The Last Day: The Wild Palms

In the best way possible, it was the same thing every day.

Yesterday's final day of the summer Faulkner class at Politics & Prose--and the last day of discussing his nuanced 1939 novel, The Wild Palms--was both an ending and a beginning. There was the usual engagement, energy, enthusiasm--even when not everyone liked it, but they were at least eager to discuss it. We also clarified some of the links between the two separate stories, and there was a slight "aha" moment when I noted the most direct (albeit implied) link between the stories: the protagonist of each winds up in the same place, Mississippi State Penitentiary in Parchman, by summer 1938. (With the two stories of a novel set 10 years apart, the links are nearly always implied or symbolic.)

We discussed whether the Harry and Charlotte characters in "The Wild Palms" story--pretty melodramatic by design--have desire, lust, love, or "Love" between them.  (They're essentially like teenagers who think they're in "love," one of the students remarked.) This story also shows Faulkner being aware of other writers and the larger culture--such as a handful of references to Sherwood Anderson and Ernest Hemingway. For example, there is playful this nod to A Farewell to Arms:

"These doctors and nurses....What a fellow hears about hospitals. I wonder if there's as much laying goes on in them as you hear about."

"No," Wilbourne said. "There never is any place."

"That's so. But you think of a place like a hospital. All full of beds every which way you turn....And after all doctors and nurses are men and women."

This is part of the more modern awareness Faulkner shows in the story, with a dash of humor to balance out the melodrama.

The tall convict in the "Old Man" story, whether a misogynist or simply terrified of women (as another student said), seemed the most compelling character in the novel. He's innocent and honest (almost to the point of naivete) and has a strong sense of duty. A lot of the story's humor comes from his naive honesty, such as when he--an involuntarily escaped convict--voluntarily surrenders:

"Yonder's your boat, and here's the woman. But I never did find that bastard on the cottonhouse."

At this point, he's come to the end of a long journey which started with his being charged to rescue a woman (pregnant, though he didn't know it at first) in a tree and a man stuck on a cottonhouse during the great Mississippi River flood of 1927. Ironically, this 'escaped' prisoner, who had all the freedom he wanted, chooses to return to the structured routine of prison.

Our conversations about the books were always enlightening and entertaining. By the end, the majority of the class felt Light in August was the most Faulknerian of our three novels. I pretty much agree, though As I Lay Dying seems equally, if a little differently, Faulknerian.

Here's hoping for more of the same thing in the fall class, when we tackle Go Down, Moses, The Mansion, and The Reivers.

http://www.politics-prose.com/william-faulkner-later-works-2

A little self-promotion....

....hopefully not of the shameless, self-indulgent variety.

In March, I gave a talk at the Library of Congress, sponsored by the Humanities & Social Sciences Division. The subject was my recent book, Faulkner and Hemingway: Biography of a Literary Rivalry. I discussed, among other things, the letters the authors exchanged in mid-1947 after Faulkner's public remark about Hemingway's lack of artistic courage.

The webcast is now available via YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMMbj1JdXhI 


One of the most fulfilling parts of this project was examining Hemingway's papers, which are housed in Boston at the Kennedy Presidential Library. I remember looking through folders containing hundreds of letters, always scanning for a single word: "Faulkner." Though the two authors never had a social relationship, they were very aware of each other psychologically.

Our next book, Faulkner's The Wild Palms, shows him having some fun with Hemingway's name and writings, including a "hemingwaves" pun and riffs on A Farewell to Arms.

A Day of Links

Another class (Light in August, Day 1), another rich conversation.

Today, though, I'm in more of a link-sharing frame of mind. Here are some critical and biographical works that can help unpack some of Light in August. All should be available via GoogleBooks, the library, and/or interlibrary loan:

David Minter, William Faulkner: His Life and Work, Chap. 6 pgs. 129-32
Joseph Blotner, Faulkner, Chap. 32 pgs. 299-312
Daniel Singal, William Faulkner: The Making of a Modernist, Chap. 7
Jay Parini, One Matchless Time, Chap. 6 pgs. 178-83
Michael Millgate, ed., New Essays on Light in August


Apropos of our discussion of the racial tensions and ambiguities of Light in August is this recent New York Times piece on Absalom, Absalom!:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/01/magazine/how-william-faulkner-tackled-race-and-freed-the-south-from-itself.html?_r=1


I'm also pleased to announce that I'll be teaching another class at Politics & Prose in the fall, beginning Thursday September 13. This one will concentrate on three later works: Go Down, Moses (1942), The Mansion (1959), and The Reivers (1962):

http://www.politics-prose.com/william-faulkner-later-works-0

I'm eager to take another trip to Yoknapatawpha with another group of students.

Round 2: The Fall

I'm very happy to announce that I'll be teaching another Faulkner class at Politics & Prose this fall, beginning Thursday September 13.

This course will look at three works spanning 1942-1962: Go Down, Moses; The Mansion; and his final novel, The Reivers.

For more information and registration, see:
http://www.politics-prose.com/william-faulkner-later-works-0


I'm looking forward to what should be another great experience.

Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes.

Day two of As I Lay Dying felt as strong and lively as the first day. We moved through the more eventful second half of the novel, reading about the flood, fire, and continued struggles and absurdity of the Bundren family—including Cash’s broken leg (fixed with cement!?), Addie's postmortem reflections, and Darl’s mental unraveling. I was again very pleased and heartened to work with engaged, intelligent adults who are eager to discuss what they’ve read.

Early on, we paid a lot of attention to the last “Darl” chapter, when he’s become fully unhinged and awaits the train ride to the mental asylum in Jackson, Mississippi. He is “Darl,” “he,” and “I” to himself at this point:

Darl has gone to Jackson. They put him on the train, laughing, down the long car laughing, the heads turning like the heads of owls when he passed. “What are you laughing at?” I said.

Moving, emotional, and a little troubling. Perhaps more so are Darl’s last words in this chapter:

Darl is our brother, our brother Darl. Our brother Darl in a cage in Jackson where, his grimed hands lying light in the quiet interstices, looking out he foams.

            “Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes.”

When I read (or reread) this chapter, I’m always struck by how much Darl has unraveled here—in part because of his mother’s death, in part because of the arduous journey he’s just completed. Jewel, I think, is the most important narrator for the way he encapsulates the family’s many dysfunctions, but this final “Darl” chapter seems one of the most poignant. Is there an Early Darl and a Late Darl, or just one emotionally complex and dynamic character?

Beyond Darl: One student brought up a good point about the lack of anger/censure against the Vardaman character for (albeit unintentionally) boring holes into his dead mother’s face. In his confused grief, he thinks she's alive and needs to breathe in the coffin. This reader vocalized what many of the novel’s readers may feel—that is, why a lot of the Bundren characters seem to accept (or be silenced by) some of the more absurd events of the novel.

With many writers but especially Faulkner, treating a book as a nonlinear story to be read, reread, and reviewed is the best strategy. How, I posed to the class, can we reconsider the early Darl chapters in light of what we learn about his mental instability later? Nabokov may have said it best: "Curiously, one cannot read a book; one can only reread it." In the case of As I Lay Dying, this strong, intelligent group should gain even more by rereading our first book.

This kind of rereading strategy will help them with our next novel, the much more sweeping and complicated Light in August. 

Faulkner on Film: HBO and James Franco

This isn't really new information, but apparently Faulkner's works will be (or are being...) adapted for numerous films:

HBO (via David Milch of Deadwood and NYPD Blue fame): http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/30/faulkner-hbo_n_1121501.html

James Franco: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/03/james-franco-set-to-write-and-direct-faulkners-as-i-lay-dying-direct-mccarthy-adaptation_n_803791.html

My hopes are high for both of these--although Faulkner's works can be pretty resistant to filming for a broad audience. Franco (despite being a bit quirky and "celebrity") gave a great performance in Milk and (from what I've heard) 127 Hours. I'm wondering how he'll handle the interiority and free indirect discourse of As I Lay Dying's 15 narrators. I also find myself wondering who'll be cast in the roles. Maybe Hailee Steinfeld (of the recent remake True Grit) could be Dewey Dell.

The Faulkner film I know the most is the 1969 version of The Reivers with Steve McQueen. It had flaws and strengths, as many adaptations do.

Let's think about it: What 1 Faulkner work would you most like to see adapted into a film?

Doctorow on As I Lay Dying

An excerpt from the novelist E.L. Doctorow's recent reflections on Faulkner and As I Lay Dying (NYRB, May 24, 2012):


Faulkner had never lived as rarefied an existence as Hemingway, a man who organized his life around pursuits—hunting, fishing, writing, war reporting. Faulkner’s life was messier, less focused, a struggle from the beginning to make enough money to survive: he was a school dropout, and worked at various jobs—postmaster, bookstore clerk—and he held down the midnight shift in a coal-fired power plant, where, as it happened, he wrote most of As I Lay Dying. He was an air cadet in Toronto when World War I ended and unlike Hemingway had to pretend to the combat experience that had eluded him. He wrote poetry before he ever considered fiction, fell in love with a woman who married someone else, bought a house in some disrepair and did all the renovations himself, lost his brother to an airplane accident for which he felt responsible, and became a heavy drinker presumably to deal with the intensity of his writing life.

Some of this hits home for me, because I've written a book about the relationship-rivalry between Faulkner and Hemingway. Both writers, to some degree, had lives that were messy and unfocused--though for different reasons.

Doctorow's take on As I Lay Dying is compelling. We could think a lot of how courage is explored in the novel--especially with Jewel and Addie Bundren.

The link to the full story (available only to NYRB subscribers):
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/may/24/faulkner-as-i-lay-dying/