I've read about half his books, I've yet to understand his popularity, and I'm sure what I have to say has been said before, but it is simply my opinion, or view of a great writer of the past, and so I will leave it with that, and on with my dumfounded-ness on why is he so renowned. He started writing 'Requiem for a Nun,' in l933, and it was if not his last book close to it when he died. It took I'd say, a long time to finish it, and it was his worse book by most peoples opinions who have read him well. Like myself, I see in a lot of the books I've read of his, he is a certain character within the book. This is not unusual; I find this a lot with Mary Renault also, well, at least with most of her books you can place her and her girlfriend in them. She switched over the Greek for obvious reasons, being a lesbian; it was easier for her to tolerate I think. She was a marvelous writer to say the least. But back to Faulkner; he was a Horney man if anything, he was going with three women at the same time: Meta, Joan and Else. He liked all the cities I liked, London, Paris and New York City. So he liked to travel, and was in the Military, and a pilot. I do think he'd had liked to be healthier, but it was a set back in life for him I think. Incidentally, I think he was Quentin Compson, Thomas Sutpen, Joe Christmas, Gavin Stevens in his books, and perhaps he was one of the Snopes; I hope I spelled all the names right, I sent my Faulkner books to Lima, Peru. All this is fine, but what made him so special, I'll never really know, but I have read his letters, and this and that (always asking for money in them); and I just can't figure it out. I do believe his Great grand-father, in the Military, Colonel Clark, was kind of his hero, a paternal hero, as my grand-father was who brought me up, so we have some things in common. I think he had a relationship with a black slave girl, and thus, William always knew this, to the point of reinforcing it in his writings, as if he was himself having the gene inside of him. He implies this number of times in his books of course, to reinforce the already known alleged, position. I know he changed his name from Falkner, to Faulkner also, but sure why, yet he did and that is that I suppose. He thought college was a waist of time, and went for a very short period of time, he wanted to live and write, and whore around I think; and do what I did best or 20-years: drink, drink, and drink more. That is perhaps why he got Alzheimer's disease syndrome in later years; or so it has been said somewhere along my many articles I've read in the past ten-years on him. Now her are my statements on why I'm so puzzled: He lied unto himself, making himself what he was not, into what he wanted to become and achieved it, this was quite a feat. I mean, it took 20-years for people to learn how to read this guy, I'm still learning, after ten. He is not by any means easy to read. Literarily, he was off balance in "Fable", he could never pull it together. And again, "Requiem..." I find lacking in readability. And in "Intruder..." his speeches are like sermons, boring. But he made it; got the Nobel Prize, I think it was in l951. Here was a man whom transcended his dreams making them reality; reality, he really did. Amazingly, Faulkner, like most of us was shaped by his entrainment, of the Deep South. He identified with the southern patrician, and he clung to it in his books, making his own world you might say. He lied about his past, to create an image for himself of the present; no easy conquest. Like me, and many writers, he had to stand still in able to write, like D.H. Lawrence, and Yeats. My lovely Peruvian wife is kind, in allowing that for me; I mean, she is in bed now, and it is 2:28 AM, and I am writing this. She would prefer me to be in bed with her, but like Faulkner, the world for me needs to stand still to write, and right now it is. Goodnight! |
