I consider myself fully Southern; East Texas, particularly Southeast Texas, identifies a lot more with LA than it does NM or OK (it probably doesn't hurt that the bulk of it traces its roots to TN). I understand quite well that Southern tradition is more than antiquated customs and brutal laws (that was my point; I did reference a few minor examples, after all ) but I never get the sense FAULKNER does, which is as perplexing as it is disappointing. I'm unabashedly Southern because I know well there is much worthy of honor there, that Southern honor and gentility has substance despite a long period with rather large clay feet that still endures in places. I'm just disappointed that Faulkner doesn't mention any of the virtuous aspects of the South; I have Yankees to tell me what's WRONG with it if I'm too blind to see for myself.

I'm well aware; where does that nobility manifest in Faulkners stories? I haven't read all his work, by far, but the characters in those I have read seem long on nostalgic denial and false pride but short on anything noble. The closest thing I've seen to that are the occasional characters who retain some stoic dignity as everything they value collapses around them, but for every one of those there's a jealous murderer or bigoted arsonist who'll demand any price of others to avoid facing reality.

The Faulkner I recall reading is The Sound and the Fury, A Rose for Emily and Barn Burning, but I can't recall much that's hopeful or aspiring in any of those three works, not legitimately so. Insisting "the South shall rise again!" is hopeful enough, but when it means restoring the antebellum Souths faded glory it's just the false hope of escapist denial. The little aspiration I do see consists of the changing social mores you referenced, but involve turning ones back on the good as well as the bad in Southern heritage. "Decay is much more than a person or home mouldering into dust", whether it's the Snopeses or some other founders representative the only way forward is a clean break with and disregard for the past and those who built Southern society, not because the built imperfectly, but because their building was actually devoid of virtue. Some want to abandon vices of the past, and some to call them virtues and relive them, but I've never seen a Faulkner character celebrate a bona fide Southern virtue. If that's its basis it's no surprise the change Faulkner sensed in the 20th Century South has largely yet to materialize.

Again, that's my complaint: You don't have to convince ME the South has many laudable qualities, but Faulkner seems a harder sell.