On one ironic and
one inspiring lesson to take away from the famous conversations.
For two years, between
1957 and 1958, William Faulkner served as the University
of Virginia’s first Writer-in-Residence. He did quite a bit with his time
in Charlottesville, but most famously and significantly he gave a
series of public readings from and lectures on his career and works,
including question and answer sessions with UVA students and members of the
community. A few years ago, my
Dad Stephen Railton and a team of digital scholars and designers produced
an online, digitized archive of
those public conversations, and I encourage any Faulkner fan—or anyone
interested in American literature and culture and history, the craft of
writing, or public performance, among other relevant topics—to spend some time
losing yourself in that archive.
Before you listen
to or read those lectures and conversations, however, it’s important to note
that one of the ironic but central ideas I would take away from them is that
artists cannot be entirely trusted when it comes to talking about their own
works. Time and again, Faulkner says things about his works and career that, at
best, feel drastically over-simplified, and at times feel (to this reader and
FaulknerStudier, at least) blatantly inaccurate. That’s perhaps most true of
his famous
statements about The
Sound and the Fury (1929), a novel that’s already plenty difficult
enough to read and interpret without having to contend with some serious
authorly misdirection. To be more generous to Faulkner, he was making those
statements thirty years after publishing Sound,
and so at the very least we have to treat all of his 1950s perspectives and
ideas as just as another collection of primary texts to analyze, no more
authoritative and certainly no more absolute than the complex works about which
he’s talking.
But if we step
back from the content of the conversations—which again is very interesting and
well worth your time—and consider the basic fact of their existence, it’s hard
not to be hugely inspired. Here was one of America and the world’s most famous
artists, a
Nobel Prize winner toward the end of his legendary career,
coming to a university not just for the recognition or a stipend or the like,
but instead to engage, deeply and extensively, with members of its community—including,
indeed especially, some of its youngest members. That Faulkner did so at all is
extremely impressive; that he did so numerous times over the course of two full
years is unique and striking; that we now have so many ways to access, engage
with, and become part of those conversations is a bit of a 21st
century miracle.
Next Cville story
tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Hometown stories you’d share?
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