Soldier's pay and a reader's pain.

Soldier’s pay is a fine example of a young, struggling author finding his voice, a distinct voice that eventually transformed Faulkner into a world-renowned writer. However, I was disillusioned with the poor quality of Soldier’s pay. Although we get hints of Faulknerian prose and his stream of consciousness style that he employed more liberally as he matured, Soldier’s Pay is difficult to digest. If it happens to be a reader’s first Faulkner novel, chances are that he will not be delighted, or willing to read anything else by Faulkner. In my case, this is my third Faulkner novel, and despite not enjoying Soldier’s Pay, I learned to appreciate Faulkner’s development. As readers, we forget that immortal writers were once amateurish, and sometimes awful. It was refreshing to find Faulkner in Soldier’s Pay as a helpless, young novelist trying to make sense and find purpose. Soldier’s pay is too much of a melodramatic novel highlighted by long, poetic discharges. Even though poetry was highly influential for Faulkner, he was rather poor at it but still insisted on applying it to Soldier’s Pay and for most of his early years.

 

The novel was definitely his craft. Ambition aside, Faulkner must have had no idea that someday he would be one of the greats. And fortunately, Faulkner certainly learned from his mistakes. Much like the poetry we read in class, the preface to the novel appears to be apologetic as to what we are about to read. The more I learn of Faulkner as a person, the more I enjoy him as a writer because I do not like what he represents as a person. Faulkner was essentially a spoiled bum in his youth that romanticized and fetishized war, soldiers, and the military in general. Despite no personal spoils of war other than the influence of the First World War, Faulkner made it a personal mission to role-play as a soldier. This is something I consider pathetic, and as morbid as his prose.

Once you become familiar with Faulkner, to admire him is to revere someone who behaved like a buffoon as a young adult. It is something to be a poor writer at first, but to also be a ridiculous character is stupefying. With Soldier’s pay, I feel that Faulkner is enamored by post-war tragedies. The man yearned for the battles he never got to experience. Instead, he opted to daydream and play dress-up, and the closest he got to being a soldier was to escape into his prose and remain in that haze for a period of time, Soldier’s Pay being a tragic product of that alter-ego.

Although this somehow falls under realism, it resembles the sensationalism of soap opera’s.  Soldier’s Pay would have found much more success with sinister war propaganda or tabloids for the forsaken wives of soldier’s who came home as different men, much like Donald Mahon (physically and emotionally), or arrived in a coffin. Cecily’s character is too hysterical to take seriously, and Donald was dead before he passed on. Much of the potential character development is lost in a awkward mix of flowery and dark prose. It is better to remember Faulkner for other novels, but I suppose all the greats had to start with a bad novel to develop talents that are definitely present in even the worst of works, but not quite tapped into.