Highlights from the Oprah site

I was just fishing around on Oprah's site for Faulkner. Of course, it was an important event for Faulkner scholars when Oprah decided to throw her considerable clout behind the dead Mississippian. But we can't lose sight, or water down, the important work we do.

Here's a passage from the bio posted on her site, by none other than Jay Parini, recent biographer of Faulkner:

What is so special about Faulkner? For a start, he turned what he called his own little "postage stamp" of a county in Mississippi into a mythic place. He called this region Yoknapatawpha County, and all of his important works are set in that mythical kingdom, whose county seat is Jefferson, and which is bounded on the north by the Tallahatchie River and on the south by the Yoknapatawpha River. This fictional county covers roughly 2,400 square miles, and is home to the many families Faulkner writes about in the novels and stories, including the Compsons of The Sound and the Fury, the Bundrens of As I Lay Dying and Joe Christmas in Light in August. The genius of Faulkner was to create a whole universe from local materials, surveying society from the highborn to the low, creating a fictional world by increments, in book after book, so that readers can see a vision unfold in astonishing detail as they progress from story to story. Faulkner's key subject, he said in his Nobel speech, was "the human heart in conflict with itself," and that conflict animates his fiction.

In the end, William Faulkner stands alone, a master of tragic farce, a wild-eyed comedian, a storyteller of the highest order. He not only told his stories; he retold them, revising the tales of Yoknapatawpha County in book after book, as characters appear and reappear, often at different periods of their lives, in different circumstances. Faulkner is one of those writers one lives in, learns to read, and comes to love. He deserved the high praise he received from critics around the world, and his presence in American literature is permanent and inspiring.

Parini knowingly skips over so many problems here that I'm frustrated with him. I suppose we like to admire the guy, but is he joking? What about the fact that Faulkner revised and republished material - changing character names, changing relationships, mis-remembering his own work or making mistakes in consistency? He's a great writer, but he's not God.

There are, however, some great resources on this site, such as a good timeline.

The video lectures are also pretty nifty.

My beef with Bill

I don't want to merely reiterate established facts and theories about Faulkner's life and work. I'd like to work through a few problems that I have with some accounts of his work, and I'd like to bring some of my background in literary regionalism during the period to bear on Faulkner. I think that his work is enormously important to the study of literary regionalism for two different reasons:

1. Faulkner's detractors, especially before WWII and especially critics with a more socialist, "realist" agenda, belittled Faulkner as a mere "regionalist" or local colorist. They cited his use of melodrama and extreme violence as evidence that he was too caught up in sentimentality and shock value. When his reputation was recuperated by critics such as Cleanth Brooks, comparisons were made between Faulkner and Robert Frost, or Faulkner and Thomas Hardy. It was the microcosm/macrocosm argument - if his fiction was about the individual struggling against the larger world, it didn't matter where that individual struggle took place, so they said. And, again and again, references were made to his "language." This is an extremely problematic part of his work and his critical history, and I think that it should be mentioned here too - I might write a book about his "language" some day, but for now let's just notice that there were inconsistencies in the way that the "regionalist" label was used.

2. Faulkner's life and work are deeply entwined in the regionalist tradition. Not only did he read and write about several prominent "local color" writers, he also participated in the so-called "Southern Renaissance." He patterned his material after well-known local colorists such as Albert Pike (as in "The Horse Swap" and how it appears in The Hamlet). He also experimented heavily with form and genre. He crafted his work in ways that work against the traditional structure (and therefore meaning) of the novel. Absalom, Absalom is an experimental novel that plays with multiple modes of narration, telling and re-telling the same events through different voices in an attempt to understand both the meaning of those events and the particular relevance of the speaker to the message.

I think it's important to use the word "voice" here, because I think that Faulkner was obsessed with voice throughout his career. I think that this obsession comes through much of his early work - especially The Sound and the Fury and Absalom, Absalom, but also in As I Lay Dying, Light in August, and Go Down, Moses. By finding a way (or multiple ways) to incorporate multiple voices in his novels, Faulkner succeeded in making the novel less about individual struggle, and more about family, community, and region. I'm not sure how to elaborate this point yet, but I think that trying to explain why the multivocality of Faulkner's work can be considered a formal experiment is a good beginning.

Short Biography of Faulkner

Below is a short biography I wrote of Faulkner for a website:

William Cuthbert Faulkner was born (as Falkner, with no “u” yet) on September 25, 1897 in New Albany, Mississippi. His father, Murry Falkner, was the humble son of a prominent father and grandfather, John Wesley Thompson Falkner and Colonel William Clark Falkner. Faulkner’s great-grandfather, William Clark Falkner, was a well-known Civil War leader, one of the founders of the Gulf & Chicago Railroad, a best-selling author of The White Rose of Memphis and other books, an active political figure who was elected to the Mississippi State Legislature, and a violent man who was acquitted of two murders and was himself murdered by a former business partner. Faulkner’s grandfather, John Wesley Thompson Falkner, was a prominent Oxford banker.

Faulkner spent most of his childhood in Oxford, Mississippi, where his father was employed by the young University of Mississippi. He had three younger brothers, and his parents employed an African-American governess, Caroline Barr, who Faulkner and his family affectionately referred to as Mammy Callie. Faulkner was short, and though he showed some athletic ability, he was too small to be taken seriously as an athlete. Later, when he tried to enlist for service in the “Great War” (World War I), he was denied because of his height.

Faulkner spent considerable time listening to people tell stories, and telling some of his own. He came in contact with Phil Stone, an older Oxford resident who took an interest in Faulkner’s poetic talents and gave him access to a considerable library of European and Classical authors. After dropping out of high school without finishing, Faulkner began to publish verse in a University of Mississippi publication. Another important Oxford contact was Estelle Oldham, a young woman that Faulkner courted until she married Cornell Franklin, a law student, in 1918.

After this disappointment, Faulkner tried to enlist in the US Army and was turned down. He took a train to Connecticut to visit Phil Stone at Yale, where he became interested in military service again. He became a cadet in the Royal Air Force in Canada in June of 1918, and began spelling his name with the “u.” The war ended before he completed training, and Faulkner returned to Oxford wearing his uniform and allowing people to think that he had seen combat. He finally enrolled at the University of Mississippi as a “special student” because of his veteran status, but stayed only a year. He published his first poem in The New Republic, “L’Apres-Midi d’un Faune” in August of 1919.

At this point in his life, Faulkner began traveling, writing poetry, and working at whatever odd jobs he could find. He worked as the postmaster in Oxford for a few years, spent a few months in New York, and published a book of poetry, The Marble Faun, in 1924. He then spent some time in New Orleans with Sherwood Anderson, who became instrumental in the publication of Faulkner’s first book of fiction, Soldier’s Pay, in 1926. He traveled in Europe for a brief period, but he was uncomfortable in Europe among fellow expatriate writers, and returned to Oxford in late 1926. He continued to circulate among friends in New Orleans, Pascagoula (Mississippi), and Oxford. His second novel, Mosquitoes, was published in 1927. Neither his first nor his second novels attracted very much attention.

Faulkner’s third novel, published in 1929 as Sartoris, was the first novel that referred to the fictional county of Yoknapatawpha, and that took place wholly in Mississippi. Faulkner took the advice of Sherwood Anderson to write about this, and would continue to write about this fictional county, often re-using characters and events, for much of the rest of his life.

Faulkner was pleased to discover that his childhood sweetheart, Estelle, had divorced Cornell Franklin. Faulkner and Estelle were married in 1929. He published one of his most famous novels shortly thereafter, The Sound and the Fury, which also took place in Yoknapatawpha County. Faulkner purchased an old Oxford home in 1930, named it Rowan Oak, and took up regular residence there.

Faulkner began working at the University of Mississippi power plant at about this time, where he famously claimed (probably falsely) that he wrote As I Lay Dying over the course of six weeks “without changing a word.” The book was published in 1930. His most scandalous novel, the “potboiler” Sanctuary, was also published that year, and became a motion picture in 1933 as The Story of Temple Drake. Faulkner became a successful short-story writer, and he continued to publish novels on a regular basis, publishing Light in August in 1932, Pylon in 1935, Absalom, Absalom in 1936, The Unvanquished in 1938, The Wild Palms in 1939, The Hamlet in 1940, and Go Down, Moses in 1942. His first daughter, Alabama, was born in 1931 but lived only nine days. His second daughter, Jill, was born in 1933. At this time, Faulkner also began spending part of his year in Hollywood writing screenplays, often without credit, for MGM, Universal, Twentieth-Century Fox, and Warner Brothers. In Hollywood, he begins a long-term affair with Meta Carpenter, that would last fifteen years.

Faulkner was writing Absalom, Absalom in 1935, when his brother Dean died (November 1935). He also appears to have brought the manuscript with him to Hollywood in 1935, and worked on the novel there. His novel Pylon, which is not about Yoknapatawpha, appeared while he was writing Absalom, Absalom. Faulkner would later say (in Faulkner in the University, an extensive collection of his remarks about his novels collected while he was at the University of Virginia) that he wrote Pylon because he was struggling with Absalom, Absalom, and that he needed to “get away” from the latter book. His affair with Meta Carpenter also appears to have begun while he was writing Absalom, Absalom. Faulkner used the title “Dark House” for the manuscript, and changed the title late in composition.

Though Faulkner achieved renown in academic circles, and though some of his books (especially Sanctuary) had some minor sales success, Faulkner earned much of his income from his Hollywood writing and from selling short stories to large national magazines. Faulkner wrote the screenplay for two famous Bogart and Bacall movies, To Have and Have Not and The Big Sleep. But by 1946, almost all of his novels were out of print.

Faulkner’s fortunes changed with The Portable Faulkner, a compilation of stories and novel excerpts edited by Malcolm Cowley. Faulkner’s work began to appear in cheap paperback editions published by the Modern Library, and the reissue of As I Lay Dying and The Sound and the Fury contributed greatly to his rise to prominence. His book Intruder in the Dust became a film shortly after its publication.

Faulkner’s position as “Great American Author” was assured when he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950. He continued to write fiction, though critics suggest that much of his best work was completed by 1942. Several of his books won major awards – his Collected Stories won the National Book Award in 1951, and he won the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award for A Fable in 1955. He was invited to become “author-in-residence” at the University of Virginia in 1956, and eventually became a part of the faculty in 1960.

Faulkner traveled extensively after the Nobel Prize, including trips to Japan, much of Europe, Brazil, Venezuela, and Peru. He became a celebrity and was repeatedly asked to represent the United States at international cultural events by the State Department (such as the International Writer’s Conference in Sao Paulo in 1954). Faulkner spoke out against segregation in Mississippi at a meeting of the Southern Historical Association in 1955. Faulkner was against segregation, but also against federal involvement in Mississippi affairs. Faulkner’s mostly moderate position made him enemies on both sides, including his brother.

After a long career as a writer and public figure, William Faulkner died in July, 1962, of a heart attack.

Faulkner's literary value?

This is a difficult question, and there are many different ways to answer it. Let me try to take the question apart a little bit.

Is Faulkner worth reading? If so, why?

Yes, I think that Faulkner is worth reading. I think that his portrayal of Southern culture has been very important to the world. That's one reason, and perhaps the most obvious and most clear. Millions of people have turned to Faulkner to better understand the South, whether appropriately or not. Another thing that makes Faulkner worth reading is his vast literary influence. Many important writers after Faulkner, like Flannery O'Connor and Cormac McCarthy, have shown clear influence. We can only guess at how extensive his influence really has been. The fact that he has become one of the most frequently studied American authors has made him required college reading for the last fifty years or so, and his influence continues because of this. For himself and his texts - and this is the hardest part to suggest or prove - I think that some of Faulkner's work is beautiful. I really enjoy some passages from The Sound and the Fury and Absalom, Absalom, despite the difficulty of these texts. There are parts of Faulkner that are horrible. But some of his writing is completely original, and some of it is breathtaking. It's not just about challenging yourself with difficult texts. It's about appreciating the way that a careful writer can surprise a reader with images and language.

Is Faulkner a good writer, or a "master"? Does he deserve his canonical status?

It's hard to say no. Faulkner studies have become a deeply entrenched part of American literary scholarship. There are thousands of published scholarly books and essays arguing about his work. It would be impossible to discard this work and omit him from the study of American literature. He might be less fashionable as an object of study than he was before - say in the 60's and 70's - but he still supplies scholars with material for study. His influence on both critics and other writers cannot be ignored, and it would be impossible to exclude him from any appropriate canon of American literature. I must also add that I personally respect and enjoy a great many of his texts, and I have read and studied him extensively because of that interest - though I cannot claim to have innocently discovered him. I began reading his books because a teacher I respected named him as one of our greatest writers.

If Shakespeare, Milton, Chaucer, and Spenser are any indication, Faulkner studies will continue for several hundred years more. I doubt that literary criticism will suddenly cease, or that any particular time will come when people will say, "I think everything has been said about Faulkner - let's move on."

If I had to recommend a book to someone for purposes of reading a good story, I might not mention Faulkner at all. If someone wanted a quality, challenging text that is complicated and not completely innocent, I might point that person toward Light in August or The Hamlet. Some of the short stories are excellent on their own, and I might recommend those. The Sound and the Fury is an important book, but I don't think that everyone should read it. It's pretty frustrating.

More Initial Comments

Let's lay out the basics of Faulkner's work and career:

1. Faulkner was born in Mississippi around the turn of the 20th century. His parents weren't wealthy, but he came from a prosperous family. His grandfather and great-grandfather were well-known attorneys and politicians, and they were active in Mississippi politics.

2. Faulkner wanted to be a soldier, but he didn't want to be a common infantryman. He went to Canada and enlisted in the Royal Air Force, but managed things so that he never actually fought in a battle or engaged the enemy in combat.

3. Faulkner went through a period in his youth where he traveled extensively - Paris for a time, New York, New Orleans, and eventually back to Mississippi.

4. Faulkner started as a poet. He wrote verse for a considerable part of his early career.

5. Faulkner really struggled to make a living as a writer. He had a job, for a time, working for the University of Mississippi, where his father had an important job. After some early successes and some interest from intellectuals, he quit that job and tried to earn a living as a writer. In many ways, he failed. He was given the opportunity to write scripts for Hollywood movies with a regular paycheck, and Faulkner jumped at the opportunity. Some of his best novels were written during this period.

6. Partly because of this struggle, Faulkner constantly wrote different kinds of work - short fiction for the mass market that was meant to be shocking and bloody (Faulkner used the term "potboiler"), and more serious work that was meant to be the kind of "high literature" that he admired in people like Joyce and Proust.

7. Sometimes, this "potboiler" work found its way into his longer, more "serious" fiction. Sanctuary, by far his best seller during his lifetime, was written intentionally as a potboiler. Absalom, Absalom, which contained material almost as shocking, was not intended to be a potboiler - but where were the lines drawn?

8. Faulkner effectively gave up on being a writer in the 40's, and he spent considerable time and effort in Hollywood during this time. This is when he wrote the full screenplays To Have and Have Not and The Big Sleep.

9. Faulkner was persuaded into a Portable Faulkner that helped begin to re-establish him in the postwar (WWII) climate. Malcolm Cowley was an important part of this re-establishment, as was the boom in publishing, and especially paperbacks. Faulkner's Sanctuary was re-issued as a mass market paperback, and sold extensively.

10. Faulkner was talked into writing Intruder in the Dust. It turned out to be a big seller (partly through the influence of Random House, who also secured a movie deal for him), and helped get him the Nobel Prize a short time later.

11. After the Nobel Prize, Faulkner became a celebrity. He was given an honorary post at the University of Virginia, and became something of a museum piece.

12. Faulkner died trying to ride a horse.

I'll write more on this later.

Faulkner and Film

I would like to point out some of the information from the IMDB profile of Faulkner. He spent a considerable part of his productive life writing for Hollywood, including some well-known films like To Have and Have Not, the first Bogart-Bacall flick, and The Big Sleep (based on the Raymond Chandler novel, directed by Howard Hawks, starring Bogart and Bacall again). He spent most of the time working as a hack writer - doing uncredited script work for Hollywood studios.

Opening

I'm thinking about what I can do with this, and I'm liking the idea of spending some time typing out - and thinking about - my research on Faulkner. I'm writing a dissertation on Faulkner, and I'm working on an angle that I hope has not been exhausted yet. Alas, so many have been exhausted!

I'd like to talk about how Faulkner's work relates to issues of regionalism - especially through its use of form. I completed a preliminary examination for doctoral candidacy that focused on issues of regionalism in American literature. I was really smitten with the work of Judith Fetterley and Marjorie Pryse. I'm not sure that it's fashionable anymore, though I admit that I've been known to be a slave to critical fashion at more than one point in my academic career. But my interest is genuine, and I really think that there are quite a few poignant questions about the so-called "ideology of form" that lack adequate answers.

Let me state a few core beliefs to help myself clarify my thinking:

1. I don't like the way that Faulkner, as an author, has not really been allowed to die. Too many critics are still obsessed with determining his intentions. I don't think that's really possible with any author, let alone this enigmatic trickster. But a number of incidents in his publishing career lend themselves to a constant revival. In other words, Faulkner may be dead, but we can't seem to chase away his ghost. Another big problem that has kept us from sticking a fork in the bastard is the way that other people - editors, scholars, publishing folks - have tinkered with his work. An important example is the "corrected text" project undertaken by Noel Polk. We no longer have access to several of the novels in their original published form. In some cases, as in the case of Sartoris, the novel is no longer published because it no longer represents, apparently, the "will of the author." Instead, we have "Flags in the Dust," the unedited version of the novel that was submitted to Faulkner's publishers, and subsequently hacked into the novel Sartoris. Why is this important? This is the novel that launches Yoknapatawpha, that weaves Faulkner's family history into the fabric of the fictional "postage-stamp."

2. The second is related to the first. Faulkner has been used and re-used for political purposes. As Lawrence Schwartz points out at great length, Faulkner criticism has never been isolated from cultural and historical context, and has never been completely objective and innocent. Faulkner's rise to prominence in the Post-WWII era had a great deal to do with the international need for American cultural products that could be said to convey American values and culture. When several critics began to address the "ideologies" - a dangerous word - of Faulkner's texts, a kind of soft dichotomy began. There were critics who continued to address his "language," and critics who tried to address the import of his work. As Wellek and Warren might put it, "intrinsic" and "extrinsic" criticism became sharply divided in the vast body of Faulkner scholarship. This echoes the "culture wars" that were fought in the academy in the Reagan Era, but it isn't so clear that these wars are over yet in the world of Faulkner scholarship.

3. Despite these difficulties, or rather, because they are inescapable and must be dealt with, I like to show appropriate respect for the work of my predecessors. Despite the serious flaws in the politics of the New Critics, several stalwart New Critics such as Cleanth Brooks have made important contributions to Faulkner scholarship. There are few critics who have written as extensively or as incisively about Faulkner as he has. Moreover, I don't wish to turn my attention toward studying the critics alone. While the history and development of American literary scholarship is a fascinating subjecting, I'm not willing or able to discourse intelligently about so vast a subject.

For now, let me break off the discussion at this point. I would like to close by saying that Faulkner scholarship is fascinating because of the cultural importance of the writer. The above difficulties are exactly the reason that Faulkner is himself such an interesting case. I would not want to eliminate the political freight of my predecessors' work. Nor am I silly enough to think that it would be possible to do so.