Intruder in the Dust

The novel focuses on Lucas Beauchamp, a black farmer accused of murdering a white man. He is exonerated through the efforts of black and white teenagers and a spinster from a long-established Southern family. It was written as Faulkner's response as a Southern writer to the racial problems facing the South. {{citation needed|date=September 2019}}

Intruder in the Dust is notable for its use of stream of consciousness style of narration. The novel also includes lengthy passages on the Southern memory of the American Civil War, one of which Shelby Foote quoted in Ken Burns' 1990 documentary The Civil War.

The characters of Lucas Beauchamp and his wife, Molly, first appeared in Faulkner's collection of short fiction, Go Down, Moses. A story by Faulkner, "Lucas Beauchamp", was published in 1999.

The character Gavin Stevens appears as a protagonist in Faulkner's short story collection Knight's Gambit (1949).

Intruder in the Dust was turned into a film of the same name directed by Clarence Brown in 1949 after MGM paid film rights of $50,000 to Faulkner. The film was shot in Faulkner's home town of Oxford, Mississippi. In 1950, Faulkner was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for "his powerful and artistically unique contribution to the modern American novel."{{cite web |url=http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1949|title=The Nobel Prize in Literature 1949 |publisher=Nobelprize.org |access-date=July 3, 2013}} The Nobel Prize was not specifically for his novel Intruder in the Dust but for the enduring contribution of his writing as a whole.

In her contemporary review of the novel, Eudora Welty noted its humor.{{cite journal | jstor=3847827 | last=Welty | first=Eudora | title=Review: In Yoknapatawpha | journal=The Hudson Review | volume=1 | issue=4 | pages=33–47 | date=Winter 1949 | doi=10.2307/3847827 }} Dayton Kohler's 1949 article noted the book's recognition of black Americans in the American south.{{cite journal | jstor=806854 | last=Kohler | first=Dayton | title=William Faulkner and the Social Conscience | journal=The English Journal | volume=38 | issue=10 | pages=545–553 | date=December 1949 | doi=10.2307/806854 }} John E. Bassett has commented that this novel represents a "serious attempt to explore contemporary Southern racism through Gavin and Chick."{{cite journal | jstor=25111705 | last=Bassett | first=John E. | title=Gradual Progress and Intruder in the Dust | journal=College Literature | volume=13 | issue=3 | pages=207–216 | date=Fall 1986 }} Jean E. Graham has discussed the contrasting rhetorical styles of Gavin and Chick throughout the course of the novel.{{cite journal | jstor=20077989 | last=Graham | first=Jean E. | title=Gavin Stevens in Faulkner's Intruder in the Dust: Only Too Rhetorical Rhetoric? | journal=The Southern Literary Journal | volume=22 | issue=2 | pages=78–89 | date=Spring 1990 }} Ticien Marie Sassoubre has examined the novel in the context of the social issues related to lynching in the American South, and then-recent American federal law with respect to black Americans.{{cite journal | jstor=23128734 | last=Sassoubre | first=Ticien Marie | title=Avoiding Adjudication in William Faulkner's Go Down, Moses and Intruder in the Dust | journal=Criticism | volume=49 | issue=2 | pages=183–214 | date=Spring 2007 | doi=10.1353/crt.0.0016 | s2cid=153508996 }}

D. Hutchinson has elucidated the unifying literary devices of the novel.{{cite journal | jstor=41801885 | last=Hutchinson | first=D. | title=The Style of Faulkner's INTRUDER IN THE DUST | journal=Theoria: A Journal of Social and Political Theory | volume=39 | pages=33–47 | date=October 1972 | issue=39 }} Peter J. Rabinowitz analyzed Faulkner's use of the detective story in the context of the "discovery novel" as compared to Dostoyevsky.{{cite journal | jstor=437695 | last=Rabinowitz | first=Peter J. | title=The Click of the Spring: The Detective Story as Parallel Structure in Dostoyevsky and Faulkner | journal=Modern Philology | volume=76 | issue=4 | pages=355–369 | date=May 1979 | doi=10.1086/390876 | s2cid=162258674 }}

{{Reflist|30em}}

• {{cite book|last=Fadiman|first=Regina|title=Faulkner's "Intruder in the Dust": Novel into Film|publisher=University of Tennessee Press|place=Knoxville, Tennessee|year=1978}}
• {{cite journal|last=Degenfelder|first=E. Pauline|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/43795413|title=The Film Adaptation of Faulkner's "Intruder in the Dust"|journal=Literature/Film Quarterly|volume=1|issue=2|date=Spring 1973|pages=138–148|jstor=43795413}}
• {{cite journal|last=Li|first=Stephanie|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/24908324|title="Intruder in the Dust" From Novel to Movie: The Development of Chick Mallison|journal=Faulkner Journal|volume=16|issue=1/2|date=Fall 2000|pages=105–118|jstor=24908324}}

• {{FadedPage|id=20190423|name=Intruder in the Dust}}
• [https://archive.today/20121210090845/http://pages.emerson.edu/faculty/John_Anderson/e_faulkn.htm John Anderson page on William Faulkner]
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20071226171326/http://www6.semo.edu/cfs/tfn_online/light_longe.htm Laurel Longe's article Lucas Beauchamp, Joe Christmas, and the Color of Humanity]
• [http://faulkner.iath.virginia.edu/?text=ID Intruder in the Dust at Digital Yoknapatawpha]

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Category:1948 American novels

Category:American crime novels

Category:American novels adapted into films

Category:Novels about racism

Category:Novels by William Faulkner

Category:Random House books