Articles in this Notebook:

Magazine:
Go Down Faulkner
The Agony and The Sweat
Eudora Welty
A Streetcar Named Tennessee
Bard of the American Iliad
The Existential Walker Percy
Richard Wright (1908-1960)
Margaret Walker Alexander
Ellen Gilchrist
Willie Morris
Clifton Taulbert

Essays:
Oxford Wedding

Essays

The past September 25, 2007 would have been William Faulkner’s 110th birthday. This singular milestone was marked by a unique birthday party thrown that day at Rowan Oak—Faulkner’s large, stately antebellum home located in Oxford, Mississippi.

If you weren’t there, you missed a grand affair, complete with birthday cake and candles, punch, the presence of literary scholars, academics, and writers from all points of the compass, and a day-long marathon reading of what is considered Faulkner’s defining work, Go Down Moses. In addition to honoring its author, the reading served to inaugurate a new state initiative called “Mississippi Reads,” which annually identifies an author from the state and, through public book readings, encourages people to read that author's works.

The event was put on with great fanfare, sponsored by the University of Mississippi English Department, the Center for the Study of Southern Culture, and the University Museum. Among the noted who came were Donald Kartiganer, Professor of Faulkner Studies at Ole Miss; Jim Carothers, Faulkner expert and Professor at the University of Kansas; Curtis Wilkie, a former prize-winning journalist at the Boston Globe and author of Dixie; Ann Fisher-Wirth, Mississippi poet and writer, and Dr. Noel Polk, the foremost scholar on the works of William Faulkner.

Throwing a 110 th birthday party for someone who passed away 45 years ago might seem quaint to some, yet it is one more reminder of how increasingly popular William Faulkner’s works have become around the world in recent years. On his 100 th birthday in 1997, there were celebrations in Paris, Toronto, Beijing, Rennes, New Orleans, and in his hometown of Oxford. Since then, his writings have continued to enjoy the kind of growing popularity—especially in Europe and Japan—that has prompted some to call Faulkner the “American Shakespeare.”

“Everybody’s aim is to help people, turn them to Heaven,” was Faulkner’s reply in 1947 when asked by an English class why he wrote. “You write to help people.”

Yet, his stories contained indictments of the South and its way of life that shocked many people rather than helped them. He wrote about what he observed around him in his world that was ugly and abhorrent. While some think he attacked his countrymen out of spite or hatred for what he saw, it is more likely that he wrote about his world exactly because he felt so deeply for it. He tried to leave Mississippi many times, but always returned because it was his home and the source of his tremendous energy and passion to write.

Nearly a half century later, the world continues to admire Faulkner’s literary achievements. But it must be remembered that Faulkner the man, the citizen, the father and husband, was himself engaged for most of his life in a constant personal struggle against the same aristocratic pretentiousness, confrontational social mores, and racist politics that he wrote about. He was an observer, but he was also a participant and a victim. He could not keep a job and was constantly in debt. His house was always falling apart and needed repairs, and he often turned to whiskey as an escape valve for the troubles he knew were just around the corner. Despite his prolific writing output in the 1920’s and 30’s, he remained relatively unknown as a writer. His books did not sell well, and he was constantly borrowing money. Even his neighbors rejected him, angered when they saw themselves written in as characters in his books.

It may be said that Faulkner fully intended to write his stories as indictments of what he saw happening in the South. But he eventually learned that his efforts to repudiate were not always understood by his editors or his readers. Throughout his writing life, he gradually became more willing to repudiate less and to engage readers more in a way that forced them to engage in and deal with the powerful issues he wrote about. Throughout the 1950’s, he used his fame as a Nobel Laureate to speak and write even more openly and energetically about the pressing social issues of the day: the Civil Rights question, the Cold War, and the hypocrisy of his fellow Southerners. But through it all, he always expressed his hope in man, and he left us with the idea that man always has a choice and can eventually prevail against even the worst that he can become.

Go Down Moses is perhaps his defining expression of this hope. Originally published in 1942 as Go Down, Moses and Other Stories, it is a series of seven unified, but seemingly unrelated stories that compares the slavery of American blacks and the Jews in ancient Egypt. It tells the history of the McCaslin family, their trials and triumphs from the Civil War era to just after 1940. In it, Faulkner examines themes of slavery and race, property and inheritance, and the relationship between man and his struggle against nature. Among the most poignant stories in the book that illustrate these themes are “The Old People,” “Delta Autumn,” and “The Bear,” which is, perhaps, his most widely acclaimed short story.

The many that gathered in front of Faulkner’s stately Rowan Oak home on his birthday to listen to the reading of this epic novel did more than just hear a good story. They became the realization of William Faulkner’s greatest hope: that his words would live and endure. The continued popularity of his books worldwide is testament to the importance of his message and the universality of his writings. He showed us who we are, where we’ve been, and where human possibility can lead us.