Discussed in this essay:

The Saddest Words: William Faulkner’s Civil War, by Michael Gorra. Liveright. 448 pages. $29.95.

William Faulkner’s short story “Dry September” is about a lynching in Mississippi. But we never see the white woman make the accusation. We never see the black man dragged into the woods and hanged. What we see are the prelude and the aftermath. First there is an argument in a white barbershop over whether the accused is guilty and whether he should be lynched. Nobody on either side knows the precise nature of the allegation. There is a description…