Pylon by William Faulkner

First published: 1935

Type of plot: Modernist realism

Time of work: Mid-Depression, during Mardi Gras

Locale: Primarily New Valois, Franciana, a transparent reference to New Orleans, and Ohio

Principal Characters:

• Lazarus, the reporter who covers the air show and becomes the book’s major protagonist
• Roger Shumann, a pilot and the leader of a flying team
• La Verne, a companion of Roger Shumann and a member of the team
• The boy, LaVerne’s son
• Jack Holmes, a member of the team and a parachutist
• Jiggs, an airplane mechanic
• Hagood, a newspaper editor

The Novel

Pylon was William Faulkner’s eighth novel; he wrote it at the height of his powers, just before Absalom, Absalom! (1936) and not long after Light in August (1932). The novel is, above all, about flying and the motivation of those who fly. The “pylon” of the title is the tower or steel post around which a pilot must turn as he competes in a race at an air fair. The term figures prominently in the jargon of competing pilots; they “turn pylons” with their planes on each lap—they “take that pylon” and try to “fly the best pylon.” Because of its subject matter, the novel is less well known than other novels Faulkner wrote during this period, yet it would be a mistake to think that it is “just about flying”; many of the themes closest to Faulkner’s heart receive full, complex treatment in this neglected novel. Pylon is also one of Faulkner’s most exciting books, set near and in New Orleans during the week of Mardi Gras.

The plot of the novel can be summarized quite simply: A flying team composed of a pilot, a “jumper,” or parachutist, and a mechanic, accompanied by a woman and her son, are desperately short of money and hope to win at least one of the purses at an air show. They live only on their winnings, which means that often they have no place to stay, little to eat, and no money for transportation within a city. They resemble circus performers, and some of the themes in the book are remarkably close to those of Ingmar Bergman’s film The Naked Night (1953). Although the book is about the “romance” of flying, the hard physical conditions of the performers are kept firmly in the foreground. Onlookers, newspaper reporters, and members of the audience speculate on their motivation: Do they fly for money or for another reason? Are they “human” and “like us” (or a Holy Family)? If one supposes that they do not do it for money, he quickly learns that they are driven by material needs. At the same time, money cannot account for their motivation. The exploration of this conflict is central to the book. It throws considerable light on Faulkner’s theme of “survival,” explored in other novels and referred to in his Nobel Prize address; as Pylon reveals, this survival is never a purely materialistic necessity but is balanced against ideals and other claims, often extremely irrational. The book also develops Faulkner’s concept of psychological necessity, that men and women must do what they are driven to do by their most profound inner motivations. This is explored through solid, complex characters who differ widely from one another and who come from a very broad variety of social strata.

One of the strangest, most unexpected relationships in the book gradually develops as it proceeds. The reporter who covers the air show becomes fascinated by Roger Shumann’s flying team; he makes their acquaintance and tries to help them. This desire appears to be completely altruistic, with no self-interest. He becomes increasingly involved in the action, and, inadvertently, it is he who is responsible for the team’s destruction. He devises a scheme that will permit them to buy a new, more powerful plane which will win the final trophy race that has the biggest purse. This, he thinks, will solve their financial problems once and for all. The reporter is partly in love with the female member of the team, LaVerne, but he is equally concerned about the welfare of the child and the team as a whole. His intention is like that of Gregers Werle in Henrik Ibsen’s The Wild Duck (1884), the busybody who tries to do good but ends up creating only destruction—this is what George Bernard Shaw called “the quintessence of Ibsenism,” and Faulkner’s treatment of the theme in Pylon is masterful.

The powerful plane which the reporter contrives to buy has several defects; the reporter learns about them at an early stage and so does Shumann, but they persevere in their plan, caught up in the desire to win. A safety expert refuses to certify the plane, but they persuade other authorities to overrule him. It becomes increasingly clear that the plane has serious flaws—Faulkner beautifully handles the hurried, panicky attempts of the flying team to compensate for them and ignore their seriousness. During the final, tense race, the plane does not perform and comes apart in the air; the pilot is killed in a lake. At the end of the novel, the group disbands.

The Characters

The major characters in Pylon are complex. Indeed, there are few “flat” or simplified characters in the book, and they appear only in chance encounters. Some difficulty is caused by names—when a major character appears in the course of the narrative, Faulkner frequently fails to name him, and the reader is often given a phrase like “the boy” or “the woman.” Keeping the characters straight is often as confusing as in a Russian novel, when the reader is given only a first name or patronymic—if anything, it is even more difficult with Faulkner. This difficulty has a rationale: Faulkner usually follows the point of view of a specific character very closely, and if that character does not think in terms of a name, then Faulkner does not provide that name. The reporter knows LaVerne only from a distance, so for him she is never LaVerne, only “she” or “the woman.”

On the other hand, the characters are highly dramatic—Faulkner describes almost all of them with a heightened physical presence and various meaningful accompanying objects. For example, Jiggs the mechanic has the boots he is buying as the novel opens. These are his prized, most valuable possession, and they acquire enormous significance as the action proceeds. At the close of the novel, he pawns them. Jiggs is one of Faulkner’s most successful creations: Poor, totally irresponsible, sly, and predatory, he is the cause of the first accident in the story—instead of pulling the valves from the motor and inspecting their stems, he gets drunk; the plane performs badly as a result, and the parachutist almost breaks his leg. In Faulkner’s words, Jiggs is a “vicious halfmetamorphosis between thug and horse.” He is a memorable addition to Faulkner’s gallery of extremely harmful, evil characters, whom he succeeds in portraying not only from the outside but also from the inside, from their own point of view—an astonishing feat, of which few other novelists are capable.

In the course of the book, the reporter’s name is given only once, in passing. As if to compensate for this, Faulkner endows him with a unique appearance. He is extremely thin, referred to as a scarecrow, a lath, a “person made of clothes and bones,” “a cutglass monkeywrench or something.”

He did not speak loudly, and with no especial urgency, but he emanated the illusion still of having longsince collapsed yet being still intact in his own weightlessness like a dandelion burr moving where there is no wind. In the soft pink glow his face appeared gaunter than ever, as though following the excess of the past night, his vital spark now fed on the inner side of the actual skin itself, paring it steadily thinner and more and more transparent.

Perhaps the nature of his personality explains why he is almost never named; he becomes consumed by his reportorial function, a “fly on the wall” who comes to live vicariously in the lives of those he observes. He ceases to have any life of his own and even stops being a reporter—he is fired, and he becomes an active agent of the plot, almost a member of the flying team. Despite this peculiar, leechlike psychological mechanism, Faulkner makes clear that he has little understanding of those he is trying to help. Toward the end of the novel, the parachutist advises him, “Only take a tip from me and stick to the kind of people you are used to after this.”

What distinguishes Faulkner’s characters is, above all, their presentation both from within—from their own subjective point of view—and from without—from the points of view of others. This gives them a unique amplitude and depth. The point of view changes many times in the course of the novel, and the reader will not find the “unified sensibility” of which Henry James wrote—as a consequence he might occasionally be confused. On the other hand, the reader will encounter numerous characters presented in great depth and urgent, compelling life.

Critical Context

Malcolm Cowley’s effort to promote Faulkner’s literary reputation after the end of World War II was largely successful. The Viking Portable selection from Faulkner’s work—edited by Cowley—brought Faulkner once again to the attention of the serious American reading public, and his reputation steadily increased until his reception of the Nobel Prize. Cowley stressed Faulkner’s achievement as a regional Southern writer, as “proprietor” of Yoknapatawpha County. Perhaps this was correct; at any rate, Faulkner’s “mythical kingdom” seized the imaginations of American readers. Pylon has no place in Yoknapatawpha County, and for some that may seem reason enough to exclude it from the canon of Faulkner’s finest novels. Yet that would be a mistake. It was written when Faulkner was producing other novels that are among his finest—Light in August and Absalom, Absalom! —and it has all their elan and creative complexity. It is an urban novel, just as successful as the novels set in his rural “mythical kingdom.” It will probably continue to fall victim to critical simplification, yet it will remain one of his half dozen most impressive novels.

Bibliography

Blotner, Joseph. Faulkner: A Biography. 2 vols. New York: Random House, 1974. Once criticized for being too detailed (the two-volume edition is some two thousand pages) this biography begins before Faulkner’s birth with ancestors such as William Clark Falkner, author of The White Rose of Memphis, and traces the writer’s career from a precocious poet to America’s preeminent novelist.

Brodhead, Richard H., ed. Faulkner: New Perspectives. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1983. One volume in the Twentieth Century Views series under the general editorship of Maynard Mack, offering nearly a dozen essays by a variety of Faulkner scholars. Among them are Irving Howe’s “Faulkner and the Negroes,” first published in the early 1950’s, and Cleanth Brooks’s “Vision of Good and Evil” from Samuel E. Balentine’s The Hidden God (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1983). Contains a select bibliography.

Cox, Leland H., ed. William Faulkner: Biographical and Reference Guide. Detroit, Mich.: Gale Research, 1982.

Cox, Leland H., ed. William Faulkner: Critical Collection. Detroit, Mich.: Gale Research, 1982. These companion volumes constitute a handy reference to most of Faulkner’s work. The first is a reader’s guide which provides a long biographical essay, cross-referenced by many standard sources. Next come fifteen “critical introductions” to the novels and short stories, each with plot summaries and critical commentary particularly useful to the student reader. A three-page chronology of the events of Faulkner’s life is attached. The second volume contains a short potpourri, with Faulkner’s “Statements,” a Paris Review interview, and an essay on Mississippi for Holiday magazine among them. The bulk of the book is an essay and excerpt collection with contributions by a number of critics including Olga Vickery, Michael Millgate, and Warren Beck. Includes a list of works by Faulkner including Hollywood screenplays.

Gray, Richard. The Life of William Faulkner: A Critical Biography. Oxford, England: Blackwell, 1994. A noted Faulkner scholar, Gray closely integrates the life and work. Part 1 suggests a method of approaching Faulkner’s life; part 2 concentrates on his apprentice years; part 3 explains his discovery of Yoknapatawpha and the transformation of his region into his fiction; part 4 deals with his treatment of past and present; part 5 addresses his exploration of place; part 6 analyzes his final novels, reflecting on his creation of Yoknapatawpha. Includes family trees, chronology, notes, and a bibliography.

Vickery, Olga W. The Novels of William Faulkner. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1959. This volume, with its comprehensive treatment of the novels, has established itself as a classic, a terminus a quo for later criticism. The chapter on The Sound and the Fury, providing an analysis of the relation between theme and structure in the book, remains relevant today despite intensive study of the topic.

Volpe, Edmond L. A Reader’s Guide to William Faulkner. New York: Noonday Press, 1964. While many books and articles have contributed to clearing up the murkiest spots in Faulkner, the beginning student or general reader will applaud this volume. In addition to analysis of structure, themes, and characters, offers critical discussion of the novels in an appendix providing “chronologies of scenes, paraphrase of scene fragments put in chronological order, and guides to scene shifts.”

Williamson, Joel. William Faulkner and Southern History. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. A distinguished historian divides his book into sections on Faulkner’s ancestry, his biography, and his writing. Includes notes and genealogy.