Soldiers' Pay

“A deft hand has woven this narrative. . . . This book rings true.”— The New York Times Faulkner’s first novel, Soldiers’ Pay (1926), is among the most memorable works to emerge from the First World War. Through the story of a wounded veteran’s homecoming, it examines the impact of soldiers’ return from war on the people—particularly the women—who were left behind. Soldiers’ Pay is (https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/william-faulkner) William Faulkner’s first published novel. It begins with a train journey on which two American soldiers, Joe Gilligan and Julian Lowe, are returning from the First World War. They meet a scarred, lethargic, and withdrawn fighter pilot, Donald Mahon, who was presumed dead by his family. The novel continues to focus on Mahon and his slow deterioration, and the various romantic complications that arise upon his return home. Faulkner drew inspiration for this novel from his own experience of the First World War. In the spring of 1918, he moved from his hometown, Oxford, Mississippi, to Yale and worked as an accountant until meeting a Canadian Royal Air Force pilot who encouraged him to join the R.A.F. He then traveled to Toronto, pretended to be British (he affected a British accent and forged letters from British officers and a made-up Reverend), and joined the R.A.F. in the hopes of becoming a hero. But the war ended before he was able to complete his flight training, and, like Julian Lowe, he never witnessed actual combat. Upon returning to Mississippi, he began fabricating various heroic stories about his time in the air force (like narrowly surviving a plane crash with broken legs and metal plates under the skin), and proudly strode around Oxford in his uniform. Faulkner was encouraged to write Soldiers’ Pay by his close friend and fellow writer Sherwood Anderson , whom Faulkner met in New Orleans. Anderson wrote in his Memoirs that he went “personally to Horace Liveright”— Soldiers’ Pay was originally published by Boni & Liveright—“to plead for the book.” Though the novel was a commercial failure at the time of its publication, Faulkner’s subsequent fame has ensured its long-term success. A wounded aviator returns home after his time in World War One. Escorted to his small hometown in Georgia by another wounded veteran of the war and a widow, he faces the many realities that come with his return: his anything-but-loyal fiancée, the silence he lives in because of his head injury, and the widow who plans to marry him herself.