THE PERCIVAL BROWNLEE LEDGERS
______________________
______________________
“The whole Brownlee
episode appears set
aside in a parenthesis,
as though merely a
subsidiary clause”
—Noel Polk & Richard Godden,
“Reading the ledgers,” The
Mississippi Quarterly 07-01-2002
Like Lit Crit Taboo—
Most Faulkner critics had done
What Isaac did too…
They left it alone—
The whole Brownlee episode
The McCaslin Curse.
Too hot to handle—
But still crucial to our
Go Down, Moses thoughts.
Single ledger page—
Full of scandalous details
Isaac’s shock of shocks.
Poor Isaac simply stunned—
An extended admission
Incestuous love!!!
Buck & Billy were—
Lovers, his own father and
His Uncle Billy!!!
Right there on the page—
Percival Brownlee kept boy
Buck’s new sweetheart slave!!!
Isaac horrified—
Miscegeny with a slave!!!
His father a queer!!!
His own dear father—
Committing the same dinge sins
Like his grandfather!!!
Can Isaac condemn—
L.Q.C. McCaslin for
For being Evil One?
Of course, Isaac does—
What most Faulkner critics do:
They ignore the news…
Isaac repressed it—
Disturbing development
Family chronicle.
Already it’s bad—
Enough without out awful
Faint revelation.
Why make matters worse—
It runs in the family?
Desire for black cock?
“Brownlee is homosexual
and that his homosexuality
is the single reason why
Isaac's father bought him,
the only slave he, Buck, or
his brother had ever bought”
—Noel Polk & Richard Godden,
"Reading the ledgers,” The
Mississippi Quarterly 07-01-2002
Isaac condemns his—
Grandfather for being such
An awful pervert.
Now it turns out that—
Buck his own father was queer
For a black kid too?
All of a sudden—
Exogamous intruder
Enters the picture.
Then in the ledgers—
Extended lover’s quarrel
Upsetting it all.
The Brownlee entries—
Suggest Buck & Uncle Buddy
Lovers living together.
Living together—
As man and surrogate wife.
What would Father say!!!
As Isaac moves toward—
His grandfather's perfidy
The ledgers open up.
With two paragraphs—
Buck & Buddy not morally
Superior to their father.
The twins have qualms—
About slavery that their
Father didn’t share.
They seem to have done—
What they could at that time
And in that place.
To ameliorate the evil—
Practices of the institution
(More than Isaac does).
But an ugly fly’s—
In the lily-white ointment
Moiling dinge passion.
No divine plan saves—
The cursed McCaslin Family
It’s always tainted!!!
“But the narrative of this
emancipatory impulse
veers towards alternative
and darker implications.”
—Noel Polk & Richard Godden,
"Reading the ledgers,” The
Mississippi Quarterly 07-01-2002
Isaac casts Brownlee—
The whole episode away
Too hot to handle.
This part of his own—
Tainted family history
Starts fumbling bad.
Falling down the stairs—
The whole Emancipation
Story in ruins.
It’s impossible—
To eradicate Slavery
Like Original Sin.
The ledgers point to—
Darker implications and
Impulsive dinge lust.
Buck has the hots for—
The young Percival Brownlee
Was he beautiful?
Was he what Buck wanted—
His marriage to Billy long gone
And dead of any love…
The brothers write it—
All down in the ledgers like
It was just business.
Unavoidable business—
Diurnally advancing pages
Percival the kept boy?
“Read by Isaac as part
of an ongoing conversation
between the two, the entries
suggest that the twins are
"long since past any oral
intercourse" (p. 194).
Faulkner's locution, speaking
quasi-directly to Isaac's
thoughts, puns subversively,
to admit the tongues of lovers
into the speech of brothers.”
—Noel Polk & Richard Godden,
"Reading the ledgers,” The
Mississippi Quarterly 07-01-2002
From "oral intercourse"—
The paragraph moves directly
To the queer “anomaly.”
The "anomaly calling itself—
Percival Brownlee" (p. 195),
an anomaly in several senses.
But most immediately—
In his being the only slave either
of the twins had ever bought.
The ledger entries—
Which follow parenthetically,
Indirectly explain it.
Why Isaac's father—
Bought Brownlee & the
Consequences of the act.
The slave transaction—
Recording the transaction
Talking about it.
“Buddy's reaction to
Buck's purchase of
Percival Brownlee
is a response first
to his twin's
homosexuality and
second to his
purchase of a slave
to satisfy his lusts”
—Noel Polk & Richard Godden,
"Reading the ledgers,” The
Mississippi Quarterly 07-01-2002
It’s less important—
To prove Buck & Buddy were
Homosexual lovers.
But more important—
To know that Isaac believes
They’re both queer brothers.
Homo miscegenators—
Glomming onto a black kid
Making him their slave.
It’s even worse than—
His grandfather’s presumptive
Straight miscegenation…
Queer miscegenation—
And brotherly incest too!!!
Isaac shit his pants.
“And that these beliefs,
conscious or unconscious,
are what drives his renunciation
of the land and of his family
tradition, not his grandfather's
presumptive heterosexual
miscegenation and incest”
—Noel Polk & Richard Godden,
"Reading the ledgers,” The
Mississippi Quarterly 07-01-2002
"Was" and part 4 of—
"The Bear" reveals Buddy's life
As cook & housekeeper.
Even as nagging wife—
Decent poker player and
Such a nice gay" couple"!!!
So Buck got bored—
Big fuckin’ deal it happens
The 7-year itch.
Who can blame Buck then—
His old Civil War buddy
N. B. Forest helped him.
Viola! Young black slave!!!—
A cute Mandingo dreamboat
Can’t plow or pick cotton.
But good in bed tho—
Oral Intercourse Perfecto!!!
“You like ‘em well-hung?”
So Buck bought him fast—
Handsome Percival Brownlee
All 12-inches of him!!!
Isaac almost had—
A hard-attack reading in
The ledger about it.
Suppressing it quickly—
“Jesus christ what if I’m
Fuckin’ queer too?”
“Does dinge turn me on?”—
Isaac closed the ledgers
Deep South funky blues…
"Allknowledgeable
even perhaps far
from readable”
—Noel Polk & Richard Godden,
"Reading the ledgers,” The
Mississippi Quarterly 07-01-2002
What are we readers—
To make of such a subtext
Faulkner be so sly.
No wonder his father—
Called him “Snake-Eyes” after his
Mother’s side of the family.
Faulkner was subtle—
Where did he learn that trick?
Big Easy boyfriends?
Queer undercurrents—
Flow deeply in his Modernist
Mississippi River.
Yoknapatawpha be—
More than just Tallahatchie
Deep in Faulkner’s mind.
He could flow with it—
Like he did with TSATF
Free of publishers.
First Benjy came—
The child idiot voice in him
That had been suppressed.
Then came Quentin—
In love with his sister Caddy
Her muddy panties.
Up in the tree—
Peering into the bedroom
Of death & darkness.
Quentin avatar—
Flashbacks from Harvard
Seancing the Past.
Quentin queer—
For handsome Dalton Ames
On the bridge that day.
Coyly hinted at—
But obviously apparent
To any modern reader.
Sex with Dalton—
Same with Shreve McCannon
Sex and Seancing.
Isn’t that how—
It’s done my dears huh?
Bon the Beautiful nods…
Like Lit Crit Taboo—
Most Faulkner critics had done
What Isaac did too…
They left it alone—
The whole Brownlee episode
The McCaslin Curse.
Too hot to handle—
But still crucial to our
Go Down, Moses thoughts.
Single ledger page—
Full of scandalous details
Isaac’s shock of shocks.
Poor Isaac simply stunned—
An extended admission
Incestuous love!!!
Buck & Billy were—
Lovers, his own father and
His Uncle Billy!!!
Right there on the page—
Percival Brownlee kept boy
Buck’s new sweetheart slave!!!
Isaac horrified—
Miscegeny with a slave!!!
His father a queer!!!
His own dear father—
Committing the same dinge sins
Like his grandfather!!!
Can Isaac condemn—
L.Q.C. McCaslin for
For being Evil One?
Of course, Isaac does—
What most Faulkner critics do:
They ignore the news…
Isaac repressed it—
Disturbing development
Family chronicle.
Already it’s bad—
Enough without out awful
Faint revelation.
Why make matters worse—
It runs in the family?
Desire for black cock?
“Brownlee is homosexual
and that his homosexuality
is the single reason why
Isaac's father bought him,
the only slave he, Buck, or
his brother had ever bought”
—Noel Polk & Richard Godden,
"Reading the ledgers,” The
Mississippi Quarterly 07-01-2002
Isaac condemns his—
Grandfather for being such
An awful pervert.
Now it turns out that—
Buck his own father was queer
For a black kid too?
All of a sudden—
Exogamous intruder
Enters the picture.
Then in the ledgers—
Extended lover’s quarrel
Upsetting it all.
The Brownlee entries—
Suggest Buck & Uncle Buddy
Lovers living together.
Living together—
As man and surrogate wife.
What would Father say!!!
As Isaac moves toward—
His grandfather's perfidy
The ledgers open up.
With two paragraphs—
Buck & Buddy not morally
Superior to their father.
The twins have qualms—
About slavery that their
Father didn’t share.
They seem to have done—
What they could at that time
And in that place.
To ameliorate the evil—
Practices of the institution
(More than Isaac does).
But an ugly fly’s—
In the lily-white ointment
Moiling dinge passion.
No divine plan saves—
The cursed McCaslin Family
It’s always tainted!!!
“But the narrative of this
emancipatory impulse
veers towards alternative
and darker implications.”
—Noel Polk & Richard Godden,
"Reading the ledgers,” The
Mississippi Quarterly 07-01-2002
Isaac casts Brownlee—
The whole episode away
Too hot to handle.
This part of his own—
Tainted family history
Starts fumbling bad.
Falling down the stairs—
The whole Emancipation
Story in ruins.
It’s impossible—
To eradicate Slavery
Like Original Sin.
The ledgers point to—
Darker implications and
Impulsive dinge lust.
Buck has the hots for—
The young Percival Brownlee
Was he beautiful?
Was he what Buck wanted—
His marriage to Billy long gone
And dead of any love…
The brothers write it—
All down in the ledgers like
It was just business.
Unavoidable business—
Diurnally advancing pages
Percival the kept boy?
“Read by Isaac as part
of an ongoing conversation
between the two, the entries
suggest that the twins are
"long since past any oral
intercourse" (p. 194).
Faulkner's locution, speaking
quasi-directly to Isaac's
thoughts, puns subversively,
to admit the tongues of lovers
into the speech of brothers.”
—Noel Polk & Richard Godden,
"Reading the ledgers,” The
Mississippi Quarterly 07-01-2002
From "oral intercourse"—
The paragraph moves directly
To the queer “anomaly.”
The "anomaly calling itself—
Percival Brownlee" (p. 195),
an anomaly in several senses.
But most immediately—
In his being the only slave either
of the twins had ever bought.
The ledger entries—
Which follow parenthetically,
Indirectly explain it.
Why Isaac's father—
Bought Brownlee & the
Consequences of the act.
The slave transaction—
Recording the transaction
Talking about it.
“Buddy's reaction to
Buck's purchase of
Percival Brownlee
is a response first
to his twin's
homosexuality and
second to his
purchase of a slave
to satisfy his lusts”
—Noel Polk & Richard Godden,
"Reading the ledgers,” The
Mississippi Quarterly 07-01-2002
It’s less important—
To prove Buck & Buddy were
Homosexual lovers.
But more important—
To know that Isaac believes
They’re both queer brothers.
Homo miscegenators—
Glomming onto a black kid
Making him their slave.
It’s even worse than—
His grandfather’s presumptive
Straight miscegenation…
Queer miscegenation—
And brotherly incest too!!!
Isaac shit his pants.
“And that these beliefs,
conscious or unconscious,
are what drives his renunciation
of the land and of his family
tradition, not his grandfather's
presumptive heterosexual
miscegenation and incest”
—Noel Polk & Richard Godden,
"Reading the ledgers,” The
Mississippi Quarterly 07-01-2002
"Was" and part 4 of—
"The Bear" reveals Buddy's life
As cook & housekeeper.
Even as nagging wife—
Decent poker player and
Such a nice gay" couple"!!!
So Buck got bored—
Big fuckin’ deal it happens
The 7-year itch.
Who can blame Buck then—
His old Civil War buddy
N. B. Forest helped him.
Viola! Young black slave!!!—
A cute Mandingo dreamboat
Can’t plow or pick cotton.
But good in bed tho—
Oral Intercourse Perfecto!!!
“You like ‘em well-hung?”
So Buck bought him fast—
Handsome Percival Brownlee
All 12-inches of him!!!
Isaac almost had—
A hard-attack reading in
The ledger about it.
Suppressing it quickly—
“Jesus christ what if I’m
Fuckin’ queer too?”
“Does dinge turn me on?”—
Isaac closed the ledgers
Deep South funky blues…
"Allknowledgeable
even perhaps far
from readable”
—Noel Polk & Richard Godden,
"Reading the ledgers,” The
Mississippi Quarterly 07-01-2002
What are we readers—
To make of such a subtext
Faulkner be so sly.
No wonder his father—
Called him “Snake-Eyes” after his
Mother’s side of the family.
Faulkner was subtle—
Where did he learn that trick?
Big Easy boyfriends?
Queer undercurrents—
Flow deeply in his Modernist
Mississippi River.
Yoknapatawpha be—
More than just Tallahatchie
Deep in Faulkner’s mind.
He could flow with it—
Like he did with TSATF
Free of publishers.
First Benjy came—
The child idiot voice in him
That had been suppressed.
Then came Quentin—
In love with his sister Caddy
Her muddy panties.
Up in the tree—
Peering into the bedroom
Of death & darkness.
Quentin avatar—
Flashbacks from Harvard
Seancing the Past.
Quentin queer—
For handsome Dalton Ames
On the bridge that day.
Coyly hinted at—
But obviously apparent
To any modern reader.
Sex with Dalton—
Same with Shreve McCannon
Sex and Seancing.
Isn’t that how—
It’s done my dears huh?
Bon the Beautiful nods…
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