The Golden Land is Faulkner’s only short story set in California. Its protagonist is Ira Ewing, a self-made real estate agent who has paid the ultimate price for his wealth: utter moral degradation, both his own and his family’s.
He is an alcoholic who beats his wife and children, while carrying on an affair. He hates his wife, and the feeling is mutual. His son is gay, while his daughter has just become embroiled in a sexual scandal. And as if all that weren’t enough, Ewing exploits the publicity surrounding the scandal to promote his business.
The antithesis of Los Angeles, California, and spectacle is Ira’s mother, Samantha Ewing, who lived a hard and impoverished life in Nebraska—a life, however, that was “moral” and “authentic.” She is the one who sees that her grandchildren lost their way at an early age in this place of loss, this ironically named “golden land.”
In The Golden Land, Faulkner sets two worlds against each other—the world of tradition and that of modernity—from the perspective of morality. The world is complicated, but a short story—even a Faulkner short story—cannot contain too much complexity. Especially when it is written by a man nourished by nostalgia for his home, for the past, for an ideal and idyllic place that never existed.
