DATE: 28 April 1958
OCCASION: First-Year English Class
This clip was created by splicing the end of T-142c and the beginning of T-142d together.
Play the full recording:
Unidentified participant: When you speak of a man in motion, do you think that that person who moves along with it is apt to be the most successful or—?
William Faulkner: Well, he—he might have more peace. He may not be more successful. By a man in motion, I meant simply that motion is life, that—that man, if he's alive, he is in motion, and whether you like where he's going or not, your only alternative is stasis or death, and the choice which Ratliff had no trouble making is, "Either—either I will take this or nothing, and I would prefer this to nothing, that I'd prefer breathing to not breathing." But success—it would depend on what anyone means by success. Maybe Ratliff never used that term to himself at all, but probably he was, in own lights, quite successful. That is, he wanted no more than he knew within his capacity he would have, that he was going to enjoy what he saw and heard and was going to live a long time in peace because he had accepted, coped with environment, without trying to manipulate environment for his own aggrandizement as Snopes did.
[end of recording]
