FAULKNER did not at all mind speaking out about the world in which he lived. At one time or another he complained of many features of our American life style: of our haste, of our activism—though we all said that we approved of culture, we couldn't find the time to read a book or listen to music or look at a picture—of our commercialism, of business so often pursued merely for the sake of business, of our tendency to reduce nearly all human relations to the cash nexus, of our huckstering salesmanship, and of the value we placed on respectability. One of the characters in "The Wild Palms," Harry Wilbourne, makes a notable comment on the subject of respectability. He tells a friend that it is idleness that breeds all of America's real virtues, virtues such as "contemplation, equableness, laziness, letting other people alone," whereas it is such prime virtues as thrift and independence that breed all the special modern vices, which are "fanaticism, smugness, meddling, fear, and worst of all, respectability."

Closely allied to this fear of what your neighbors may think of you is something that sounds like its direct opposite: your own nagging desire to know the worst about your neighbor— the wish to find out all about his private life—and a willingness, if necessary, to violate his privacy.