William Faulkner

[waalkwriter]

Didn't see it, so I might have missed it. Would have been shocked it if it wasn't here. Faulkner is the very pinnacle of genius.

He said it all about the emerging young writers of post-modernist paranoia of Pynchon in his Nobel Prize speech:

Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.

Which by the way is considered the best Nobel Prize speech ever given. It is short, it is literally maybe 1/5th the length of Le Clezio's and perhaps even only a tenth the length of Lessing's speech. But somehow its brilliance and astonishing it affect it had in its time period only serve to mark Faulkner's brilliance. While people in the room couldn't understand him due to his quick mumbling, when the transcript of the speech was read the next day there was an international uproar, and his line, "I believe that mankind will not only endure: he will prevail" would become the most quoted line of any speech in the history of the Nobel prize. Faulkner did in four paragraphs what no other writer has managed to even come close to doing in his platform to the world. Though other lines such as "Until he relearns these things, he will write as though he stood among and watched the end of man" are just as good. If anyone has not read the acceptance speech I beg you to do so as it is an inspiring masterpiece. A colloquial story I have read in Faulkner's biographies is that his fellow winner, the intellectual Bertand Russell, when finding out what was actually said, made a statement to its sheer poetic brilliance.

Though I am not dumb enough, like Newsweek was to do while criticizing Muller's choice as this years laureate, to make the statement that Faulkner's career was reignited by the Nobel, a statement of utter ignorance, cursory fact-checking helps:

For the book, Faulkner contributed a new “Appendix” to The Sound and the Fury, in which he examined both the distant past and the near future of the Compson family as told in the novel. Published in April 1946, The Portable Faulkner would mark the beginning of the resurgence in popular and critical interest in Faulkner’s work. In December, the Modern Library would publish a one-volume edition of The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying, preceded by Faulkner’s “Compson Appendix.” Over the coming years, the Modern Library would continue to re-issue Faulkner’s novels, a practice that continues to this day.

Faulkner is the greatest novelist of the 20th Century and it is undoubted that he is. He wrote not one masterpiece, but he wrote five, The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, Absalom Absalom, and Go Down Moses.

In contrast to the flowery praises of today's winners I find Faulkner's Nobel Citation rather flat: "for his powerful and artistically unique contribution to the modern American novel".

Anyway, I would like to have a good discussion on Faulkner. So I am opening up the board.

[Manuel76]

greatest novelist...best nobel prize speech...well,well...undoubted??

still he's one of my four or five best novelists in the XXth century.

that line from his speech, I never heard about it, but it reminds me last line from the Appendix to Sound and Fury.

I would add another masterpiece: The wild palms (I love that book, both stories) and perhaps Light in August.

Wild Palms, and Sanctuary, too, now that's a creepy character....and the sense of foreboding is pretty overwhelming.....

[Eric]

I've never read any Faulkner. He's an author I've been going to read on countless occasions, but have never got round to it.

Would you start chronologically, or are there "musts" among his works, things that you have to read to be "Faulknerised", so to speak, i.e. mesmerised by the master.

Not knowing much about him, I've always thought of Faulkner as a novelist. And yet I see from the Wiki that he wrote well over a hundred short-stories.

[Peeping Tom]

Originally Posted by Eric

Would you start chronologically, or are there "musts" among his works, things that you have to read to be "Faulknerised", so to speak, i.e. mesmerised by the master.

If there is one work by Faulkner you have to read, it would be The Sound and the Fury, not only because it is one of the best novels of the Twentieth Century, but because it is also a good introduction to Faulkner. The four sections that comprise it (Benjy, Quentin, Jason, and Dilsey) are written in four different styles, each one reflective of the subject/narrator. If you never read anything else by Faulkner, this would be enough. Of his short stories, among my favorites are A Rose for Emily and Barn Burning.

[Howard]

I would agree about The Sound and the Fury, and would also strongly recommend Absalom, Absalom (long and dense, but very rewarding) and Go Down, Moses. Other well known works of his (As I Lay Dying, Light in August and The Wild Palms) I have found less congenial, but they all have their admirers.

[Eric]

Thanks Peeping Tom and Howard. When I get round to reading Faulkner, I'll now know where to start. With an author you've never read, starting can be a confusing business without a Cicero to guide you.

[roaring fish]

Originally Posted by Howard

I would agree about The Sound and the Fury, and would also strongly recommend Absalom, Absalom (long and dense, but very rewarding) and Go Down, Moses. Other well known works of his (As I Lay Dying, Light in August and The Wild Palms) I have found less congenial, but they all have their admirers.

Interesting that you mention Go Down, Moses, because I view Faulkner's short-stories as his most interesting work. Go Down, Moses can be seen as a collection of stories, and The Bear did appear earlier as a stand-alone short story.

I am biased on this as I love short stories. It is said that Faulkner hated short stories even though he wrote a lot of them, but consider this quote from Faulkner:

Yes sir. You can be more careless, you can put more trash in [a novel] and be excused for it. In a short story that’s next to the poem, almost every word has got to be almost exactly right. In the novel you can be careless but in the short story you can’t. I mean by that the good short stories like Chekhov wrote. That’s why I rate that second — it’s because it demands a nearer absolute exactitude. You have less room to be slovenly and careless. There’s less room in it for trash.

The obvious short story collections are Collected, Selected, and Uncollected.

[lionel]

A number of photos I took, plus text I added, of William Faulkner's Oxford and New Albany, and of his great-grandfather, the novelist Colonel William Falkner, at Ripley.

[Clarissa]

Mississippi Plantation Diary That Inspired William Faulkner Discovered - NYTimes.com

[sirena]

I saw once the movie The Sound and the Fury with Yul Brynner as Jason and Joanne Woodward as Miss Quentin. The plot is basicly different from the book, but it is still interesting in its own way.

[waalkwriter]

Well I've bought Absalom, Absalom, it's sitting on my bedside table waiting for me to muster the courage to tackle it. The first few pages were not encouraging.

I knew what I was getting into, Quentin's section of The Sound and the Fury is the most difficult to read, and the neurotic quality makes it almost maddening, now I have an entire novel to read from his perspective.

I personally think the greatest bit of writing ever done was Bengy's section of The Sound and the Fury.

[Manuel76]

Originally Posted by waalkwriter

I personally think the greatest bit of writing ever done was Bengy's section of The Sound and the Fury.

It's great and impressive, but I find it quite uncharacteristic of Faulkner's prose style. Usually he's more like Quentin's section.

And I always felt that Benji's section was great but not totally convincing in one way: sometimes the vocabulary, the style, is too rich for a retarded man from those days. The result is a piece of genius and is supposed to be narrated by a man who doesn't really undertand what happens around him.

But I love that book so much I think it doesn't matter.

[lionel]

There are hours and hours of audio recordings here - Faulkner speaking about and reading his work - from the University of Virginia.

Faulkner at Virginia

BLOG

[waalkwriter]

Thanks for this interesting resource.

[Patrick Murtha]

I am far from a Faulkner expert, and have much of his work left to read. But I can say that I find As I Lay Dying to be an excellent entry point into his world -- funny and moving both.