Viking ignited a renewed interest in William Faulkner in 1946 through its publication of the Viking Portable Faulkner, an anthology of short stories and excerpts from his novels. Faulkner had been one of the bright stars of the prewar literary scene, hailed as a genius by many modernists, although not every critic was a fan. His books were not blockbusters but sold well enough for serious literature. However many readers found his convoluted stories and verbose prose, at times verging on stream of consciousness, hard to follow. Some thought his work was too sexual and nightmarish while others, looking for titillation, were put off by their serious tone. By 1946, Faulkner was in danger of fading into obscurity. Because of wartime paper shortages, his books, like many backlist titles, had gone out of print and were hard to find even in the independent bookstores that dealt with books on the backlist. Meanwhile Faulkner had gone to Hollywood to make a living as a screenwriter.
Viking had started its portable line in 1943. Although the volumes were thick, they were compact enough to fit into a pocket. The initial target market was servicemen, much as the wartime paperbacks.
The Portable Faulkner was widely seen as one of the greatest successes, reviving critical and reader interest in this often difficult writer. Cowley presented Faulkner’s work not as individual stories and books but as an epic saga composed of cycles dealing with Native Americans, blacks, the planter aristocracy and their descendants, the town folk and the poor whites of his mythical Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, over a 130 year span. For the Viking volume, Cowley took select short stories and excerpts from Faulkner's novels and arranged them by themes and in chronological order by when they took place, rather than by when they were written. Editorial notes by Cowley introduced each section. The result was an eye-opener to many, placing a writer whom many had found obtuse into an understandable and relatable context.
Caroline Gordon in her May 5, 1946 review for The New York Times Book Review wrote that Cowley’s introduction also saved Faulkner from the superficial readings often given to his work by critics who pigeonholed his novels and stories as simply examples of the Southern Gothic genre or as depictions of the moral degeneracy of the South. Cowley and Gordon argued that Faulkner had a greater purpose. Gordon, a novelist herself, was part of the Southern Agrarian school along with her on-again, off-again husband, the poet and essayist Allen Tate. The Tates, champions of Southern values, were close to Faulkner personally. Faulkner had been Gordon's mentor and she was his champion. She noted that Cowley saw Faulkner as she did, as joining the Agrarian lament about the corruption of the South’s traditional agrarian way of life by the capitalist values of the industrial North, which fueled the rise of amoral materialists like the hillbilly Snopes family over the genteel plantation aristocracy and the salt-of-the-earth small farmers. The Agrarians like Allen Tate attacked capitalism from a vantage point that was often reactionary and at times racist but they were often personally close to writers like Malcolm Cowley who criticized capitalism from the left.
In a comment, echoed by others who wrote about this book and other Viking volumes, Gordon warned that the excerpts from the novels did not deliver the full impact that the novels had in their entirety. On the other hand, she noted, the compendium minimized some of Faulkner's flaws such as his tendency to get carried away by his rhetoric and the structural weaknesses of some of his novels.
The original edition of The Portable Faulkner included:
THE OLD PEOPLE:
“A Justice” from These Thirteen
“Wedding in the Rain” from Absalom, Absalom!
“Red Leaves” from These Thirteen
“Was” from Go Down, Moses
THE UNVANQUISHED:
“Raid” from The Unvanquished
“Wash” from Doctor Martino and Other Stories
“An Odor of Verbena” from The Unvanquished
THE LAST WILDERNESS:
“The Bear” from Go Down, Moses
THE PEASANTS:
“Spotted Horses” in a revised version of the story based largely on the expanded version incorporated in The Hamlet
THE END OF AN ORDER:
“That Evening Sun” from These Thirteen
“Ad Astra” from These Thirteen
“A Rose for Emily” from These Thirteen
“Dilsey” from The Sound and the Fury
MISSISSIPPI FLOOD
“Old Man” from The Wild Palms
MODERN TIMES:
“Death Drag” from Dr. Martino and Other Stories
“Uncle Bud and the Three Madams” from Sanctuary
“Percy Grimm” from Light in August
“Delta Autumn” from Go Down, Moses
“The Compsons” a new appendix to The Sound and the Fury
Later versions of The Portable Faulkner replaced some of these selections with excerpts from Faulkner’s later works. The book remains in print as a paperback from Penguin Classics.