Popular Culture Review Vol. 8, No. 2, August 1997 | Page 150

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it can later be raised. The relief is necessary for the sake of even
higher excitement later.
Faulkner, however, goes beyond comic relief to what might be
called comic erasure. He reduces the level of emotional excitement
and of logical meaning to zero. At the point of zero, the reader's mind
is empty and ready for anything, and ready to work at obtaining it.
Mink's trial eventually reaches higher emotional peaks because it
follows the "Spotted Horses" episode, because, for a time, it had been
completely forgotten. Quentin's suicide becomes an act of total
desperation and is completely meaningless because the comic episode
with the foreign girl and the fight with Gerald Bland have r^u ced
both the emotion and the meaning to zero.
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Notes

Robert Dodge

1. Walter J. Slatoff, Quest for Failure: A Study o f William Faulkner (Ithaca,
1962) p. 53
2. Henri Bergson, Laughter, trans. Cloudesley Biereton and Fred Rothwell
New York, 1937) p. 4.
3. Max Eastman, The Enjoyment of Laughter (New York, 1939), p. 9.
4. Eastman, 10.
5. William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury, Modern Library Edition (New
York, 1946), p. 182. Hereafter identified in the text as SF.
6. Olga Vickery, The Novels of William Faulkner (Baton Rouge, 1959), p. 65.
Hereafter identmed in the text as Vickeiy.
7. William Faulkner, /Is I Lay Dying, Modern Library Edition (New York,
1946), p. 409. Hereafter identified in the text as AILD
8. Edmond Volpe, A Reader's Guide to William Faulkner (New York, 1964), p.
153.
9. William Faulkner, Light in August, Modern Library Edition (New York,
1950), p. 9.
10. William Faulkner, Sanctuary, Signet edition (New York, 1961), p. 82.
Hereafter identified in the text as Sanctuary.
11. William Faulkner, Ths Hamlet, Vintage edition (New York, 1964), P. 336.
12. William Faulkner, The Town, Vintage edition (New York, 1957), p. 355.
Hereafter identified in the text as Town.
13. William Faulkner, The Mansion, Vintage edition (New York, 1959), p. xi.