william 'bill' faulkner



i can't remember my age when i learned to read.  i was no prodigy by any means.  but i feel like i've always been reading, & loving, the text & the sound of words.  of course, i'm a natural idiot.  that is not self-deprecation.  really, i'm a happy dope.  & not good at much.  but i love language.  even languages i don't understand.  so if there is a writer/artists/musician i'm interested in i will watch/listen usually via youtube in their language even without subtitles.  should i miss definitions of the words is enhanced by my pleasure in hearing their languages.

which brings me to this short documentary about, & starring, william faulkner.  & tho i've been reading texts for as long as i can remember i really didn't become literate until my late teens/early 20s.  my love of literature, particularly poetry, was gaining momentum & as my wanderlust took me to various colleges i did little academic work.  i spent most of my time in these schools' libraries making discovery after discovery.  william faulkner was my man at that time.  & as i read his novels & stories i was unable to parse their dense structures.  i was enthralled to their music & structures.  faulkner's prose was like something i had never seen/heard.  he was like an alien from another planet.

of course a bit later i discovered the great 20th century modernists like gertrude stein & james joyce.  still, however, faulkner was, to me, sui generis.  how did this mortal human being come to his gifts?  so i read biographies, several of them, & i discovered he was a high school drop out who earned an f in english.  he was also thought of as a bum to his neighbors in oxford, mississippi because of his bohemian airs they called him 'count no'count'.  still, these don't explain the art.  how could it?  finally, i've come to subscribe to faulkner's belief that if he didn't write his novels someone would have.  & if you don't have nothing to say, break the damn pencil.

& yet, for what it is worth, we have technology to preserve the voice & images of a person.  so when i was doing my perambulations on one campus or another i discovered that the library had a media center.  in that center were tapes of readings.  i heard richard hugo [another early favorite of mine], james wright, charles simic, miroslav holub, &, ta da!, william faulkner reciting his nobel speech prize.  man!  finally i was able to hear the great writer's voice.  that was something special.

it is special.  we are lucky that we can read, but via technology, watch & hear, our favorite artists.  & in all those faulkner bios i read i don't recall any detailing the above short film about & starring faulkner & the real people, including his wife, in his life in oxford.  the language is more formal than we are used to today.  everyone calls him bill.  i don't know why it has taken me this long to find this wonderful piece of film.  but here he is,  faulkner in the flesh.  please do pay especial attention to his speech at the end which is as necessary to hear today as it was over 60 years ago.  also, faulkner does rock that tobacco pipe.  i don't smoke but i like the accoutrements of smoking like zippo lighters, & that pipe looks pretty damn good.