Death Drag

by William Faulkner

Genres: Short Stories

Unknown Binding

Published January 1, 1932

About the author

William Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer. He is best known for his novels and short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, a stand-in for Lafayette County where he spent most of his life. A Nobel laureate, Faulkner is one of the most celebrated writers of American literature and often is considered the greatest writer of Southern literature.
Faulkner was born in New Albany, Mississippi, and raised in Oxford, Mississippi. During World War I, he joined the Royal Canadian Air Force, but did not serve in combat. Returning to Oxford, he attended the University of Mississippi for three semesters before dropping out. He moved to New Orleans, where he wrote his first novel Soldiers' Pay (1925). He went back to Oxford and wrote Sartoris (1927), his first work set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County. In 1929, he published The Sound and the Fury. The following year, he wrote As I Lay Dying. Later that decade, he wrote Light in August, Absalom, Absalom! and The Wild Palms. He also worked as a screenwriter, contributing to Howard Hawks's To Have and Have Not and The Big Sleep, adapted from Raymond Chandler's novel. The former film, adapted from Ernest Hemingway's novel, is the only film with contributions by two Nobel laureates.
Faulkner's reputation grew following publication of Malcolm Cowley's The Portable Faulkner, and he was awarded the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature for "his powerful and unique contribution to the modern American novel." He is the only Mississippi-born Nobel laureate. Two of his works, A Fable (1954) and The Reivers (1962), won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Faulkner died from a heart attack on July 6, 1962, following a fall from his horse the month before. Ralph Ellison called him "the greatest artist the South has produced".

Reviews

[Derek · Rating 3 out of 5]

I feel as if Faulkner might have benefited from time (more time?) reading Chekhov. But wouldn’t everybody?

[Brian Skinner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Death Drag is an airplane trick . This story tells about two men performing it by dropping a ladder from the plane so the guy on top of a car can ge onto it. There is a mishap but that is not really the best part of the story. The very last paragraph is the punchline.

[Sierra Mason · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5⭐️

[Anthony · Rating 4 out of 5]

A trio of barnstormers fly into town and drum up business to put on an airshow for the residents with their breathtaking stunt known as the Death Drag.