Faulkner, William

A collection of 3 typescripts, 2 with numerous corrections in the author's hand in ink,81 pages including agent Harold Ober's contents pages and title-page for each story (all with Ober's distinct red-ruled borders) (11 1/8 x 8 1/2 in.; 282 x 216 mm, with three-hole punch in left margin), in black folder with Ober label, titled "Unpublished Stories by William Faulkner," [vp, c. 1930–1942]; folder split at fold, chipped.

Comprising: "Snow," typescript with autograph corrections, 18 pp. (paginated 1–13, 13A–B, 14–16), c. 1942 — "With Caution and Dispatch," typescript with autograph corrections, 38 pp. (paginated 1–10, 10A–B, 11–15, 1–15, 15A, 16–20), early 1930's — "Knight's Gambit," typescript, 23 pp., early 1941. 

Fargnoli and Golay, William Faulkner A to Z, p. 217; Faulkner (Blotner, ed.), Uncollected Stories, pp. 642–677, 711–712

Condition as described in catalogue entry
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Three Faulkner short stories, all unpublished during his lifetime, two with his autograph corrections.  "Snow" and "With Caution and Dispatch" remained unpublished until they appeared posthumously as the last two stories in Uncollected Stories (ed. Blotner, 1979).  For more on "Knight's Gambit," see lot 257.  Ober's contents leaf also lists "A Courtship," which is not present here.  That story was published in the Sewanee Review in 1948 and appeared in Collected Stories in 1950.

"Snow" was first submitted to agent Harold Ober in a 21-page version in February 1942.  The agent called the story "beautiful," but suggested Faulkner "simplify" it.  After revisions and some cutting, Faulkner sent the present 18-page version to Ober.  The story is told as a flashback of an incident the narrator witnessed in Switzerland sometime before the Second World War.  As Nicholas Fargnoli and Michael Golay have pointed out, "The story is more reminiscent of the more abrupt style of Ernest Hemingway, as opposed to Faulkner's own more discursive and meandering voice."  Appropriate to a story written during the Second World War, there is a sinister character who is later revealed as a Nazi.  Faulkner's francophile tendencies are stong here too.  When the American characters order ragout from a Swiss waiter with strong anti-German sentiments, Faulkner writes (in a sentence with manuscript corrections), "So we ate the food that was good anywhere in Europe or anywhere else that French was spoken; we mounted the clean stairs to the little clean room beneath the steep pitch of the eaves and lay between the clean chill sheets which even of themselves smelled of snow."  Blotner comments, "The portraits of the Prussian general and his fiancée will remind some readers of Caddy Compson and her German general as Faulkner sketched them in October 1945 in the Appendix, 'The Compsons,' which he wrote for Malcolm Cowley's The Portable Faulkner …." 

"With Caution and Dispatch" was based on Faulkner's brief service in the R.A.F. in Canada.  According to Faulkner, he wrote this story about the time he also wrote another story based on this experience, "Turn About," which sold to the Saturday Evening Post in 1932.  The present story was still unsold in 1939.  It was then that Faulkner attempted to revise and rewrite it.  He pruned the original story, but it was still rejected by the Post and Collier's.  The story as it appears in Uncollected Stories is taken from the present copy.  This version is divided into two sections, as though Faulkner "had concluded that the whole of 'With Caution and Dispatch'  was too long for magazines…unless divided into two installments."  There were, however, no takers for the revised version either.  The story "supplies a bridge in the activities of young John Sartoris between his early R.F.C. service and his fatal mission as related in 'All the Dead Pilots' and Sartoris" (Blotner). 

A fine example of Faulkner at work, revising his short stories for the glossy magazine market of the 1930's and 40's.