RE: faulkner of the day

Jim Whitehead (ejw@ics.uci.edu)
Sat, 3 Jul 1999 18:41:02 -0700


For me, Faulkner is one of the few writers whose prose I can feel actually
changing the way I think as I read. For me, there's a palpable change in my
mental processing while reading Faulkner -- the insanity of his characters
leaks out of the novels, into my head. I have no idea how he manages it.

- Jim

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dave Long [mailto:dl@silcom.com]
> Sent: Saturday, July 03, 1999 3:21 PM
> To: fork@xent.com
> Subject: faulkner of the day
>
>
>
> "For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he
> wants it, there is the instant when it's still not yet two oclock on
> that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind the
> rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the furled
> flags are already loosened to break out and Pickett himself with his
> long oiled ringlets and his hat in one hand probably and his sword
> in the other looking up the hill waiting for Longstreet to give the
> word and it's all in the balance, it hasn't happened yet, it hasn't
> even begun yet, it not only hasn't begun yet but there is still time
> for it not to begin against that position and those circumstances
> which made more men than Garnett and Kemper and Armistead and Wilcox
> look grave yet it's going to begin, we all know that, we have
> come too far with too much at stake and that moment doesn't need
> even a fourteen-year-old boy to think This time. Maybe this time
> with all this much to lose and all this much to gain: Pennsylvania,
> Maryland, the world, the golden dome of Washington itself to crown
> with desperate and unbelievable victory the desperate gamble, the
> cast made two years ago...."
>
> -Dave
>
> on a lighter note, Faulkner's comment on losing his job at the Post
> Office:
> "I reckon I'll be at the beck and call of folks with money all my
> life, but thank God I won't ever again have to be at the beck and
> call of every son of a bitch who's got two cents to buy a stamp."
>