Notes on a Horsethief (1950)

Summary

Richard Walser. “Faulkner Story of Good and Evil.” Raleigh News and Observer, February 11, 1951, Section IV, p. 5.

This is the first book to come from the pen of America's leading writer of fiction since his elevation some months ago to the ranks of Nobel Prize winners. Whether it is a long short story or a brief novel, one must take his choice. Faulkner has a habit of denying the usual classifications. At any rate, it is a postscript to his 1948 novel, Intruder in the Dust–a story which put clearly upon the conscience of white Southerners the psychological requisites to the solution of their racial problem as well as one which defined the psychological posture of the Southern Negro regarding this problem. The conscience has not changed in Faulkner's story, though the fictional situation has somewhat altered.

It is April, 1914. A famous imported racehorse, with a leg irreparably injured in a train wreck, is stolen by his English groom, and with the aid of a Negro preacher-stableman is nursed and cared for sufficiently for him to win races in out-of-the-way county seats and country fairs, always eluding the pursuing detectives, police, insurance adjusters, and others interested in his apprehension. The chase ends in a small Missouri town, where the escape of the English groom is effectuated as a tribute from the community to the groom's efforts to have the horse serve his natural purpose–racing–instead of imprisoning him in a veterinarian's ward to provide procreation for future thoroughbreds. The community also saves the Negro from the law as a reward for his role in the escapades–thus reversing the basic situation in Intruder in the Dust.