Debts of Honor, Narrative Authority, and Southern Manhood in “Knight’s Gambit”

Abstract

Abstract: This essay considers how a particular trace of Faulkner’s 1942 short-story draft of “Knight’s Gambit,” which he failed to place in any mass-market magazine, clarifies the stakes of his final 1949 novella with the same title. In the draft, the key motive for Max Harriss’s attempted murder of Gualdes (Gualdres in the published version) involves the repayment of a gambling debt. In revising, Faulkner recognized the weakness of the original motive. But while the novella completely changes Max’s motive, it does not erase male gambling debts as much as it displaces them throughout the narrative. While chess is the central metaphor in “Knight’s Gambit,” poker is nevertheless a crucial element in Gavin Stevens’ mentoring of his nephew, Chick Mallison. Learning the complementary narrative structures of chess (gambits) and poker (gambling), Chick achieves something unusual in the Faulkner canon: a young white Southern male’s successful movement into manhood.