The extensive cutting job that Harcourt felt was necessary. For fifty dollars, Wasson agreed to pare down his client's novel. On September 20, 1928, Faulkner received a contract for the book, now to be called Sartoris (no one knows who changed its name), which was to be about 110,000 words long, and which was to be delivered to Harcourt, Brace sixteen days later. Faulkner left immediately for New York, presumably to help Wasson with his revision. But when he sat down in Wasson's apartment to observe

231-542: The new novel was completed. It was 596 pages long in transcript, and he called it Flags in the Dust . Full of enthusiasm, Faulkner sent Flags in the Dust up to Horace Liveright (who had published his first two novels) in New York. Liveright read it, disliked it, and sent it back with his firm recommendation that Faulkner not try to offer it for publication anywhere else: it was too diffuse, too lacking in plot and structure; and, Liveright felt, no amount of revision would be able to salvage it. Faulkner, crushed, showed Flags in

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252-469: The nobility . As in Greece, this was a class of privileged men and women whose familial connections to the regional armies allowed them to present themselves as the most "noble" or "best" of society. Alfred Harcourt Alfred Harcourt ( / ˈ h ɑːr k ɔːr t / ; January 31, 1881 – June 20, 1954) was an American publisher and compiler who co-founded Harcourt, Brace & Howe in 1919. Harcourt

273-514: The operation on his novel, Faulkner found himself unable to participate. If it were cut, he felt, it would die. Wasson persisted, however, pointing out that the trouble with Flags in the Dust was that it was not one novel, but six, all struggling along simultaneously. This, to Faulkner, was praise: evidence of fecundity and fullness of vision, evidence that the world of Yoknapatawpha was rich enough to last. As he later wrote of his third novel, "I discovered that my own little postage stamp of native soil

294-406: The poem The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot . Aristocracy (class) The aristocracy is historically associated with a "hereditary" or a "ruling" social class . In many states, the aristocracy included the upper class of people (aristocrats) with hereditary rank and titles. In some, such as ancient Greece , ancient Rome , or India , aristocratic status came from belonging to

315-534: The postage it's costing me." In the meantime, convinced that he would never become a successful novelist, Faulkner began to work on a book that he was sure would never mean anything to anyone but himself: The Sound and the Fury . Wasson tried eleven publishers, all of whom rejected Flags in the Dust . Finally he gave the typescript to Harrison Smith, then an editor of Harcourt, Brace & Company. Smith liked it, and showed it to Alfred Harcourt, who agreed to publish it, provided that someone other than Faulkner perform

336-481: The return of young Bayard Sartoris to Jefferson from the First World War . Bayard and his twin brother John, who was killed in action, were fighter pilots. Young Bayard is haunted by the death of his brother. That and the family disposition for foolhardy acts push him into a pattern of self-destructive behavior, especially reckless driving in a recently purchased automobile. Eventually young Bayard crashes

357-808: The student newspaper, the Columbia Spectator . Harcourt graduated from Columbia College of Columbia University in 1904 with fellow grad Donald Brace . The two joined Henry Holt and Company before founding Harcourt Brace and Company in 1919. Alfred Harcourt represented some of the most recognized writers of the time such as Robert Frost Sinclair Lewis , Carl Sandburg , George Orwell , Virginia Woolf , T.S. Eliot , and E.E. Cummings . Harcourt retired from his business due to poor health in 1942 and died in 1954 in Santa Barbara, California . He remained director of Harcourt Brace until his death. Harcourt's second wife, Ellen Knowles, founded

378-528: The word developed, it also produced a more political term: aristoi ( ἄριστοι ). The term aristocracy is a compound word stemming from the singular of aristoi , aristos ( ἄριστος ), and the Greek word for power, kratos ( κράτος ). From the ancient Greeks, the term passed to the European Middle Ages for a similar hereditary class of military leaders, often referred to as

399-454: Was first used in Athens with reference to young citizens (the men of the ruling class) who led armies at the front line. Aristokratia roughly translates to "rule of the best born". Due to martial bravery being highly regarded as a virtue in ancient Greece , it was assumed that the armies were being led by "the best". This virtue was called arete ( ἀρετή ). Etymologically, as

420-604: Was the son of Gertrude M. Elting and Charles M. Harcourt. Alfred was born in New Paltz, New York , to a fruit farmer and attended the New Paltz Normal School . While at the normal school Harcourt became a member of the Delphic Fraternity . An illness at age 9 led to his love for books and reading. After his studies at New Paltz, Harcourt attended Columbia University where he was an editor of

441-454: Was worth writing about and that I would never live long enough to exhaust it." Nevertheless, Wasson kept his bargain with Alfred Harcourt . For the next two weeks, while Faulkner sat nearby writing The Sound and the Fury , Wasson went through the typescript of Flags in the Dust , making cuts of every sort until almost a fourth of the book had been excised. Harcourt, Brace published this truncated version on January 31, 1929, as Sartoris (with

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