William Faulkner
Fumo

Okay then; you read "Faulkner" and came to this page. Admit it.
But more importantly, you read "Faulkner", then "Greg*89*, and you managed to offset your displeasure towards the second with fascination for the first, and you clicked on the review.
You know what? You did well because "Smoke" by Faulkner is a really great story. And I’m not that bad either.

Even though it was written and published in 1932, it first appeared in the April issue of "Harper's", "Smoke" is not steeped in the same experimental style that characterized his major works, and, which were coming to light during that same period.
It is probably the offspring of both the need to write something that was marketable and Faulkner's passion for hard boiled, detective, and crime stories.
"Smoke" indeed follows the classic structure of detective stories, where the resolution of the plot happens only at the end, with the discovery of the murderer, and where a good piece of the narrative is used to show us the path to find the culprit.

"Smoke", here in the "Short Stories" edition by Espresso (2009 series), can be found in "Six Mystery Stories" published by Einaudi in 2000.

The narrative voice is internally focused within the story and tells us about the case of old Anselm's inheritance, "a violent man", who dies in unclear circumstances.
His two sons are suspected, both having left home due to the difficult coexistence with their father.
This is the plot of the story, which for Faulkner is yet another pretext to narrate the unknown forces that have dominated man from the deepest recesses of time and the unconscious.
The core of the story is nothing more than greed and ignorance, here personified in a character, along with the age-old tensions that can erupt between father and sons. The plot and the story themselves, the developments, remain in the background.

Faulkner does not make us regret his choice because with a powerful zoom he manages to succinctly render the spiteful relationship between Anselm Holland and his junior son, and strikes us with his ability to make the hatred running between the two authentic.
Without having to resort to explanations or extra words. Faulkner knows there is no need because the more futile the reasons for so many quarrels appear (the paying of taxes, for example), the more tangible this hatred becomes.
Leaving us fascinated by the human relationships he weaves more than by Gavin Stevens' grandiloquent speeches, the lawyer turned investigator.