B Malcolm Franklin, Bitterweeds
CCP Carvel Collins Papers, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas
CGBC Louis Daniel Brodsky and Robert W. Hamblin, eds., Faulkner: A Comprehensive Guide to the Brodsky Collection
CWF M. Thomas Inge, Conversations with William Faulkner
“DSF” Dean Faulkner Wells, “Dean Swift Faulkner: A Biographical Study”
EDBS Dean Faulkner Wells, Every Day by the Sun: A Memoir of the Faulkners of Mississippi
ESPL William Faulkner, Essays, Speeches, and Public Letters
FAWP Joseph L. Fant and Robert Ashley, Faulkner at West Point
FB (1974) Joseph Blotner, Faulkner: A Biography (1974)
FB (1984) Joseph Blotner, Faulkner: A Biography (1984)
FC Malcolm Cowley, The Faulkner-Cowley File
FL Judith Sensibar, Faulkner and Love
FWP Floyd Watkins Papers, Emory University
JBP Joseph Blotner Papers, Louis Daniel Brodsky Collection, Center for Faulkner Studies, Southeast Missouri State University
LDBP Louis Daniel Brodsky Papers, Center for Faulkner Studies, Southeast Missouri State University
LG Louis Daniel Brodsky, Life Glimpses
LITG James B. Meriwether and Michael Millgate, eds., Lion in the Garden
MBB John Faulkner, My Brother Bill
MCR Meta Carpenter recordings, UM
MFP Malcolm Franklin Papers, Special Collections, Thomas Cooper Library, University of South Carolina
NYPL Berg Collection, New York Public Library
RHMP Robert H. Moore Papers, University of North Carolina, Special Collections.
SL Selected Letters of William Faulkner
UM Archives and Special Collections, University of Mississippi
UVA William Faulkner archive, Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia
VJR Recording of Louis Daniel Brodsky interview with Victoria Johnson, LDBP
WFCR M. Thomas Inge, William Faulkner: The Contemporary Reviews
WFTF William Faulkner, William Faulkner at Twentieth Century-Fox: The Annotated Screenplays, edited by Sarah Gleeson-White
1. Paddock, Contrapuntal in Integration, 111.
2. Qtd. in FB (1974), 418.
3. Interview with Mrs. Vernon Omlie, November 24, 1963, CCP.
4. Gresset, Fascination, 240.
5. SL, 239.
6. See Millgate, 140–41, for details about the Shushan air show.
7. Gwynn and Blotner, eds., 36.
8. Hamblin, “Faulkner and Hollywood: A Call for Reassessment,” 19–20.
9. McBride, ed., Hawks on Hawks, 57.
10. Yonce, “ ‘Shot Down Last Spring’: The Wounded Aviators of Faulkner’s Wasteland,” 206, cites Keats in her description of the narrator in “The Lilacs,” the first poem in A Green Bough, but the phrase seems applicable to the reporter as well.
11. Interview with Hermann Deutsch, February 1965, JBP
12. Brooks, William Faulkner: Toward Yoknapatawpha, 183. See also 399, 402, for Brooks’s identification of Deutsch as the model for the reporter.
13. Interview with Murray Spain, early June 1960, CCP.
14. Interview with Richard Bradford, August 9, 1969, JBP.
15. Interview with Mrs. Roark Bradford, spring 1963, CCP.
16. Interview with Mrs. Vernon Omlie, November 24, 1963, CCP.
17. See the reminiscence of George W. Healy Jr., editor of the Times-Picayune, in Webb and Green, eds., William Faulkner of Oxford, 59–60: “Although Bill never was, strictly speaking, a member of the Times-Picayune staff, he made many a visit to our newsroom to talk with [Roark] Bradford, Lyle Saxon, and others on the staff who, like himself, were turning out books.”
18. Parini; Karl, 529.
19. Bassett, ed., 178.
20. Qtd. in Brooks, William Faulkner: Yoknapatawpha and Beyond, 402.
21. EDBS.
22. EDBS.
23. Dardis, Some Time in the Sun.
24. For Hawks’s difficulties with Barbary Coast and the backing he received from Goldwyn, see Rollyson, A Real American Character, 43–50.
25. WFCR, 132.
26. For my assessment of the film adaptation, see Rollyson, “Faulkner’s Shadow.”
27. Lurie, Vision’s Immanence, 16.
28. Qtd. in Lurie, Vision’s Immanence, 181.
29. Kawin, Faulkner and Film, 47.
30. Torchiana, 307.
31. January 23, 1935, in Trotter, 105.
32. February 2, 1935, in Trotter, 106; and February 15, 1935, in Trotter, 108.
33. SL, 90.
34. Marshall Maslin, “All of Us,” Xenia (OH) Evening Gazette, February 23, 1935, https://newspaperarchive.com/xenia-evening-gazette-feb-23–1935-p-4/.
35. SL, 88.
36. Bassett, ed., 15.
37. Charleston (WV) Daily Mail, March 27, 1935, https://newspaperarchive.com/charleston-daily-mail-mar-27–1935-p-6/, reprinted from New York Herald Tribune, March 25, 1935.
38. https://www.newspapers.com/image/202638711/?terms=Pylon%2BFaulkner; interview with Louise Meadow, March 20, 1963, CCP.
39. “DSF,” 140–49.
40. “DSF,” 161–62.
41. EDBS.
42. Interview with Louise Meadow, July 8, 1975, CCP.
43. Trotter, 111.
44. SL, 92–93.
45. SL, 93.
46. Interview with Louise Meadow, August 3, 1971, CCP.
47. Faulkner is quoted in several newspaper clippings, CCP.
48. Interview with Victoria Fielden, March 13, 1968, CCP.
49. Interview with E. O. Champion, April 12, 1950, CCP.
50. Interview with Louise Meadow, August 3, 1971, CCP.
51. Bleikasten, William Faulkner: A Life through the Novels, 254.
52. See Murphet, 30–32, on the romance of flying in Faulkner’s work.
53. The details of Dean’s death and Faulkner’s reaction derive from EDBS.
54. Interview with Louise Meadow, August 3, 1971, CCP.
55. SL, 93–94.
1. Wilde, “An Unpublished Chapter from A Loving Gentleman.”
2. Cassettes 11 and 12, n.d., MCR. Meta Carpenter’s dramatic, retrospective memoir romanticizes her first meeting with Faulkner. I have listened to the recordings of her memories and conversations with her coauthor. A more prosaic account emerges on cassette 18, May 12, 1973, one that does not overturn her book but that includes the mundane aspects of their first meeting. Going over the day Faulkner first walked into the office where Meta was working, she said: “He didn’t impress me at all. Nice soft voice. I really wasn’t excited. I was meeting big movie stars. Writers were not nearly as glamorous. . . . I probably spoke about it at the Studio Club, saying ‘I met William Faulkner. He’s a nice little man.’ ” See also Wilde, “An Unpublished Chapter from A Loving Gentleman.” For Carpenter’s explanation of how her book was put together, see Broughton, 779. Meta Carpenter Wilde was her married name at the time her book was published. Her maiden name was Doherty. She was also married to Wolfgang Rebner, but throughout my narrative I refer to her as Meta Carpenter since that was her name when Faulkner met her, and he often used “Carpenter” when addressing her. Unless otherwise noted, quotations of dialogue between Carpenter and Faulkner are from Wilde and Borsten, A Loving Gentleman.
3. Interview with Meta Carpenter, December 28, 1963, CCP.
4. Wilde and Borsten, A Loving Gentleman.
5. Breen to Colonel Jason S. Joy, January 31, 1936, Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.
6. Cassette 14, June 30, 73, MCR.
7. Sayre diary and oral history, NYPL.
8. Interview with Joel Sayre, March 20, 1968, CCP.
9. Interview with Dorothy Parker, April 17, 1965, JBP.
10. Interview with Joel Sayre, March 20, 1963, CCP.
11. Interview with Joel Sayre, March 20, 1968, CCP.
12. Interview with David Hempstead, June 6, 1966, JBP.
13. David Hempstead, television interview transcript, CCP.
14. Interview with Buzz Bezzerides, February 17, 1963, CCP.
15. Stempel, 20.
16. Interview with Lillian Hellman, August 18, 1952; letter from Hellman, February 2, 1952, CCP.
17. Bradford’s account is taken from his papers at Tulane University, as transcribed by Carvel Collins.
18. Garrett, afterword to The Road to Glory, 163–67.
19. Interview with Ben Wasson, March 28, 1965, JBP.
20. Wilde, “An Unpublished Chapter from A Loving Gentleman,” 452–53.
21. Culled from Faulkner’s handwritten screenplay at UM.
22. The last names of Paul and Michel change in various versions of the script, and in one version Michel is called Pierre. I have used the names in the released film.
23. Hillier and Wollen, eds., 51.
24. Interview with Meta Carpenter, October 28, 1963, CCP.
25. Although ever-grateful to Howard Hawks, in her recordings Meta could also be critical of the way he exploited her and used other women.
26. Interview with Meta Carpenter, “Hollywood 1963,” CCP.
27. Interview with Meta Carpenter, “Hollywood 1963,” CCP.
28. I’m indebted to Ramsey’s account of Hopkins’s career and its relevance to Faulkner’s Hollywood reputation. According to Ben Wasson, Hopkins wanted to meet Faulkner. She sent him an invitation to attend a dinner party, but he never replied (interview with Ben Wasson, August 3, 1963, CCP).
29. Wilde, “An Unpublished Chapter from A Loving Gentleman,” 453–55.
30. Wilde, “An Unpublished Chapter from A Loving Gentleman,” 457–58.
31. Cassette 14, June 30, 1973, MCR.
32. Steve Allen, Hooked on Books show, 1977, recording, UM.
33. In A Loving Gentleman, Meta has them entering the Larry Edmunds Bookshop. But that shop was not in business until 1940, whereas Stanley Rose, which Faulkner was known to frequent, was located next to Musso & Frank’s in 1935.
34. Cassette 13, n.d., MCR. I met Meta in Hollywood in 1987 to interview her and her husband Arthur for my biography of Lillian Hellman. But of course I told her about my dissertation on Faulkner, and we spoke about him as well. My wife, Lisa Paddock, also the author of a book about Faulkner, made this meeting an especially warm one.
35. Interview with Meta Carpenter, “Hollywood 1963,” CCP.
36. Interview with Meta Carpenter, December 22, 1963, CCP.
37. Wilde, “An Unpublished Chapter of A Loving Gentleman,” 455.
38. http://www.bottle-spot.com/posts/10179/manhattan-new-york-other-2-for-sale-chateau-pontet-canet-pauillac-2006.
39. Interview with Meta Carpenter, n.d., CCP.
40. Notes, n.d., CCP; Broughton, 800.
41. Minter, 161.
42. Many have questioned Faulkner’s motivations, including Joseph Blotner, writing to Malcolm Cowley (January 13, 1977): “She seems not to have realized how much she was just his doxy, and so she seems self-deluded. But much of the time he was obviously stringing her along, wanting a bed mate, though perhaps somewhat self-deluded that he loved her too” (JBP). I well remember when her memoir first appeared and how much certain Faulkner scholars at a Modern Language Association meeting scorned her testimony. Carvel Collins, on the other hand, regarded her seriously and interviewed her several times. She felt loyal to Collins and distrusted Blotner, the authorized biographer. She published her memoir only when she concluded that Collins would never publish his book, as she told me when I met with her in December 1987. In that same letter to Cowley, Blotner added, “Estelle never gave me problems about her [Meta], or anyone else really.” Perhaps not. But judging by Blotner’s letters asking for interviews, it was clear that he was prepared to excise passages his interviewees found objectionable, and it is also equally clear that he never put to Estelle many of the basic questions a biographer would like to have answered.
43. Cassette 14, June 30, 1973, MCR.
44. Wilde and Borsten, “A Loving Gentleman,” typescript.
45. Carvel Collins seems to be the only scholar who saw the drawings of Meta before she deposited them at the New York Public Library.
46. Telephone interview with Meta Carpenter, April 26, 1989, CCP.
47. Meta Carpenter to Carvel Collins, November 19, 1985, CCP.
48. Interview with Meta Carpenter, December 1963, CCP.
49. Meta Carpenter to Carvel Collins, November 19, 1985, CCP. She objected strongly to David Minter’s characterization of her relationship with Faulkner. She hoped Collins would be able to correct many of the misconceptions.
50. Interview with Carvel Collins, December 28, 1963, CCP.
51. Meta Carpenter to Carvel Collins, November 19, 1985, CCP.
52. Broughton, 797.
53. Wilde, “An Unpublished Chapter from A Loving Gentleman.”
54. Crown later taught generations of performers at the University of Southern California.
55. Interview with John Crown, n.d., CCP.
56. Carpenter misremembers the film, calling Crawford a shop girl.
57. WFTF, 190.
58. Grimwood, 279.
59. WFTF, 196.
60. UVA. This part of the letter was omitted from SL.
61. WFTF, 195. Joel Williamson writes: “He conveyed in letters to Oxford the warmth he failed to show in person.” Do we know that? Faulkner certainly conveyed that impression in his complaints about Estelle, but that is not the same thing as knowing what the marriage was like when he was not complaining about her.
62. Interview with Howard Hawks, n.d., CCP.
63. UVA.
64. UVA.
65. Trotter, 112, 114, 115. On August 13, 1936, in a note written on Twentieth Century-Fox stationery, Faulkner sent Bryant five hundred dollars, expressing regret that he had not been able to send the money sooner. By December 10, he had sent another five hundred, mentioned in his typed note on Fox letterhead.
66. What part did Malcolm Franklin play in Faulkner’s life? His memoir is a loving tribute to his stepfather. On Faulkner’s side, the record is mixed. Malcolm’s two wives said Faulkner was ambivalent about Malcolm, who was not remembered in Faulkner’s will. Dean Faulkner Wells reported Faulkner saying that Malcolm was “weak.” One Faulkner friend said Faulkner beat “the hell out of” Malcolm with a switch. Chabrier interprets Faulkner’s behavior as a repetition of his own father’s rejection of him. Yet Malcolm and Faulkner shared much in their love of nature, and Malcolm, as his mother said and Malcolm’s own diaries and letters show, clearly adored his stepfather. Jimmy Faulkner believed his uncle had made an “honest effort” to instill the right values in Malcolm (see Chabrier, 45–46).
67. Judith gives Bon a photograph of herself to carry with him but finds a photograph on Bon’s body that is not of her but of the octoroon mistress and his son. Quentin imagines the Sutpens as they would appear in a faded family photograph. Miss Rosa speaks of Charles Bon, “I saw a photograph; I helped to make a grave.” She returns obsessively to her impression of Bon as a photograph, a shadow, a projection of her imagination (see Urgo, 62).
68. Interview with Buzz Bezzerides, n.d., CCP.
69. SL, 95–96.
70. Interview with Louise Meadow, March 20, 1963, CCP.
71. Estelle Faulkner, n.d., recipient is unclear, JBP.
72. Notes from interview with Mrs. Roark Bradford, spring 1963, CCP: Bradford and his second wife met the Faulkners at the Peabody Hotel in Memphis in 1939. Both of them “threw up their hands and said something to the effect that ‘Don’t say we must drink again.’ However the apartment or set of rooms in the hotel was 2 rooms put together so there were two bathrooms, and Faulkner began to go to one of the bathrooms and his wife, Estelle, began to go to the other one. They began to make continual trips to their two bathrooms. And it turned out Estelle’s bathroom had a bottle of gin in it and Faulkner’s bathroom had a bottle of bourbon in it, and they were both drinking privately in this way while seeming not to take part in drinking the Bradfords’ liquids in the Bradfords’ room.”
73. SL, 96.
74. Wilde and Borsten, “A Loving Gentleman,” typescript.
75. Cassette 15, February 1974, MCR.
76. Broughton, 790.
77. Black.
78. Broughton, 790.
79. Interview with John Crown, December 23, 1963, CCP. Meta corroborated Crown’s testimony.
80. The documents I rely on are in the Berg Collection, NYPL.
81. Bleikasten, William Faulkner: A Life through the Novels, 237.
82. Walton, 6–7.
83. Elisabeth Muhlenfeld, introduction to William Faulkner’s “Absalom, Absalom!”: A Critical Casebook (Garland, 1984), xii–xiii. For the old-school view of Hollywood as only a distraction and worse, see Williamson: “In many ways, Hollywood as Hollywood was simply another disaster in Faulkner’s life. It affected his writing, but there is no sign that it added anything really substantial to his talent, and it certainly sponged up his diminishing energies.” Unfortunately, even after the splendid scholarship of Gleeson-White, Solomon, Robbins, and others, a recent biography by Kirk Curnutt calls Faulkner’s work in Hollywood “lackadaisical.”
84. SL, 83–84.
85. Rudy Behlmer discusses Faulkner’s various drafts in his commentary on the DVD release of Gunga Din, warnervideo.com, 2004. See also Rudy Behlmer Papers, Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.
86. “Das” is the name of Major Blynt’s “colored” double in Faulkner’s MGM screenplay “Manservant,” also set in India. Das in both of Faulkner’s treatments has a fraught identification with the white people he serves, sacrificing himself by taking poison. In each case, the character seems to represent a repressed love that gives Absalom, Absalom! so much of its powerful charge.
87. The Gunga Din comment, repeated by biographers without any sense of context of how working on a Rudyard Kipling epic not only suited but enriched Faulkner’s sensibility, is another part of the disconnect that a biographical narrative ought to remedy. Here is a typical example from Jay Parini: “The money, not the project [Gunga Din], excited him, as well as the prospect of spending more time with Meta.” Others, like Fred Karl, 573, get distracted by observing that Faulkner went boar hunting with Nathanael West on Catalina Island. André Bleikasten, William Faulkner: A Life through the Novels, 225, does not even know that “Gunga Din” is a poem, not a novel, although he does realize that Faulkner “knew Kipling’s work well and believed that he understood the film’s hero—‘a colored man’—better than most.” But what Faulkner understood is missing in Bleikasten. See Solomon, 77–79, for a discussion of Faulkner’s work on Gunga Din.
88. See Polk’s introduction to “Absalom, Absalom!”: Typesetting Copy and Miscellaneous Material, William Faulkner Manuscripts 13.
89. Urgo and Polk, eds. Muhlenfeld still provides the best short account of the book’s genesis (introduction to William Faulkner’s “Absalom, Absalom!”: A Critical Casebook).
90. Millgate, 152. This remains the most succinct account of the novel’s composition.
91. In Children of the Dark House, Polk notes: “The fact that certain pages of the manuscript of Absalom, Absalom! are written in the same green ink that he used to write the entire Pylon manuscript suggests that even though he put his problems with Absalom aside long enough to write Pylon, he didn’t completely abandon the former.”
92. See Muhlenfeld, introduction to William Faulkner’s “Absalom, Absalom!”: A Critical Casebook, xvii.
93. The gangster is Popeye. “A Dull Tale,” in Faulkner, Uncollected Stories of William Faulkner, provides a slightly different version of Dal Martin’s rejection at the big house door.
94. “Evangeline” is included in Faulkner, Uncollected Stories of William Faulkner.
95. SL, 79.
96. “Evangeline” is confusing and not fully worked-out fiction. In a detailed analysis of the story, Schoenberg, 41, observes that Faulkner “must have intended the child’s Negro blood to have come from his mother, at least at this point in the development of the story; Charles Bon’s lack of parents, however, makes the matter ambiguous. Bon’s appearance is left to the imagination of the reader, but it seems never to have troubled any of the Sutpens.”
97. Gwin, The Feminine and Faulkner, 84.
98. Irwin, Doubling and Incest/Repetition and Revenge, 37, 150.
99. Ford, 150–51.
100. Lurie, Vision’s Immanence, 2. Lurie’s guiding principle is derived from his epigraph citations of Theodor Adorno’s “Cultural Criticism and Society”: “The cultural critic is not happy with civilization, to which alone he owes his discontent. He speaks as if he represented either unadulterated nature or a higher historical stage. Yet he is necessarily of the same essence as that to which he feels superior.” Although Faulkner regretted what he called his “whoring”—writing commercial stories and film scripts—that very word is a palpable admission that he could not extricate himself from the knowledge of that which he abhorred. See also Urgo, 58: “Primarily, Absalom, Absalom! is a celebration of collaboration as a fruitful human exercise toward creating new works of art and reaching new levels of comprehension. Faulkner learned this in Hollywood.” True enough, although several of his short stories directly related to the novel are also tributes to collaboration, as are Faulkner’s experiences with Sherwood Anderson, William Spratling, Howard Hawks, and Joel Sayre.
101. Although Shreve is speaking in 1910 and so could not have seen the movie, readers in 1936 would have recalled the 1925 movie even if they had not read Lew Wallace’s 1880 novel.
102. Urgo, 60.
103. Matthews, William Faulkner: Seeing through the South.
104. Matthews, William Faulkner: Seeing through the South.
105. Weinstein, “Marginalia: Faulkner’s Black Lives.”
106. T. M. Davis, Faulkner’s Negro: Art and the Southern Context, 180.
107. Weinstein, Becoming Faulkner, provides another eloquent explanation of Bon’s significance: “Half French in his sophistication, half American in his vulnerability; half female in his charm, half male in his strength; half white by his father, part black by his mother: Bon blends elegance and power, unillusioned shrewdness and generosity of spirit. These come together to produce a suppleness of being that no pure line of descent could make available. He is the text’s utopian image of what miscegenation might really enable, though no one in the story is prepared to consider this possibility once he is ‘outed’ as black. Identified thus—his history exposed and communicated—Bon cannot be loved, nor admired, nor admitted into the precincts of his white family. Once racially fixed, he must either submit to be ‘nigger’ or die the death.”
108. T. M. Davis, Faulkner’s Negro: Art and the Southern Context, 235.
109. Interview with Larry Wells.
110. After first identifying her as Miss Rosa, critics tend to call her Rosa. I continue to call her Miss Rosa because I think the title, like Mr. Compson, is important. It defines her status in relation to him, to Quentin, to the other Sutpens, and to her community.
111. Saunders, 69: “a large portion of the narrative itself—that produced by Quentin and Shreve—is conditioned by the Compsons’ exchange of a piece of property for a room at Harvard.”
112. Coleman, 423: “It is all too easy to let Mr. Compson read Rosa for us.”
113. Godden, “Absalom, Absalom! and Rosa Coldfield,” 43, goes so far as to suggest she “does not seek to bring down the mansion of Patriarchy . . . but to live in a planter’s house.” She seeks to “maximize her claims to possession.”
114. Handley, 139.
115. Polk, Children of the Dark House.
116. A good deal of recent Faulkner criticism has been invested in rehabilitating Miss Rosa, demonstrating that hers is the foundation narrative without which the other narrators could not progress, as I argued decades ago in Uses of the Past in the Novels of William Faulkner. For a Barthian rehabilitation, see Kaufman, 175–95.
117. Urgo and Polk, eds.: “The ‘almost’ stops one. Henry is a murderer whether a fratricide or not and a good deal of the novel is based on an assumption (which it does not prove) that Henry and Bon are at least half brothers. Does Rosa mean that she knows they were not brothers but that Henry thought he was killing a brother? If so, and perhaps more important, how does she know this? The novel does not explain” (see Polk’s “Faulkner: The Artist as Cuckold,” in his Children of the Dark House). Godden, “Absalom, Absalom! and Rosa Coldfield,” 42–43, has quite another gloss on Miss Rosa’s reference to fratricide: “Prior to 1865, Rosa knows exactly who Bon is; and . . . in 1865, she has class-based reasons for deploying that knowledge in a minimally articulated form.” I deal with Godden’s argument when I get to the denouement of the novel.
118. Porter, Seeing & Being, 273, observes that Sutpen “virtually treats his failed design as if it were itself a book, over which he pores, ‘tedious and intent,’ trying to locate the missing fact he had forgotten, the ‘mistake’ he had made, so as to explain ‘a result absolutely and forever incredible.’ ”
119. The entry for Bon in the genealogy section of the novel supports the findings of Quentin and Shreve, and though certain critics may wish to see Faulkner as fallible—as only one source to consult—I don’t see how there can be doubt in his mind, at least, as to how we are to read Bon as a brother with black blood. See also Singal, 201–2: “The overall architecture of the work . . . demands that Bon’s ‘taint’ be racial and that he be Sutpen’s child; otherwise the pieces will not fit into the structure as Faulkner plainly intended. . . . [P]assages explicitly establishing Bon’s racial ancestry and parentage appeared in draft versions of the novel until very late in the composition process, when Faulkner apparently decided for reasons of narrative technique to make the reader play detective and put the story together him- or herself.” I side with Gray, 210: “Working both with and against the grain of the different stories that comprise the novel, Faulkner aims precisely to show that we can ‘narrativize’ the past: which is to say, come to terms with it as a force both controversial and innate—something open to argument and yet also inward, an understanding or impulse latent within us.”
120. I cannot recall in reading the critical literature on the novel an explanation as to why General Compson takes such an interest in Sutpen. I put the question to Hortense Spillers at the 2019 Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference. She suggested that Sutpen, as a failed patriarch, musing over the failure of his design, considers General Compson, another failed patriarch, the only candidate for his confidence. But I’m still not sure why General Compson finds Sutpen so compelling.
121. Latham, 461.
122. Godden, “Absalom, Absalom! and Faulkner’s Erroneous Dating of the Haitian Revolution,” 494–95: “Southerners might recognise that when Sutpen ‘enter[s] the ring’ with one of his slaves, he does so with ‘deadly forethought,’ not merely to retain ‘supremacy’ [and] ‘domination’ but to enact the pre-emptive counter-revolution, crucial to the authority of his class.” Knox, 22, notes that Faulkner was “doubtless drawing on the accounts of the bloody slave rebellion which occurred in August, 1791, when the effects of the French Revolution combined with a history of brutal exploitation to lead to much the same result as in France.” Knox cites T. Lothrop Stoddard, The French Revolution in San Domingo (Boston, 1914), 138. “The uprising experienced by Sutpen occurred, however, in 1827, at a time when there was no longer slavery in Haiti. It is worth noting that Faulkner avoids the use of ‘Slave’ to describe the insurgents, but it would certainly be assumed by the unsuspecting (ignorant would be too harsh a term) reader that a slave rebellion was in progress.” Knox’s work is one of several valuable theses and dissertations on microfilm in UVA.
123. Urgo and Polk, eds.
124. Urgo and Polk are similarly baffled: “Mr. Compson claims ‘two exceptions’ as sons: does he here mean Bon? If so, how does he know that Bon is Sutpen’s son? Is it possible that Sutpen has other children?”
125. There are so many nuances in the narrator’s commentary that Urgo and Polk believe the novel has more than one unnamed narrator, although I believe there is only one supple voice who records and ruminates on what the character-narrators have to say.
126. Urgo and Polk go to the trouble of glossing the phrase, pointing out that it originates in logging: A “strong spiked timber by which logs are canted in a saw-mill” and strewn among other logs was called a “nigger” and could injure an inattentive worker. So the “nigger” in Mr. Compson’s terms is “something hidden and dangerous; it’s also a secret from the past, like a skeleton in the closet which, if known, would compromise the present.”
127. Brister, 49, suggests that the letter is a condensation of Bon himself, that the “stove polish, which is meant to approximate blackness (or blackface), is inscribed over the French watermark on the white page suggesting the taint of darkness which has begun to eclipse the house of Sutpen.”
128. The wording recalls Wash Jones’s reply to Sutpen: “I’m going to kill you, Kernel.”
129. See Urgo and Polk’s introduction to chapter 5. They canvas the different explanations of who is narrating.
130. Lurie, Vision’s Immanence, 104, 115.
131. D. Robbins, 321.
132. I am closely paraphrasing Fowler, Faulkner: The Return of the Repressed, 122.
133. Snead, 13.
134. Snead, 13.
135. Toni Morrison qtd. in Gwin, “Racial Wounding and the Aesthetics of the Middle Voice,” 29.
136. Urgo and Polk, eds.
137. James G. Watson, “ ‘If Was Existed’: Faulkner’s Prophets and the Patterns of History,” 62.
138. I examined these drafts, part of the Rowan Oak Papers, UM.
139. Polk, ed., “Absalom, Absalom!”: Typesetting Copy and Miscellaneous Material, William Faulkner Manuscripts 13.
140. For the full rationale of my argument, see Rollyson, Uses of the Past in the Novels of William Faulkner.
141. Sullens.
142. Shreve’s question is a statement as much as it is a question, which is perhaps why Faulkner did not use a question mark.
143. Urgo and Polk, eds.: “whites can thus never overcome the fear that that one genetic drop of black blood will someday assert itself in the birth of a child.”
144. One of the most remarkable aspects of the novel’s ending is that it continues to sustain new and insightful readings, a process of advancing reinterpretation similar to the hermeneutical dialectic that drives Absalom, Absalom! My reading of Jim Bond has been powerfully influenced by Aliyyah I. Abdur-Rahman: “By disappearing behind the haunting cry, Jim Bond absents himself from both the conceptual and the visual logics of racial othering. He is not caught, that is, not captive. He is not stationary, that is, not made to occupy the gestures, shapes, and practices of racist subjugation. He is not available for use; that is, he is self-possessed, nearly free. Understanding Jim Bond this way, as both the novel and the nation’s redemptive promise, sheds necessary light on the conclusion to Absalom, Absalom!: when Shreve prophesies that ‘the Jim Bonds are going to conquer the western hemisphere,’ it is not a lament; it is a prayer.” This interpretation is a fascinating reversal of the earliest generation of Faulkner critics, who saw in Jim Bond Faulkner’s own horror of miscegenation. How they could square this interpretation with that other idiot, Benjy Compson, never seems to have occurred to them. By their logic, Benjy would be Faulkner’s condemnation of what? See Campbell; and Kartiganer, 28: “One might say that although Faulkner is aware of the necessity for the South to recognize its ‘natural heir,’ which is the freed Negro slave, he is unwilling to admit that the products of such miscegenation can approach the magnificence of the pure-blooded if unforeseeing giants who engendered the system.” Critics who set aside race see another Jim Bond, who “represents the entire story: he is potential meaning, always just out of reach, but asserting in his idiot howling the negation of meaning. The suggestiveness of his presence is denied by the very quality that establishes it, his incomprehensibility,” writes James Guetti, 86. Guetti takes his argument too far when he adds: “Bond represents the constant tension that haunts Quentin, the story that must be meaningful and cannot be.” But isn’t the story for Quentin all too meaningful?
145. Singal, 221.
146. Abdur-Rahman. For another treatment of Absalom, Absalom! as a Reconstruction novel, see Saunders, 66–96.
147. Many historians have remarked upon the medieval ambiance of the antebellum South. See also Rollyson, Uses of the Past in the Novels of William Faulkner, 235.
148. Abdur-Rahman.
149. Singal, 211.
150. L. M. Jones, 29: “Significantly, Judith, the one who witnessed, enjoyed and seemed to understand the fights between her father and the ‘wild niggers’ in the barn (as opposed to Henry’s revulsions to those affairs), is able to form a compatible relationship with her mulatto sister, Clytie. Perhaps she comprehends what her father and the system really stand for via these fights, i.e. that these Negroes are in subservience only because of her father’s power to defeat them in physical conflict.” In Faulkner’s treatment of Judith and Clytie in his screenplay “Revolt in the Earth,” he makes this bond between Judith and Clytie even stronger. See also Morland.
151. Stecopoulos, 135, observes that “as the Caribbean subplot of Absalom, Absalom! suggests, early in his career the writer demonstrated extraordinary sensitivity to the white South’s odd status as a society at once colonized (oppressed by the northern metropole and federal state) and colonizing (exploitative of both African Americans and hemispheric Americans).” Like Faulkner, Quentin is a traditionalist under duress, not wanting to hate the South because then he has no basis on which to stand, and yet having to stand on foundations shaped by evils such as slavery. For Quentin, telling the Sutpen story is bearable to begin with because Shreve is Canadian, and so a northerner once removed from the War between the States. But when Shreve turns on Quentin at the very end of the novel, that degree of separation between the roommates no longer obtains, and Quentin’s plight is dire as he tries to negate a negation.
1. SL, 98.
2. This paragraph draws directly on Barry Hudek, “ ‘Mississippi on the Potomac’: Sutpen’s Hundred as Washington, D.C.,” in Faulkner and Hemingway, ed. Rieger and Leiter.
3. SL, 97.
4. By July 24, 1937, Faulkner had instructed his agent, Morton Goldman, to sell “An Odor of Verbena” (SL, 100). On August 7 he was assigned to The Last Slaver, and he completed his revision of a Sam Hellman and Gladys Lehman screenplay on September 1 (WFTF, 221).
5. WFTF, 320. Solomon, 79–87, like Karem, sees parallels between The Last Slaver and Absalom, Absalom!, but Faulkner was just about done with the novel, now in galleys, and his work on The Unvanquished seems much more relevant in considering how he developed Lovett’s character.
6. Faulkner’s work on Slave Ship is collected in WFTF. The film is available on DVD, Twentieth Century-Fox, Cinema Archives.
7. For a very different interpretation, casting Faulkner as complicit in Hollywood’s elimination of “black agency and voice altogether,” see Karem, 171.
8. WFTF, 376.
9. WFTF, 403.
10. WFTF, 427.
11. Wilde and Borsten, “A Loving Gentleman,” typescript.
12. Postmarked June 28, 37, Twentieth Century-Fox envelope, UVA.
13. For parallels between Drums along the Mohawk and The Unvanquished, see Solomon, 95.
14. Trotter, 118–23.
15. Interview with Henriette Martin, December 31, 1963, CCP.
16. The film is available on YouTube: https://youtu.be/f0wIlhHLcoQ.
17. See Delson, 177–78. Solomon corrects Blotner and subsequent scholars and biographers who assumed “Revolt in the Earth” was written in 1943 because of Robert Buckner’s Warner Brothers memo rejecting the script. Solomon provides a learned explanation of the technical innovations of the script that stem in large part from Murphy’s earlier films.
18. Interoffice memo, January 6, 1943, Buckner to Faulkner, UVA.
19. Owada, 161.
20. See, for example, Kawin, Faulkner and Film, 131–35.
21. Did Orson Welles’s 1936 “Voodoo Macbeth,” using voodoo rather than Scottish witchcraft to bring down a usurper, have an impact on “Revolt in the Earth”?
22. Owada, 174.
23. The constant laughter in the film is also reminiscent of O’Neill’s Lazarus Laughed, in which laughter is employed as an elemental force, representing not only the joy that Lazarus takes in existence but also the rebuke his resurrection administers to those who do not participate in the joy of the spirit that he represents. The all-encompassing laughter is the affirmative, all-accepting nature of life that Sutpen denies by rejecting part of his family.
24. LITG, 33–34.
25. Trotter, 124.
26. Interview with Wolfgang Rebner, July 1965, CCP.
27. SL, 102.
28. SL, 101.
29. Interview with Donald Klopfer, February, 8, 1977, CCP.
30. Interview with Phyllis Cerf, December 10, 1965, CCP.
31. Brooks, William Faulkner: The Yoknapatawpha Country, 75–99, has one of the most compelling defenses of The Unvanquished as a significant example of Faulkner’s art. For a contrary view, see Gray, 225–28.
32. See my review of two Sherman biographies: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-magnitude-of-his-achievement-1466192373.
33. This passage is taken from the Rowan Oak Papers, UM.
34. Rowan Oak Papers, UM.
35. January 7, 1935, UVA.
36. Eric Foner’s précis of the early twentieth-century view of Reconstruction is what Faulkner had to work with in The Unvanquished: “When the Civil War ended, the white South accepted the reality of military defeat, stood ready to do justice to the emancipated slaves, and desired above all a quick reintegration into the fabric of national life. Before his death, Abraham Lincoln had embarked on a course of sectional reconciliation, and during Presidential Reconstruction (1865–67) his successor, Andrew Johnson, attempted to carry out Lincoln’s magnanimous policies. Johnson’s efforts were opposed and eventually thwarted by the Radical Republicans in Congress. Motivated by an irrational hatred of Southern ‘rebels’ and the desire to consolidate their party’s national ascendancy, the Radicals in 1867 swept aside the Southern governments Johnson had established and fastened black suffrage on the defeated South. There followed the sordid period of Congressional or Radical Reconstruction (1867–77), an era of corruption presided over by unscrupulous ‘carpetbaggers’ from the North, unprincipled Southern white ‘scalawags,’ and ignorant blacks unprepared for freedom and incapable of properly exercising the political rights Northerners had thrust upon them. After much needless suffering, the South’s white community banded together to overthrow these governments and restore ‘home rule’ (a euphemism for white supremacy). All told, Reconstruction was the darkest page in the saga of American history.” The novel is not as partisan as this account. Faulkner elides several key events. It is not clear that in his telling the South is “ready to do justice to the emancipated slaves,” but his great-grandfather certainly reflected the view that the South should be quickly reintegrated into national life, and Colonel Sartoris is clearly depending on the continuance of Lincoln’s reconciliation policies. Very little is said specifically about the Burdens as Radical Republicans or about carpetbaggers and scalawags. “Home rule” entailed violence that Faulkner did not condone. Faulkner generally avoids the period of so-called “ignorant blacks” and worse who harry white people in Birth of a Nation and Gone with the Wind.
37. Pruitt.
38. “Faulkner Novel Will Be Screened,” Charleston Gazette, February 22, 1938, https://newspaperarchive.com/charleston-gazette-feb-22–1938-p-5/.
39. Matthews, William Faulkner: Seeing through the South, 221.
40. Wittenberg, The Transfiguration of Biography, 157, notes that The Unvanquished “dramatizes the arrival of its protagonist at a stage of maturity not achieved by any of Faulkner’s previous young males and makes a final cathartic gesture toward significant parental and surrogate-parent figures in Faulkner’s past.”
41. Interview with Estelle Faulkner, September 9, 1965, JBP.
42. Bleikasten, William Faulkner: A Life through the Novels, 276.
43. Pruitt. Elnora, Ringo’s sister, does not appear in The Unvanquished; in “There Was a Queen” she is described as Bayard’s half sister, making it just possible that Ringo is also Bayard’s half brother.
1. Zender, 538.
2. SL, 106.
3. The comment was made at the Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference, July 22, 2019, during a panel discussion of a presentation by Gary Bertholf, “Faulkner’s ‘Negroes,’ The McJunkins’s Faulkner, and My Search for Greenfield Farm: Southern Literature from Below.”
4. UVA.
5. B, 33, 47–50.
6. Interview with Robert Daniel, 1951, CCP. Chabrier, 53, reports the rumor mentioned in an interview with Lewis Dollarhide, who taught at the University of Mississippi from the 1950s through the 1980s.
7. VJR: According to Cho-Cho’s daughter, Vicki, Claude Selby later made several visits to Oxford attempting to reclaim Vicki, but Faulkner, in effect, stood guard, picking her up at school and making sure Selby’s efforts were thwarted.
8. My account of Cho-Cho is drawn from LG, 140–43.
9. Gray, 241, 245.
10. Gray, 246.
11. August 24, 1938, UVA.
12. SL, 107.
13. Harrisburg Sunday Courier, March 12, 1939.
14. Nelson and Goforth, 80. Charles Nelson saw Faulkner reading the novel and asked him about it. Faulkner said he “enjoyed it” but made no other comment.
15. WFTF, 607.
16. In Faulkner’s script, the name is Blue Black, but I use the character’s name in the released film to avoid confusion.
17. WFTF, 705.
18. WFTF, 751.
19. WFTF, 579: “Here is the paradox of frontier mythology in a nutshell.”
20. Miss Reba in Sanctuary also wears a veil, and Claude in Today We Live announces: “there’s not any Eden anymore, and they wear khaki and not veils.” Veils are the sign of propriety that Caddy and Charlotte cast off and that Miss Reba appropriates in her parody of propriety.
21. Berg collection, NYPL.
22. Gray, 243.
23. Interview with Wolfgang Rebner, July 1965, CCP.
24. Interview notes, n.d., CCP.
25. McHaney, William Faulkner’s “The Wild Palms,” 10–12, suggests that Sherwood Anderson’s second wife, Tennessee Mitchell, a sculptor who created “grotesque, satirical figurines” and was attracted to impecunious men, served as a model for Charlotte Rittenmeyer.
26. See McHaney’s first chapter of William Faulkner’s “The Wild Palms” for extensive parallels between The Wild Palms and A Farewell to Arms.
27. McHaney, William Faulkner’s “The Wild Palms,” 18, likens McCord to Sherwood Anderson.
28. WFTF, 224.
29. Gray, 252, supposes Harry is masturbating.
30. Gwin, The Feminine and Faulkner, 133–34.
31. Faulkner’s erotica drawings are in the Berg Collection, NYPL.
32. Weinstein, Becoming Faulkner, 189, speaks of Meta’s “well-bred docility.” That is nowhere in evidence in the drawings. For a contrary view, see A. G. Jones, “The Kotex Age,” 144: “It seems likely that this [the love affair with Meta] was Faulkner’s first sustained and intimate encounter with a woman who was both profoundly sexual and increasingly autonomous.”
1. I was startled when I read this account from Mrs. Agnes McComb Kimbrough to Robert H. Moore, July 14, 1970, RHMP, because it was almost word for word what Kathy Smith, Dana Andrews’s daughter, told me about what it was like growing up with an alcoholic father. She would tell her friends to just step over her father, who had passed out in the living room (see Rollyson, Hollywood Enigma: Dana Andrews).
2. “TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE LEAGUE OF AMERICAN WRITERS,” ESPL.
3. Robert Haas to William Faulkner, March 22, 1940, UVA: “This is just to let you know that Mrs. Doherty came in yesterday and that in accordance with your instructions we handed her $150.00 in cash.”
4. Interview with Dorothy Commins, January 18, 1964, CCP.
5. Snell, 243.
6. Joel Sayre oral history, NYPL.
7. SL, 111.
8. James G. Watson, William Faulkner: Self-Presentation and Performance.
9. LITG, 17.
10. Weinstein, Becoming Faulkner, 299.
11. FWP.
12. Trotter, 136.
13. Pruitt, 193.
14. James G. Watson, The Snopes Dilemma, 12.
15. Pruitt, 194.
16. James G. Watson, William Faulkner: Self-Presentation and Performance.
17. James G. Watson, William Faulkner: Self-Presentation and Performance.
18. I have resisted any deeper probing of Ratliff’s motivations, since I think his reactions to the cow episode have a good deal to do with his offended sense of propriety. But if you are in the market for a Freudian take on Ratliff as bugger-man, see Polk, Children of the Dark House, 190.
19. Gray, 263.
21. Interview with Maud Falkner, April 13, 1950, CCP.
22. Listen to clips from Faulkner talking about The Hamlet: http://faulkner.drupal.shanti.virginia.edu/node/10403?canvas#.
23. Pruitt, 195.
24. Matthews, William Faulkner: Seeing through the South, 125.
25. James G. Watson, William Faulkner: Self-Presentation and Performance.
1. Faulkner to Mary Bell, May 7, 1940, UVA.
2. Faulkner’s hunting companion Ike Roberts said that Faulkner, “slightly intoxicated,” spoke at the funeral of a black man and spoke so long the “colored preachers” had no opportunity to speak and the casket was carried out of the church while Faulkner was still speaking (interview with Ike Roberts, spring 1950, CCP).
3. SL, 117–18.
4. FL.
5. Karl, 634.
6. CGBC, vol. 2, 27.
7. Faulkner, Thinking of Home, ed. Watson, 61.
8. SL, 122–23.
9. See, for example, SL, 124–25.
10. SL, 125.
11. SL, 126–29.
12. FB (1974), 1050.
13. See SL, 130–32, for the business details.
14. SL, 136–37.
15. SL, 138.
16. For more on Sergeant York, see Rollyson, A Real American Character, 91–95; and Solomon, 119–20.
17. Peek and Hamblin, eds., 283.
18. See Trotter, 137. Faulkner mentions borrowing from Will Bryant John Spencer Bassett’s The Southern Plantation Overseer as Revealed in His Letters. In The Ledgers of History, Sally Wolff posits another important source for the commissary books, the Francis Terry Leak diaries, which Faulkner may have read while visiting friends in Holly Springs, Mississippi. Several Faulkner scholars have endorsed and disputed Wolff’s findings. The main problem I have with Wolff’s evidence is that much of what she attributes to the Leak diaries can also be derived from Bassett’s book, which we know for certain Faulkner consulted. As to the testimony of Edgar Wiggin Francisco III, who claimed a firsthand connection with Faulkner, I could not make a determination. Wolff’s critics note that Francisco does not appear in the other Faulkner biographies and that much of Wolff’s evidence is hearsay. That no biographer knew about Francisco’s existence is not in itself dispositive. Such occurrences do happen in biography. One of Amy Lowell’s lovers, an important figure in her life, does not make a single appearance in Lowell’s massive Houghton Library archive, and yet letters turned up in the Massachusetts Historical Society that made it possible for me to rewrite a significant period in Lowell’s biography that none of her several biographers knew about. Perhaps more evidence will yet come to light regarding Faulkner’s experiences in Holly Springs, where Francisco’s family lived (see Maria Bustillos, “The Faulkner Truthers,” The Awl, April 22, 2014: https://www.theawl.com/2014/04/the-faulkner-truthers/; and Wolff’s rebuttal: “ ‘Everybody Knew’: Ledgers of History: Questions and Answers,” South Atlantic Review, December 22, 2016, 66–88).
19. June 23, 1942, CCP. Wiley was then a professor of history at the University of Mississippi and a friend of Faulkner’s.
20. Matthews, William Faulkner: Seeing through the South, 200, may be right that “Ike solves a mystery that is already known by the community to be part of its unmentionable past,” but not until Ike’s effort is the enormity of the mystery and its cover-up palpably exposed.
21. Polk, Children of the Dark House.
22. FB (1984).
1. Interview with W. J. Van Santen, New Orleans, March 27, 1963, CCP.
2. Interview with Bell Wiley, November 8, 1963, CCP.
3. Jill’s report card, UVA.
4. LITG, 42–51.
5. January 23, 1940, UVA.
6. Interview with Joan Williams, in Hickman, William Faulkner and Joan Williams.
7. Carter, 147–48.
8. Wasson, 159–62.
9. Beck, Faulkner, 21. The three Beck articles are collected in this volume.
10. Beck, Faulkner, 37.
11. Beck, Faulkner, 43.
12. SL, 142.
13. FB (1974), 364.
14. FB (1974), 1103.
15. “Death of William Faulkner Recalls Visit to Author’s Home 20 Years Ago,” New York Times, July 10, 1962.
16. Interview with Richard Charles Rippin, June 2, 1963, about a visit to Rowan Oak on November 30, 1941, CCP.
17. CGBC, vol. 2, 23–24.
18. CGBC, vol. 2, 25.
19. EDBS.
20. SL, 149.
21. SL, 152.
22. EDBS.
23. EDBS.
24. EDBS.
25. Nelson and Goforth, 57–61.
26. Interviews with Sandra Baker Moore and Larry Wells.
27. Larry Wells, July 2014, interview by the author.
28. SL, 153.
29. William Lewis Jr., the current owner of Neilson’s, gave me a copy of the letter.
30. SL, 154.
31. Cerf to Faulkner, June 3 and 30, 1942, UVA.
32. SL, 155.
33. See SL, 156–61, for the Herndon fiasco, and 157 for the letter to Geller.
1. Montagu, 34.
2. See also SL, 162.
3. Cassette 9, August 11, 1975, MCR.
4. August 20 and September 25, 1942, UVA.
5. N.d., UVA.
6. August 1, 1942, UVA.
7. August 17, 1942, UVA.
8. Cassette 13, n.d., MCR.
9. Interview with Meta Carpenter, n.d., CCP.
10. Interview with Stephen Longstreet, June 12, 1965, JBP.
11. Interview with Meta Carpenter, n.d., CCP.
12. CWF, 45.
13. Interviews with Jo Pagano, June 4 and 5, 1966, JBP.
14. Interview with Stephen Longstreet, June 12, 1965, JBP.
15. Interview with Meta Carpenter, n.d., CCP.
16. Interview with Jo Pagano, June 5, 1966, JBP.
17. February 13, 1977, Sound roll 7B, sound 21. Camera roll 13B, CCP.
18. LG, 57.
19. Interview with Meta Carpenter, n.d., CCP.
20. Interview with John Fante, June 8, 1966, JBP.
21. Warner, 290.
22. Interview with Robert Buckner, June 9, 1965, JBP.
23. SL, 162.
24. Interview with Buzz Bezzerides, June 14, 1965, JBP.
25. Jackson, “If It Still Is France, It Will Endure,” 40–41. Blotner reports that at one point Buckner did pair Faulkner with Max Brand, author of Destry Rides Again and other pulp stories, to soup up the action, but it is difficult to detect Brand’s influence. He apparently accomplished little, except for matching Faulkner drink for drink, and soon he departed for a war-correspondent assignment in Italy, where he was killed (see FB [1984]).
26. SL, 173.
27. CGBC, vol. 3, 6.
28. CGBC, vol. 3, 335.
29. SL, 164.
30. CGBC, vol. 3, 353.
31. CGBC, vol. 3, 362.
32. CGBC, vol. 3, 395–98.
33. Nigel Hamilton to Carl Rollyson, March 23, 2018. Jackson, “ If It Still Is France, It Will Endure,” anticipates some of my conclusions, although he links Faulkner’s work on the De Gaulle scripts to his Nobel Prize address and to a decline in Faulkner’s fiction, whereas I see the Warner Brothers phase as part of his emerging commitment to public service and to a different kind of fiction that should be viewed on its own terms and not be read as simply inferior to his pre–World War II writing.
34. LG, 71.
35. LG, 71.
36. LG, 72.
37. LG, 59.
38. LG, 59.
39. SL, 165–66.
40. Interview with James and Margaret Silver, September 23, 1962, CCP.
42. The Christmas and New Year’s details are drawn from B, 69–80.
43. Warner Brothers collection, University of Southern California. The treatment has been published in Faulkner, Country Lawyer, ed. Brodsky and Hamblin.
44. Warner Brothers collection, University of Southern California.
1. SL, 167.
2. Interview with Dorothy Parker, n.d., CCP.
3. Interview with John Crown, December 22, 1963, CCP.
4. LG, 70.
5. Interview with Jo Pagano, winter 1963, CCP.
6. Interview with Meta Carpenter, December 1963, CCP.
8. Interviews with Meta Carpenter, n.d., CCP.
9. Starr, 347–48.
10. SL, 167.
12. FB (1974), 1140.
13. SL, 167.
15. See Rollyson, Lillian Hellman: Her Legend and Her Legacy, 207.
16. March 1, 1943, UVA.
17. LG, 104.
18. SL, 170–71.
19. SL, 173–74.
20. CGBC, vol. 4, x–xii.
21. N.d., JBP.
22. CGBC, vol. 4, ix.
23. The only film that approaches Faulkner’s panoramic visualization of the war is Frank Capra’s Why We Fight, a seven-part documentary that covers every battle theater of World War II.
24. See Solomon, 119, for Faulkner’s work on God Is My Co-Pilot, including the creation of a Hawksian hero along the lines of Fonda.
25. Fonda enlisted in the navy and was not available for the film.
26. Faulkner was not able to get those men in Abbeville to listen to a talk about the war, but he put their listening to a Joe Louis heavyweight title match to good use.
27. CGBC, vol. 4, xxxv–vi.
28. CGBC, vol. 4, xxx.
29. SL, 175–76. Was Faulkner referring to the Silver Shirt Legion of America?
30. Larry Wells, interview by the author, July 2017.
31. SL, 175.
32. SL, 177.
33. JBP. In FB (1984), Blotner supposes that Estelle’s letter “must have seemed perverse” to Faulkner. Beware of those “must have beens” in biography, which only signal what the biographer does not know.
34. MFP.
35. August 18, 1943, MFP.
36. CGBC, vol. 4, xxxix.
37. SL, 178.
38. Interview with Henry Hathaway, February 26, 1977, CCP.
39. Interview with Stephen Longstreet, June 8, 1965, JBP.
1. December 2, 1943, MFP.
2. November, 4, 1943, MFP.
3. December 21, 1943, MFP.
4. October 8, 1943, JBP.
5. Interview with Vicki and Dean, March 18, 1965, JBP.
6. SL, 178–79.
7. SL, April 22, 1944, 180–81.
8. LG, 60–61.
9. Postmarked April 14, 1944, JBP.
10. Kawin, ed., To Have and Have Not, 32.
11. McBride, ed., Hawks on Hawks, 78.
12. McCarthy, 372.
13. Kawin, ed., To Have and Have Not, interviewed Carpenter about her work on the picture. For a critique of Kawin, see B. Robbins, “The Pragmatic Modernist,” 244.
14. McCarthy, 373.
15. Longstreet to Joseph Blotner, n.d., JBP.
16. N.d., JBP.
17. See Rollyson, A Real American Character, 109–13.
18. Kawin, introduction to To Have and Have Not, ed. Kawin.
19. Williamson.
20. Crowther was not alone. Marcy Townsley (Austin American, January 27, 1945) uses the same word.
21. Farber, Farber on Film, ed. Polito, 196–97.
1. LG, 63, 75, 77.
2. SL, 181.
3. N.d., MFP.
4. February 22, 1944, MFP.
5. May 22, 1944, MFP.
6. Interview with Jo Pagano, winter 1963, CCP.
7. VJR.
8. CGBC, vol. 2, 27–29.
9. Blotner, “Faulkner in Hollywood,” 291.
10. McClelland, 356.
11. Wald, 130.
12. September 30, 1944, MFP.
13. LG, 66–67.
14. LG, 58.
15. McCarthy, 379.
16. Dardis, Some Time in the Sun.
17. Farber, 287.
18. Agee, 502.
19. Solomon, 183–84.
20. Wood, 170. Furthman worked mainly on the last part of the script, after Faulkner and Brackett had concluded their work. I have concentrated on the parts Faulkner and Brackett worked on together, although Furthman’s material fits the Faulkner-Brackett conception of the story quite well (see Kawin, Faulkner and Film, 113).
21. Solomon, 181.
22. McBride, ed., Focus on Howard Hawks, 51.
23. SL, 186–87. Phillips, 49, may be right that this is Faulkner’s wry farewell to Hollywood, but it is also an expression of affection for a film he had wanted to work on with Howard Hawks from the moment they had considered doing so.
1. See the discussion of Faulkner’s work on Mildred Pierce in LaValley, 34–36; B. Robbins, “The Pragmatic Modernist,” 249–55; and Solomon, 172–74.
2. Faulkner’s treatment is included in Faulkner, Country Lawyer, ed. Brodsky and Hamblin. See Solomon, 160–64, for more discussion of The Damned Don’t Cry and its impact on Faulkner’s fiction, especially Go Down, Moses.
3. Zanuck’s response is in the Howard Hawks Papers, Brigham Young University.
4. McCarthy, 535.
5. Lee Caplin to Carl Rollyson, email, May 26, 2018.
6. Rose, 96.
7. Moore.
8. Rose, 105, states that Miss Rosa is draining men of their blood, reflecting Faulkner’s fear of women, but this is not what the novel reveals about Rosa or about southern women, as Rosa’s relations with her sister Ellen and Judith make clear.
9. Vera and the countess may actually be the same person, in which case the Faulknerian idea of perpetuating family behavior by giving different generations the same name becomes a literal truth in the vampire tale.
10. See Kawin, Faulkner and Film, 136–43; and McCarthy, 403–4.
11. Wald, 130.
12. SL, 189.
13. SL, 186.
14. SL, 188.
15. SL, 189–90, 201.
16. SL, 187.
17. SL, 191.
18. Faulkner to Geller, Warner Brothers Archives, University of Southern California.
19. Malcolm’s letters home, February 2, 23, and March 19, 1945, MFP.
20. B, 81–83.
21. SL, 192.
22. The script is available at the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.
23. SL, 194–95.
24. Blotner, “Faulkner in Hollywood,” 294–95.
25. Interview with Malcolm Cowley, April 23, 1965, CCP.
26. Purcell does not appear in Faulkner’s unrevised first draft.
27. Faulkner, Stallion Road, ed. Brodsky and Hamblin, xv–xvi.
28. Faulkner, Stallion Road, ed. Brodsky and Hamblin, xvi.
29. CGBC, vol. 2, 31–33.
30. CGBC, vol. 2, 33–34.
31. Faulkner, Stallion Road, ed. Brodsky and Hamblin, xxvi.
32. Faulkner, Stallion Road, ed. Brodsky and Hamblin, xxvi. In another version, CWF, 48, Longstreet has Faulkner quoting D. H. Lawrence: “Culture in Southern California is the jade arse of the world.”
33. CGBC, vol. 2, 34.
34. Brodsky and Hamblin, Stallion Road, xvi.
1. Wolff and Watkins, Talking about William Faulkner, 24.
2. In another version Dean Faulkner Wells remembered, Judith’s father forbid her to marry a Yankee, and the brokenhearted girl threw herself off the Rowan Oak balcony, landed on the steps, and broke her neck (see Bezzerides, 71).
3. VJR.
4. B, 86–88.
5. Faulkner to A. P. Hudson, August 16, 1945, CCP.
6. EDBS.
7. Interview with Jill Faulkner, May 15, 1971, JBP.
8. Bezzerides, 92.
9. Bezzerides, 67.
10. Interview with Jill Faulkner, December 1969, JBP. See also Chabrier, 43.
11. B, 89–93.
12. Bezzerides, 94.
13. Bezzerides, 95.
14. N.d., JBP.
15. Bezzerides, 94.
16. ESPL.
17. SL, 211.
18. SL, 223.
19. SL, 217–18.
20. CGBC, vol. 2, 35.
21. Faulkner to McDermid, January 29, 1946, Warner Brothers Archives, University of Southern California.
22. CGBC, vol. 2, 39–40.
23. SL, 233.
24. SL, 182.
25. SL, 184–85.
26. SL, 196–98.
27. FC, 30.
28. SL, 205.
29. FC, 47.
30. SL, 222–23.
31. FC, 57.
32. Interview with Leo Rosten, July 10, 1966, JBP.
33. SL, 211–13.
34. SL, 217.
35. SL, 222.
36. https://www.christies.com/lotfinder/Lot/faulkner-william-the-portable-faulkner-edited-with-5331762-details.aspx.
37. SL, 233.
38. This review by Edwin Seaver and Robin McKown was reprinted in the Arlington (IL) Heights Herald (July 26); Chicago Daily Herald (July 26); Delphi (IN) Citizen (August 1); Odessa (TX) American (August 4); and Lubbock (TX) Avalanche Journal (August 25, 1946); Gordon’s review is extensively quoted in the Kingsport (TN) Times News (May 26).
39. SL, 222.
40. SL, 222.
1. Simons’s account: n.d., CCP.
2. On March 17, 1965, Jimmy Faulkner told Blotner that William Faulkner had wanted a son and that Estelle’s inability to provide one had disturbed the marriage. The basis for this statement is not clear.
3. These master’s theses are conveniently available at UVA.
4. SL, 234–35.
5. FC, 97.
6. SL, 238.
7. Interviews with Ike Roberts, spring 1950 and August 21, 1951, CCP.
8. SL, 244.
9. SL, 245.
10. See Trotter, 136–48.
11. SL, 246.
12. SL, 247.
13. SL, 248–49.
14. CWF, 67.
15. CWF, 82.
16. SL, 249.
17. SL, 251–52.
18. See Hemingway, Selected Letters, ed. Baker, 623–25.
19. SL, 253.
20. Interview with Phil Stone, April 5, 1950, CCP.
21. VJR.
22. LG, 145.
23. LG, 147.
24. Sandra Moore and William Lewis Jr., n.d., interviews with the author.
25. William Lewis Jr., n.d., interview with the author.
26. LG, 66–69.
27. LG, 148.
28. N.d., JBP.
29. N.d., JBP.
30. B, 116. See Hamblin, “Lucas Beauchamp, Ned Barnett, and William Faulkner’s 1940 Will.”
31. SL, 257.
32. FB (1974), 1242.
1. Interview with Eric Devine, Autumn 1965, CCP.
2. SL, 262.
3. SL, 266.
4. SL, 262.
5. FC, 100.
6. Broach, LDBP.
7. July 17, 1948, CCP.
8. EDBS.
9. SL, 276.
10. SL, 276.
11. Both interviews are included in LITG, 59–62.
12. Cowley’s notes and Blotner’s interview with Bill Fielden, October 13, 1964, are in JBP.
13. On the first edition of Go Down, Moses, Faulkner wrote, “For Muriel Cowley a charming & delightful Lady with gratitude,” signing his name and adding “Sherman, Conn 25 Oct. 1948” (see Brodsky and Hamblin, eds., Selections from the William Faulkner Collection, 95).
14. FC, 108–14.
15. SL, 277–79.
16. The heading is quoted from the Philadelphia Inquirer, September 26, 1948.
17. Malcolm Cowley in the New Republic (October 18, 1948) took a line similar to Wilson’s—accusing Faulkner of preachiness. Some critics still find Wilson’s critique persuasive (see, for example, Sundquist, 148–52).
19. Matthews, William Faulkner: Seeing through the South, 227.
20. Jenkins, 278. See also Monaghan, 54: “When he makes use of such stereotyped and insulting terms as ‘Sambo,’ Stevens shows quite clearly that even a man consciously dedicated to racial equality can, if he adopts a generalising habit of mind, quickly translate generalisation into dehumanisation and deprecation, a mental progression which forms the basis of much racial prejudice.” Faulkner, so far as I know, never used the word “Sambo” in his correspondence.
21. Polk, “Man in the Middle: Faulkner and the Southern White Moderate,” in Children of the Dark House.
22. Towner, Faulkner on the Color Line, 55.
23. SL, 262.
24. For more on Faulkner’s revisions, see Stephen Railton, “Manuscripts &c: Intruder in the Dust,” Digital Yoknapatawpha, University of Virginia, http://faulkner.drupal.shanti.virginia.edu/node/10659?canvas (date added to project: 2016).
25. West’s classic essay, first published in the New Yorker, is reprinted in her collection A Train of Powder. See also Rollyson, Rebecca West, 255–56.
26. FWP.
27. For examples of Faulkner’s work on the film, see Stephen Railton, “Manuscripts &c: Intruder in the Dust,” Digital Yoknapatawpha, University of Virginia, http://faulkner.drupal.shanti.virginia.edu/node/10659?canvas (date added to project: 2016).
28. Degenfelder, 138; Fadiman, 27.
29. Philip K. Schemer, “Brown Champions Work on Location,” Los Angeles Times, October 30, 1949, https://www.newspapers.com/image/381266839/.
30. Interview with Emily Stone, April 11, 1950, CCP.
31. Interview with Phil Stone, April 11, 1950, CCP.
32. Kingsport (TN) News, April 9, 1948, quoting an item in the Jackson (MS) Daily News, https:xwww.newspapers.com/image/68635042/.
33. Fadiman, 29.
34. Interview with Ben Maddow, February 25, 1977, CCP.
35. Bob Thomas, “Picture with Negro Theme Is Finished,” Pampa (TX) Daily News, May 8, 1949, https://newspaperarchive.com/pampa-daily-news-may-08–1949-p-4/.
36. Interview with Phil Stone, April 11, 1950, CCP.
37. Fadiman, 37.
38. Fadiman, 32.
39. LG, 158.
40. Parini, 307.
41. Snell, 265.
42. SL, 286.
43. G. Allen Johnson, “Star Presents a New Look at a 1949 Film about a Lynching,” https://www.sfchronicle.com/movies/article/Star-presents-a-new-look-at-1949-film-about-a-11183938.php#photo-12992542.
44. Broach.
45. LG, 158.
46. Fadiman, 36.
47. LG, 159.
48. Interview with Dean Faulkner Wells, January 1964, CCP.
49. Elizabeth Spencer, “Film Premiere of ‘Intruder’ Described by Novelist Spencer,” Delta Democrat-Times, October 16, 1949, https://www.newspapers.com/image/21421513/.
50. Snell, 269.
51. Bess Condon to Aaron Condon, n.d., CCP.
52. Interview with Dean Faulkner Wells, January 1964, CCP.
53. LG, 159.
54. Faulkner wrote as much in a presentation copy of A Green Bough, inscribed to his cousin Vance Carter Broach (see Brodsky and Hamblin, eds., Selections from the William Faulkner Collection, 74).
55. LG, 161.
56. Fadiman, 31.
57. EDBS.
58. Gene Roper Sr., “Oxford Blazes with Glory for Premier of ‘Intruder,’ ” Jackson Clarion-Ledger, October 12, 1949, https://www.newspapers.com/image/179715276/.
59. “Memphis Censors Approve ‘Intruder’ with Reservations,” Tennessean, September 9, 1949, https://www.newspapers.com/image/112041978/; Fadiman, 38.
60. “Film Industry Is Showing Maturity, Akron Beacon Journal, November 11, 1949.
61. Jenkins, 267.
62. Helen Bower, “Star Gazing,” Detroit Free Press, December 4, 1949, https://www.newspapers.com/image/97717741/.
63. Fadiman, 36.
64. Fadiman, 38–39.
65. SL, 293.
66. Schwartz, Creating Faulkner’s Reputation, 57.
67. For these examples and others, see Inge, “William Faulkner, James Avati, and the Art of the Paperback Novel.”
68. Schwartz, Creating Faulkner’s Reputation, 59.
69. Earle, 241, suggests that Lucas is not immediately recognizable as a black man, especially since his head and backside are viewed from a distance. Perhaps, although the four-color cover shows the flesh tones of the white people as opposed to the black head. A cursory glance at the cover, however, might not take in the black-white opposition.
70. Inge, “William Faulkner,” 52; see also Earle, 235–38.
1. SL, 280.
2. Snell, 267–68.
3. CGBC, vol. 2, 46.
4. For Stone’s correspondence with Carey and Collins, see CGBC, vol. 2, 48–56.
5. Brodsky and Hamblin, eds., Selections from the William Faulkner Collection, 109.
6. The section heading is taken from the cover of the Signet edition of Knight’s Gambit.
7. See Jay Watson.
8. Gray, 306.
9. SL, 292, 296.
1. SL, 278–79.
2. SL, 274.
3. SL, 304.
4. Skei, William Faulkner: The Short Story Career, 106.
5. Critics have engaged in a wide range of arguments about the internal consistencies, inconsistencies, and themes within the six sections and between them. See, for example, Ferguson, 155–60; Carothers, 59–60; and Millgate, 270–75.
6. See Kinney, “Faulkner’s Narrative Poetics and Collected Stories,” for one of the most detailed accounts of the book’s unity.
7. Paddock, Contrapuntal in Integration, 121.
8. SL, 299.
9. Interview with Meta Carpenter, n.d., CCP.
10. Interview with Judge S. B. Thomas of Greenville, MS, September 22, 1962, CCP.
11. Webb and Green, eds., William Faulkner of Oxford, 186.
12. Jacksonville (IL) Daily Journal, December 3, 1950, https://www.newspapers.com/image/48438126/?terms=Faulkner%2BNobel%2BPrize.
13. FWP.
14. “In Mississippi Everyone Has a Faulkner Story,” Southern Register, Summer 2007.
15. “I Know William Faulkner,” Oxford Eagle, November 16, 1950.
16. Snell, 275–76.
17. Interview, August 10, 1951, CCP.
18. CGBC, vol. 2, 64.
19. Hattiesburg American, December 6, 1950, https://www.newspapers.com/image/277075302/?terms=Faulkner%2BNobel%2BPrize.
20. Interview with Phyllis Cerf, December 10, 1965, CCP.
22. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, December 9, 1950, https://www.newspapers.com/image/140018035/?terms=Faulkner%2BNobel%2BPrize.
23. CGBC, vol. 2, 59.
24. Interview with Judge S. B. Thomas of Greenville, MS, September 22, 1962, CCP.
25. Cassette 16, July 14, 1973, MCR.
26. SL, 311.
27. CGBC, vol. 2, 59. Like her nephew, Bama did not use apostrophes in her contractions.
28. SL, 311.
29. Portland Press Herald, January 20, 1951, https://newspaperarchive.com/portland-press-herald-jan-20–1951-p-9/.
30. Minter, 219: “Many artists carefully avoid articulating their simpler convictions. Some do so out of fear of evoking ridicule—of being termed an aging scout master or a doddering fool. But Faulkner has always been better at taking chances than at exercising caution.”
31. Marguerite McMillin, “Nobel Prizewinner Faulkner Prefers His Own Little World,” Corpus Christi Caller Times, December 4, 1950, https://newspaperarchive.com/corpus-christi-caller-times-dec-10–1950-p-21/.
32. https://newspaperarchive.com/troy-record-nov-15–1950-p-6/; see also Jackson Daily News, November 11, 1950, assigning Faulkner to the “privy school of literature.”
33. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 12, 1950, https://www.newspapers.com/image/138184330/?terms=Faulkner%2BNobel%2BPrize.
34. Miami News, November 14, 1950, https://www.newspapers.com/image/298551571/?terms=Faulkner%2BNobel%2BPrize.
35. SL, 312.
36. Interview with Else Jonsson, March 27, 1974, JBP.
37. Aunt Bama enjoyed a comment by Mrs. Collins, Carvel’s wife: “Mr. Faulkner made the King of Sweden look like a peasant” (Aunt Bama to Carvel Collins, n.d., CCP).
38. Interview with Else Jonsson, September 12, 1967, JBP.
39. Gresset, “A Public Man’s Private Voice,” 70, suggests as much.
40. Interview with Else Jonsson, March 28, 1964, JBP.
41. Interview with Else Jonsson, March 28, 1964, JBP.
42. Interview with Else Jonsson, March 27, 1964, JBP.
43. SL, 314.
44. SL, 315. Faulkner as farmer has often been treated as a joke, a ruse on his part to fend off intruders into his literary life, which he safeguarded as a trade secret. Rose C. Fleming, a public information specialist for the Mississippi Soil Conservation Service, remarked that Faulkner “took seriously the admonition to ‘use each acre according to its capabilities and treat it according to its needs.’ ” Henry Butler, a soil conservation technician, remembered that Faulkner “carried his lunch and stayed with us all one day when we installed the dragline ditch.” The technicians were creating “diversion terraces and ditches round the bottomland fields so they could be worked. . . . He was interested in knowing about all aspects of conservation—why we located the ditch the way we did—how we used the instruments. He was always interesting to talk to, but in the out-of-doors he seemed to open up.” Fleming’s report is in RHMP.
45. SL, 321.
46. SL, 318.
47. SL, 339.
48. SL, 342.
49. SL, 381.
1. See James G. Watson, William Faulkner: Letters & Fictions, for an astute interpretation of the role letters play in Faulkner’s life and work.
2. Williams to Karl, n.d., Fred Karl Papers, Special Collections, Thomas Cooper Library, University of South Carolina.
3. N.d., UVA. Unless otherwise noted, all the quotations in this chapter are from SL and Hickman.
4. October 2, 1952, UVA.
5. Hickman, ed., Remembering.
6. Hickman, William Faulkner and Joan Williams.
7. Hickman, William Faulkner and Joan Williams.
8. Hickman, William Faulkner and Joan Williams.
9. Gray, 322–23.
10. Hickman, William Faulkner and Joan Williams.
11. JBP.
12. Hickman, William Faulkner and Joan Williams.
13. CGBC, vol. 2, 95.
14. Interview with Estelle Faulkner, March 2, 1965, JBP.
15. CGBC, vol. 2, 94.
16. CGBC, vol. 2, 96.
17. Sandra Moore, Kate Baker’s daughter, n.d., interview by the author.
18. CGBC, vol. 2, 116; Mullener, 14.
19. Postmarked July 31, 1952.
20. VJR.
21. CGBC, vol. 2, 135.
22. CGBC, vol. 2, 135.
23. CGBC, vol. 2, 135.
24. CGBC, vol. 2, 136; Silver, 38–39.
25. CGBC, vol. 2, 136.
26. CGBC, vol. 2, 138.
27. Minter, 231.
28. Hickman, ed., Remembering.
29. ESPL. Faulkner had told Jill’s high school principal and history teacher, Charles Nelson Sr., that “he had done more for Jill than any other person” (see Nelson and Goforth, 44).
30. Interview with Phil Mullen, November 18, 1966, JBP.
31. Interview with Charles Nelson Sr., August 10, 1951, CCP.
32. ESPL. UVA holds Faulkner’s letters to his daughter. I have put the dates of letters in the text in parentheses. I am indebted to Marcella Sohm for sharing with me her essay “ ‘She Was My Heart’s Darling’: Faulkner as Father, through Letters to his Daughter Jill at College,” based on her reading of the UVA letters.
33. ESPL.
34. ESPL.
35. CGBC, vol. 2, 93.
36. CGBC, vol. 2, 94.
37. CGBC, vol. 2, 116.
38. CGBC, vol. 2, 134.
39. CGBC, vol. 2, 135.
40. CGBC, vol. 2, 136.
41. CGBC, vol. 2, 138.
42. Hickman, William Faulkner and Joan Williams.
43. Hickman, William Faulkner and Joan Williams.
44. Hickman, William Faulkner and Joan Williams.
45. Bezzerides, William Faulkner: A Life on Paper, 104.
46. Williams’s memoir is included in the Open Road ebook edition of her novel.
47. SL, 328. Part of the letter was used as a blurb for Greene’s novel.
2. For Purser’s reminiscence, see CWF, 90–93.
3. SL, 75, 78, 84.
4. SL, 298.
5. Interview transcript, n.d., CCP.
6. SL, 302–7, 311; Louisville (KY) Courier Journal, November 19, 1950, https://www.newspapers.com/image/108364063/.
7. McCarthy, 485.
8. Interview with Aunt Bama, October 5 or 6, 1951, CCP.
9. CGBC, vol. 2, 61–62.
11. Faulkner’s letter: CCP.
12. McCarthy, 486.
13. “Hommage à Dean Faulkner Wells,” by Francois Busnel, Le Grande Librairie, France 5 Television, interview, July 10, 2011, made available by Larry Wells on vimeo: https://vimeo.com/312333051.
14. CGBC, vol. 2, 62.
15. Cassette 3, October 27, 1973, UM.
16. George Sidney’s dissertation remains a useful study of the tensions inherent in Faulkner’s effort to conform to studio standards. See, for example, 184: “Thus twice during his screen writing career Faulkner repudiated Hollywood’s ‘manual of style,’ his obligations to his employers, his assumed role—and wrote for himself.” Sidney is referring to Banjo on My Knee and “Country Lawyer,” underestimating how many times Faulkner went against Hollywood orthodoxy in Sutter’s Gold, Drums along the Mohawk, and The Left Hand of God, although I am not certain Sidney saw Faulkner’s adaptation of Barrett’s novel.
17. Karl, 819, mistakenly assumes that Faulkner was “reunited” with Bogart, but the released film is based on another writer’s script, with a different director, long after Faulkner had departed from Hollywood.
18. Faulkner and Brennan shared the same anti–New Deal, anticollectivist views. They only cared about individuals and enjoyed the company of all types, who taught Faulkner and Brennan so much of what they needed to know in order to write and to perform.
19. WFTF, 923; Solomon, 13–14, 197–98.
20. Maud Falkner to Sallie Burns, January 16, 1951, CCP.
21. Solomon, 211, compares Hank’s narration, especially at the beginning of the film, to Faulkner’s “anxious habit of qualification” and his long, conjunction-filled sentences that wind through Requiem for a Nun.
22. Lowrey to Stone, February 28, 1951, CGBC, vol. 2, 63.
23. The film was not released until July 1952, but I think one reason Faulkner liked it is because it accorded with his redemptive vision in The Left Hand of God.
24. Solomon, 204.
25. See Robbins, 356, for more parallels between Mildred Pierce and Requiem for a Nun.
26. Roberts, 218.
27. Rampton, 162.
28. Wittenberg, The Transfiguration of Biography, 218.
29. Gray, 314.
30. Snell, 281.
31. Gray, 314–15.
32. Polk, Faulkner’s “Requiem for a Nun,” 19–20.
33. Weinstein, Becoming Faulkner, 216.
34. Gavin Stevens also elicited an ambivalence in Howe that would fuel critical debate for decades to come: “I still don’t know whether he is wisdom incarnate or a monster of cruelty.” See, for example, Polk’s critical study of Requiem for a Nun and Jay Watson’s book on Stevens’s career in Faulkner’s fiction.
1. William Faulkner to Meta Carpenter, August 8, 1951, CCP.
2. SL, 318. For a discussion of the differences between the produced play and the novel, see Polk, ed., “Requiem for a Nun”: Preliminary Holograph and Typescript Materials, William Faulkner Manuscripts 19, ix.
3. William Faulkner to Meta Carpenter, August 8, 1951, CCP.
5. Interview with Edmund Kohn, n.d., JBP.
6. Interview with Aunt Bama, August 5 or 6, 1951, CCP; Collins to Aunt Bama, January 21, 1952, CCP.
7. Ober to Ray Stark at Famous Artists, April 6, 1951, UVA.
8. SL, 319–21.
9. Chabrier, 43–44.
10. Ober to William Faulkner, December 18, 1952, UVA.
11. During one Princeton class when questioned about some difficulties with a literary text, Faulkner observed that he did not think “literature was written for Princeton sophomores” (interview with Richard Ludwig, January 1964, CCP).
12. Kaledin’s meetings with Faulkner occurred on October 10 and 12, 1951. He wrote about them for Carvel Collins. Kaledin became an American studies scholar at MIT, which is perhaps where he met Collins, who also taught there. For Kaledin, see http://news.mit.edu/2016/professor-emeritus-arthur-kaledin-dies-1206.
13. LITG, 65–67.
14. Interview with Ike Roberts, August 21, 1951, CCP.
15. Interviews with Vicki and Dean, March 18, 1965, CCP; and with Christine Drake, August 19, 1964, JBP.
16. CGBC, vol. 2, 71.
17. SL, 331–32.
18. SL, 340.
19. SL, 330–32.
20. WFCR, 94–95.
21. James Silver, footnote 7 in his paper “William Alexander Percy: The Aristocrat and the Anthropologist,” 10, CCP.
22. SL, 339.
23. The doctors’ notes and Commins’s diary entries from September 18 to late October (Estelle’s note is undated) are in LDBP.
24. SL, 342.
25. Stone to Collins, November 13, 1952, JBP.
26. CGBC, vol. 2, 99.
27. CGBC, vol. 2, 104.
28. SL, 344.
1. SL, 344.
2. CGBC, vol. 2, 105; SL, 345.
3. Malcolm’s diary for this period is at UVA.
4. Coughlan, 24–25.
5. The story is included in Uncollected Stories of William Faulkner.
6. Interview with Joan Williams, August 22, 1965, JBP.
7. This is Michel Gresset’s view as well (see Gresset, “Weekend, Lost and Revisted,” 175).
8. WFCR, 96–97.
9. Commins, 199–200.
10. SL, 346–47.
11. Malcolm Franklin’s diary, UVA.
12. SL, 348.
13. William Faulkner to Meta Carpenter, May 15, 1953, CCP.
14. SL, 349.
15. CGBC, vol. 2, 112–13.
16. See Hickman, William Faulkner and Joan Williams.
17. CGBC, vol. 2, 113.
18. SL, 352.
19. SL, 354. The letter is undated but appears to have been written in mid-October 1953.
20. JBP.
21. CGBC, vol. 2, 120.
22. CGBC, vol. 2, 121.
23. Nelson and Goforth, 90.
24. SL, 354.
25. Chabrier, xiii.
26. Nelson and Goforth, 17.
27. The striking aspect of the Nelson and Goforth book is its evocation of Faulkner as performance artist.
28. Commins, 208.
29. Interview with Estelle Faulkner, March 12, 1965, JBP.
30. CGBC, vol. 2, 124.
31. CGBC, vol. 2, 125.
32. CGBC, vol. 2, 126.
33. CGBC, vol. 2, 141.
34. CGBC, vol. 2, 129.
35. SL, 356.
36. SL, 358.
37. CGBC, vol. 2, 129.
1. Stein, 295.
2. CGBC, vol. 2, 138.
3. WF to Saxe Commins, January 15, 1954, JBP.
4. Jean Stein Van den Heuvel, Dec 6, 1976, CCP.
5. John Waters, August 1, 2018, interview with the author.
6. Chabrier, 56.
7. Kennedy Fraser, “American Parnassus: Jean Stein and Her Friends,” http://www.sothebys.com/en/news-video/blogs/all-blogs/sotheby-s-at-large/2017/11/american-parnassus-jean-stein-friends.html.
8. Philip Weiss, “Remembering Jean Stein,” http://mondoweiss.net/2017/05/remembering-jean-stein/.
9. https://catalogue.swanngalleries.com/asp/fullCatalogue.asp?salelot=2462+++++121+&refno=++736415&saletype=.
10. CGBC, vol. 2, 136.
11. CGBC, vol. 2, 130.
12. CGBC, vol. 2, 133.
13. Stein, 295.
14. WFCR, 118.
15. March 19, 1954, UVA.
16. Commins, 206.
17. SL, 362; McCarthy, 517–24.
18. See Solomon, 245.
19. April 13 and April 15, 1954, CGBC, vol. 2, 140–42.
20. CGBC, vol. 2, 144.
21. LITG, 162.
22. CGBC, vol. 2, 144; SL, 364.
23. UVA.
24. SL, 363.
25. SL, 365.
26. Jane Eads, “Wm Faulkner Attends Party on Maryland Estate,” Greenwod (SC) Index Journal, July 2, 1954, https://www.newspapers.com/image/69463435/?terms=Paul%2BSummers%2BJill%2BFaulkner.
27. LITG, 77–79.
28. Cerf to William Faulkner, June 28, 1954, UVA.
29. Interview with V. P. Ferguson, June 29, 1965, CCP. Faulkner made this comment in the summer of 1954. I have not been able to identify Dr. Busby.
30. See Bleikasten, William Faulkner, 432; Wittenberg, The Transfiguration of Biography, 221–22; Minter 229; Parini, 361; Rampton, 165; Karl 754, 880. See Kodat, 82, for a summary of critical response to A Fable.
31. See, for example, SL, 233.
32. Gray, 333.
33. SL, 262.
34. Karl, 879, suggests that “Faulkner was being influenced by the heuristic quality of movies he was working on.” Rampton, 164–65, inadvertently describes Faulkner’s approach to A Fable in terms that would make for a good, wacky Hollywood movie: “a scrambled story, set in a foreign country that he had visited only a few times, about a war that he had tried to serve in but could not, centered around a quasi-supernatural manifestation of Christ during the trench warfare at Easter in 1918, complete with a cast of thousands, including a clutch of abstractions to serve as characters, and an account of the vicissitudes of racing a three-legged horse in America thrown in.” Stefan Solomon’s book has begun the long overdue process of integrating Faulkner’s film work with his fiction.
35. Bleikasten, William Faulkner, 432, complains about “page upon page about uniforms,” but Cecil B. DeMille would have been delighted.
36. Kodat, 84–85.
37. SL, 238.
38. In The Wintering, Almoner tells Amy, “I don’t ever want you to be embarrassed by sentiment. That’s one thing wrong with the world today.”
39. SL, 178; see also Solomon, 148.
40. Solomon, 149.
1. SL, 367.
2. CGBC, vol. 2, 152.
3. WFCR, 103.
4. CGBC, vol. 2, 151.
5. JBP.
6. LITG, 81.
7. CWF, 103.
8. CGBC, vol. 2, 157.
9. CGBC, vol. 2, 158–60.
10. EDBS.
11. Interview with Shelby Foote, November 20, 1965, JBP.
12. Interview with Bern Keating, March 25, 1963, CCP.
13. Collins to Sallie Burns Faulkner, June 28, 1963, CCP.
14. Sanderson, 15, 17.
15. Interview with James Silver, March 1963, CCP.
16. LG, 169.
17. Interview with Ella Somerville, September 24, 1962, CCP.
18. Interview with Ella Somerville, September 24, 1962, CCP.
19. LG, 170.
20. CGBC, vol. 2, 161.
21. CGBC, vol. 2, 169.
22. CGBC, vol. 2, 169.
23. October 31, 1954, CGBC, vol. 2, 170–71.
24. CGBC, vol. 2, 173–74.
25. Written December 13, postmarked December 16, CGBC, vol. 2, 174–75.
26. SL, 372.
27. LITG, 80–82.
1. LITG, 83.
2. See Ragan for a detailed discussion of Faulkner’s significant alterations of the stories in order to shape Big Woods into an integrated work of art.
3. SL, 376–77.
4. Johnson, 250.
5. Interview with Robert Farley, n.d., CCP.
6. Faulkner’s letters are included in ESPL.
7. McEwen did become a leader, serving as president of Alcorn’s Student Council, but perhaps not the kind of leader Love envisioned. When a black faculty member attacked the NAACP, claiming the organization was alienating white people and limiting opportunities for black people, McEwen led a student protest and boycott of classes. He was expelled (see Time, March 18, 1957, http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,809204,00.html).
8. Eagles, 54.
9. My account of Earnest McEwen Jr. is drawn from conversations with his daughter, Gloria Burgess, and from her book Pass It On! (Two Sylvias Press, 2018). See also https://www.eomega.org/article/legacy-living.
10. The speech/essay is included in ESPL.
11. Interview with Dean William C. Jones of the University of Oregon, one of Faulkner’s hosts, August 9, 1963, CCP.
12. Linscott to Fiedler, March 4 and 21, 1955, UVA.
13. Both articles are in ESPL.
14. SL, 378.
15. SL, 382.
16. Stone to Starr, October 12, 1955, NYPL.
1. See his question-and-answer sessions at Mary Washington University: http://faulkner.lib.virginia.edu/display/wfaudio08_2.
2. The film is available on YouTube: https://youtu.be/0NJP3cRq4lk. The voice-over narration is taken from a somewhat longer Faulkner text included in ESPL.
3. LITG, 86.
4. LITG, 89–90.
5. LITG, 98.
6. LITG, 100–101.
7. LITG, 101.
8. LITG, 144.
9. LITG, 131.
10. LITG, 122.
11. LITG, 175.
12. LITG, 149.
13. LITG, 165.
15. WFCR, 121.
16. SL, 386.
17. LITG, 205.
18. LITG, 213.
21. Henry Butler, who worked for the Soil Conservation Service that did work on Faulkner’s farm, is quoted in a March 1970 press release from Rose C. Fleming, public information specialist with the Soil Conservation Service, RHMP.
22. RHMP, 354.
23. Grenier’s interview is included in LITG, 215–27.
24. Chapsal’s interview is included in LITG, 228–31.
25. Qtd. in FB (1984).
26. FB (1984).
27. Qtd. in RHMP. J. R. Cofield, Faulkner’s Oxford photographer, also supplied this gloss in RHMP, 441, August 12, 1970: “I will say, however, that ‘friend William’ felt very strong about the mistreatment of (WORTHY) darkies (but like the balance of we Southerners), he had no use what-so-ever for a ‘trifling Negro’ (with his hand poked out) and not willing to work for his ‘daily-bread,’ as all humans are supposed to do. . . . I too have very dear friends among the Colored-race.”
28. McCarthy, 523: Harold Jack Bloom reported Faulkner said “things about blacks that were, to say the least, not very nice, although publicly he cultivated a paternalistic stance toward them.”
29. RHMP, 238.
30. Donald Nuechterlein to Patricia Garcia, email, forwarded to Carl Rollyson, April 17, 2017.
31. Nuechterlein, 75.
32. SL, 388.
33. I have found no letters from Howland after Faulkner returned home to Mississippi in the fall of 1955.
34. SL, 387.
1. ESPL. Till had been afflicted with polio and a stutter.
2. Fargnoli and Golay, 234.
3. Interview with James Silver, April 1963, CCP.
4. Interview with Mrs. James Silver, March 23, 1963, CCP. Other details are derived from Silver, Running Scared, 36–43.
5. Interview with Ashford Little, n.d., CCP.
6. March 29, 1966, JBP.
7. CGBC, vol. 2, 185.
8. Silver, 43–44.
9. SL, 388.
10. Stecopoulos, 127–28.
11. For John Faulkner’s letters and Faulkner’s three replies, see Meriwether, ed., A Faulkner Miscellany, 135–38.
12. ESPL.
13. C. Adler to William Faulkner, March 17, 1956, JBP.
14. Akia to William Faulkner, March 27, 1956, JBP.
15. The interview appeared in two different versions: on March 4 in the Sunday Times and in the Reporter on March 22. The Reporter version is included in LITG, 258–64.
16. To Joan Williams, SL, 408, Faulkner admitted, “I don’t know why I thought then that drinking could help, but that’s what I was doing, a lot of it.”
17. FC, 111.
18. Weinstein, Becoming Faulkner, 116.
19. For Faulkner’s letter and Howe’s reply, see LITG, 265–66.
20. SL, 391.
21. “The Life and Times of Fr. David Kirk,” Road to Emmaus 9, no. 2 (Spring 2008): 11–12, http://www.roadtoemmaus.net/back_issue_articles/RTE_33/THE_ROAD_TO_EMMAUS_RUNS_THR_HARLEM.pdf.
22. SL, 398.
23. Williamson.
24. Silver, 60–61.
25. Williamson.