I’m trying to race through a couple more scholarly books and articles, taking notes on my computer, just so I don’t have to take them along with me. Among other things, I’ve been reading through Faulkner’s speeches, letters, and his responses to questions when he spent time at the University of Virginia as Writer-in-Residence. After spending so many hours puzzling over his novels, wondering not just about matters of literary interpretation but even “What the heck is going on?” it’s both refreshing and exasperating to read Faulkner’s own take on things: a character in As I Lay Dying is deemed “completely off his rocker . . . Darl was mad from the first.” Despite the bluntness of his responses, it’s not entirely clear what one should make of such material; he has proven himself a forgetful and even downright wrong interpreter of his own work in other places, but then again, he wrote it in the first place!
Erin
Alan Schmierer