William Faulkner Retroactively Canceled in Home State for Criticizing South
Gov. Reeves Claims Author is "Out to Get" Mississippi
There’s no denying that if you value people, ethics, and generally anything good in this world, Mississippi is not the state for you.
Gov. Tate Reeves has done virtually everything in his legal power to roll back human rights to the Antebellum-era of American history, from signing laws preventing the discussion of race in schools to banning gender-affirming healthcare for transgender youth.
If you think Tate is just another attention-starved, lunatic politician following the new tough Republican party-line stance against liberal topics, guess again. He is a deranged and demented Trump-thumper, who will stop at nothing until his state is an authoritarian Red hellhole.
That might be a little strong, but not entirely false.
All one has to do is look at his most recent and controversial decision—no not HB 1020, which essentially allows Tate-appointed chief justices to forgo the democratic process and choose their own judges—but to effectively “cancel” fellow-Mississipper William Faulkner due to his “woke agenda” and books “where he criticized the South and the good people of the Magnolia state.”
Until he apologizes and starting now, all William Faulkner books have been removed from state, town, and school libraries.
Doubtful Tate Reeves has read anything other than “Mein Kampf” and maybe a little Art of the Deal. Also, probably lots of weird mail-order porn. Whatever gripe he has against Faulkner, it’s surely been fed to him by staffers and interns in an effort to make him more of a household name with the Freedom Caucus and viewers of Fox News.
One wonders if such a move like banning the beloved, Lafayette County-born author is his attempt to get a seat at the table if and when Trump is re-elected or Desantis is elected. With banned books now under his ever growing belt, he is eligible to become a ghoul-for-hire of the far-right.
It’s true that while being proud of his home state, Faulkner was condemnatory of a Southern culture rooted in slavery. One needs to read no further than 1946’s The Portable Faulkner, a tight and compact little “greatest hits” book, to get a sense of the dread and malaise the author had about slavery and its after-effects.
Yes, criticizing the status quo of the South would probably ruffle the feathers of a politician the likes of Reeves, whose fraternity in college was busted for their members wearing blackface.
And if you need a little history lesson, remember that Mississippi (which was only ratified its statehood to “balance” the Senate) had the largest slave population out of any state by 1820 (staggeringly, they only became a state in 1817). For many, this was a badge of honor carried into the Civil War when they proudly joined the Confederate cause. In fact, at the start of the Civil War, Mississippi was one of two states in the union (South Carolina, duh) where the majority of the state’s population were slaves.
Fun fact: it was only in 2013 when the state submitted the required documentation to ratify the 13th Amendment that slavery was outlawed.
Tate won’t have you talking about his state’s racial past, and if you are an educator, you are lawfully banned from doing so. And if he has no ability or legal recourse to jail or fine someone like the deceased author, then he will retroactively cancel him and make sure no Mississippian (if they can read—sorry, literacy rates are at an all-time low) will read a Faulkner book ever again!
There is no doubt that Faulkner was troubled by his state’s ugly past and assuredly, he would not have approved of Tate’s right-wing, conservative (borderline fascist) politics. His books expose a moral corruption and decay in Mississippi that was proverbially stinking up the joint.
William Faulkner’s own personal beliefs about race were shaped by his Missisippi upbringing and education—they now call this sort of post-Antebellum indoctrination “Lost Cause Revisionism.” Growing up, Faulkner was taught that the South lost tragically and at the cruel, unjust hands of Lincoln and the North.
Yes, at times Faulkner might have believed and even taken part in the hate-speech and rhetoric of his time, most of which he apologized for and tried to whitewash, blaming his alcoholism. There are several shocking comments detailed in Michael Gorra’s biography The Saddest Words that you might believe would have maybe come from someone like Gov. Tate and not Faulkner.
However, Faulkner spent the rest of his writing life uncovering and exposing the evils of slavery and most if not all of his fiction tackle to some degree the moral failure of the Confederate cause.
If he really believed in the racial things he said in his personal life, it is not reflected in his fiction. In fact, Faulkner degrades the South as a grotesque landscape filled modern-day mutants who clutch Bibles and blindly follow their backwards-racist beliefs and stolen valor down into unmarked graves. There is no glory for a Confederate, despite what titles they have and plantations their family may still own. See the depraved and morally-bankrupt Jason Compson from The Sound and the Fury for Faulkner’s personal opinion of what he viewed as the ideal “Southern Man.”
If you remember anything about Jason Compson from that book, it ain’t pretty.
So should Gov. Reeves be afraid of what Faulkner might say about the South?
Probably.
In fact, getting cancelled by the likes of Reeves sounds pretty good right now.