Faulkner, William

Carbon typescript of the novel Pylon, with title in ink in the author's hand on the first page, a few leaves repaginated in the author's hand, 344 pages (11 1/8 x 8 1/2 in.; 282 x 216 mm), each of the six chapters held together with a paper clip, [Oxford, Mississippi, ca. December 1934]; first leaf darkened and with paper loss at edges (some text lost in lower right corner), some rodent damage to left margins of all chapters except 4 (but with no loss of text), rust stain in upper right corner of chapters 1–4, creasing and spotting to scattered leaves.  Laid in: 2 British European Airways luggage claim tags. 

Polk, ed.  Pylon: Typescript Setting Copy and Miscellaneous Holograph Pages, pp vii–x, 3–347

Condition as described in catalogue.
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William Faulkner's retained unedited carbon typescript of his 1935 aviation novel, Pylon.  This copy corresponds to the typescript setting copy in the collection of the Alderman Library, University of Virginia, only lacking the copy editor's extenisve notations found on the top copy.  The present copy is important in that it shows Faulkner's text in its unedited state.  In his introduction to the facsimile of the typesetting copy, Noel Polk writes, "According to Faulkner's date on the final page of the holograph manuscript at the University of Mississippi, he completed the writing on November 26, 1934; but he had already sent [publisher Harrison] Smith the typescript of the first chapter before November 5, the second by November 23, and the third by November 30; the fourth bears the editorial date 12/5, the fifth 12/10, and the sixth and seventh 12/15.  As was to the case with Absalom, Pylon underwent extensive editorial alteration.  As the typescript setting copy … demonstrates, editors bowlerized and 'normalized' the deliberate strangeness of the syntax and language and made hundreds of other rather arbitrary changes in the text.  Smith, who spent a week in Oxford with Faulkner going over the galleys, had made many further editorial changes on them.  The galleys, which were set beginning January 8, record both Faulkner's acquiescence to many of Smith's changes, his attempts to restore the original wording and punctuation, and numerous attempts to repair damage that Smith had done.  Pylon was published on March 25, 1935."

The incomplete 151-page autograph manuscript of the novel is in the collection of the University of Mississippi.  The typescript setting copy at the University of Virginia and the present carbon typescript are the only known complete typescripts of the text.  Corrected galley proofs are held by the Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas.  Noel Polk based his 1985 corrected text (Library of America) on the Alderman Library typescript.

As Faulkner told students at the University of Virginia in the 1960's, he wrote Pylon as a respite from the complications involved in writing Absalom, Absalom!  The novel was written at great speed at the end of 1934.  It has been called Faulkner's most self-consciously "modernistic" work, abounding in descriptions of aviators and their machines, runways, and art deco air terminals.  Aside from the frequent references to Shakespeare in the novel, Faulkner takes pains to pay tribute to his modernist heroes James Joyce (in the second chapter, "An Evening in New Valois") and T. S. Eliot (throughout the novel, but especially in the penultimate chapter, "Lovesong of J. A. Prufrock").  Pylon is one of Faulkner's few non-Yoknapatawpha novels and is based on the festivities and air shows at New Orleans's newly built Shushan Airport, held to coincide with Mardi Gras, February 1934.

This carbon typescript, newly discovered by the family and one of only two known typescripts of Pylon, is the only one left entirely as Faulkner wrote it and is the only one in private hands.