William Faulkner Answers Student’s Questions

“No man ever put more of his heart and soul into the written word than did William Faulkner.”

— Eudora Welty

In 1947, at the University of Mississippi, William Faulkner — an extraordinarily inconsistent and difficult writer whose work is almost invariably frustrating, and yet a writer whom you cannot ever quite dismiss (the following Q-and-A shows why, I think, Faulkner being a man who thought and cared so deeply about literature) — was, during spring semester, asked to address the class once a week, which he agreed to do, provided the professor be barred from the class, which the professor was.

Here are some of the questions he was asked and the answers he gave:

Q: Which of your books do you consider best?

WILLIAM FAULKNER: As I Lay Dying was easier and more interesting. The Sound and The Fury still continues to move me. Go Down, Moses — I started it as a collection of short stories. After I reworked it, it became seven different facets of one field. It is simply a collection of short stories.

Q: In what form does the initial idea of a story come to you?

WF: It depends. The Sound and The Fury began with the impression of a little girl playing in a branch and getting her panties wet. This idea was attractive to me, and from it grew the novel.

Q: How do you go about choosing your words?

WF: In the heat of putting it down you might put down some extra words. If you rework it, and the words still ring true, leave them in.

Q: What reason did you have for arranging the chapters of The Wild Palms as you did?

WF: It was merely a mechanical device to bring out the story I was telling, which was one of two types of love. I did send both stories to the publisher separately, but they were rejected because they were too short. So I alternated the chapters of them.

Q: How much do you know about how a book will turn out before you start writing it?

WF: Very little. The character develops with the book, and the book with the writing of it.

Q: Why do you present the picture you do of our area?

WF: I have seen no other. I try to tell the truth of man. I use imagination when I have to and cruelty as a last resort. The area is incidental. That’s just all I know.

Q: Since you do represent this picture, don’t you think it gives a wrong impression?

WF: Yes, and I’m sorry. I feel I’m written out. I don’t think I’ll write much more. You only have so much steam and if you don’t use it up in writing it’ll get off by itself.

Q: Did you write Sanctuary at the boilers just to draw attention to yourself?

WF: The basic reason was that I needed money. Two or three books that had already been published were not selling and I was broke. I wrote Sanctuary to sell. After I sent it to the publisher, he informed me, “Good God, we can’t print this. We’d both be put in jail.” The blood and guts period hadn’t arrived yet. My other books began selling, so I got the galleys of Sanctuary back from the publisher for correction. I knew that I would either have to rework the whole thing or throw it away. I was obligated to the publisher financially and morally and upon continued insistence I agreed to have it published. I reworked the whole thing and had to pay for having the new galleys made. For these reasons, I didn’t like it then and I don’t like it now.

Q: Should one re-write?

WF: No. If you are going to write, write something new.

Q: How do you find time to write?

WF: You can always find time to write. Anybody who says he can’t is living under false pretenses. To that extent depend on inspiration. Don’t wait. When you have an inspiration put it down. Don’t wait until later and when you have more time and then try to recapture the mood and add flourishes. You can never recapture the mood with the vividness of its first impression.

Q: How long does it take you to write a book?

WF: A hack writer can tell. As I Lay Dying took six weeks. The Sound and The Fury took three years.

Q: I understand you can keep two stories going at one time. If that is true, is it advisable?

WF: It’s all right to keep two stories going at the same time. But don’t write for deadlines. Write just as long as you have something to say.

Q: What is the best training for writing? Courses in writing? Or what?

WF: Read, read, read! Read everything — trash, classics, good and bad; see how they do it. When a carpenter learns his trade, he does so by observing. Read! You’ll absorb it. Write. If it is good you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out the window.

Q: Is it good to copy a style?

WF: If you have something to say, use your own style: it will choose its own type of telling, its own style. What you have liked will show through in your style.

Q: Do you realize your standing in England?

WF: I know that I am better thought of abroad than here. I don’t read any reviews. The only people with time to read are women and rich people. More Europeans read than do Americans.

Q: Why do so many people prefer Sanctuary to As I Lay Dying?

WF: That’s another phase of our American nature. The former just has more commercial color.

Q: What is the best age for writing?

WF: For fiction the best age is from 35-45. Your fire is not all used up and you know more. Fiction is slower. For poetry the best age is from 17 to 26. Poetry writing is more like a skyrocket with all your fire condensed in one rocket.

Q: How about Shakespeare?

WF: There are exceptions.

Q: Why did you quit writing poetry?

WF: When I found poetry not suited to what I had to say, I changed my medium. At 21 I thought my poetry very good. At 22 I began to change my mind. At 23 I quit. I use a poetic quality in my writing. After all, prose is poetry.

Q: Mr. Faulkner, do you mind our repeating anything we have heard outside of class?

WF: No. It was true yesterday, is true today, and will be true tomorrow.

Feasting Fort Collins: Grill – with Ray Harvey

The following questions were submitted to me some time ago by the magnanimous and most excellent Kristin Mastre, owner and originator of Feasting Fort Collins, who has very graciously permitted me to reprint this interview here:

Name: Ray Harvey

Occupation: Bartender

1. What brought you to Fort Collins?

The big blue highway. Nothing more specific than that, I’m afraid.

2. What do you love about living in Fort Collins?

The pines and the pipistrelles.

3. What inspired your career choice?

Ultimately, my love of literature, which I felt bartending would best facilitate. I was not wrong. Just incidentally, did you know that the poet John Masefield, off a ship at 18, worked for a while in a Greenwich Village saloon?

4. What’s the best meal you’ve eaten here?

To be very honest, I find the concept of eating slightly preposterous, if you really want to know. I mean, when you think about it. Our bodies totally dependent on this stuff that just turns to dross anyway. I mean, human existence reduced to THAT. Well, it lacks class, in my opinion. Having said that, the two-pound T-Bone, with chanterelle mushrooms, followed by strawberries Romanoff and coal-black coffee at Nico’s Catacombs haunts me in a most peculiar way.

5. What’s your drink?

Coffee. I’m really not much of an alcohol drinker, I regret to say — disappointing to many, I know, but upon the other hand, we can all I think agree that I must keep my wits about me, such as they are.

6. How often do you prepare your own meals?

Infrequently. The fact is, I do not eat every single day. It keeps me alert and gives me that lean and hungry look — or so I like to believe.

7. What would we find in your refrigerator?

Raw meat and roses.

8. What do you do to relax?

Well, I drink a lot of coffee. I go for long runs. I read a lot. In general, I find myself most relaxed when I’m alone with my books.

9. Favorite meal on the go?

A bloody slab of beef.

10. Craziest, funniest, or most embarrassing story from the business?

Undoubtedly, the time I got Janeane Garofalo so drunk on Jack Daniels that by the end of it, she was trying to light up the filter end of her Marlboros, the mere memory of which still causes that sudden erection of hairs on the back of my neck. All of this was when you could still smoke in bars, of course.

11. What’s your guilty pleasure?

Lapping honey from the sharpened blade.

12. What are your hopes for the Fort Collins food scene?

Let us keep on keeping on.

13. What album are you currently wearing out on your ipod?

The Darling Thieves, Race to Red. That song “Unspoken” makes me bang my head.

14. Where do you go for a date night?

Ace Gillett’s. Is there anywhere else?

15. What’s for breakfast?

Books, black coffee, the breathing bell above.

16. What do you do after work?

French toast at IHOP, around 4:00 am. Next, I scrub my chompers and hit the deck.

17. What’s your death row meal?

My goodness, you ARE morbid. Answer: a quart of cookie dough.

18. What’s the best ice cream flavor?

Pistachio.

19. What do you have on your DVR?

After Dark, My Sweet.

20. What’s your favorite thing to do in Fort Collins?

Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with all thy might.




Please be sure to read the slightly more no-holds-barred interview here.

Interview With Slagheap

Ray Harvey: writer, bartender, and nobody's bitch

The following questions were submitted to me some time ago by Mr. Maxwell Hoaglund, of Slagheap magazine, which unfortunately closed its doors before this Q & A appeared. I publish it here with Mr. Hoaglund’s full knowledge and permission.

Q: If your finger isn’t typing, where is it?

Ray Harvey: It’s on the pulse of the people.

Q: Are you really a bartender?

Ray Harvey: Yes.

Q: What is your signature cocktail?

Ray Harvey: The Harvey Fingerbanger.

Q: It sounds fantastic.

Ray Harvey: You have no idea.

Q: What all’s in it?

Ray Harvey: Two parts finger, three parts banger. The rest is secret.

Q: Working in the food and beverage industry — has it made you into a foodie?

Ray Harvey: Perish the thought!

Q: Do you have dietary restrictions? Vegetarian? Vegan?

Ray Harvey: No, no, no. Not that which goeth into a man can defile him but only that which cometh out; for out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaketh. Gourmandizing of any kind is one of the surest signs of stupidity. The food snobbery of the vegan or the food snobbery of the vegetarian or the food snobbery of the organic-only cult, no matter how shabbily dressed, is every bit as beastly as the food snobbery of the rich and famous.

Q: As an anti-postmodernist — if I may put it that way — are you stalking your victims? If so, doesn’t your tendency to shoot from the hip startle them?

Ray Harvey: On the contrary, it lulls them into a false sense of security.

Q: Speaking of which, your article on Postmodernism, including the comments, created a small sensation in our office. What, may I ask, is reality? Can you prove existence?

Ray: Reality is existence. And existence is that which exists. Reality is that which is. The only alternative to existence is non-existence. But non-existence does not exist. There is only existence. In the words of Victor Hugo: “There is no nothing.” Regarding whether we can prove existence: yes, in a sense. Proof, by virtue of what it is, assumes existence, you see. How so? Existence must necessarily come before proof, because of what proof actually is: i.e. the preponderance of evidence which admits no other alternative. Evidence means that something exists. The very proof of existence is existence itself, to which there is only one alternative: non-existence. But non-existence does not exist. Only existence exists.

Q: Where do thoughts go when one is not thinking?

Ray Harvey: Where does the wind go when it’s calm? Said Voltaire.

Q: Who or what have been your biggest literary influences?

Ray Harvey: Karl Shapiro, Dostoevsky, Blood Meridian and Suttree, J.D. Salinger’s Nine Stories, Transparent Things, Pale Fire, certain sections of Ada.

Q: More than once, you’ve been accused of declaiming, as you’ve also been accused of ribaldry.

Ray Harvey: Paraphrasing Nabokov, conventions and cliches, particularly of the sexual variety, breed remarkably fast: the blotchy buttock, the bulbous breast, the baggy balls, phony moans of bliss, the endless talky-talky of dick this, ass that, vagina this, oral that — it’s worse than primitive; it’s boring. The lack of style in these discussions of various copulation techniques is enough to wilt the most tremendous of boners.

Q: You’ve said that your novel is in some measure concerned with justice. Is that correct?

Ray: Yes.

Q: What is justice?

Ray Harvey: Justice is the legal recognition of the fact that each and every human being, regardless of race, sex, sexual orientation, color, class, or creed, is individuated and sovereign, and no human or government institution may therefore infringe upon another’s property or person. Money, never forget, is also property.

Q: Why is justice important?

Ray Harvey: The path of the just is as a shining light, which shines more and more unto the perfect day. But what is the alternative? Only injustice. We are each born free. Freedom is a birthright.

Q: Gordon Gano once said “Happiness is a word for amateurs.” Do you think that’s true?

Ray Harvey: No, I do not.

Q: What is happiness? A chocolate turtle?

Ray Harvey: Yes.

Q: Would it be fair to say that you see life as a funny but cruel joke?

Ray Harvey: No, it wouldn’t fair. That question has the unmistakable shimmer of inanity. Life is neither inherently silly, nor inherently angst-ridden. The only alternative to life is death. And death is what gives life meaning in the sense that death is what life constantly strives against. But it’s not the other way around: from the perspective of the dead, life obviously doesn’t carry any particular relevance. I think you may be confusing me with the walleyed Existentialist Jean Paul Sartre, or one of his ventriloquist dolls.

Q: What is the purpose of it all?

Ray Harvey: Whatsoever thy hand findest to do, do it with all thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thous goest.

Q: Where is The Good located?

Ray Harvey: The Good ultimately resides inside the human brain, which is conceptual by nature and operates (therefore) by means of choice. There can be no good nor evil if there is no choice. Thought is not automatic. Thought requires effort; it requires an act of will. Quoting the psychologist Rollo May: “When we analyze will with all the tools that modern psychology brings us, we shall find ourselves pushed back to the level of attention or inattention as the seat of will. The effort which goes into the exercise of will is really effort of attention; the strain in willing is the effort to keep the consciousness clear, i.e. the strain of keeping attention focused.” That is where The Good resides. That is ultimately the source of all good and all bad behavior: the choice to pay attention or not. The rest is just an elaboration on this.

Q: Where may we see an excerpt of your book?

Ray Harvey: Well, you can hear me read the Prelude, in my surliest voice: