William Faulkner wrote I think four novels that took place outside of his fictional Yoknapatawpha County. Others take place in other places but explicitly refer back to the county as well. This is one of those novels. It’s also his first novel, and it’s also one of his few works that takes on the idea of flying, this and his novel Pylon, and a handful of stories. He was fascinating by flying and tried to join the US Army’s flying corps, the British flying corps, and the Canadian Air Force. He was able to join the Canadian Air Force, but records indicate he never received any training. He would sometimes lie about it.
This novel is not expressly about flying but does involve a veteran of the US army who flew in WWI, who has also recently been destroyed by it and seems soon to die. In addition to this figure, we get other returning soldiers, and the dying soldier’s fiance, who otherwise thought he was dead. The novel focuses on the wages of war, and this is where the title of “pay” comes in, as what is owed and what is paid to soldiers. Wages and pay are both double words. You can both give and receive wages and pay, and this novel explores both.
Is it good? Not really. But I think about the early failures of writers who went onto greatness (and Faulkner began pumping out truly great novels in 1929, where he wrote five nearly perfect novels in six or seven years) as something plugging up the works. This one needed to come out to prepare the way for the rest.