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VOICE ONE:
I’m Faith Lapidus.
VOICE TWO:
And I’m Steve Ember with People inAmerica in VOA Special English. Today, we finish the story of thewriter William Faulkner. He created an area and filled it withpeople of the American South.
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VOICE ONE:
In nineteen-forty-five, all seventeen books William Faulkner hadwritten by then were not being published. Some of them could not befound even in stores that sold used books.
The critic Malcolm Cowley says, Faulkner’s “early novels had beenpraised too much, usually for the wrong reasons. His later and inmany ways better novels had been criticized or simply not read. “
Even those who liked his books were not always sure what he wastrying to say. Faulkner never explained. And he did not giveinformation about himself. He did not even correct the mistakesothers made when they wrote about him. He did not care how his namewas spelled: with or without a “u. ” He said either way was allright with him.
Once he finished a book he was not concerned about how it waspresented to the public. Sometimes he did not even keep a copy ofhis book. He said, “I think I have written a lot and sent it off tobe printed before I realized strangers might read it. “
VOICE TWO:
In nineteen-forty-six, Malcolm Cowley collected some ofFaulkner’s writings and wrote a report about him. The collectionattempted to show what Faulkner was trying to do, and how eachdifferent book was part of a unified effort.
Cowley agreed that Faulkner was an uneven writer. Yet, he said,the unevenness shows that Faulkner was willing to take risks, toexplore new material, and new ways to talk about it.
In nineteen-twenty-nine, in his novel “Sartoris,” Faulknerpresented almost all the ideas he developed during the rest of hislife. Soon after, he published the book he liked best, “The Soundand the Fury.” It was finished before “Sartoris,” but did not appearuntil six months later.
VOICE ONE:
In talking about “The Sound and the Fury,” Faulkner said he sawin his mind a dirty little girl playing in front of her house. Fromthis small beginning, Faulkner developed a story about the Compsonfamily, told in four different voices. Three of the voices arebrothers: Benjy, who is mentally sick; Quentin, who kills himself,and Jason, a business failure. Each of them for different reasonsmourns the loss of their sister, Caddie. Each has a different pieceof the story.
It is a story of sadness and loss, of the failure of an oldSouthern family to which the brothers belong. It also describes theprivate ideas of the brothers. To do this, Faulkner invents adifferent way of writing for each of them. Only the last part of thenovel is told in the normal way. The other three parts move forwardand back through time and space.
VOICE TWO:
The story also shows how the Compson family seems to cooperate inits failure. In doing so the family destroys what it wants to save.
Quentin, in “The Sound and the Fury,” tries to pressure hissister to say that she is pregnant by him. He finds it better to saythat a brother and sister had sex together than to admit that shehad sex with one of the common town boys of Jefferson.
Another brother, Jason, accuses others of stealing his money andcausing his business to fail. At the same time, he is stealing fromthe daughter of his sister.
Missus Compson, the mother in the family, says of God’s actions:”It can’t be simply to…hurt me. Whoever God is, he would not permitthat. I’m a lady.”
VOICE ONE:
Some of the people Faulknercreates, like Reverend Hightower in “Light in August,” live so muchin the past that they are unable to face the present. Others seem torun from one danger to another, like young Bayard Sartoris, seekinghis own destruction. These people exist, Faulkner says, “in thatdream state in which you run without moving from a terror in whichyou cannot believe, toward a safety in which you have no…[belief].”
As Malcolm Cowley shows, all of Faulkner’s people, black orwhite, act in a similar way. They dig for gold after they have losthope of finding it –like Henry Armstid in the novel, “The Hamlet.”They battle and survive a Mississippi flood for the reward ofreturning to state prison — as the tall man did in the story “OldMan.” They turn and face death at the hands of a mob — like JoeChristmas does in the novel, “Light in August.” They act as if theywill succeed when they know they will fail.
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VOICE TWO:
Faulkner’s next book, “As I Lay Dying,” was published innineteen-thirty. It is similar to “The Sound and the Fury” in theway it is written and in the way it deals with loss. Again Faulkneruses a series of different voices to tell his story. The loss thistime is the death of the family’s mother. The family carries thebody through flood and fire in an effort to get her body toJefferson to be buried.
Neither “As I Lay Dying” nor “The Sound and the Fury” was a greatsuccess. Faulkner did not earn much money from them. He was addingto his earnings by selling short stories and by working from time totime on movies in Hollywood. Then to earn more money, he wrote abook full of sex and violence. He called it “Sanctuary.”
When the book was ready to be published, Faulkner went to NewYork and completely rewrote it. The changes were made after it wasprinted. So Faulkner had to pay for them himself.
VOICE ONE:
The main person in “Sanctuary” is a man called Popeye. He is akind of mechanical man, a man, Faulkner says, without human eyes.Faulkner says he is a person with the depth of pressed metal. ForFaulkner, Popeye represents everything that is wrong with modernsociety and its concern with economic capitalism.
Popeye is a criminal, a man who “made money and had nothing hecould do with it, spend it for. ” He knows that alcohol will killhim like poison. He has no friends. He has never known a woman.
In later books he appears as a member of the Snopes family. TheSnopes are a group of killers and barn burners. They fear nothing,except nature. They love no one, except themselves. They cheateveryone, even the devil. They live in a private land withoutmorals. Yet Flem Snopes ends as the president of the bank inJefferson.
Like Popeye, they gain the ownership and use of things, but theynever really have them. Flem Snopes marries into a powerful familybut his wife does not even have a name for him. She calls him “thatman. “
Faulkner says that nothing can be had without love. Love is theopposite of the desire for power. A person in one of Faulkner’sstories says, “God created man, and he created the world for him tolive in. And…He created the kind of world he would have wanted tolive in if he had been a man. “
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VOICE TWO:
“Light in August” starts with the search by a woman, Lena Grove,for the man who promised to marry her. The story is also about twopeople who do not fit with other people. They are a black man namedJoe Christmas, and a former minister John Hightower, who has losthis belief in God. Faulkner ties the three levels of individualpsychology, social history, and tragedy into a whole.
In nineteen-thirty-six, Faulkner followed “Light in August” with”Absalom, Absalom.” Many consider this his best novel. It is thestory of Joseph Sutpen, who wants to start a famous Southern familyafter America’s Civil War. It is told by four speakers, each tryingto discover what the story means. The reader sees how the storychanges with each telling, and that the “meanings” are created byindividuals. He finds that creating stories is the way a human beingfinds meaning. Thus, “Absalom, Absalom” is also about itself, as awork of the mind of man.
VOICE ONE:
Faulkner’s great writing days were over by the end of World WarTwo. Near the end of his life, Faulkner received many honors for hiswriting. The last, and best honor, was the Nobel Prize forLiterature in nineteen-fifty.
In a speech accepting the award, Faulkner spoke to young writers.It was a time of great fears about the atomic bomb. Faulkner saidthat he refused to accept the end of the human race. He said hebelieved that man will not only survive, he will rule. “Man isimmortal,” he said, “because he has a soul, a spirit capable ofcompassion, sacrifice and endurance. The writer’s duty is to writeabout these things. “
William Faulkner died of a heart attack in nineteen-sixty-two. Hewas sixty-five years old.
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VOICE TWO:
This Special English program was written by Richard Thorman andproduced by Lawan Davis. I’m Steve Ember.
VOICE ONE:
And I’m Faith Lapidus. Join us again next week for People inAmerica in VOA Special English.
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