Like the platypus who cannot decide whether he is flesh or fowl, a new secies has in recent years appeared in the zoo of critical writing. This is the work--basically an outgrowth of feature journalism--which hovers indeterminately between straight biography and straight criticism without fulfilling the requirements of either form. The Private World of William Fauikner, by Robert Coughlan, is one of these books.

As a brief sketch of Faulkner's background and way of life it is a competent job of reporting. As a critical analysis of his work it is incomplete and without depth

Criticism Weak

Its weaknesses are most evident when it turns half-heartedly to criticism and attempted explications of his novels as it does with A Fable in the last chapter. Here, after outlining the complex plot of the book and commenting on its obvious aspects, Coughlin rather despairingly admits his incapacity to treat it fully or even profitably. "The heavy burden of symbolism of A Fable doubtless will keep Faulkner scholars busy for many years to come. . . The book, on the whole, seems demented."

When, on the other hand, the book sticks to its professed purpose of giving the reader a glimpse into Faulkner's world it is interesting, amusing, and glib.

Coughlin shows us the young author as the townspeople of Oxford, Mississippi saw him in the years following the first world war. Not much of a success at anything, borrowing money from his friends and doing odd jobs of carpentry to live, he wandered through the streets silently, sometimes barefootel, and stood musing for hours in front of the old curthouse, a proud, shabby questionmark.

His research into Faulkner's family rest, and occasionally jotting down history and especially into the life of great-grandfather William Cuthbert Faulkner provides a good deal of insight into the sources of Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County characters and their stories. The great-grandfather was the living model for Colonel John Sartoris, one of the central figures in the Jefferson Sags, and in the figure of Faulkner himself, painfully dedicated to the labor of reproducing this family legend, lies a clue to the Reverend High tower of Light in August and the obsession with ancestral heroism which he carried with him even to the pulpit.

Returning to the present and to Faculkner's adventures in Hollywood, however, Coughlin weakens the book with an overdose of anecdotes. He seems to become so involved with the writer's eccentricities that, instead of trying to explain them or put them in proper perspective, he piles amusing incidents on the reader so heavily that the chapter largely destroys the clear outline of Faulkner the man that he has sketched in the earlied part of the book.

Keen Analysis

The world which Coughlin reveals in his book, moreover, is not really Faulkner's private world. There is a distinct feeling that he is looking in, that he has failed to get beneath the surface or Faulkner's life and is only recording, as fully and as competently as possible, the externals of this world.

But the externals are interesting in themselves, and Coughlin has reproduced them faithfully. If the Faulkner student accepts the limitations of this study, he will find much in it to interest and amuse him.