There is a deep congruity between the movements of Faulkner’s mind, with its sense of an inescapable family trauma, and the history and culture of his region, so deep that it hardly seems possible to distinguish between them. So many of the ills he describes are with us still. He was born into an understanding of the way white supremacy works, and a part of him never stopped believing in the racial hierarchy that shaped his boyhood, even as the writer grew increasingly critical of it. He…
