Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 7, No. 31, June 1946

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According to many European critics the four outstanding contemporary novelists in America are Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, John Dos Passos, and William Faulkner. Only one of these great modern writers submitted a short story to EQMM’s first prize contest — William Faulkner, whose “An Error in Chemistry” was awarded one of the second prizes. It is only fair to say that while in the final balloting William Faulkner failed by a single vote to win the first prize, his story represented, in the opinion of at least two of the judges, “the most distinguished writing” in all 838 manuscripts entered in the first EQMM contest.

But that is not surprising: William Faulkner has never written any prose that did not bear the unmistakable mark of literary distinction. It has been said of Faulkner that in reality he is a split literary personality: that there are two Faulkners, one “a stylized and morbid mystic,” and the other “a sharp and brilliant narrator.” Surely the dichotomy of Faulkner s talent is confirmed in “An Error in Chemistry”: this strange story of almost pure detection is stylized, morbid, mystical, and sharply and brilliantly narrated. It has also been said of Faulkner that his work is in the tradition of Poe and Ambrose Bierce: that it reflects the “technical ingenuity” and horror of those two masters of natively American prose. The kinship of Faulkner, Poe, and Bierce is scalpel-keen critical insight; its fundamental truth grows on you.

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