I only “discovered” Faulkner five or six years ago after finding 1960s Penguin paperback editions of three of his novels in my father’s book collection. The first I read, The Sound and the Fury, blew me away. I was less taken with As I Lay Dying, but even so Faulkner’s prose was an education to read. And now Intruder in the Dust, which I thought was better than As I Lay Dying, but not as good as The Sound and the Fury. It was the control of voice in the latter which impressed me so much. Intruder in the Dust uses a stream-of-consciousness narrative which is highly effective but not easy to read, but equally impressive in terms of narrative control. The novel reminds me, in a way, of Aleksandr Sokurov’s film Russian Ark. It has that same breathless quality to it. Lucas Beauchamp, a black man, is found standing over the body of Vinson Gowrie, a white man, with his pistol in his hand. He is immediately arrested, and the sheriff prepares for a visit from the Gowries, and other hillbilly families, who intend to lynch Beauchamp. But Beauchamp is innocent, although too proud to give a full account. Chick, the teenage nephew of the town lawyer, believes Beauchamp, and with the help of a black friend and an old white woman, sets out to prove it by digging up the body of Vinson Gowrie to show he wasn’t shot with Beachamp’s gun. But it’s not Gowrie’s body in the grave, it’s that of his business partner. Which opens up a whole can of worms, dragging in the sheriff and the lawyer, in order to find Vinson’s body and discover the identity of the actual murderer. Despite lots of uses of the n-word, and a Jubal Harshaw-like rant from Chick’s uncle, and, basically, Faulkner’s views on society and race relations, which have only been subscribed to by White American Males of a Certain Age, Intruder in the Dust is a novel with prose that’s masterclass, and a use of language that can only be admired. I plan to thoroughly explore Faulkner’s oeuvre. ( )

This book feels like William Faulkner trying to write a high-spirited boy's adventure story. Only, as it's William Faulkner, it's a high-spirited boy's adventure story about the South's deeply entrenched struggle with racism, death, family, identity, and punctuation. Faulkner departs from his traditional formula by leaving out sex and dredging up some happiness, which comes off as an interesting experiment -- the reader familiar with Faulkner keeps waiting for the other shoe to drop and the racist violence to begin. But they don't, and eventually the reader realizes that it's all been disappointingly sweet. ( )

Polemically and poetically dense, Intruder will take many readings to completely absorb.

A few years ago when I was reading later Faulkner novels, a friend said to stop because he was a racist.
I recently read and now agree that INTRUDER IN THE DUST proves that he was not a racist

Faulkner forever had faith that the South would fare best if whites resolved their own racism - if only that had been true!!!

Readers may hope that the descendants of the 16 year old hero followed his courage and inspiration. ( )

Starts out so promising in terms of racial progress, but ultimately frustrating and frightening in the main character (and others' underlying racial sentiments). Worth the read, but frustrating as a sort of final place to leave Faulkner on race. ( )

William Faulkner rarely gives us a character easily described as “admirable”. But in Intruder in the Dust, we meet Lucas Beauchamp, a black man whose integrity, strength and moral soundness we simply must admire. He is the focus of the mystery that forms what plot there is in this novel. After being discovered standing over the dead body of a white man, with his recently fired Saturday pistol in his pocket, Lucas is assumed to be the killer of one of the Beat Four Gowries, a seriously bad lot. Enter 16-year-old Charles “Chick” Mallison, who had an enlightening encounter with Lucas when he was 10 or 11 which he has never forgotten, and which has left him considerably unsettled in his mind about Southern culture, race, and his own place in the society he’s about to inherit. Lucas sees Chick and the boy’s uncle, the overeducated lawyer Gavin Stevens, as his only hope of proving the he did not shoot Vinson Gowrie. There follows a grim, nearly farcical, round of grave openings and closings as Chick and his accomplice, Miss Eunice Habersham, attempt to uncover evidence that will prevent either the townspeople or the Beat Four crowd from lynching this man who is the source of so much of his own angst. Faulkner introduces elements of the bildungsroman, as Chick moves through days and nights without sleep or food, (taking pains to avoid his mother who he assumes would stop him in his tracks) on a quest he doesn’t even fully understand, We actually see surprisingly little of Lucas, but what we do see is very revealing. He is composed, resigned to placing his fate in the hands of a confused boy and an old woman, but somehow above the commotion stirred up by his arrest. For anyone who questions Faulkner’s stance on race relations in Southern society, this book has many of the answers. Like all of his work, it gets better every time I read it. ( )