A Treasure Trove of Information

Creative Commons license 2.0 / flickr

I emailed my high school English teacher last week because i knew that she liked Faulkner a lot, and within mere minutes, she emailed me back! What a gem! This is what she sent me:

Because I haven't specifically studied him for a long time, I'm not sure what to say but I do remember he grew up in a very strict southern household where he was sent to a corner of the parlor for punishment. His family owned slaves and became close their children--playing games with them. He played hokey when it came to go to church and often got in trouble for it. It was during his Parlour Punishment that he took out the dictionary and read it over and over--hence his love and mastery of words. I also know he was bitter about the U.S. army's rejection of his desire to serve in the military, saying he was too small--to short, only 5'6". He was not particularly close to his father--he was also alcoholic and tyrannical. He fought a great deal with Hollywood elites when he worked there briefly as a screenwriter. He drank a great deal, and the only person he ever really loved was his wife--who was forced to reject him as a young girl and even married someone else. She later divorced that man and married Faulkner. He was an extremely proud man and didn't take rejection kindly. He didn't like others telling him what to do and battled that all his life. He was extremely proud of his roots, even the distant grandfather/relative feud that he tells stories about in many of his novels--a recurring character, Colonel Satoris. He is based on a real character in Faulkner's family tree. I hope this helps.

This is definitely useful information, and a good way for me to understand one of the authors I'm studying and what he thinks about family. 

After my success with my teacher, my library visit, and the English Symposium, I am excited to dive into my books and write! 

When You Give a Girl a Library...

Public Domain CCO / Pixabay

All I had to do was browse the Faulkner section of the library, and it was like themes of family, childhood, and parenthood started to launch themselves at me. Needless to say, I found several new sources for both Faulkner and Carroll's portrayals of authority and themes of family in their works. I couldn't help but check just a few out to take home with me...I feel a bit like a literary hoarder.

At any rate, here is a new and improved list of sources:
 
THESIS: Just as Alice is ridiculously scorned, mislead, and reprimanded by the authority figures in her journey through Wonderland, the offspring of Addie Bundren represent the precarious condition of children that do not have reliable authority figures in their lives in the novel As I Lay Dying. Lewis Carroll and William Faulkner's works identify the damage caused to children by dysfunctional family environments and autocratic adults.

Words: Inadequate and Plentiful

Creative Commons License 2.0 / Jeffery Wright

I didn’t like it at all. I didn’t like the time period, the setting, or the strange and tragic plot. 

I had to read As I Lay Dying for my AP Literature class during my senior year of high school, and it was a struggle. In that class, we would read the book first, and try not to discuss it in too much detail until the date upon which everyone should have finished (which I didn't do). Then, we would begin together. Our teacher would take the black and white print and transform it into a compendium of literary genius and philosophical insight. 

Through our discussion, what at first was an incomprehensible string of “is’s” and “is nots” in a paragraph narrated by the apparently insane character, Darl, slowly developed into a deeply profound and unsettling thought process about the reality of human existence. Reminiscent of Descartes’s “Cogito ergo sum” (“I think, therefore, I am”), Darl comes to the conclusion,

And since sleep is is-not and rain and wind are was, it is not. Yet the wagon is, because when the wagon is was, Addie Bundren will not be. And Jewel is, so Addie Bundren must be. And then I must be, or I could not empty myself for sleep in a strange room. And so if I am not emptied yet, I am is. (Faulkner 72)

I must be honest and say that most of this is over my head. However, Faulkner’s mastery of the English language—his bold use of stream of consciousness and his manipulation of verbs into nouns—affected me then and deeply affects me now. In this way, language is magic.