FAULKNER: PAPER IN PROGRESS
A paper I will be (should everything go according to plan) coauthoring with another colleague and a professor. Because we’re overachievers, we feel we might have something new to add to the saturated market that is William Faulkner scholarship. I spent all day in the University of Texas Perry-Castaneda Library, browsing ancient collections of Faulkner-related letters, interviews, and analysis because I’m an avid proponent of primary sources.
I’m often discouraged with literature studies because I don’t subscribe to formula “scholarship” per se. In one of his University of Virginia lectures, Faulkner notes that because of the way most writers write–tour de force*–literary analysis is pretty much university-funded navel gazing. Authors don’t always intend the crazy symbolism we tease out of the text. As I Lay Dying is a good example, as Faulkner wrote it in a six-week binge. It’s fair to say he didn’t have much time to work out consciously complex subtext–as a matter of fact, he said as much during his lectures.
*I would like to note here that a lot of Faulkner sources talk about how he considered As I Lay Dying to be a tour de force. The modern interpretation of that phrase is “a great work”, and so more than a few critics have raised eyebrows at the seemingly arrogant comment, but that’s not what Faulkner intended at all. Faulkner spoke French and used this term literally to mean “a feat of strength”, as in: it took a hell of a lot of sweat to write the damn thing. When read in the context of his interviews and lectures, the latter definition is obvious.
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