5 Stars for Intruder in the Dust by Faulkner

This is not a great Faulkner novel. At best its mediocre; however, its Faulkner. I've never read a Faulkner novel or short story that didn't force me to see someone's perspective other than my own. Told in the perspective of a boy named Chick as he tries to understand Lucas, a black man accused of killing a white man, I become painfully aware of Lucas's complex character. Lucas was the best character in the story and from page one you root for him. You want justice for Lucas. Lucas is flawed with stubborn pride in a time period that didn't allow a black man to have pride. It is this so-called flaw that makes me like him. Lucas is also painted with precise intelligence. He knows who he can trust and who he cannot. This line of reasoning just might save him. Lucas also values life which is why he saved Chick long before the novel begins. Lucas's pride refused payment for such a grand gesture. Both Lucas and Chick have a inner faith in the goodness of humanity. Lucas because he's a really good guy and Chick because he's still a boy and maybe hasn't had time to lose his faith. Faulkner says this much better than me...

“A man or a race either if he's any good can survive his past without even needing to escape from it and not because of the high quite often only too rhetorical rhetoric of humanity but for the simple indubitable practical reason of his future: that capacity to survive and absorb and endure and still be steadfast.”

Faulkner's stories are always presented in a setting loaded loaded with racism decorated in the antebellum of backward pride. It's a tough place to find even a thread of hope in humanity, but Faulkner finds it. In Intruder in the Dust, that faith is found in Lucas and spills over onto Chick. In Faulkner's novel, Light in August, identity is once again explored and steadfastness is discovered through not Joe, but Lena's love. "She was the captain of her soul." In The Sound and the Fury, it was the perspective of Quentin that gave me hope despite Quentin's ending.  Intruder in the Dust is a short read and it often steers off the plot topic, but it is worth reading; however, if you have never read a Faulkner book don't start here. Pick up As I Lay Dying or Light in August, or start with a short story like A Rose for Emily, that one is creepy Southern Gothic suspense at its best.