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VOICE ONE:
I’m Faith Lapidus.
VOICE TWO:
And I’m Steve Ember with People in America in VOA SpecialEnglish. Today, we begin the story of the life of a famous Southernwriter, William Faulkner. He wrote about an imaginary place anddescribed changes in the American South.
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VOICE ONE:
William Faulkner was born at the end of the nineteenth century.It was a time when there were two Souths in the United States. Thefirst was the South whose beliefs had existed from before theAmerican Civil War which began in eighteen sixty-one. This South didnot question rules, even when those rules did not satisfy humanneeds. It was a South filled with injustice for black people. Itheld the seeds of its own destruction.
The other South was a land without any beliefs. It was a placewhere success was measured by self-interest. This was a South whereeach person had lost his place in the group. It was a place wherepeople owned things that they did not know how to use.
Faulkner saw that the old beliefswere not right or even worth believing. And he saw that they couldnot provide justice because they were based on slavery. Yet he feltthat even with their lies and half truths the old beliefs werebetter than the moral emptiness of the modern South.
VOICE TWO:
In Faulkner’s story called “The Bear” a group of men are talkingafter the day’s hunt. One man reads from a poem by the Englishwriter, John Keats:
“‘She cannot fade, though thou has not thy bliss, Forever wiltthou love, and she be fair. ‘
“He’s talking about a girl,” one man says.
The other answers, ‘He was talking about truth. Truth is one. Itdoesn’t change. It covers all things which touch the heart — honorand pity and justice and courage and love. Do you see now. ‘”
The American writer, Robert Penn Warren says about Faulkner, “Theimportant thing is the presence of the idea of truth. It covers allthings that involve the heart and define the effort of man to riseabove the mechanical process of life. “
VOICE ONE:
Faulkner has been accused of looking back to a time when life wasbetter. Yet, he believes that truth belongs to all times. But it isfound most often in the people who stand outside what he calls “theloud world. “
One of the people in his story “Delta Autumn” says, “There aregood men everywhere, at all times. “
Faulkner’s great-grandfather accepted the old beliefs. He was oneof the men who had helped build the South, but his time was gone.Now money had replaced the old order of honor. What Faulkner saw wasthat there could be no order at all, no idea of doing what is right,in a world that measured success in terms of money.
VOICE TWO:
This is the changing South that Faulkner describes in the area hecreated. He named it Yoknapatawpha County. He describes it as in thenorthern part of the state of Mississippi. It lies between sandhills covered with pine trees and rich farmland near the MississippiRiver. It has fifteen-thousand-six-hundred-eleven people, living onalmost four-thousand square kilometers. Its central city isJefferson, where the storekeepers, mechanics, and professional menlive.
The rest of the people of Yoknapatawpha County are farmers or menwho cut trees. Their only crops are wood and cotton. A few live inbig farmhouses, left from an earlier time. Most of them do not evenown the land they farm.
The critic Malcolm Cowley says, “Others might say that Faulknerwas not so much writing stories for the public as telling them tohimself. It is what a lonely child might do, or a great writer. “
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VOICE ONE:
William Faulkner was born in New Albany, Mississippi, ineighteen-ninety-seven. His father worked for the railroad. William’sgreat-grandfather had built it. His grandfather owned it. When thegrandfather decided to sell the railroad, William’s father moved hisfamily thirty-five miles west to the city of Oxford.
Growing up in Oxford, William Faulkner heard stories of the pastfrom his grandmother and from a black woman who worked for hisfamily. He heard more stories from old men in front of thecourthouse, and from poor farmers sitting in front of a countrystore.
You learn the stories, Faulkner says, without speech somehow fromhaving been born and living beside them, with them, as children willand do.
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Faulkner was a good student. Yet by the time he was fifteen hehad left school. Except for a year at the University of Mississippiat the end of World War One, that was the last of his officialeducation.
He took a number of jobs in Oxford, but did not stay with any ofthem. He began to think that he was a writer. Then innineteen-eighteen the woman he loved married another man. Faulknerleft Mississippi and joined the British Royal Flying Corps. He wassent to Canada to train to fight in World War One.
The war ended before he could be sent to Europe. He returned toOxford, walking with difficulty because of what he said was a “warwound. “
VOICE ONE:
At home Faulkner again moved from one job to the next. He wrotebad poetry, drew pictures that looked like other men’s pictures, andwrote uninteresting stories. A book of his poetry, The Marble Faun,was published in nineteen-twenty-four.
A year later he went to theSouthern city of New Orleans, Louisiana. There he met the Americanwriter, Sherwood Anderson. They became friends. Anderson toldFaulkner to develop his own way of writing, and to use material fromhis own part of the country. He also told Faulkner he would find apublisher for the novel Faulkner was writing. But Anderson also toldFaulkner that he would not read the book.
VOICE TWO:
The book was called “Soldier’s Pay.” It would not be rememberedtoday if it were not for Faulkner’s later work. The same could besaid of Faulkner’s next book, “Mosquitoes.”
Money from these books made it possible for him to travel toEurope. He educated himself by reading a large number of modernwriters. Among them was the Irish writer James Joyce. From him,Faulkner learned to write about people’s inner thoughts. He alsoread the books of the Austrian doctor, Sigmund Freud. From him,Faulkner learned some of the reasons people act in the strange waythey often do.
Instead of remaining in Paris, as many American writers did,Faulkner returned to Mississippi and began his serious writing. “Iwas trying,” he said, “to put the history of mankind in onesentence. ” Later he said, “I am still trying to do it, but now Iwant to put it all on the head of a pin. ” He created YoknapatawphaCounty and its people, and gave them a meaning far beyond theirplace and lives.
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VOICE ONE:
In nineteen-twenty-nine Faulkner married Estelle Oldham, thewoman he had loved since they were in school together. Her earliermarriage had failed. She had returned to Oxford with her twochildren.
They bought an old ruined house and began the costly work ofrepairing it. Faulkner also took on the job of supporting the restof his family. His letters from this time on are often full of talkabout what he must do to support his family and to continue therepairs to his house.
VOICE TWO:
Faulkner’s next book, “Sartoris,” presents almost all the ideasthat he develops during the rest of his life. First, however, thebook Faulkner wrote had to be cut by about twenty-five percent.
Faulkner resisted. He said, if you grow a vegetable, you can cutit to look like something else, but it will be dead. Yet, whenFaulkner read the book after his editor cut it, he approved. He evencooperated in more re-shaping of the book.
In “Sartoris,” Faulkner found his subject, his voice, and hisarea. He writes about the connection between an important Southernfamily and the local community. He describes how the Sartoris familyseems to help in its own destruction.
VOICE ONE:
In the next seven years, between nineteen-twenty-nine andnineteen-thirty-six, he seemed to re-invent the novel with everybook he wrote. “Get it down,” he said. “Take chances. It may be bad,but that’s the only way you can do anything good. “
At that time, most novels about the South described a land thatnever existed. After Faulkner, few northerners were brave enough towrite about a South they did not know. And no serious Southernwriter was willing to describe a South that did not exist.
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VOICE TWO:
This program was written by Richard Thorman. It was produced byLawan Davis. I’m Steve Ember.
VOICE ONE:
And I’m Faith Lapidus. Join us again next week for the rest ofthe story about William Faulkner on People in America in VOA SpecialEnglish.
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