Go Down, Moses and Other Stories (1942)

Summary

Ted Robinson. “Go Down, Moses.” Cleveland Plain Dealer, April 12, 1942, All Feature Section, p. 3.

This book of stories will be published Tuesday morning. If I should print this review next Sunday, I should be five days late. There are reviewers who violate the publication date by printing their notices a week before release, and thus they annoy bookseller and publisher alike, violate agreements, and disappoint the public. I mention this merely to disclaim any desire or intention to join that class.

Go Down, Moses is named for the last story in the book. There are only seven, all told, but one is what publishers nowadays call a “novella.” It is called “The Fire and the Heart” and it runs to a hundred pages.

But that last story was certainly the one to choose for the christening of the book; it is a bright, bitter story, as clean as a cameo. Indeed, some of the best of Faulkner is in this volume; and when I say that, I am calling the book important. You can get up a quarrel in almost any company by mentioning Faulkner, and there are critics as well as readers who froth at the mouth when his name comes up. And this is all very silly.

I do not go forth on a missionary crusade to tout this writer as the Great American Genius; I do not even think he should be on the required reading list for the eighth grade. Indeed, I will go so far as to say that I find certain passages in his works unpalatable. But since similar things have been said about most of the world's important authors I cannot feel that they are particularly worth discussing any more.