that the trouble with Flags in the Dust was that it was not one novel, but six, all struggling along simultaneously. This, to Faulkner, was praise: evidence of fecundity and fullness of vision, evidence that the world of Yoknapatawpha was rich enough to last. As he later wrote of his third novel, "I discovered that my own little postage stamp of native soil was worth writing about and that I would never live long enough to exhaust it." Nevertheless, Wasson kept his bargain with Alfred Harcourt. For the next two weeks, while Faulkner sat nearby writing The Sound and the Fury, Wasson went through the typescript of Flags in the Dust, making cuts of every sort until almost a fourth of the book had been excised. Harcourt, Brace published this truncated version on January 31, 1929, as Sartoris (with a dedication: "To Sherwood Anderson through whose kindness I was first published, with a belief that this book will give him no reason to regret that fact"), and the old Flags in the Dust was soon forgotten by everyone but Faulkner. Literary importance Sartoris is the first of Faulkner’s tales set in Yoknapatawpha County, and introduces many of the characters that appear in his later fiction. It was also the immediate predecessor of some of his most famous and critically acclaimed novels The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, Sanctuary and Light in August. The novel also introduces Byron Snopes in a minor role as a rival suitor to Narcissa Benbow. His relative Flem Snopes is at the center of Faulkner’s "Snopes trilogy": The Hamlet, The Town and The Mansion. In a letter to his publisher, Faulkner said "At last and certainly, I have written THE book, of which those other things were but foals. I believe it is the damdest best book you'll look at this year, and any other publisher". Contemporary reviews, however, were mixed; while appreciating Faulkner's writing style, they stressed the book's seeming lack of consistency and its loose plot. Literary critic Cleanth Brooks described the novel as "extremely well-written", full of literary allusions and exploring the plight of a lost generation. He compared Sartoris to the poem The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot. References Joseph Leo Blotner (1974): Faulkner: a biography. New York, Random House. Cleanth Brooks (1991): William Faulkner: the Yoknapataphwa Country. New Haven, Yale University Press 1929 American novels Novels by