Faulkner at Virginia: An Introduction

Mr. Faulkner: Writer-In-Residence

By Joseph Blotner

[This essay was first published in The Virginia Quarterly Review (Spring 2001), then as a chapter in Mr. Blotner’s autobiography, An Unexpected Life (Louisiana State University Press, 2005). It is reprinted here with the generous permission of the Blotner family and VQR.]

It was just as well, for Fred Gwynn and me and our hopes for the University of Virginia’s Writer-in-Residence Program in 1955, that our memories of Charlottesville did not stretch back more than a few years. Others recalled a signal event in its cultural life more than two decades before. Ellen Glasgow, Virginia novelist and literary grande dame, felt that Southern writers like herself living in New York were kept from seeing each other by their isolation and the bustle of metropolitan life. She proposed to UVa. English Department head James Southall Wilson a gathering of 20 or 30 leading writers in some pleasant place where they could talk with each other. The president of the university endorsed the idea, and the resulting committee invited 34, including Thomas Wolfe, James Branch Cabell, and William Faulkner. Against his inclination and better judgment, Faulkner made one of the number on Oct. 23, 1931, eagerly awaited because of the publicity that had greeted his sensational novel Sanctuary.

Genuinely shy, and convivial mainly with a few friends and then only intermittently, he attended just a few of the sessions. His old friend and sometime mentor, Sherwood Anderson, later wrote, “Bill Faulkner arrived and got drunk. From time to time he appeared, got drunk again immediately, & disappeared. He kept asking everyone for drinks. If they didn’t give him any, he drank his own.” By the time for departure, Faulkner was glad to accept dramatist Paul Green’s offer of a ride to New York. This was the beginning of a journey by car and coastal steamer that would add to the lore of Faulkner’s drinking exploits before his circuitous return to Mississippi. Memories of these events were still green in Charlottesville in 1955. One of the journalists who wrote at length about the Southern Writers’ Conference was Emily Clark, and now it was her bequest that would be the linchpin for the return of its most spectacular participant.

Fred and I wrote to more than a dozen prominent writers, but we had very little money to offer, and some, such as Edmund Wilson and J.D. Salinger, said that they did not do that sort of thing. Some were doing it elsewhere. Others did not reply. When a friend of the English Department mentioned the plan to Jill Faulkner Summers, she said, “I think Pappy might be interested in that.” When Fred wrote to him in April of 1955, he indicated his interest and supplied a short list of his needs, including “a place to live and a servant to clean it.” When Fred and Floyd Stovall, our chairman, drove out to see him in April at Fox Haven Farm, where Jill and her husband Paul were living, Stovall said with some embarrassment that he doubted if they could raise $2,000. “Don’t worry about money,” Faulkner replied, “All I need is enough to buy a little whiskey and tobacco.” He agreed to come in the late winter and early spring.

The three of us on the Balch Commitee were delighted, and Floyd moved quickly. He urged the appointment to President Colgate W. Darden, a tall spare aristocrat, former governor of the state and a member of the DuPont family by marriage. “It would add prestige to the university,” Floyd said in summing up.

“The University of Virginia,” said Darden, “has sufficient prestige without William Faulkner.”

Floyd thought that Darden had obviously heard about Faulkner’s last appearance at the university. “I feel sure nothing like that will happen again,” he said reassuringly, and the president agreed to recommend his appointment as writer-in-residence for the second semester of 1956-1957.

In January I glimpsed him for a moment from the other end of the long, dimly-lit corridor when he made a brief visit to the fifth floor of New Cabell Hall. A small man, severely erect, he moved slowly, turning into Fred’s office and out of my sight. On February 15th he strolled the Lawn in tweed suit and overcoat and Tyrolean hat, casually trim and elegant. After a press conference in Cabell Hall with the journalists and photographers who had trailed him along the Lawn, he met with students and visitors in Fred’s graduate course in American fiction. The session began with questions about The Sound and the Fury. He answered slowly and carefully in his light, soft voice. Then he would look down at the desk, idly turning over a matchbox housed in a metal holder decorated with RAF wings. His calm belied his feelings. “I’m terrified at first,” he would say later, “because I’m afraid it won’t move.” But it did, and the hour passed quickly. He was more relaxed at its end and in a session with reporters. When one asked why he accepted the invitation, he answered, “It was because I like your country. I like Virginia and I like Virginians. Because Virginians are all snobs, and I like snobs. A snob has to spend so much time being a snob that he has little left to meddle with you, and so it’s very plesant here.”

Enthusiastic admirers of his work as Fred and I were, we formed a kind of silent cheering section. After his accepting this gambit, we were anxious that it should succeed. I had heard a number of authors’ question-and-answer sessions, but his were different, and they were reflections of both his mind and personality. He was articulate but not voluble, and he could tolerate silence as few people could. He had submitted to many interviews, and over the years he had developed a number of formulaic answers, often wry and funny, and often conveying the flash and brilliance of epigrams. But he also had a spontaneous phrase-making gift. Though he looked attentively at questioners, I had the sense of a distance which he imposed between himself and the rest of us. This appearance had been an unparalleled experience for me and Fred too. When I returned to my office after meeting another class, Fred stuck his head in my door. “I’ll go get Mr. Faulkner and we’ll have coffee in my office,” he said. Before I could compose myself, Mr. Faulkner walked in.

He had an extraordinary presence. As I thought about it later, I realized that he radiated power. It was the kind of effect attributed to great tenors and matadors. Here this perception came from a number of things: from knowing I was with the man who had created so many works of art and who had such a profusion of gifts, from his aura of calm and silence, and from knowing how withdrawn and sometimes irascible he was said to be. When Fred introduced me and Mr. Faulkner extended his hand, it was not a handshake but a handclasp, the hard firm grip of a man used to exerting pressure, as in training horses and grasping hand tools. He spoke softly and casually. “Morning, Gin’ral,” he said.

He appeared perfectly relaxed in Fred’s large, cream-colored office, waiting quietly while the steaming Nescafe cooled, lighting a pipeful of his strong, rich-smelling tobacco, a blend so distinctive that you could enter a room and recognize that he had been there. As we sipped, he answered questions slowly and politely, but he obviously felt no need to initiate conversation for the sake of any amenities. He had been cordial, but when he left, walking slowly down the hall, head up, eyes straight ahead, Fred and I sat down as we would have after exercise that had claimed all our attention. Then Fred apologetically explained Faulkner’s odd greeting to me. Remembering his stories about World War I, and trying to make conversation that might interest him, Fred said that he and I had both flown in World War II. When Faulkner had expressed quiet interest, Fred had said, out of a mixture of nervousness and attempted humor, “I’ll go get General Blotner and we’ll have some coffee.” So the strange greeting had been an attempt to use local informal names. He did not employ it again, and soon he was calling us by our first names. We had enjoyed being with him, but it would be some time before we would be easy in his company.

Relatively few students took advantage of the office hours he offered to hold. “I sat there,” he said later, “and answered questions that could have been answered by a veterinarian or a priest.” Our colleagues kept up a steady stream of requests for him to appear in their classes, usually when they had assigned his fiction. As the junior member of the committee, I helped Fred in setting up the schedule and escorting him to class. When Floyd Stovall had written him in November, he had offered the department as a barrier against engagements beyond his duties, and Faulkner had gratefully accepted. It fell to Fred and me to do most of the shielding. We did so gladly, with the sense of intimacy it gradually helped to produce. Only later would we realize this would not endear us to some, including a few of our colleagues, but we didn’t care. This assignment was worth any amount of resentment. Only gradually would we recognize what a stroke of good fortune ours had been.

It occurred to us that our duties included an obligation to others besides the writer-in-residence. There were the students and teachers who would come after us and would not have the chance to ask the author of The Sound and the Fury and Absalom, Absalom! about his work. One day Fred and I resolved that after time spent with him we would write down what he said. But when we compared our recollections, we realized that this wouldn’t work. We couldn’t be his friend, but secretly recording what he said when he had thought he was talking casually. Only a few of his remarks at universities had been recorded, and others which had been misquoted or quoted out of context had caused misunderstanding and hurt feelings. There was one thing we could do. Fred suggested to him recording all the sessions. He readily agreed, and so one of us would carry a bulky tape recorder to class. That year Fred and I wore raincoats, and this sight of two average-sized men flanking a smaller one and carrying an object in a case reminded some of sinister characters in adventure movies. When one observer mentioned us to Faulkner, he replied, “They’re doing pretty well. Next month I’m going to teach them to fetch and carry.”

There was no telling when or how that sharp wit would flash out. And he provoked humor in others as well, though now it was good-natured rather than acerbic, as it had been many years before when envious locals had called him “Count No ’Count.” One of my students was a talented caricaturist. Al Carlson sketched him as long-nosed and spindly, cuffs over his knuckles, a book under his arm, one hand resting on a broken column as he looked smiling ahead. When the editor handed him his copy of The Virginia Spectator, I watched the subject, himself a talented caricaturist, take it and slowly inspect the cover. His face flushed with soundless laughter that grew until he was overcome with the paroxysms of coughing of the inveterate pipe smoker. There were other symptoms of the growing attitude that semester toward the writer-in-residence, one of pride and affection. What he had called snobbery in the first press conference had translated into respect for his privacy, and pride at the presence of a world-class artist on the Grounds of the University of Virginia.

Because Fred’s duties as editor of College English placed added demands on his time, he tended to have less of Mr. Faulkner’s society than I did. Some mornings he might stop in at my office rather than his own and sit there while he checked his morning mail. Occasionally he would surprise me with a comment. He had told Professor Atcheson Hench that his mail seemed initially to come mostly from old ladies criticizing his remarks that Virginians were snobs. He could never tell what subject they might broach. One morning he opened a letter, read it slowly, and then refolded it. “This woman says how she likes my work and then tells me what a hard time she’s having,” he said. “That means she’ll let me give her some money.” He deposited the letter in the wastebasket. He unfolded his Times and settled his dark-horn-rimmed glasses more firmly on his nose. I turned back to my preparations for class.

His class sessions and occasional readings from his work were interrupted in March by a two-week visit to Greece for the State Department to coincide with a performance of his Requiem for a Nun. His busy schedule was crowned by his reception of the Silver Medal of the Athens Academy. But this triumph came at a cost. The combination of fatigue, celebration, and his pattern of retreat from crowds precipitated a drinking cycle. Leaving behind him a trail of lost objects, he was back in Virginia in early April, in the hospital. Before long, however, he had recuperated enough to resume riding with friends, aiming to condition himself and take jumping instruction for fox hunting with the Keswick and Farmington Hunts.

This was not an activity I had the skill or time to share with him, but fortunately there was another one. For a few years I had been helping to judge places in track meets or take times with a stopwatch, in return for which I received two seasons’ football tickets. With the approval of our supervisor, anatomist James Kindred, Faulkner joined me at the finish line of the 440-yard race. Our job was to pursue the first three finishers to get their names accurately. I should have known better by now than to think my fellow judge could escape observation and blend into the slim crowd in his khaki pants, linen jacket, and old Panama hat. Most of the athletes appeared not to know who this official was who walked after them rapidly at races’ ends asking, “Young man, young man, what’s your name?” One race, however, was different. The mile relay had just been won with a brilliant sprint by the visitors’ anchor man. A moment later, one of the runners walked up to us, his face flushed, and his chest heaving. “Sir,” he gasped, “in our class” – he struggled for breath – “we’ve just been reading your book.” He held out a copy of Light in August. “Would you please autograph it for me?” I recognized the visitors’ anchor man in the relay. Faulkner smiled and signed it. The winner thanked him profusely and walked away with an additional laurel from Charlottesville. As we were jotting down the first set of names, one of the officials who had met him earlier observed our progress.

“Well, Mr. Faulkner,” he said, “I see they’ve put you to work.”

“Yes,” he replied. “Blotner and I are workin’ for our letter. When we get it, we’re goin’ to put it on a sweater. I get to wear it on Sattidays.”

When it came to racing, he preferred the equine variety. He was riding often in spite of near-chronic back pain from injuries old and new and the inconvenience of having to depend occasionally on others for rides out to Grover Vandevender’s farm where he rode. We discussed the problem one morning over coffee in Fred’s office, which had become our Squadron Room. He said he had considered a motor scooter because a cycle might jar his back.

“We ought to get one of those belts for your back,” Fred said.

“Yes,” I added, “one of those wide black leather ones with red and blue stones on it.”

“We could letter ’Charlottesville’ on it,” Fred said.

“No,” Mr. Faulkner said, “we should put on it, ’Department of English.’”

The ambience of his various appearances was unpredictable and sometimes anticlimactic, as at one event of a kind he would have shunned ordinarily. On Friday, April 12, John Dos Passos arrived to address the law school and the Jefferson Society. A large man, smiling and diffident, he talked afterward at a reception with undergraduates clustering around him. Then the circle broke as some of the students made way for this other guest come to congratulate the speaker. When they saw it was Faulkner, those closest fell silent to hear the exchange between the two novelists who – according to Faulkner at least – were among the five best contemporaries in their craft. Faulkner extended his hand, and Dos Passos, a good head and a half taller, grasped it.

“Hello, Dos,” said Faulkner.

“Hello, Bill,” said Dos Passos.

They exchanged casual pleasantries as the circle reformed at a respectful distance and a photographer recorded the meeting. Dos Passos did not give the impression of shyness Faulkner did, but neither was he voluble, and so the two frequently fell silent as they sipped their drinks. After a short but polite interval, Faulkner offered his hand again.

“Well, good night, Dos,” he said.

“Good night, Bill,” his old acquaintance responded genially, and as the ring closed once more, Faulkner set off on foot for home.

For his scheduled public appearances, however, he usually rose to the occasion, and he was anxious to give what he considered full value for his appointment and remained wary of drifting into a formulaic routine of classroom sessions. As the end of April neared, it was time, as he put it, to “put the show on the road.” Students and faculty at other Virginia institutions were anxious to hear him, and so we set off in my car on a beautiful afternoon for Mary Washington College, the university’s sister institution in Fredericksburg an hour away. Well-turned out, his hair white from the morning’s shower, he was in good form, Reading rapidly as usual, from “Spotted Horses,” he held the attention of the young ladies of Mary Washington, who listened in a hush. They asked questions that were intelligent as well as respectful, and as if put on his mettle by their attractive presence, he was witty and responsive.

The American ambassador had recalled to me how after Faulkner discharged his last Nobel Prize obligation, he helped himself liberally from the drink tray as if he were saying, “School’s out.” Now, leaving Mary Washington, we walked through the sombre brick-walled cemetery where Confederate soldiers lay beneath dark weathered stones with fading letters. Any meditations on mortality they inspired may have increased his readiness for relaxation. We stopped by a meadow and uncorked the bottle of Jack Daniel’s he had brought along. It tasted fine out of paper cups with ice and a little water. Talking at random we looked out over the country. We had a second drink. When it was finished Mr. Faulkner said, “Let’s have another one.”

“Why don’t we go on,” Fred countered, “and find a restaurant where we can have one while we’re waiting for dinner?”

“I don’t see why we can’t finish the bottle here,” said Mr. Faulkner, with what sounded to me like the slightest edge to his voice.

Fred and I exchanged fleeting wary glances. We were both bourbon fanciers but essentially moderate drinkers, and I think Fred may have shared my sudden vision of darkness falling on the meadow with none of us in best shape to drive the car. Thinking too of Yvonne and the children at home waiting for dinner, I said “Let’s have one more here and then go.” Fred poured the drinks, and we enjoyed them without further discussion. The Jack Daniel’s was tasting even better now, but we went on to find a restaurant that served moderately good steaks, and at last we returned home in the fragrant evening.

There were further occasions for relaxation that spring. Each of us on the Balch Committee and our wives had found occasions to invite the Faulkners for drinks. If William Faulkner tended to be withdrawn, his wife, Estelle, had always been outgoing and popular, so much so that Faulkner’s college friend and first literary agent, Ben Wasson, would recall her in her youth as “the Butterfly of the Delta.” Slim now almost to the point of emaciation, she dressed elegantly. She had long since mastered the traditional arts of the Southern belle. Graceful and animated, never at a loss for conversation, she charmed effortlessly. “Call me ’Stelle,’” she had said and made us feel perfectly natural when we did.

The Town, the second volume of the projected trilogy describing Faulkner’s fictional Snopes family, made its appearance, and he gave us our inscribed copies. In the warm sunlight of late May, he and Estelle entertained the whole English Department, the French doors of their graceful Georgian home on Rugby Road thrown open to the spacious flagstone terrace. By mid-June, with the last of his University obligations discharged, we were free to go on the first of several planned expeditions. One bright morning at 5:30 his gray Plymouth station wagon pulled up in front of our house, and I went out to join him, Paul Summers, and Estelle’s son, Malcolm Franklin, for a tour of the Seven Days’ battlefields, the scene of bloody Civil War fighting. We took turns driving, and then, as the day wore on, made our way from Malvern Hill to Petersburg and Amelia Courthouse. Paul had brought along one of his West Point textbooks, and we stopped frequently to orient ourselves. It became obvious that Mr. Faulkner knew the battles in considerable detail, far better than any of the rest of us. The day turned warm and sunny, and though we were solemn and inclined to silence in the midst of the stone testimonials to awful carnage there, the trip had been a memorable one.

That evening, the Faulkners gave a Squadron dinner on the terrace at Rugby Road. (We were acquiring our own memorabilia even though we had thus far obtained only a model of the RAF Sopwith Camel for him – the Chief – and not yet the TBF bomber for Fred or the Flying Fortress for me.) We savored Estelle’s giant shrimp curry, ate quail eggs, and drank champagne. After dessert we had coffee and brandy in the candle light. In a momentary pause in the conversation, the Chief spoke. “Lieutenants Gwynn and Blotner, front and center,” he said in an abrupt, clipped voice.

Fred and I rose, stepped forward together, and came to attention. He stood at attention too and made a short rapid speech about our work, then stopped as abruptly as he had begun. The surprise still lingering, we said “Thank you, sir,” saluted, performed an uncoordinated about-face, and resumed our places. Fred was then 41, six years my senior, but I think he must have felt a glow just as I did. By late June the Faulkners were gone, back home in Mississippi attending to Rowan Oak and the needs of his Greenfield Farm out in the country. Indoor as well as outdoor work kept him busy, and it would be five months before he and Estelle could return to Charlottesville.

When the Faulkners returned, they brought with them two paintings by his mother, Maud Falkner – now increasingly well known for her realistic "American Primitive" style – one for the Gwynns and one for us. Although the Chief rode and hunted and sailed his sloop at home, he found more diversion here in Virginia. As he had gone to Little League baseball games with me in the spring, now in November he was ready to sample University of Virginia football. “I like this,” he told me. “This is real amateur sport. At home they got a tame millionaire and he buys a team for them.” Before half-time began the producer of the game’s radio coverage asked me if I could persuade Mr. Faulkner to talk with “Bullet Bill” Dudley, a Virginia football “immortal,” who was doing the color portion of the broadcast. When he agreed and followed me up the crowded aisle, the effluvium of his farm trench coat was nearly overpowering as we entered the confines of the broadcast booth. Reading from the producer’s scrawled note, Bullet Bill declared, “it’s a real pleasure to have with us today Mr. William Faulkner, winner of the Mobile Prize for Literature.” The Laureate was increasingly a unique presence in Charlottesville.

In the spring he had begun talking about moving to Charlottesville permanently. He had broached the subject sitting in my office. “I was thinking that it might be good to have some connection with the university after I’m through being writer-in-residence – if they can still use me, that is.” Mr. Stovall and Fred and I determined that we would go to the administration again when he returned in February. It was not as if he did not have work of his own to do. He was now well into The Mansion, the volume that would complete the Snopes trilogy begun so long ago. In January he remained faithful to a schedule of office hours that saw him seated at his Cabell Hall desk from 10:30 until noon five days a week. When he had no callers, he would read his New York Times for a while, then take from his trench coat a thick roll of white copy paper. Soon anyone passing could hear his slow tapping on Floyd Stovall’s portable typewriter.

Fred and I had only gradually become accustomed to our unique situation. In our developing careers we had gradually come to teach American classics, the work of Hawthorne and Melville, Twain and James, and others in the canon. Then suddenly we had found ourselves teaching that of an artist whom many anthologists and literary historians were placing on a similar level. It was a heady experience, in part because, though he was far from voluble himself, he gave us leave to ask anything in the class sessions and obviously made an effort to answer conscientiously. Our unspoken part of the bargain was to respect his personal and professional privacy. When we talked as friends in the Squadron Room, we did not interpolate the kind of literary questions he had heard for years, and in class we had asked more than we had ever expected to do. One result was his unasked volunteering of information virtually fresh from his worktable. Greeting him one morning, I asked how he was feeling. Not only was he fine, he said, but “I even got back to work on my novel.” Another morning in mid-February found him even more ready to talk.

“Get any work done this morning?” Fred asked.

“Yes,” he replied, stirring his coffee. “I haven’t worked for so long that it’s fun again. I got back to that Memphis whorehouse in Sanctuary, Miss Reba’s. That’s where I am right now. Senator Snopes is in Memphis and the nephew is going to barber college and they’re trying to preserve his innocence.” This was the kind of story-telling he had done as a young aspirant in Greenwich Village, sitting shoeless on the floor among friends, his imagination still busy with his creations. When Fred asked if Eula Varner’s daughter had reappeared, he volunteered more. “No,” he said, “that’s the third-act curtain to the whole thing” and went on to describe the action on which the end of the plot turned.

It was exciting to be this close to the artist’s smithy, and he even gave us a sense of participation in some of his work. In February he wrote out a talk he had been invited to deliver to three societies on the Grounds of the University. The political atmosphere in Virginia provided a special element of drama. The governor had promulgated a doctrine of “massive resistance” to federal pressure for integration. It would have been politic for William Faulkner to avoid the subject, but when he brought his talk with him to Fred’s office at coffee time and asked us both to read it, we saw that he had instead met the issue head on. “A Word to Virginians” was an appeal to lead the whole South in educating the Negro. The other Southern states still looked to Virginia as a mother. They had ignored her counsel once before, to their grief, but now, he wrote, “Show us the way and lead us in it. I believe we will follow you.”

“How’s that?” he asked us. We had both read the pages quickly.

“Good,” I said, thrilled more, I believe, by his request that we read his work than by the carefully worded appeal itself.

A week before, Floyd Stovall had talked to President Darden about some permanent tie to the university for Mr. Faulkner. Darden responded that though he appreciated Faulkner’s contribution, he felt that other writers who came under the Balch program would feel that they too might achieve permanent connections with the university. Though this seemed a lame and transparent excuse to us, we felt that Faulkner’s speech must have convinced Darden that his position was right. And the closing of some public schools, extending through 1958-1959 showed that it had extensive support.

Though there were still nearly a dozen class appearances ahead before William Faulkner’s term as writer-in-residence was over, there was a sense for us of the end of things as spring came in. We still gathered for coffee each morning, the Chief sitting in the low camp chair Fred had stencilled “Balch Chair of American Literature.” Katherine Anne Porter had been chosen as the next writer-in-residence. “I guess we ought to get a pipe,” I said “and have it engraved ‘Emily Clark Balch Pipe of American Literaure.’ That would still be yours.” He chuckled soundlessly. If we needed evidence that some did not share our regret at his vacating the position, I had heard it a few days earlier from another member of the Balch Committee, Fredson Bowers, who seemed likely to succeed Floyd Stovall as department chairman.

“Did ‘Pappy’ get over the idea that he was going to be the permanent writer-in-residence?” he asked me, with a broad grin. I replied that he had never seriously entertained that idea, and more than once he had asked me to tell him if he stopped being effective in the job.

Sometimes now his remarks would take on a valedictory tone, and we began a round of Squadron dinners, for in late May the Faulkners would return to Mississippi for the summer. Not long after that the Gwynns would be leaving as Fred took up the chair of the English department at Trinity College in Connecticut. Then, in August my wife and I would be departing for a Fulbright Lectureship at the University of Copenhagen. But these dinners were festive occasions. Knowing Mr. Faulkner’s taste for French cuisine, Yvonne served beef bourguignon, with baba au rhum for dessert. As he put down his spoon he asked, “What time’s breakfast, Miss Yvonne?”

He fulfilled his last public sessions and continued work at home on The Mansion. Earlier he had told Fred and me that he wanted us to see his new book. Because I had thought this just a polite remark, I was totally surprised when he arrived at our door one afternoon and handed me a manila portfolio.

“Here,” he said brusquely, “you can read this.” A glance inside showed me that it was a ribbon typescript, not just a carbon copy. It was the first third of his new novel, he said.

“You have another copy at home, don’t you?” I asked anxiously.

“No,” he said abruptly.

After he had left, I showed Yvonne what he had given me. She was aghast. “You don’t mean you expect to keep that overnight in a house with three little girls with crayons?” I read it that night, put it on top of our highest bookcase, and returned it to him the next day at cocktail time.

Even though the time was short, Floyd Stovall decided on one more try and walked up the Lawn to the president’s pavilion. “Mr. Darden,” he said, “I’d like to propose, with the concurrence of the English Department, that Mr. Faulkner be made an honorary lecturer in American literature to keep up his connection with the university.”

“There are no honorary positions at the University of Virginia,” was the reply. Colgate W. Darden had kept his no-hitter going.

There were, however, some tangible mementos. One night as the Faulkners sat in their Rugby Road living room, there was a knock on the door. Faulkner opened it and found no one there, but on the steps was a large package containing a silver tray from the Seven Society, an anonymous group of the university’s most distinguished sons. It was engraved to him in tribute to his contribution to the life of the university.

Our Fulbright year of 1958-59 passed rapidly with my teaching at the University of Copenhagen, lecturing elsewhere, and traveling strenuously in the summer through the Alps and as far as Rome before our return to Charlottesville in August. The Faulkners were back as the gold of October gave way to dappled November. Back in time for the Blessing of the Hounds, he was riding now with not just one hunt but with two, togged out in derby, stock and shining boots. But he was not neglecting his vocation for his avocation. He had finished his work on The Mansion, and on November 13 of 1959 it was published. Reading something he had written recently, I never knew when I would experience the shock of recognition. Sitting in Fred Gwynn’s office during those coffee and hangar-flying sessions, we had told war stories. Fred had said little about flying a TBF off a carrier in the Pacific, but I had told about the end of my brief career as a bombardier until we were shot down over Cologne, and about watching helplessly as green target flares drifted right over Stalag Luft XIII D when the RAF came over to bomb one of Germany’s largest marshalling yards. When I read Chapter Thirteen of The Mansion, I sat straight up in my chair. “I enjoyed that part about Chick’s experience in Germany,” I told the author later.

“I used your story about being bombed in POW camp,” he said with a smile. “I lifted that right from what you told me.”

There were other items that drew on our experiences. Fred and I had edited the Chief’s class conferences, and 36 of them would be published that year as Faulkner in the University. Saxe Commins at Random House had opposed the project for fear it would be thought Faulkner’s last word on his work. But then it was agreed that the University Press of Virginia would publish it, with the royalties to be split evenly among the three of us. We also made the joint resolve that they would always be spent on Jack Daniel’s.

Faulkner’s Virginia connection was signalized in two other ways as well. Linton Massey had suggested to University Librarian John C. Wyllie that some connection be found for Faulkner. Wyllie cautiously agreed, and in early January he released the news that William Faulkner would become consultant on contemporary literature to the Alderman Library. Very shortly thereafter he had a call from President Darden asking where he got the authority to add people to his staff and payroll that way. Tough-minded John Wyllie had a ready response. “There’s no money involved at all.” Faulkner would have a study with a desk, a chair, and a typewriter. “He’ll have access to anything in the library, but nobody will have access to him.” This time Darden made no rejoinder.

Buying land was a different kind of commitment. Hedda Hopper had reported from Hollywood that Rowan Oak was for sale, with a room reserved for Faulkner’s permanent use. Three days later the Associated Press followed this fanciful account with the word that the Faulkners had bought a home on Rugby Road in Charlotttesville and would move into their handsome Georgian brick house in August. He might never be able bring himself to sell Rowan Oak, but he intended to spend as much time living in Virginia as his tax situation would permit.

They settled in comfortably there, but he had his eye on a place in Albemarle County where he could leave his own home, mount Stonewall or Fenceman, and ride to Grover Vandevender’s farm to set out with him for the hunt. After searching in the winter and spring, he settled on the place. “I want Red Acres,” he wrote his friend, Linton Massey, asking if he would let him have $50,000 on demand if he needed it to seal the deal. Faithful as ever, he agreed. It looked as if Red Acres would be his, with its nine-box-stall, stable and groom’s room, and seven other buildings. The residence itself was a handsome brick structure with a central portion nearly a century old. To look from the wide front veranda was to see for miles, the panorama of rolling hills and meadows like an 18th-century landscape. Almost within his grasp, it eluded him when he died of a heart attack in Oxford, Mississippi, on July 7, 1962.

A year later I began my biography of William Faulkner. Two years later Yvonne and I bought 917 Rugby Road from Estelle Faulkner and I continued my work there.

©2001, 2005 Joseph Blotner

The Grounds and the Fury: William Faulkner at the University, 1958

By Ken Ringle (College ’61)

God obviously created William Faulkner to explain the American South. He may have regretted it, because then He needed an army of scholars, critics and teachers to explain William Faulkner.

Those of us who found ourselves on the same campus with him half a century ago in Charlottesville needed at least that much aid. Faulkner himself was not much help at all. It wasn’t for lack of availability. The agreement that made him the University of Virginia’s first writer in residence in 1957 and 1958 specified that he keep regular office hours something like once a week. Those of us hoping to write our own selves into immortality (or at least into the arms of English majors at Sweet Briar) would show up to sit at his feet and study the muse.

Surprisingly, the regulars were a pretty small group, perhaps because the novelist rarely said much. He would lean back in his chair in his tweed sport coat, khakis and a green wool tie with little fox heads on it, then puff on his pipe and make infrequent gnomic pronouncements. We would sit there gaping, wracking our under-booked brains for some question that wouldn’t make us look stupid.

“Mr. Faulkner, in your short story ‘The Bear,’ do you consider the bear a positive nature symbol or a negative nature symbol or a symbol both positive and negative like the white whale in Moby-Dick?”

“Oh,” he’d eventually say in his thin, reedy voice, after puffing on his pipe long enough to raise the suspense: “That’s just a story about a bear.”

I was usually too intimidated to ask anything. Though I was certain I was destined to write the Great American Novel, I was mortified that I found his work unfathomable. How could I write a novel when I couldn’t even read his?

“Mr. Faulkner, how do you start a novel? How do you even know what you want to write about?”

Pause while he stroked his gray mustache.

“M’boy you have to write because you can’t not write. You have to be demon-driven by what’s inside you.” More pipe puffing. What the hell did that mean? It was years before I’d learn.

Stalking him for clues became a passion. Once, on my job shelving books at Alderman Library, I borrowed the key to the room in the stacks where he wrote. He’d just finished The Mansion and I thought the pictures on the wall, the books he used for reference, his general writing environment would give me clues on how to be a writer. I found the answer, but not the one I expected. The room was absolutely bare. There was nothing in it but one of the library’s standard oak tables and a chair, an upright Underwood typewriter and a big stack of writing paper. Nothing else. No books, no pictures or posters on the wall, no jottings, no comfy sweaters, not even a dictionary. It was all in his head. How depressing.

Undeterred, I soldiered on. Faulkner liked to wander around the university grounds and observe things, usually from beneath one of those little green Tyrolean hats with the shaving brush in the hatband. I would run across him regularly near Lambeth Field, where he used to idle at track practice. He showed little interest in the major university sports of football and lacrosse, but would spend hours timing sprinters and hurdlers with two stop watches that never seemed to agree.

I pondered that for clues. Maybe it had something to do with the horses in his books and stories. He rode to hounds with the Farmington Hunt and always rode horses too big for him, which greatly excited Freudians in the English department. But I wasn’t sure what it told me.

He didn’t appear demon-driven whenever I saw him. Just a meditative onlooker, galloping somewhere deep in his imagination.

Not all our encounters were planned. In the winter of 1958, as a photographer for the Cavalier Daily, I was stationed across from the Virginia ABC store on Charlottesville’s Main Street to get a shot of students stocking up for Midwinters weekend. I was framing the line snaking into the door on the right when out of the door on the left came William Faulkner. Wholly dwarfed by his enormous burden of bottle-packed shopping bags.

In those days college drinking was a source of more celebration than hand-wringing, particularly at Virginia, and we merrily ran the picture on the CD’s front page. The English department faculty was horrified. Faulkner was not. “They caught me,” he said with a grin.

The faculty reaction was symptomatic. In those days novelists didn’t hang around campuses much, believing real life a more profitable laboratory for observation. Faulkner was such a prize that obsequious professors all but laid their coats over puddles in his path. The writer himself, who lacked even a high school diploma and was famously disdainful of academics, remained polite but distant, countering scholars’ questions with mischievously opaque replies.

His agreement with the university specified that he was required to give no more than an occasional speech and no classroom lectures at all. But, in addition to keeping office hours, he was to answer questions periodically from both graduate and undergraduate students in a classroom setting. Thus he was regularly led before us like a trained bear to deepen the mystery of just what he meant by the biblical allusions in Light in August or the stained-glass imagery in Go Down, Moses. There was much tape-recording of all this, the results appeared years later in Frederick L. Gwynn and Joseph Blotner’s book Faulkner in the University. But Gwynn and Blotner edited out much of the mischief.

Unenlightened by such sessions and despairing of unlocking Faulkner on my own, I sought out a superb young English instructor named John Graham, who was far more passionate about nourishing learning than about nourishing cults of celebrity.

“I’m not surprised you found Faulkner difficult,” he said. ”You probably started off trying to read The Sound and the Fury.” I had. “Everyone does that. It’s his best-known book. But it’s also his most difficult.”

The way to read and appreciate William Faulkner, he said, was to take one of two routes. To just sample his power with language and as a teller of tales, he said, read “Old Man.” It’s a mesmerizing short novel – originally part of The Wild Palms – about the 1927 Mississippi flood and a convict trapped therein with a pregnant woman who, in one of literature’s great Gothic sequences, gives birth in a swamp atop an Indian mound aswarm with cottonmouth water moccasins.

To go further and understand Faulkner’s panoramic sweep of history, he said, one should start with The Unvanquished, a historical novel that’s one of his most accessible. It deals with the earliest years in his saga of the Southern aristocracy. Then read Absalom, Absalom! and Go Down, Moses, which continue the story of the aristocratic decline and focus on how that affects blacks. Then The Hamlet, which charts the rise of the poor white Snopes clan. Then, he said, you’re steeped in Faulkner’s mythical Yoknapatawpha County and its secrets of blood and history, and ready for all his other books, which weave in and out of the cultural stream he chronicles with such power.

Graham’s insight, which I’ve never seen published anywhere, finally unlocked William Faulkner for me. And as it did, his books became a passion and the writer himself seemed to open up. One day as we talked in his office, he presented me with an insight as valuable today as it was then.

“Mr. Faulkner,” I asked him “In your book As I Lay Dying, most of the characters are socially pretty reprehensible. The only one with any kind of sensitivity or nobility is Addie Bundren, the schoolteacher. Yet you have her marry Anse Bundren, absolutely the most dreadful of the whole lot. How can you justify that?” Faulkner rubbed his mustache and re-lit his pipe, then looked at me a long, long time.

“My boy,” he finally said in his slow drawl. “Haven’t you ever heard the story of the beautiful butterfly? That flitted from flower to flower? And lit at last on a horse turd?”

Despite the courtly charm with which he inevitably responded to those who approached him, Faulkner was normally reserved and, though he basically liked students, he appeared somewhat remote and most held him in awe.

But not all students were so cowed.

One who wasn’t was a fraternity brother of mine named Zeke Waters. Zeke was a jovial good-hearted guy but, like most of us then, did not over-exert himself in the classroom. He was always looking for shortcuts.

One spring evening we were lounging in he sun on the porch of the Beta House next to Beta Bridge before dinner. Zeke was panicked. He was an English major and the next day faced the dreaded senior “comprehensives”, the do-or-die examinations which in those days tested every student facing graduation on the entire body of knowledge absorbed in his major field of study over four years. Zeke was weak on American literature, and was looking for some quick fix to repair the situation. Where could he find it? he asked us. He got a few opinions but mostly shrugs. Then, from the direction of the Rotunda he spotted William Faulkner, walking home to his house up Rugby Road.

“That’s it!” said Zeke. “Faulkner knows all about American literature! He can tell me what I need to know!”

Now, I’m pretty sure Zeke had never read a line of Faulkner’s, but he was the most amiable and approachable of souls, and could make friends with a tree. He loped across Rugby road, greeted Faulkner and soon they disappeared together up the road and over the hill chatting, tall and lanky Zeke with his arm around Faulkner who was a kind of splendidly dapper but miniature man.

An hour or more went by. Zeke did not appear and we Betas went in to dinner without him. Finally, after dinner, Zeke showed up.

How did it go? we all wanted to know. Did Faulkner give you the keys to American literature?

“Well, not exactly,” said Zeke. “He couldn’t have been nicer and we talked about all sorts of things. But I never quite got him around to where I could ask the right question.”

It turned out Faulkner appeared glad to meet Zeke and grateful for the company on his homeward stroll. They chatted about the weather, the football weekend, where Zeke was from and other topics. When they got to Faulkner’s house, he asked Zeke in. He said his wife was away, the housekeeper was fixing dinner but he was going to have a drink first. Would Zeke like one too?

Zeke, like most students, never turned down a drink and soon they were seated companionably in Faulkner’s living room sipping good bourbon. The talk turned to horses, the pictures on the wall, the house – Faulkner liked Charlottesville because his daughter lived there – and so on. Faulkner suggested a second drink. Zeke accepted. There may have been a third.

“I was trying to think how to get him around to the literature question when the housekeeper came in and said dinner was ready,” Zeke said. “Faulkner is just the most courteous man in the world. He asked me to stay to dinner, saying there was plenty to eat. I protested no, I couldn’t do that, I was expected back at the Beta house. But I said I would come in the dining room with him and finish my drink while he ate. I was still trying to work him around to American literature.”

The housekeeper had arranged the small dining room beautifully, Zeke reported, with crystal, wine glasses, a vase of flowers and so on, all set off by a splendid white table cloth. Faulkner sat down and began spooning his soup. Zeke stood against the wall with his glass of bourbon, making conversation, trying desperately to turn the talk to books.

“That’s when it happened,” Zeke said. “For some reason I crossed my legs while I was standing there talking and thinking, and I lost my balance.”

Down he slowly toppled, grabbing desperately for support. He caught the end of the tablecloth. Off came the tablecloth, the vase, the glasses, the flowers, Faulkner’s soup, everything. The sound of crashing crockery and glass, Zeke said, seemed to go on forever.

Faulkner, who had somehow escaped both injury and stains, was unconcerned by the mess. He was worried Zeke might have hurt himself. He picked Zeke up, brushed him off, apologized for the incident and asked once again if Zeke wouldn’t stay and share the rest of the dinner.

“But I decided it was time to leave,” Zeke said. “Because even though I hadn’t had a chance to ask him about literature and even though Faulkner could not have been nicer, that housekeeper was really, REALLY pissed off.”

I can’t remember if Zeke passed his comprehensives.

©2009 Ken Ringle

Ken Ringle retired in 2003 after 33 years as a writer, editor, essayist and critic for The Washington Post. His work has also appeared in The National Geographic, Smithsonian, European Affairs and other publications, and he has been a writer-in-residence himself as a Washington Post Fellow at Duke University.

Faulkner and an Undergraduate

By John A. Church (College ’59)

In this Ralph Thompson photo of Faulkner at a UVA track meet in 1958, John Church can be seen in sweat togs standing next to the hurdles on the far side of the track.

I was nearing the end of the fall semester of my third year in the College of Arts and Sciences. Except for a required chemistry course in the spring semester, the remainder of my schedule was relatively free. Now was my chance to branch out and explore some other areas, as befitted someone pursuing a liberal arts education.

I had always enjoyed English literature but had never read much that was written after the nineteenth century. The course catalog had an offering called English 28, Contemporary American Literature, meaning starting at about 1900. It looked interesting. I knew, however, that it was intended for English majors, and English had always been a strong department at Virginia. As a nonmajor I couldn’t take it without specific permission from the instructor, and so I went to see Joseph Blotner.

I gave Mr. Blotner a sales talk about how much I liked English literature and wanted to take his course. He quickly learned that I was a chemistry major and seemed really puzzled and cautious about having me in his class. English and chemistry are what one might call orthogonal disciplines, i.e. at right angles, the one having little or nothing to do with the other. So what was I trying to do? Didn’t I know that this was an intense course that demanded lots of reading and analysis, and that I would be up against serious competition? I could almost read his mind: What would I think of some dilettante English student who wanted to try his hand at an advanced chemistry course with little or no preparation? (Obvious answer: I would have admired his courage, but advised him as strongly as possible not to do it.) But seeing my persistence, Mr. Blotner finally relented and let me sign up anyway, probably against his better judgment.

At that stage I was unfamiliar with the words that Alexander Pope had put into the mouth of his pedantic literary nemesis Richard Bentley: “For thee (i.e. the Goddess of Dullness) we dim the eyes and stuff the head/With all such reading as was never read.” I was soon loaded to the gunwales with reading that was seldom read even then, and probably almost never these days except in English classes. We started off with The Ambassadors by Henry James, an enormous and convoluted unpageturner published in 1903. I imagined that one reason Mr. Blotner had assigned it was that he was trying to get students like me to drop the course early on. I somehow managed to get through this stultifying comedy of manners, and then after Theodore Dreiser’s equally lengthy but considerably more interesting An American Tragedy, things started to change.

William Faulkner was writer-in-residence at the University during this period, which was one reason I had wanted to take English 28. (Blotner was later to write a long biography of Faulkner, authorized by the writer’s family after Faulkner had passed on in 1962.) As a suitable diversion, Blotner accompanied Faulkner all over the Grounds, including to our track meets, which probably appealed to Faulkner’s horse-racing interests.

We commenced our Faulkner journey in Mr. Blotner’s class with The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying, soon getting deep into the saga of Mississippi’s fictional Yoknapatawpha County and its stupendously decadent denizens. Most of the latter would have struggled to put one word after another on paper, but they thought in streams of consciousness that went on for page after page of muddled confusion, indecipherable time shifts, antecedentless pronouns, neurosis, outright psychosis and miry misery, with occasional flashes of sardonic humor to leaven the unbearable messes of their hopelessly depressing lives. Still, I would rather read ten of these books than one comatose The Ambassadors. Faulkner was often charged with writing such material after having had a few bourbons, and I could easily understand why this perception had arisen.

Faulkner gave frequent afternoon seminars in Rouss Hall to which students from many different graduate and undergraduate English courses were invited in turn. Faulkner did not lecture or volunteer material here; he was a quiet, shy, and private individual who inhabited his proprietary county and rarely left it. He had given a memorable address upon receiving the 1949 Nobel Prize for literature, but public speaking was not really his forte.

Students would come to the seminars with carefully-prepared questions typically addressing some abstruse point in one or another of his novels or stories. Faulkner would respond extemporaneously, gracefully, and as completely as he could under the circumstances. Although he answered most of the questions clearly and would sometimes expound upon them at length, the process was obviously difficult for him at times, as it no doubt would be for any author with a substantial opus. When stumped, he would unabashedly ask for help from Gwynn or Blotner. Occasionally, as at the seminar I attended on May 2, 1958, he would say very simply, “I don’t remember” or “It’s just a story.”

Upon being asked in one of his early seminars if he had read Henry James, Faulkner replied “Yes, but without much pleasure. Henry James to me was a prig, except for The Turn of the Screw, which was [a] very fine tour de force.” A few years ago, I read Faulkner in the University, Gwynn and Blotner’s condensation of Faulkner’s seminars, for the first time. I found it entertaining reading, and I confess that it gave me much pleasure to read Faulkner’s assessment of James. Due to lack of space, however, many of Faulkner’s remarks had to be omitted in the Gwynn and Blotner book. The present compilation now restores these omissions as completely as possible. In particular, the audio tapes provide much additional insight into Faulkner's thoughts as he responded to questions from the participants.

Perhaps I may be permitted to digress from my direct recollections of Faulkner the man to Faulkner the writer. I have enjoyed his stories and novels and have much appreciated the introduction to them that I received in Blotner’s course. Among dozens of other unforgettable characters that he created, Faulkner invented the avaricious and amoral Snopes family of The Hamlet, The Town, and The Mansion partly to satirize the growing crassness and commercialism of the South in the early twentieth century, and in this he succeeded admirably. The names of the Snopeses are memorably apt. The chief schemer is Flem (phlegm), who always seems to be chewing his eponymous cud. Among his many other misdeeds, Flem overlooks and even encourages the adultery of his stunning but clueless wife Eula in order to gain advancement in a local bank so that he can embezzle from it. After a series of earlier money-grubbing schemes, Flem solicits a bribe from Eula’s father to marry her, she being pregnant by another man. In a marvelous passage, Flem, who had no soul to begin with, cheats Satan out of it anyway. Then there is the vicious bushwhacker Mink Snopes, who eventually murders cousin Flem for not having helped him escape from prison after a previous assassination; proverb-quoting I. O. Snopes, who chisels his own kinfolk; honest grocer Wallstreet Panic Snopes (the son of good-hearted Eck, who after all is not a real Snopes); Montgomery Ward Snopes, who runs a photographic studio with pornographic postcards on the side, and various others. (If Faulkner were writing today, we might have Subprime Mortgage Snopes and Stimulus Package Snopes.) Finishing one of his novels tends to leave one wandering around in a depressed daze for several hours, which must mean that it was a good one. End of digression.

When attending Cavalier track meets at Lambeth Field, Faulkner was permitted to judge running events and also time them, although his timings in all likelihood were unofficial. At one such meet, I was in the stands with some of my friends when not participating myself. For part of his time at Lambeth on this occasion, Faulkner went over to a remote section of the stands and sat there alone. One of my friends asked us whether we would like to go over and talk with the author privately. None of us took him up on this suggestion, whereupon he sallied forth unafraid and spent some 15 minutes or so alone with Faulkner. Upon returning, he said that they had had a very nice conversation but was unwilling to divulge the subject matter.

Mr. Blotner has recently written an engaging autobiography (An Unexpected Life, 2005). Surviving a forced belly landing in a B-17 behind German lines, enduring bedbugs and lice at POW camps, and having known William Faulkner so well should certainly qualify as unexpected. His book is quite touching in places, if giving somewhat short shrift to the nuances of Charlottesville academic society; Blotner was from a far different biome, northern New Jersey.

Aristotle had a notion that within every raw piece of marble lies a predestined statue that will appear after a sculptor has simply removed the superfluous parts. In Pope’s concise paraphrase, you hew the block off and get out the man. Critics differed as to whether Blotner, in his massive two-volume 1974 biography of Faulkner, had successfully gotten out the man or just reduced him to powdery fragments that shed little light on how or why he had written his books. “Footnotes to Genius” ran the title of an unfriendly review in Time magazine, while others praised the study as definitive. Several extensive condensations and reissues with new matter have taken place, most recently in 2005.

Many writers, including Faulkner if one is to take his statements about such biographies at face value (“Don’t tell [my readers] anything [about me], it can’t matter to them”), prefer that their lives not be described at all, unless by themselves. This does not discourage those whom Faulkner called “academic gumshoes” from intruding in the dust. Their efforts continue to be the basis of a thriving cottage – one hesitates to say academical village – industry. Kipling’s valedictory “The Appeal” is one author’s plea for privacy about his personal life, one that often goes unheeded:

If I have given you delight
By aught that I have done,
Let me lie quiet in that night
Which shall be yours anon:

And for the little, little span
The dead are borne in mind,
Seek not to question other than
The books I leave behind.

Notes and Sources

John A. Church is the author of Pleasant Riches: The University of Virginia in the Late Fifties (privately printed, 2009), from which most of the above material has been adapted. He was the City Editor for The Cavalier Daily who wrote the headline for the 16 February 1957 article “Faulkner Begins Stay As Writer-In-Residence.” He adds:

“I read the transcript and listened to the tape recordings of the Faulkner seminar that I attended on May 2, 1958. I couldn’t at first remember having asked a question myself on that occasion. However, just before the end of the second of these two tapes, I did a double take when a person clearly using my own voice posed the following question: ‘Sir, you’ve mentioned that these people in The Sound and the Fury are doomed. Is it your theory that people everywhere are doomed, or is it just these people in Mississippi?’ Faulkner began his answer with ‘No, no,’ followed immediately by laughter from the audience. He then chuckled and went on to give a ringing response: it was only the Compsons themselves who were doomed, because they lived in the past and ‘refused to accept now and tomorrow.’ Could I have just been intentionally priming Faulkner for the kind of answer that he gave? I can’t say now, because it’s impossible for me to remember exactly what was going on in my head more than half a century ago. In fact, many other Faulkner characters do appear to be doomed, though not necessarily in the Compsonian sense. Whatever the case, Faulkner’s answer was an eloquent one, and so I’m indeed glad that I did ask the question.

“My father had a far more significant connection with William Faulkner than any of mine. In October 1931, Faulkner attended the Southern Writers Convention at the University. Randolph W. Church (College ’29, Grad ’32), later State Librarian of Virginia and a graduate student in English in 1931, met Faulkner and other prominent writers of the day at the convention. The following account of some of these events is from my father’s small booklet entitled ‘John Cook Wyllie 1908-1968: A Very Personal Remembrance’ (privately printed, 1972): ‘There were literary giants in the earth in the early days. Through the good offices of perceptive members of the faculty they came to visit the University, and John [Wyllie] and I had the opportunity of meeting and talking with many of them: T. S. Eliot, James Stephens, Vachel Lindsay, Robert Frost, and, not least, an introspective little man who claimed Yoknapatawpha County, and who later made the University his final home. For him, we were commissioned to see that the University Library had in its collections all of his then extant printed material – no mean task. We were also required to find him when he became lost, and I vividly recall a sombre dawn when he was located, curbside, in the lower town.’ One can only speculate as to what might have happened if Faulkner had not been lucky enough to have been rescued in this way. John Wyllie was the University’s twelfth Librarian, serving in this capacity from 1956 until his untimely passing twelve years later. He had previously been Curator of the McGregor Library at Alderman and was a noted expert on rare books.”

Acknowledgment

I thank my brother Randolph W. Church Jr. (College ’57, Law ’60) for supplying extensive files of the Cavalier Daily from our time period as well as photocopies of pages from the Virginia Spectator.

©2010 John A. Church (j.church@mindspring.com)

Faulkner and an Undergraduate

By Gerald L. Cooper (College ’58, M.Ed. Guidance ’69)

Upon graduation from Christchurch School in June 1953, I entered and quickly left Princeton University in September, disenchanted. I attended the College of William and Mary for three semesters happily, and then transferred to the University of Virginia in January 1955, to pursue a major in English. A year or so later I found myself in a small lecture hall, straining to hear a world-renowned writer-in-residence who spoke in an almost inaudible voice using an extraordinary accent. He described a mythical place with an Indian-sounding name: Yoknapatawpha. That reminded me of my own place of origin: the shores of the Rappahannock.

The speaker was William Faulkner, whom I had heard of from another native Mississippian, Robert M. Yarbrough Jr., instructor in senior English at Christchurch. Bob had introduced me to Faulkner’s novels The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying outside of class.

Someone in the audience that day in 1957 at the University of Virginia asked Mr. Faulkner to give his view of promising young American writers. Violating his policy against endorsing writers, he replied that one of the best was from right here in Virginia: “His name is William Styron, and his book is titled Lie Down In Darkness.” Deciphering Faulkner’s low-pitched, Miss’sippi drawl with no amplification from my seat on the back row of the small auditorium in Rouss Hall, I realized he had spoken the name of a graduate of my old school – William Styron, known to his Christchurch classmates as “Sty.” I had attended the graduation of the Class of 1942 at Christchurch, to honor my friend and mentor, Jim Davenport, a member of that class, along with Styron and about fourteen others. By 1957 I had also read Lie Down In Darkness, Styron’s first book, that he published in 1951 and that won the Prix de Rome.

Several daily newspapers reported Faulkner’s public recognition of William Styron, including the Washington Post and the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Thereafter I found it more comfortable to mention around the Grounds that I was a graduate of Christchurch. Both the University’s English professors and my fellow students, some of whom were graduates of well-known prep schools like Woodberry Forest, Episcopal High, and Lawrenceville, suddenly sounded respectful of Christchurch, that unpretentious school with the million-dollar view on a bank overlooking the Rappahannock River.

I completed a bachelor’s degree in English at the University of Virginia in December 1957, a year after William Faulkner arrived as writer-in-residence. I had several opportunities to hear Mr. Faulkner discuss his writing between January and December of 1957. Although I was not among the favorites of the English department’s English majors, and therefore not invited to special gatherings with Mr. Faulkner, it was possible nonetheless to find “Old Bill” around the Grounds, occasionally at fraternities. I remember his quiet presence one evening in the Serpentine Club, at the back of the Quadrangle. (I knew the location of every fraternity because one of my part-time jobs was delivering beer kegs to the fraternities from Carroll’s Tea Room.)

In that setting Mr. Faulkner was less reticent than he was in small English seminars or honors classes. His painful shyness in one-to-one settings became well-known in New Cabell Hall, and not many students signed up for those uncomfortable meetings. Perhaps he was under-utilized, as some have suggested.

Even peripheral undergraduate students such as I were aware that factions within the English department – and perhaps among the entire University administration – were in disagreement over the value of Mr. Faulkner’s presence and usefulness on the Grounds. Former professor of English Joseph Blotner has captured much of the color, along with some of the political issues, of that era at the University in his autobiographical work, An Unexpected Life, published in 2005. The chapter titled “The University and Mr. Faulkner” might more accurately be titled “The Faulkner Era at the University of Virginia.”

Despite the politics and controversy, William Faulkner had a remarkable impact in the brief period of his presence in Charlottesville. His time on the Grounds is comparable to the presence of Edgar Allan Poe, who was enrolled for one academic year, beginning February 1, 1826, in just the University’s second session.

The University of Virginia’s first president, Edwin A. Alderman, wrote in 1925 a convincing essay on Edgar Allan Poe’s tenure as a student. He describes how Poe, despite a short stay and a less than exemplary lifestyle, had symbolized the presence of a “world poet” at the University. Alderman concludes that Poe “has contributed an irreducible total of good to the spirit which men breathe [at the University] as well as a wide fame to his alma mater that will outlive all disaster, or change, or ill-fortune.” Alderman defines the effect that a true artistic talent may have upon a community of scholars – even when that presence is brief and controversial.

Blotner and others have reported that President Colgate Darden was lukewarm to Faulkner’s writer-in-residence status because he questioned that the University needed the national attention that Faulkner’s visit would bring. But from my point of view, William Faulkner’s presence on the grounds had the effect of opening a window onto a larger world for UVA students in the late 1950s. It is difficult for students in the 21st century to imagine what a great gulf existed between the Grounds and the larger worlds of government, commerce and especially the arts, before the advent of mass communications. No national media coverage originated in Charlottesville, and even Washington, D.C. offered little or no live theatre, at least until the Kennedy Center opened in 1971. Thus to have a person of international stature in the world of letters – a Nobel laureate – walking the Grounds daily over a period of months and years demonstrated that the University of Virginia had not lost sight of the world-class ambitions of its founder.

I’ve had an enduring interest in the University of Virginia ever since I arrived on the Grounds some fifty-three years ago as a “transfer” from another college. Perhaps that’s why I view the University from a different perspective than does the typical alumnus of any era before the 1970s. I have devoted a chapter in my ebook to the University of today, titled “Leading to Diversity,” highlighting the changes that I see as having occurred under the leadership of President John T. Casteen III.

I am happy to observe that gone are the days of a stereotyped faculty and student body, and of a laissez faire attitude toward diverse students that I experienced when I attended in the 1950s. As Mr. Jefferson the Francophile might have said, Vive la difference!

Gerald L. Cooper divided his 43-year career as an administrator, counselor and teacher among four preparatory schools, two colleges, and finally as executive director of a college access program [501 (c) (3)] that served ten public high schools in Norfolk, Portsmouth, and Virginia Beach. This essay derives from his ebook, On Scholarship – From An Empty Room at Princeton, available in PDF format online at “http://www.talkeetna.com/OnScholarship/index.html” . In it he describes his personal experiences with financial aid: receiving it, granting it, fundraising for it, and finding it for needy students.

President Alderman’s remarks about Poe can be found in “Edgar Allan Poe and the University of Virginia” (The Virginia Quarterly Review, spring 1925), reprinted in We Write for Our Own Time: Selected Essays from the Virginia Quarterly Review (Charlottesville, 2000).

©2010 Gerald L. Cooper

Faulkner and an Undergraduate

By Gerald L. Cooper (College ’58, M.Ed. Guidance ’69)

Upon graduation from Christchurch School in June 1953, I entered and quickly left Princeton University in September, disenchanted. I attended the College of William and Mary for three semesters happily, and then transferred to the University of Virginia in January 1955, to pursue a major in English. A year or so later I found myself in a small lecture hall, straining to hear a world-renowned writer-in-residence who spoke in an almost inaudible voice using an extraordinary accent. He described a mythical place with an Indian-sounding name: Yoknapatawpha. That reminded me of my own place of origin: the shores of the Rappahannock.

The speaker was William Faulkner, whom I had heard of from another native Mississippian, Robert M. Yarbrough Jr., instructor in senior English at Christchurch. Bob had introduced me to Faulkner’s novels The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying outside of class.

Someone in the audience that day in 1957 at the University of Virginia asked Mr. Faulkner to give his view of promising young American writers. Violating his policy against endorsing writers, he replied that one of the best was from right here in Virginia: “His name is William Styron, and his book is titled Lie Down In Darkness.” Deciphering Faulkner’s low-pitched, Miss’sippi drawl with no amplification from my seat on the back row of the small auditorium in Rouss Hall, I realized he had spoken the name of a graduate of my old school – William Styron, known to his Christchurch classmates as “Sty.” I had attended the graduation of the Class of 1942 at Christchurch, to honor my friend and mentor, Jim Davenport, a member of that class, along with Styron and about fourteen others. By 1957 I had also read Lie Down In Darkness, Styron’s first book, that he published in 1951 and that won the Prix de Rome.

Several daily newspapers reported Faulkner’s public recognition of William Styron, including the Washington Post and the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Thereafter I found it more comfortable to mention around the Grounds that I was a graduate of Christchurch. Both the University’s English professors and my fellow students, some of whom were graduates of well-known prep schools like Woodberry Forest, Episcopal High, and Lawrenceville, suddenly sounded respectful of Christchurch, that unpretentious school with the million-dollar view on a bank overlooking the Rappahannock River.

I completed a bachelor’s degree in English at the University of Virginia in December 1957, a year after William Faulkner arrived as writer-in-residence. I had several opportunities to hear Mr. Faulkner discuss his writing between January and December of 1957. I was not among the elect of the English department’s English majors, and therefore I was not invited to special gatherings with Mr. Faulkner. It was possible nonetheless to find “Old Bill” around the Grounds, occasionally at fraternities. I remember his quiet presence one evening in the Serpentine Club, at the back of the Quadrangle. (I knew the location of every fraternity because one of my part-time jobs was delivering beer kegs to the fraternities from Carroll’s Tea Room.)

In that setting Mr. Faulkner was less reticent than he was in small English seminars or honors classes. His painful shyness in one-to-one settings became well-known in New Cabell Hall, and not many students signed up for those uncomfortable meetings. Perhaps he was under-utilized, as some have suggested.

Even peripheral undergraduate students such as I were aware that factions within the English department – and perhaps among the entire University administration – were in disagreement over the value of Mr. Faulkner’s presence and usefulness on the Grounds. Former professor of English Joseph Blotner has captured much of the color, along with some of the political issues, of that era at the University in his autobiographical work, An Unexpected Life, published in 2005. The chapter titled “The University and Mr. Faulkner” might more accurately be titled “The Faulkner Era at the University of Virginia.”

Despite the politics and controversy, William Faulkner had a remarkable impact in the brief period of his presence in Charlottesville. His time on the Grounds is comparable to the presence of Edgar Allan Poe, who was enrolled for just one academic year, beginning February 1, 1826, in the second session at the University of Virginia.

The University of Virginia’s first president, Edwin A. Alderman, wrote in 1925 a convincing essay on Edgar Allan Poe’s brief time as a student at the University. He described how Poe, despite a short stay and a less than exemplary lifestyle, had symbolized the presence of a “world poet” at the University. Alderman concluded that Poe “has contributed an irreducible total of good to the spirit which men breathe [at the University] as well as a wide fame to his alma mater that will outlive all disaster, or change, or ill-fortune.” Alderman defined the effect that a true artistic talent may have upon a community of scholars – even when that presence is brief and controversial.

Mr. Faulkner’s arrival on the Grounds signaled the presence of another “world writer” equal in stature to Edgar Allan Poe and Thomas Jefferson, who had dominated the University of Virginia’s pantheon of genius for generations. Blotner and others reported that President Colgate Darden was lukewarm to Faulkner’s writer-in-residence status because he questioned that the University needed the national attention that Faulkner’s visit would bring.

I’ve had an enduring interest in the University of Virginia ever since I arrived on the Grounds some fifty-three years ago as a “transfer” from another college. Perhaps that’s why I view the University from a different perspective than does the typical alumnus of any era before the 1970s. I have devoted a chapter in my forthcoming book to the University of today, titled “Leading to Diversity,” highlighting the changes that I see as having occurred under the leadership of President John T. Casteen III.

I am happy to observe that gone are the days of a stereotyped faculty and student body, and of a laissez faire attitude toward diverse students that I experienced when I attended in the 1950s. As I see it today:

John Casteen as president has influenced the entire University of Virginia community to draw on the distinctive attributes of its past – including the genius of its founder, Thomas Jefferson – and also to make changes in its practices for the future, aiming to set standards for measurably higher achievement in the twenty-first century. In the twenty years that he has been president, Casteen has gathered a diverse group of persons to the University’s faculty, administration and student body, and he has nurtured them in their new environment. Apparently the Board of Visitors shares this commitment to diversity.

As Mr. Jefferson the Francophile might have said, Vive la difference!

Gerald L. Cooper divided his 43-year career as an administrator, counselor and teacher among four preparatory schools, two colleges, and finally as executive director of a college access program [501 (c) (3)] that served ten public high schools in Norfolk, Portsmouth, and Virginia Beach. This essay derives from his forthcoming book, On Scholarship – From An Empty Room at Princeton, about his personal experiences with financial aid: receiving it, granting it, fundraising for it, and finding it for needy students.

President Alderman’s remarks about Poe can be found in “Edgar Allan Poe and the University of Virginia” (The Virginia Quarterly Review, spring 1925), reprinted in We Write for Our Own Time: Selected Essays from the Virginia Quarterly Review (Charlottesville, 2000).

©2010 Gerald L. Cooper

Learning Faulkner

By Ann Thomas Moore (Grad English ’58)

Why Frederick Gwynn prepped our graduate class in the American novel so rigorously in anticipation of the visit of William Faulkner, I’m not quite sure. Whatever his reasons, he had each of us submit, several class meetings in advance, a list of tentative questions that we might ask our guest. These sheets came back to us in the next class, the last before the visitation, with the handwritten note, “Ask this one.” An arrow pointed to the acceptable question.

It was humbling to realize that any of our questions might have been unworthy, but whatever the reasons, graduate school was all new to me. Since graduating four years earlier from Westhampton College of the University of Richmond with the BA in French, I had taught half that time in a public elementary school in Roanoke and half in the English department at the then-flourishing old Lane High School in Charlottesville. But the University of Virginia exerted an irresistible pull: I couldn’t live that close to Mr. Jefferson’s university without being a student there myself. And so I had enrolled as a graduate student in English.

On the appointed day of the Faulkner visit to our class, we sat, thoroughly coached, in silent anticipation, our sheets of questions on our desks before us. Mr. Gwynn stepped out into the hall and ushered William Faulkner into the room. He introduced our guest formally and, after seating him in the professor’s chair, center front, retired to a student desk on the side of the room near the windows and waited to see what would happen.

A lengthy silence followed. Faulkner sat, hands loosely clasped on the desk, and looked at us. He was utterly serene, and we began to realize that we could sit a very long time with nothing being said unless one of us asked a question. Finally, Doug Day, veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps who sat on the front row (and later became a member of the UVA English Department), stormed the silence with the first question. Faulkner responded fully and graciously, and then the silence fell again. But we now understood the strategy. I’m not sure that we ever overcame our reticence entirely, or that he ever really relaxed into an easy exchange with us. But for the next hour, we proceeded in this manner, feeling our way and getting dim insights into this man who was both mystery and object of admiration to all of us.

For the rest of the year, I would see him from time to time on the Grounds, almost always strolling alone. He was easily recognizable from a distance – a small trim man with a certain dignity in his step, a tweed suit, a felt hat, his pipe. When I walked down the hall past his office in the English department, I would often see him through the open door, his face just visible above the big typewriter on his desk. It was his open door that gave other students outside of English individual access to him. The academic setting was one thing, however, the social another. He was reputed to be a dud at cocktail parties, where he would retire to nurse his drink and not have much to say until time to go home.

One didn’t have to be a graduate student in English to know William Faulkner. In Mary Munford Hall, which at the time housed female graduate students from all disciplines, I recall a long late-night conversation with one of the high school teachers of science who were in residence for a special program. She had independently become fascinated with Faulkner and read everything of his that she could find. She went to all his public readings and wanted to hear whatever I could tell her. Somehow, despite the requirements and rigors of her own program, her intellectual encounter with his work was clearly a significant part of the education she was getting.

He did several public readings during the course of that year. Everybody knew these were not to be missed, and there were always large audiences including people from both the University and the town. I have a dim memory of another occasion when he read his Nobel acceptance speech to a small gathering in the Rare Book Room.

Before my experience of Faulkner’s year in residence at the University, his prose had seemed complex and difficult, not providing me, I thought, any handles to relate to his story. His was not the South that I knew, and I hadn’t especially liked his characters.

But being a graduate student at the University of Virginia when William Faulkner was in residence there was an important educational initiation for me. I found, as I got to know him in some small way, and to hear his stories spoken in his own voice, that I was able to read him with greater comprehension. Intellectually, I developed some sense of what he was about, an understanding of why he was important, and a great appreciation of his accomplishment. And for me personally, these insights made less mysterious to me the larger South where I had lived all my life. They helped me to see more broadly, think more deeply, and appreciate with greater comprehension the fact of growing up in that place, at that time, in our country’s history.

Ann Thomas Moore (Rosa Ann Thomas, MA English, UVA 1958) taught in public schools in both Roanoke and Charlottesville, Virginia, and in the English Department at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. She worked as a copywriter in Houston (1981-1986) and in Los Angeles (1987-1997). After her move to New York City in 1997, she retired briefly but returned to teaching as an Adjunct Associate Professor of English at Pace University (2001-2010). She can be emailed at anntee@mac.com.

©2010 Ann Thomas Moore

Memories of William Faulkner

By James W. Haskins (College ’63, Law ’66)

[When Mr. Haskins took Professor Blotner’s course, Faulkner had already completed his last term as “Writer-in-Residence,” but as this recollection indicates, he remained a presence at UVA, and still made occasional appearances in English department classes. He read The Reivers publicly in the Cabell Hall auditorium on the evening of 17 May 1962. This was his last appearance before a UVA audience – and his largest: nearly a thousand people attended. These sessions were not recorded.]

I was a 1963 graduate of the College of Arts of Science at the University of Virginia and a graduate of the law school in 1966. In the fall of 1959, I had read Faulkner’s “Nobel Acceptance Speech” and had pictured him to be a writer of a unique period of southern history that had universal significance. As I began my second year of undergraduate study, I was enrolled in a course taught by Joseph Blotner who was a professor of English and a close personal friend of Mr. Faulkner. Professor Blotner arranged for our class to hear Mr.Faulkner on several occasions during which I became aware of Mr. Faulkner’s eccentric personality. At least, that is the way it appeared to a second year student from Martinsville who considered himself lucky to be a student at the University of Virginia.

On one occasion, Mr. Faulkner was coming to our class for a question and answer session about his work. At the beginning of the class, Mr.Faulkner was introduced by Professor Blotner and stood before the class. Mr. Faulkner said nothing and stood there for what seemed liked a couple of minutes of silence before a student asked him a question. The question and answer session ended and Mr. Faulkner left the class. Professor Blotner told us that Mr. Faulkner was there to answer questions from students and it was his custom to not speak unless he had been asked a question during this type of session.

On several occasions a student asked Mr. Faulkner why he made a particular statement in The Sound and the Fury. Mr. Faulkner would always answer, “I didn’t make this statement, Jason or Quentin made the statement.” Mr. Faulkner would then stand quietly until another question was asked.

During one of his class appearances, Mr. Faulkner was asked about the complicated structure of the The Sound and the Fury. He answered that he did not set out to write a novel but a long story similar in length to “The Bear.” As to the structure of the novel, it began from Benjy’s point of view. Mr. Faulkner then stated that he could not conclude the story with Benjy so he let Quentin and Jason tell the story for a while. Finally, when this too did not work, he decided to “. . . let Faulkner tell the story” and it was finished as part four. Thus, The Sound and the Fury became a great novel.

When The Reivers was published in 1962, I remember hearing Mr. Faulkner read from his new novel. Mr. Faulkner appeared at the designated time and place and after being introduced by Professor Blotner he began to read several parts of the novel. When he finished the reading, he closed the book and left the room. Again, like the question and answer session, Mr. Blotner explained that this session was a reading and when the reading was complete the session was over. There were no questions.

With Professor Blotner’s teaching of Absalom, Absalom and The Sound and the Fury in our coursework, I became interested in Mr. Faulkner as an individual. I would often see him walking alone through the grounds of the University. Whenever I would see him there, I would follow him from place to place just to see where he was going and what he might do. On a couple of occasions, I followed him into Mincer’s Pipe Shop on the Corner. I watched him purchase packages of Roitan Cigars. He would then leave Mincer’s and walk back towards his home that was located on Rugby Road.

My impression of Mr. Faulkner from my own observations, as well as insights from Professor Blotner, was that he was a private man who was not interested in traditional social skills. The course with Professor Blotner and my exposure to Mr. Faulkner are memories of the University that I still cherish.

©2010 James W. Haskins

Memories of “Bill” Faulkner with the IMP Society

By Jack Docherty (Education ’61)

I entered the University in January, 1958, as Mr. Faulkner began his second and last term as Writer-in-Residence. I would always speak with him when I saw him walking on the grounds, and especially at the track meets which he frequented. At one meet we were talking on the field and I asked him how much longer would he remain in Charlottesville before returning to Oxford, Mississippi. He said “a fortnight.” I didn’t know what that word meant, and I went back to my room and looked it up in the dictionary. Every time I’ve heard that word since then (admittedly, not too often) I think of him. He had that beautiful British way of speaking, with neat phrases and often unusual wording. Speaking with him was always a joy for me. He was also surprisingly humble. Once I had two young co-eds in my car and was showing them around the Grounds when I spotted Mr. Faulkner walking unnoticed. “There's William Faulkner,” I told my lady friends. They were extremely excited and asked me to stop, which I did. He was very sweet with those girls. The four of us had such a lovely experience that I was glad we had stopped to talk.

I was, or rather I am a member of the IMP Society. In 1958, The IMPS decided that Mr. Faulkner should receive the IMP Award we give annually to an important Professor, and invited him to attend the awards dinner. We also invited Professor John Coleman, the distinguished English Professor, to accompany Mr. Faulkner at the ceremony. (I can't remember if it was at Fry Springs or Farmington.) On the night of the dinner we sent one of our members – I’ll call him “Henry” in this account, though that is not his name – to pick up Mr. Faulkner and the VIP guest Professor Coleman from the English Department. Well, Henry had put a few swigs of his favorite bourbon, Virginia Gentleman, in him before he left our pre-dinner cocktail party to pick the two up – enough so that he was feeling no pain. He returned with both of our distinguished guests. We realized just how much of bourbon Henry had downed when he came into the room with his arm around Mr. Faulkner as if they were old and best friends. They were about the same height. Henry, with his arm around Mr. Faulkner, proceeds to introduce the ten or twelve IMPS in the room to his new pal, “Bill” Faulkner! Professor Coleman began having a nervous breakdown which got worse every time Henry called Mr. Faulkner “Bill.” As for Mr. Faulkner, he was loving it! He loved the whole evening and we all had a great dinner and evening. This wonderful man and author gave a warm thank you speech. Of course a more sober member took Mr. Faulkner home.

In closing I want to remark how humble and shy Mr. Faulkner was. While attending Mr. Jefferson’s University we often speak about being a “gentleman.” To me and my fellow classmates, Mr. Faulkner was the walking symbol of what that word means. And God, could that man write!! We were blessed, we few 4500 men students wearing coats and ties, to have William Faulkner walk with us and share with us his genius on our immortal grounds.

While a student on an athletic scholarship Jack Docherty was elected the President of his school and was a member of the Jefferson Literary Society, the IMP Society, the TILKA Society and the Honor Committee. He played on the football team and was the last boxer to represent the University of Virginia at the NCAA Boxing Championships. Although he says he still doesn’t know how he did it, he graduated in 3 years. After UVA he worked at Bristol Myers Squibb before he became the Founder and CEO of a Boston Orthopaedic Medical Firm. He assisted in the design and development of total hip and knee joint replacements and reconstruction at the Harvard Medical School Hospitals. In 1997, he retired to Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. He can be contacted at docxx@webtv.net

©2010 Jack Docherty

Encountering Mr. Faulkner

Joe Carroll (College ’61)

In this detail from a Rip Payne photo of Faulkner’s May 1961 reading in the Library’s McGregor Room, Joe Carroll, but not his wire recorder, can be seen far right, in the chair at the author’s immediate left.

I was a First Year Student when Faulkner served his second term as Writer-in-Residence. My memory tells me that my encounters with him both occurred during my own second year, 1958-1959, but the photographic evidence makes it seem more likely that the second encounter came during my last year at UVA. Before I get to these encounters, however, I want to share one anecdote I acquired secondhand, about Faulkner as a true window shopper.

I recall the owner of ELJO’s, at the time Charlottesville’s leading men's store, located near Mincer’s on the Corner, telling me that he sold clothing to Faulkner from time to time but that, due to his nature (perhaps shyness), Faulkner would never come in to the store to shop. He preferred to window shop as he passed by the store. When he saw something in the window that he liked he would come in to the store and purchase it. Therefore, El always tried to put something in the window he thought would appeal to Faulkner.

My own first encounter with Faulkner can be called cinematic. I had gone to the University Theatre one afternoon to see a new movie, based on a Faulkner novel. I believe it was The Long Hot Summer. I was sitting in my favorite spot, the middle seat in the center of the theater. Just as the lights dimmed and the movie began I noticed that someone came in and took the seat next to the empty one beside me. I did a double take when I realized it was Faulkner. He saw me looking at him and gave me a polite nod. We never spoke and I did not have the nerve afterwards to ask if he enjoyed the film.

My last encounter could be entitled “A Painful Lesson.” When it was announced that Faulkner was going to do a reading at the Alderman Library one afternoon, and that it would be open to all students, I scraped together practically every cent I had to run down to the University Bookstore and purchase a portable wire recorder. Some may remember that wire recorders preceded tape. I think it cost about $100. I got to the reading room at the library about an hour early to get a seat as near to the lectern as I could. I chose a sofa that was facing perpendicular to the lectern. When Faulkner began to speak I plugged in the microphone and held it out toward him as far as I could reach. I had never used the recorder and did not know how well the mike would pick up his voice.

I held the microphone in this position until my arm was practically paralyzed. I saw Faulkner glance at me several times, probably noting that I was recording him, but he did not say anything so I felt I was not violating any rule. When he finished his reading, I relaxed my arm and reached down to turn off the recorder. What I saw pained me even more than my sore arm: the microphone jack was unplugged and dangling beside the chair near the floor. I had recorded absolutely nothing of his reading.

I’ve always wondered if Faulkner had noticed this idiot holding up an unattached microphone for almost an hour. I’m sure it would have given him a chuckle.

After graduating from UVA, Joe Carroll received an MA in Romance Languages from Princeton in 1963 and went on to teach at several colleges and universities until 1969 when he left academia to join an advertising and publishing relations agency in Knoxville, TN. There he served as Vice President/Account Supervisor. He then joined Furniture/Today, the weekly business newspaper of the furniture industry, becoming publisher in 1985. In recognition of his contributions to the furniture industry he received the City of Hope's Spirit of Life Award in 2006. In 2009 he was elected to the American Furniture Hall of Fame. He received an honorary Doctorate degree from Kendall College in 2010. He is the author of four books in The Perfect Home series. He retired in April, 2010 and came out of retirement in July to head a High Point Advertising and Public Relations agency.

©2010 Joe Carroll

Memory of William Faulkner

By Lloyd T. Smith, Jr. (College ’55, Law ’60)

I was a 1955 graduate of the College of Arts & Sciences at the University of Virginia and returned to the Law School in September of 1957. At that time the Law School was in Clark Hall, which was only a stone’s throw from Cabell Hall where Mr. Faulkner was scheduled to give a series of talks to students, all of whom were invited to attend. I think I attended about three of his informal lectures which were really simply question and answer sessions. I have no memory of Mr. Faulkner giving a prepared talk or that these sessions were related to any particular work. There was a faculty member present but I don’t think he ever directed the lectures.

My clearest impression is that Faulkner did not wish to be asked analytical questions about his style or the moral or philosophical implications of his writing. I think he considered himself a story teller who had worked hard to develop a voice and a style: each reader could take from one of his novels just what he wished. What scholars might find in his work was not his business and much of it was rubbish. He did not appear to enjoy appearing before such an audience; if anything he was resentful.

In one of his lectures a student arose and asked how Mr. Faulkner could possible justify writing “The Bear,” which he characterized as glorifying the slaughter of wild animals. Faulkner had apparently never thought of this criticism and remarked that the question was stupid and gave no answer.

I met Mr. Faulkner on more intimate terms in the early 1960s. I was practicing law in a Charlottesville firm when the senior associate, Leigh B. Middleditch, Jr., asked me if I would go with him after work to witness William Faulkner’s will. Middleditch had prepared the will, and at 5:00 PM we left the office and drove to Mr. Faulkner’s house on Rugby Road. We were met at the door by a courtly black man wearing a white jacket with green and gold piping who showed us to the parlor. Mr. Faulkner appeared shortly and Middleditch went through the formalities and the will was signed and witnessed. Then, without any particular request, the black man reappeared in the parlor with a silver tray bearing three gin and tonic.

The three of us sat quietly for a few moments and to make conversation I asked Mr. Faulkner if his novel, The Fable, which I had recently read, drew on a chapter in Dostoyevsky’s novel, The Brothers Karamazov, particularly, “The Grand Inquisitor.” His response, after a poignant pause, was, “Misto Smith, I gather you fancy yourself a Renaissance man.” He was correct, but never answered my question and I did not repeat it. I knew the answer.

The conversation turned to fox hunting and there was no further literary discussion.

©2010 Lloyd T. Smith, Jr.

My Time with William Faulkner

By William Lecky (Architecture ’60)

I was in the School of Architecture at UVA from 1955 until I graduated in 1960. I audited several English courses during Faulkner’s tenure at the University. Mr. Faulkner was given a small office in Cabell and students were encouraged to “drop in” and meet this amazing author. I had a class on the same floor as his office and would walk by his assigned space every other day. Yet each time I looked in his open door, there was no one there but him, reading the paper. In hindsight, I suppose it was absurd, but I began to feel sorry for the man, thinking he might be feeling under-utilized by the students. So one day I went in, introduced myself, asked a few inane questions about one of his books as a way to break the ice, and then sat down and began to chat. Over time we became friends and started going to UVA baseball games together at Lambeth Field. We frequently walked down the street and a car would speed by and someone would shout “Hi, Bill.” Since we were both Bills, we both waved back on reflex. We would always smile at each other, having no idea who was in the car or who they were calling to. Since he was who he was, and I was who I was, I suspect they were calling to him somewhere between 95 and 100 percent of the time.

I remember one game in particular. They sold cold Coca-Cola in bottles to people watching the game. We were sitting on the upper seats looking down at the game when two children – perhaps 10 or 12 years old – began running around the collecting empty bottles that had been left by students below us. At one point an argument broke out over who was going to claim one of the empty bottles. They both arrived at the same bottle at the same time. The argument got more and more heated until it appeared they were going to square off and fight for possession of that empty bottle. I turned to Faulkner and said, “Well, who do you put your money on?” Faulkner hesitated for a moment and replied, “I don’t know who is going to win, but the kid on the left will be the one that cries!” I found his perception of this small event so profound that I remember it to this day with such clarity, as though it happened yesterday.

On a lighter side, I had done a charcoal drawing of a scene from one of Faulkner’s books that I mentioned during one of my visits to his office. He seemed very interested in seeing it, so I invited him to come by my apartment on his way home. I lived on Rugby Road in a large house converted into several apartments, and Faulkner walked by my building every day. He agreed to come later in the week, so I invited a friend from Washington to come down to meet the great man on the appointed day. I met Mr. Faulkner at his office and walked down the Lawn to Rugby Road. We arrived at my apartment, Faulkner came in, and I showed him the drawing . . . but somehow my friend had disappeared. I kept him there, discussing the drawing as long as possible, until finally he had to go. Just after he left, my friend emerged from the bathroom. He apparently got so nervous at the thought of meeting such a great man, that mother nature summoned his body for other needs. So after he came all the way to Charlottesville from DC, they never met.

At the School of Architecture, at least when I was there, there was a tradition that the fourth year class (Architecture was a five year program at that time) would take a field trip with one of the professors over the Spring Break. The trip was funded by donations received from architects in and around the area. The furthest any class had gone was Chicago. It occurred to me, after learning of this tradition, that we shouldn’t wait till our fourth year to go soliciting funds from local architects. So I got the class together and we formed an organization we called The Forum of Contemporary Arts. We put on a few art shows, had a large art raffle one year, and I wrote letters to every famous architect, poet, author, and artist that I could think of, asking them to come to Charlottesville to give a talk. Other than a large collection of rejection letters from some very famous people, the effort was essentially unsuccessful. There was, however, a group called the Institute of Contemporary Art in Washington that was very successful at recruiting people of note to come to DC to give a lecture. Of course, they paid lecturers for their efforts, which was a benefit we failed to offer. In any event, the President of that organization learned, somehow, that I had befriended William Faulkner, who was a person they coveted, but one who had never agreed to speak to their organization. Even at UVA, as far as I know, or can remember, Mr. Faulkner did mainly readings from his works and answered questions from the students. He seldom gave formal “talks.” In any case, the President of the ICA came down to visit me one afternoon. He wanted to work a trade. He would get Frank Lloyd Wright to come to UVA to give a talk, and I would convince William Faulkner to go to DC for the same purpose. The thought of meeting and hearing Frank Lloyd Wright was, of course, overwhelming, but I "agreed" to the "deal."

The next thing I knew, I got a call from the ICA that Frank Lloyd Wright had agreed to come to UVA for a talk. Our class was beside themselves. We got permission from the University to put on the event, and sold 1,000 tickets for a lecture at the Cabell Hall auditorium. We collected $5,000 in ticket sales. As the fates would have it, however, unfortunately I got a telegram from Mr. Wright two days before the scheduled event that he had taken ill, and his doctor had forbidden him from any travel. He was very apologetic, but promised to schedule a trip to UVA when he recovered. We notified the press of the cancellation, and gave instructions for reimbursement, but miraculously only half the ticket buyers asked for a refund. Along with other contributions and art sales, our class had assembled enough money to spend ten days in Mexico City over our fourth year Spring Break. Mr. Faulkner was flattered to be offered as a trade for the world’s most famous architect of the time, but not surprisingly elected to pass on the invitation to go to DC. As an aside, Mr. Wright died just a few days after I received his telegram.

William Lecky, FAIA, spent 35 years of his professional career as a partner in the firm Cooper-Lecky Architects in Washington, DC. He is currently owner and founder of The Lecky Design Studio. High points in his career include several projects at the White House, the Blair House, the Vice-President's House, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the Korean War Veterans Memorial on the National Mall. He has been awarded a National AIA Design Award, the Presidential Design Award, the AIA 25 Year Award, the Virginia Distinguished Achievement Award, the AIA Silver Medal, and multiple regional design awards.

©2010 William Lecky

The Gentleman Hitch-Hiker

By R. C. Greene (College ’61)

My term as William Faulkner’s unoffical driver-in-residence must have occurred in the Spring 1958, during my first year at UVA. I remember seeing him at some point during that year in Cabell Hall; I was casually interested in knowing he was at the University, but like many other students, I did not realize that we were in the presence of true greatness.

For various reasons, I was one of the few first-year students who were permitted a car on Grounds. It was sometime after first seeing him, when I was driving through the Grounds, that a mustached Southern Gentleman in a white linen suit and blue-and-orange tie, with an umbrella hooked over his left arm, had his right hand and thumb out seeking a ride. I must admit, I did not recognize him as Mr. Faulkner, attesting to my obvious inattentiveness during the Cabell Hall event.

I stopped for the man, asked where he was going, and proceeded to take him with me to downtown Charlottesville. I do not recall why either of us was going there. He said he was a professor at UVA, but gave no name. He said he would be going to C-ville at that time each week – was I? Having a part-time job near Free Bridge, I made a plan to pick him up each week at the same place and time (a Thursday, I believe, in late morning).

The following week, after having been told by a dorm mate that he had seen me driving Mr. Faulkner, I first apologized to him for not recognizing him. Putting me fully at ease, he said that he had to admit that he did not recognize me either, and we shook hands, acknowledging one another with a laugh.

He was fun and easy to talk with – a bit “crusty” and I liked that.

I recall a discussion of Faulkner’s works in English class when the professor and I disagreed on the meaning of some passage in one of his works. I said I would ask Mr. Faulkner, which completely unglued the professor (whose name escapes me), since I had a one-on-one relationship with, arguably, the most world-famous man in Charlottesville since Jefferson himself. Obviously, the professor did not enjoy such a relationship.

At our next encounter, I did ask Mr. Faulkner the “hidden” meaning of the passage, to which he replied (and I remember clearly): “I wrote what I meant, and I meant what I wrote.” I wish I could recall the passage or even from which piece it came.

I have tried to remember if I ever figured out where Mr. Faulkner was going, but nothing comes to mind. I am not sure I ever knew, just that I dropped him off on Main Street (now the Mall) at the corner of 5th Street, where the Army-Navy Store was at that time. There were lots of banks, professional offices and good restaurants in the area. I picked him up just before noon, so he may have had a regular luncheon appointment with someone. We travelled together on Thursdays for a month or more, and then one of us stopped going to Charlottesville at that time of day. It was a fun experience for me, even at that time.

Once, when walking with some friends to the Corner, Mr. Faulkner came walking in the opposite direction and casually said: “Good morning, Dick.” Great memory!

His daughter was Master of the Farmington (Fox) Hunt. I met her several times when the Hunt crossed our horse farm north of Crozet, some years ago.

It was 54 years ago that Mr. Faulkner was my passenger, and it is one of my fondest memories (of many) of my days at UVA.

Following the UVA experience, which included ROTC, Dick Greene served his country “on loan” to a related government agency in SE Asia; then obtained an MBA in Land Economics from Fairleigh Dickinson University and began a career as a real estate entrepreneur–broker, investor, builder, developer and consultant. He served nine years on the Alumni Board of the Greater NY UVA Chapter, rising to President and Chairman in the 1970’s. He and his wife have been married 42 years, have one daughter and one granddaughter. They enjoy their horse farms in NJ and VA, collect classic cars, fly their Cessna Skyhawk and research history as a hobby. He has returned to UVA’s Medical Center for two major operations by top-notch doctors recommended by classmates.

©2011 R. C. Greene

Mr. Faulkner in My Classroomr

By Robert Scholes

[This essay was first published, in a slightly longer form, in The Brown Alumni Magazine (May/June 2006), and is reprinted here with the generous permission of the BAM. Professor Scholes taught at UVA between 1959 and 1964. Faulkner’s visit to his class probably occurred in 1962, during one of the returns to UVA that the novelist made every spring between the end of his second residency and his death.]

The main event in this narrative is a visit paid by William Faulkner to my undergraduate honors seminar in the novel, on a day when we were discussing his novel Absalom, Absalom! I had occasion recently to mention this episode in the preface to a book of mine, and I have been getting questions about it ever since. People want to know what this experience was like, what Mr. Faulkner was like, how he responded to students – and things of that sort. I will try to answer these questions, but first I need to provide a bit of background on that moment in our history as it played out in and around the university that Thomas Jefferson designed and founded many years before.

I started teaching at the University of Virginia in 1959, fresh out of graduate school at Cornell, where I had contemplated writing a dissertation on Joseph Conrad and William Faulkner, but had dropped that idea when offered the newly acquired papers of James Joyce to catalogue instead. But Faulkner was a star in my firmament before I ever got to shake his hand or chat with him at a party. He had been a Writer-in-Residence at UVA for some years before I got there, spending half the year there, and dutifully allowing conversations with faculty to be recorded and published. I had read a volume of these before I even got there. But these were not quiet times in that part of the world.

I remember being interviewed in a hotel room at the meeting of the Modern Language Association by a disgruntled professor who waxed eloquent on the subject of what was called “massive resistance” – the closing of the public schools in Charlottesville, rather than integrate them as the law had begun to require. The professor left the University of Virginia and I arrived, after being assured that the schools were indeed reopening, so that my two little ones could attend them. But other things were going on. There were no female students at Virginia in those days, and, at football games, black people sat in the end zone and whites along the side of the field. The local movie theatre made all black people sit in the balcony, and I soon got into a controversy in the newspaper with someone who insisted that this was necessary because they smelled bad. I remember responding that some white people smelled worse than some black people, and suggesting that a smellometer be put in the lobby and everyone with a high score be sent upstairs – but this did not happen, as you might expect.

As a Yankee, born in Brooklyn, educated in New York and Connecticut, I was really in no position to pontificate about all this to the locals. But I had white southern colleagues who played a leading role in the struggle over civil rights, sitting in with blacks at local diners and generally proving that not all southerners were bigoted or cowardly. The position of Faulkner in all this was interesting. Any serious reader of his novels knew that he did not think white folks were necessarily smarter, more sensitive, or morally superior to blacks. I remember asking him at a conference about his book, Go Down, Moses, which he always called a novel, though it looked to many people like a collection of stories about different people over a long period of time. They had stopped tape-recording his conferences by this time, and I think he was a bit more forthcoming because of that. In any case, he explained patiently to me that the book was unified by taking place entirely on the same bit of territory, and by having as its protagonist the Negro race as a whole. As the title implied, it was about their evolution toward freedom and equality.

I should point out that Faulkner took his obligations as Writer-in-Residence seriously, interpreting them as a responsibility toward the students in particular. During this struggle over civil rights he spoke at least once to a group of undergraduates about integration. What I learned about that meeting suggests that he told them that integration was right and should happen, but that he thought it needed some time and shouldn’t be hurried. As we know now, it came pretty fast, but with many gaps and difficulties that helped keep racism alive and well, with politicians in the south and elsewhere playing the race card for years afterward with varying degrees of subtlety. I don’t want to suggest that it should have come more slowly, only to point out that Faulkner was right to be concerned about the pace of the process and how that might affect the results.

It was his concern for the students, and his commitment to them, however, that brought him to my seminar. As I recall, this visit was arranged by Joe Blotner, a colleague who had generally squired Mr. Faulkner around the university, tape-recorded the interviews, and ultimately, some years after his death, published a major biography of Faulkner. Mr. Faulkner, as we called him, liked Joe and was at ease with him and his family. Virginia was a rather formal place in those days. We referred to the founder as Mr. Jefferson, and my department chair told his faculty that we should dress as well as the students. (I remember asking him if he meant qualitatively or quantitatively, and he said he meant we should wear coats and ties. This gentleman was also my landlord, and when he promoted me from Instructor to Assistant Professor, he actually raised my rent.)

On the big day, Mr. Faulkner came to Joe’s office, as I recall, and I met him there and walked him down the hall to the seminar room, where he joined us around a large table. He had re-read the book, he said, so he could respond to questions about it. So, the students started in and he was as forthcoming and serious as anyone might wish. At social events, I should point out, this was notoriously not the case. People trying to talk literature with him over a class of bourbon, were rebuffed, usually politely. I remember talking to him about cock-fighting at such gatherings and things like that – about which I knew nothing, but I was trying to learn as much as I could about southern culture, and what better teacher could one have? But he was not the same reticent country gentleman in the seminar room with students.

If I were the sort of memoirist who gets on Oprah, I would probably remember every detail of that class, with advantages, but it is all a blur in my memory, except that I recall my own major question, which I saved until the students had satisfied to some extent their own thirst for knowledge. In reading Absalom, Absalom! we learn about the past first from those closest to the events and gradually move further away until at the end, what we are getting is the imaginative reconstruction of that past by two college students who have a large emotional investment in what happened and what it meant. I told Mr. Faulkner that it seemed to me that the further away we got from the eye-witnesses and the deeper we got into the imaginative reconstruction of events by those who were never near them, the closer we were coming to the truth. All I remember is that he confirmed my view, or seemed to. And it is a literary view, the view of an artist not a country gentleman. Mr. Faulkner, as it happened could play both of those roles, perfectly, and I am grateful that I had a chance to be an eye-witness to them, though I remain cautious about claiming that my memory speaks the truth about him One thing I do know. The books are great books, and they are still very much alive. And Mr. Faulkner was a great writer – one of the greatest we have ever had. It was a privilege to chat with him socially and a thrill to hear him talk seriously about literature as an art. Being an English teacher has its moments, after all.

©2006, 2010 Robert Scholes

The Virginia Spectator Writer in Residence Issue (April 1957, vol. 118, no. 7, pp. 8-9)

Thorn For Edward

By Thomas Hawley

When Colonel Edward Carthington died, the whole neighborhood went to his funeral. The long procession made its way through the dirt and filth of the slum area of Brownsville, along the gutters of a civilization that God once created but did not now claim. The funeral was to be preached in the large seating capacity of the Pitkan Theatre. There the crowds had a whopping good time listening to the preacher say the last nice things about a man they knew little about through a public address system. All the pimps, bookies, cab drivers, barkeepers, prostitutes, and illegitimate children of Brownsville were there.

Bennie the Bookie and the old Chinese laundryman, Wrong Tool, silently wiped large tears from their eyes as the preacher continued to impress the population with his eloquence. Of all the people in the theater, Benny and Wrong Tool knew the Colonel best. They had been his steady tenants for the past twenty years at 505 Cabell Street.

After fifteen minutes of talk about the hereafter, Benny took out his scratch pad and silently began to pick the winners for the next race. Wrong Tool, his oriental face inscrutable, slipped his opium pipe from the folds of his dress and began to puff contentedly. After the funeral was over, they joined the large crowd that retired to "Beeler's" Bar for a last mug of warm beer in memory of the "Colonel."

Through the smoke and odors that filled the bar, a silent observer, by moving around in the crowd, could piece together the life of the Colonel since his arrival in Brownsville some twenty years earlier.

"Remember old Ben Carthington? You know – say you haven't been around here long have you? – he was a convict down in Mississippi and was told to build levees on the river and damn near drowned before he escaped and came north to drive a truck for the old Peepers Mob during prohibition . . . made quite a reputation ... years later retired, then willed that old tenant house at 505 Cabell to this guy from Jetterson County . . ."

Frequent oaths punctured the conversation and then an old woman who had spilled her beer across the front of an open dress was talking.

"He arrived early one afternoon . . . made quite a hit with the ladies, and there are some on this street . . . men didn't like him until he set the house up to whiskey here one night when he was drunk . . ."

Benny turned to Wrong Tool.

"Remember how he got that rep for being in the syndicate? Cops brung him home and no court . . . gave those kids those old dueling pistols with knots in the handles . . . wonder where those are now. . . . You goddam chink, pay tention to what I am sayin."

The story unfolded. After three years everyone on the block thought he was a boss of the syndicate. He took long walks at night after his wife ran out on him and never had trouble . . . no one would buck the syndicate.

"Remember the morning he fired those damn pistols out the window and said his wife had left him for that Dude magazine salesman and never to speak her name in his presence.

"Remember old Berty the prostitute. . .she swears he came to her room one night, right after his wife ran out, and wanted to tell her his life story. How his father was a 'road gang' boss down in Jetterson County and shacked up with this old southern gal. Yeah, never did marry according to Berty . . . years later they found his body in the house and there was one hell of a stink in Jetterson. The old gal had slipped arsenic into him and laid him away for years . . . that's southern aristocratic living for you. . . No one believed old Berty but it was a damn good story . . ."

Benny's mind wasn't on the death of the colonel. He was thinking about Edna Snopes. A pretty little girl, she had commanded the top price at fifteen. She later went into the call girl racket, then took to the needle. To Louisville for the cure and then returned to Brownsville. She and the Colonel had been seen together quite a bit before they slipped over the bridge and got married.

Benny knew the old Colonel had been happy with Edna. He knew, also, that Edna would never be tied to one man. (Benny had chased her out of his room one night.) He respected the Colonel and knew trouble was near when the Dude magazine salesman had stayed in town two weeks. Benny and Wrong Tool alone knew the salesman was the one who started Edna on the needle.

Benny and Wrong Tool had been happy when the Colonel had fired off those pistols and announced his wife's desertion. But the Colonel had remained in his apartment more and more after his wife had left him. He drank a lot and read copies of "Dude." Sent small kids across to Beeler's to get his bottle . . . and then he had died.

A lawyer had announced that the Colonel's will would be read tomorrow afternoon in the sitting room of the house. There was a great deal of speculation about the heirs, no one knew of any kin of the Colonel.

The morning the will was to read the heavens opened its gates and the rains of antiquity fell on Cabell Street. It seemed the gods were trying, with heavenly water, to wash the filth and dirt of the gutters into the river. A large crowd of people had filled the room.

Wrong Tool and Benny sat silently in the crowd. Everyone who had known the Colonel enough to expect some pittance from an unknown fortune was there.

The will was very simple. All his personal belongings would be Benny's and Wrong Tool's. He had willed his pistol to the local police station and had penciled in a note at the bottom of the will that someone clean up the back bedroom.

Three tear-stained old ladies of the neighborhood cleaned the colonel's apartment, throwing aside the numerous copies of "Dude" he had read faithfully every month. When they opened the door to the back bedroom, they screamed and recoiled. The odor of decayed flesh filled the apartment. The worn blanket that had prevented the wholesale escape of the odor fell over one of the women who fainted and lay quivering.

Two bodies lay across each other on the bed. The rotten flesh had worn away from the bones and tattered remains of clothing clung to the bones. A large, but neat bullet hole filled the forehead of Edna while the Dude magazine salesman had been shot over the left ear.

©1957 The University of Virginia

The Virginia Spectator Writer in Residence Issue (April 1957, vol. 118, no. 7, pp. 10-11, 28)

The Personality of William Faulkner

By William J. Powell

The picture to the left is worth a thousand words in trying to discover the personality of William Faulkner. The picture is a mental image that came to him of children who were sent out in the yard to play during their grandmother's funeral. Only one of the little girls was big enough of spirit to climb a tree to look in the window to see what was going on. But along with her courage, she had muddy pants. This mental image struck Faulkner where he lives, for it was the beginning of many years of struggle during which he labored to convert the essence of this mental scene, which was an intuitive experience, to words on paper. He tried a short story first, then a book, The Sound and the Fury, attacking it from almost every conceivable angle and never being satisfied that he had put the epiphany of the mental scene down on paper even after adding a preface entitled "Appendix."

That he would have difficulty in the task is not astounding, because he considered the whatness of that picture a keystone of the universe without which the universe would collapse. The measure of greatness of any writer is the degree to which he sees the universe in any image or event, for indeed the universe would collapse if even its smallest part were removed. Faulkner senses the truth in this, and hence he is able to find importance and significance in a great many things, and this provides him with a sense of values which far transcends the values of average society and gives a radiance to a pair of muddy pants whose wearer has hoisted them above the heads of her contemporaries. He is able to find nobility in a prostitute and prostitution in nobility.

Because William Faulkner sees the greater value in the recognition that each person's values are valid for all people collectively, he has a great respect for writers who attempt to put the universe "on the head of a pin" in their books, writers whose characters "don't just move from page one to page 320 of one book, but between whom there is continuity like a blood-stream which flows from page one through to page 20,000 of one book. The same blood, muscle and tissue binds the characters together." It was on this basis that Faulkner rated Thomas Wolfe above himself, himself second, Dos Passos third, Caldwell fourth, and Hemingway fifth. He rated them on how much of the universe each tried to put on the head of the pin which was their total writing.

Paradoxically, Faulkner feels that to be great, a writer must necessarily be a failure by virtue of having tried to do more than he was capable of doing. The higher the aim of the writer, the more glorious will be the failure, and the more glorious his failure, the more successful and great will be the writer, assuming that the writer tries his hardest to achieve his aim.

Implicit in this seemingly contradictory formula, however, is the assumption that the writer understands, in the unwritten and unwritable language of his soul, as much of the universe as he attempts to put in writing. What he must understand is not the word "universe," but the universe itself. Since the degree to which the universe is understood by a person is the same degree to which he has overcome prejudices of all varieties, it seems that Faulkner's test could be more simply stated : That the more prejudice that a writer overcomes, the greater his writing will be. This is essentially the personality of Faulkner : He has little prejudice.

For those who are interested, William Faulkner's hobbies are flying (a former member of the Canadian Flying Corps), supervising operations on his farm, hunting, guns, and dogs. He is said to have a courtly manner, addressing all males as "sir" and all females as either "ma'am," "wellum," "yessum," or "nome." He is usually dressed in flannels or tweeds from his taylor on Savile Row, London, wears a tyrol hat of brown color without goat whisker, smokes a pipe, has a blazer with an R.A.F. emblem on the pocket. He does not offer to go into things, but is receptive usually, when things come to him. He is known to be courteous and well mannered. He has a sense of humor which is sometimes misunderstood, but such misunderstandings do not perturb him as a rule. An example of this was the statement he made at a press conference in answer to the question, "Why did you accept the invitation of the Department of English to be a writer in residence at the University of Virginia?" Faulkner answered, "It was because I like your country. I like Virginia, and I like Virginians, because Virginians are snobs. A snob has to spend so much time being a snob that he has little left to meddle with you, and so it's pleasant here." Those who resented this statement were either snobs or people who did not realize that the press conference was relaxed, humorous, and even whimsical in tone. But all of these things are merely the garments of Faulkner's personality, however, and are analogous to the word "universe," as opposed to the universe itself. William Faulkner gives the impression of honesty and sincerity with himself as well as others, and has a dignity about him in spite of the occasional showing of muddy pants.

©1957 The University of Virginia

The Virginia Spectator Writer in Residence Issue (April 1957, vol. 118, no. 7, pp. 10-11, 28)

The Personality of William Faulkner

By William J. Powell

The picture to the left is worth a thousand words in trying to discover the personality of William Faulkner. The picture is a mental image that came to him of children who were sent out in the yard to play during their grandmother's funeral. Only one of the little girls was big enough of spirit to climb a tree to look in the window to see what was going on. But along with her courage, she had muddy pants. This mental image struck Faulkner where he lives, for it was the beginning of many years of struggle during which he labored to convert the essence of this mental scene, which was an intuitive experience, to words on paper. He tried a short story first, then a book, The Sound and the Fury, attacking it from almost every conceivable angle and never being satisfied that he had put the epiphany of the mental scene down on paper even after adding a preface entitled "Appendix."

That he would have difficulty in the task is not astounding, because he considered the whatness of that picture a keystone of the universe without which the universe would collapse. The measure of greatness of any writer is the degree to which he sees the universe in any image or event, for indeed the universe would collapse if even its smallest part were removed. Faulkner senses the truth in this, and hence he is able to find importance and significance in a great many things, and this provides him with a sense of values which far transcends the values of average society and gives a radiance to a pair of muddy pants whose wearer has hoisted them above the heads of her contemporaries. He is able to find nobility in a prostitute and prostitution in nobility.

Because William Faulkner sees the greater value in the recognition that each person's values are valid for all people collectively, he has a great respect for writers who attempt to put the universe "on the head of a pin" in their books, writers whose characters "don't just move from page one to page 320 of one book, but between whom there is continuity" like a blood-stream which flows from page one through to page 20,000 of one book. The same blood, muscle and tissue binds the characters together." It was on this basis that Faulkner rated Thomas Wolfe above himself, himself second, Dos Passos third, Caldwell fourth, and Hemingway fifth. He rated them on how much of the universe each tried to put on the head of the pin which was their total writing.

Paradoxically, Faulkner feels that to be great, a writer must necessarily be a failure by virtue of having tried to do more than he was capable of doing. The higher the aim of the writer, the more glorious will be the failure, and the more glorious his failure, the more successful and great will be the writer, assuming that the writer tries his hardest to achieve his aim.

Implicit in this seemingly contradictory formula, however, is the assumption that the writer understands, in the unwritten and unwritable language of his soul, as much of the universe as he attempts to put in writing. What he must understand is not the word "universe," but the universe itself. Since the degree to which the universe is understood by a person is the same degree to which he has overcome prejudices of all varieties, it seems that Faulkner's test could be more simply stated: That the more prejudice that a writer overcomes, the greater his writing will be. This is essentially the personality of Faulkner: He has little prejudice.

For those who are interested, William Faulkner's hobbies are flying (a former member of the Canadian Flying Corps), supervising operations on his farm, hunting, guns, and dogs. He is said to have a courtly manner, addressing all males as "sir" and all females as either "ma'am," "wellum," "yessum," or "nome." He is usually dressed in flannels or tweeds from his taylor on Savile Row, London, wears a tyrol hat of brown color without goat whisker, smokes a pipe, has a blazer with an R.A.F. emblem on the pocket. He does not offer to go into things, but is receptive usually, when things come to him. He is known to be courteous and well mannered. He has a sense of humor which is sometimes misunderstood, but such misunderstandings do not perturb him as a rule. An example of this was the statement he made at a press conference in answer to the question, "Why did you accept the invitation of the Department of English to be a writer in residence at the University of Virginia?" Faulkner answered, "It was because I like your country. I like Virginia, and I like Virginians, because Virginians are snobs. A snob has to spend so much time being a snob that he has little left to meddle with you, and so it's pleasant here." Those who resented this statement were either snobs or people who did not realize that the press conference was relaxed, humorous, and even whimsical in tone. But all of these things are merely the garments of Faulkner's personality, however, and are analogous to the word "universe," as opposed to the universe itself. William Faulkner gives the impression of honesty and sincerity with himself as well as others, and has a dignity about him in spite of the occasional showing of muddy pants.

©1957 The University of Virginia

The Virginia Spectator Writer in Residence Issue (April 1957, vol. 118, no. 7, pp. 12, 23-26)

The Sound And The Flurry

By "Carlos"

Being extracts from the Journal of Mr. William Faulkner, Writer-in-Residence?

Feb. 10: Arrived right on time. Met at the station by a delegation from the English Department. Fellow named K in charge; made a nice little speech about how glad they are to have us. Then they took us to the house and showed us around; K pointed out a little room upstairs that would be good for a study. He seems quite anxious for me to continue working while here.

Shown the grounds after lunch. Beautiful, simply beautiful. Know I'm going to love it here. Wonderful view of the Rotunda from the Lawn.

Splendid office they've assigned to me. K took me up; also offered to take care of anything that comes up – just call him. Sterling fellow.

Tea at the Colonnade Club this afternoon.

Feb. 11: Had to get up a bit early this morning. K came by at four-thirty to see how we were getting along; seems he has an early class and just thought he'd drop by. Rest of the department showed up too, one by one, between five and eight. All brought copies of A Fable to be autographed. Glad to do them a favor. But at this hour: Never did get back to sleep.

Went over to the office this afternoon to get things settled down. English Department quite solicitous of my welfare; very efficient in keeping curiosity-seekers out. Place is swarming with people from the English Department, though. Heard a silly rumor about some Sociology professor that tried to get in, but K assures me that it was just an exaggeration; they just don't want me to be bothered. Wish he would get some of these English chaps out, then. Must be about fifteen of them in here. Haven't seen anybody else yet.

Had lunch with the head of the department and three or four professors. Showed me the schedule they had made up for my lectures, etc. Quite a few of them – about six a week. Said something about this to one of them and he got pretty indignant. I'll have to talk to them about it later. Far too many. Wouldn't have any time to write.

Tea again at the Colonnade Club. Hope we don't have to go there every afternoon.

Rather hoped to get an evening to myself, but was asked to dinner by the English faculty wives. Very nice people. Funny thing happened on the way. When I left the house I was met by two young instructors that I seem to see everywhere I go – seems they were invited too. They said they had just come to accompany me over, but I could have sworn they were waiting outside the door when I went out. Like a stake-out. . . .

Dinner very nice. Strange incident afterwards, though. Getting ready to leave, when I heard some thumps and crashes from the ladies room, and what I could have sworn was a muffled scream. Couple of seconds later a Mrs. M rushed out, looking a little dishevelled, and asked me to dinner. Seemed rather afraid that someone else might have gotten there first. These things take up so much time, but I had to accept. Noticed an ambulance pulling up when we left. Strange. . .

Feb. 21: Need sleep badly. Can't seem to get out of these lectures. Had no idea there would be so many. Suggested to K for the third time that I have other work to do too – got a very funny look. Know everyone in the damn department by now. Walk into one of those lectures, look down, and there are those same faces, leering up at me expectantly like bloodsuckers. How much can you say about writing?

They won't even let me go anywhere by myself anymore. Tried to walk up the Lawn on the way to the office this morning and some associate professor jumped out from behind Washington's statue and steered me back to Cabell Hall; said I had six lectures left to write this week. Too groggy to resist.

Damn office too full of people. Every time I turn around I see K standing and staring over my shoulder like I was a blasted IBM machine. Can't do anything anyway for all the English Department people running in and out. God, they take notes on everything I do – I think they're going to publish a book on writing technique or something. I feel like I'm in a goldfish bowl. Got to get out of here. I haven't even talked to anybody but English professors. Told K I was going to drop down and look into a few classes (haven't seen any students since I've been here); he excused himself and when I got up to go the door was locked. Leaned against the desk, sobbing. Fell asleep. Would so like to get out once in a while.

These luncheons and dinners with the faculty getting me down. Wives always bruised or bandaged like they'd been in a fight. Learned that one of them I had dinner with that first night was taken to the hospital with a concussion and multiple fractures directly afterwards. You don't suppose . . .

Got up this morning to go to the bathroom and found K standing outside the little study; he saw me and started asking me why I didn't use it. How does he know I don't? (Haven't had time to write anything but lectures since I got here.) In fact, how the hell did he get into the house? Tried to get into the bathroom, but he grabbed me and began shouting, "Why? Why don't you write in there? You're a writer, aren't you?" Kneed him in the groin, ran into the bathroom and locked the door. Collapsed into the bathtub and fell asleep. God . . .!

Tea at the Colonnade Club again. Lord, how I hate tea. Almost vomited in Mrs. R's lap. Why can't I stay home? Too dangerous to try. They found me hiding in the coal bin yesterday at tea-time. Four husky young instructors. Doctor says it should heal in about a month.

March 4: Same two professors standing over the bed when I woke up. Never should have tried to get a message out by that student on the way to the office last week. Things are very desperate – I may crack soon. They even go to the toilet with me now. Can hear them prowling in the corridor outside my door at night, guarding me and looking for the first draft of a novel they think I have hidden. They're furious that I haven't written anything yet, but I never have time. Why don't they let me alone? Am so sleepy. Fell asleep giving the lecture yesterday; K rushed up angrily and slapped me awake and made me finish. Must get out. Heard about that Sociology professor – it was true. K threw him out of the window in the office next to mine. Five stories. Broke his neck. They won't let me see anyone. Wouldn't be surprised if that student is being followed now.

I was very foolish this afternoon. Tried to make a break for the car as they took me to lunch, but I was caught and beaten severely about the head and face. Was unconscious almost the whole way to Mrs. G's, where we ate. I looked almost as bad as Mrs. G. I understand she has won me for lunch for three days in a row now – almost killed professor F's wife. Makes no difference any more, though; I hardly know what I'm doing. Shame about Mrs. F – she made very good pies.

The lecture went very badly today. K stood behind me, as usual, with a blackjack. I was careful, though – he only hit me four times; mainly for losing the place. My mind wanders so. But I must carry on until I can escape.

Tea at the Colonnade Club, and I have learned to keep it down very well. Mrs. T strikes me each time I vomit; I have quite a good conditioned reflex now.

March 12: Nothing very important happened today, but I must be very careful to insert my pronouns and articles and things from now on – they have been reading the journal and punish me when they find grammatical errors. I'm slipping fast – must get out, or lose my mind completely. Perhaps I can smuggle this page out to someone, and get tickets for the next plane to Greece. I have friends there; they will hide me. Will try tonight. Chin up, old man.

©1957 The University of Virginia

The Virginia Spectator Writer in Residence Issue (April 1957, vol. 118, no. 7, pp. 12, 23-26)

The Sound And The Flurry

By "Carlos"

Being extracts from the Journal of Mr. William Faulkner, Writer-in-Residence?

Feb. 10: Arrived right on time. Met at the station by a delegation from the English Department. Fellow named K in charge; made a nice little speech about how glad they are to have us. Then they took us to the house and showed us around; K pointed out a little room upstairs that would be good for a study. He seems quite anxious for me to continue working while here.

Shown the grounds after lunch. Beautiful, simply beautiful. Know I'm going to love it here. Wonderful view of the Rotunda from the Lawn.

Splendid office they've assigned to me. K took me up; also offered to take care of anything that comes up – just call him. Sterling fellow.

Tea at the Colonnade Club this afternoon.

Feb. 11: Had to get up a bit early this morning. K came by at four-thirty to see how we were getting along; seems he has an early class and just thought he'd drop by. Rest of the department showed up too, one by one, between five and eight. All brought copies of A Fable to be autographed. Glad to do them a favor. But at this hour: Never did get back to sleep.

Went over to the office this afternoon to get things settled down. English Department quite solicitous of my welfare; very efficient in keeping curiosity-seekers out. Place is swarming with people from the English Department, though. Heard a silly rumor about some Sociology professor that tried to get in, but K assures me that it was just an exaggeration; they just don't want me to be bothered. Wish he would get some of these English chaps out, then. Must be about fifteen of them in here. Haven't seen anybody else yet.

Had lunch with the head of the department and three or four professors. Showed me the schedule they had made up for my lectures, etc. Quite a few of them – about six a week. Said something about this to one of them and he got pretty indignant. I'll have to talk to them about it later. Far too many. Wouldn't have any time to write.

Tea again at the Colonnade Club. Hope we don't have to go there every afternoon.

Rather hoped to get an evening to myself, but was asked to dinner by the English faculty wives. Very nice people. Funny thing happened on the way. When I left the house I was met by two young instructors that I seem to see everywhere I go – seems they were invited too. They said they had just come to accompany me over, but I could have sworn they were waiting outside the door when I went out. Like a stake-out. . . .

Dinner very nice. Strange incident afterwards, though. Getting ready to leave, when I heard some thumps and crashes from the ladies room, and what I could have sworn was a muffled scream. Couple of seconds later a Mrs. M rushed out, looking a little dishevelled, and asked me to dinner. Seemed rather afraid that someone else might have gotten there first. These things take up so much time, but I had to accept. Noticed an ambulance pulling up when we left. Strange. . .

Feb. 21: Need sleep badly. Can't seem to get out of these lectures. Had no idea there would be so many. Suggested to K for the third time that I have other work to do too – got a very funny look. Know everyone in the damn department by now. Walk into one of those lectures, look down, and there are those same faces, leering up at me expectantly like bloodsuckers. How much can you say about writing?

They won't even let me go anywhere by myself anymore. Tried to walk up the Lawn on the way to the office this morning and some associate professor jumped out from behind Washington's statue and steered me back to Cabell Hall; said I had six lectures left to write this week. Too groggy to resist.

Damn office too full of people. Every time I turn around I see K standing and staring over my shoulder like I was a blasted IBM machine. Can't do anything anyway for all the English Department people running in and out. God, they take notes on everything I do – I think they're going to publish a book on writing technique or something. I feel like I'm in a goldfish bowl. Got to get out of here. I haven't even talked to anybody but English professors. Told K I was going to drop down and look into a few classes (haven't seen any students since I've been here); he excused himself and when I got up to go the door was locked. Leaned against the desk, sobbing. Fell asleep. Would so like to get out once in a while.

These luncheons and dinners with the faculty getting me down. Wives always bruised or bandaged like they'd been in a fight. Learned that one of them I had dinner with that first night was taken to the hospital with a concussion and multiple fractures directly afterwards. You don't suppose . . .

Got up this morning to go to the bathroom and found K standing outside the little study; he saw me and started asking me why I didn't use it. How does he know I don't? (Haven't had time to write anything but lectures since I got here.) In fact, how the hell did he get into the house? Tried to get into the bathroom, but he grabbed me and began shouting, "Why? Why don't you write in there? You're a writer, aren't you?" Kneed him in the groin, ran into the bathroom and locked the door. Collapsed into the bathtub and fell asleep. God . . .!

Tea at the Colonnade Club again. Lord, how I hate tea. Almost vomited in Mrs. R's lap. Why can't I stay home? Too dangerous to try. They found me hiding in the coal bin yesterday at tea-time. Four husky young instructors. Doctor says it should heal in about a month.

March 4: Same two professors standing over the bed when I woke up. Never should have tried to get a message out by that student on the way to the office last week. Things are very desperate – I may crack soon. They even go to the toilet with me now. Can hear them prowling in the corridor outside my door at night, guarding me and looking for the first draft of a novel they think I have hidden. They're furious that I haven't written anything yet, but I never have time. Why don't they let me alone? Am so sleepy. Fell asleep giving the lecture yesterday; K rushed up angrily and slapped me awake and made me finish. Must get out. Heard about that Sociology professor – it was true. K threw him out of the window in the office next to mine. Five stories. Broke his neck. They won't let me see anyone. Wouldn't be surprised if that student is being followed now.

I was very foolish this afternoon. Tried to make a break for the car as they took me to lunch, but I was caught and beaten severely about the head and face. Was unconscious almost the whole way to Mrs. G's, where we ate. I looked almost as bad as Mrs. G. I understand she has won me for lunch for three days in a row now – almost killed professor F's wife. Makes no difference any more, though; I hardly know what I'm doing. Shame about Mrs. F – she made very good pies.

The lecture went very badly today. K stood behind me, as usual, with a blackjack. I was careful, though – he only hit me four times; mainly for losing the place. My mind wanders so. But I must carry on until I can escape.

Tea at the Colonnade Club, and I have learned to keep it down very well. Mrs. T strikes me each time I vomit; I have quite a good conditioned reflex now.

March 12: Nothing very important happened today, but I must be very careful to insert my pronouns and articles and things from now on – they have been reading the journal and punish me when they find grammatical errors. I'm slipping fast – must get out, or lose my mind completely. Perhaps I can smuggle this page out to someone, and get tickets for the next plane to Greece. I have friends there; they will hide me. Will try tonight. Chin up, old man.

©1957 The University of Virginia

The Virginia Spectator Writer in Residence Issue (April 1957, vol. 118, no. 7, pp. 18-19)

Views of a Writer-in-Residence

By "Pablo"

"INDEED, we are fortunate to have with us this semester, Mr. William Shakespeare of the Elizabethan Drama Company. Mr. Shakespeare, as you all know, is one of Britain's most eminent playwrights, and he has produced such outstanding masterpieces as A Midsummer Night's Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, and Love's Labor's Lost. For the remainder of the term, Mr. Shakespeare will live on the grounds, give lectures, criticize our superannuated antiquated methods, or in short, try in every way to assist the English Department in making Virginians 'literary men of the world.' Mr. Shakespeare, would you like to say a few words?"

"The web of our lives is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together; our virtues would be proud if our faults whipped them not; and our crimes would despair if they were not cherished by our own virtues. Now, I'll step forth to whip hypocrisy; but, for this, I'll not tax you, you elements of eager knowledge; I'll give you Kingdom; yet, you'll owe me no subscription: let fall your pleasure; here I stand, your slave, a poor, infirm and weak old — "

". . .er, well, that's fine. I think everyone would like to know what you think of Virginia. How do you like it here, Mr. Shakespeare?"

"I have been absent in the spring, when proud-pied April, dressed in all her trim hath put a spirit of youth in everything. . ."

"Yes, we're proud of our weather; but, I meant what do you think of the University; you know, things like the general atmosphere, or Thomas Jefferson's praised architecture?"

"Hence! Unreal mockery."

"Oh! Not Jefferson, sir, but I see your point if you are citing the new Student Union Building; we call it the 'Ping-Pong Palace'."

"Selling eternity to get a toy. . .'tis not worth the dust which the rude wind blows upon its face."

"Yes. well you know we could take it up with the State, or perhaps with President Darden, only I doubt we'll get anywhere, besides, the president is resigning."

"Indeed tears live in an onion that should water this sorrow."

"Well, really sir. . ."

"Men have died from time to time and worms have eaten them, but not for love."

"Well sir, just to change the subject. . ."

"I know a man that had this trick of melancholy sold a goodly manor for a song; yet, the quality of worth is never strained, it. . ."

". . .as I was saying, ah, we have certain traditions here, such as the 'Virginia Gentlemen'. . ."

"Me thinks conceit is weakest bodies strongest works, but I dare damnation. To hell allegiance! Vows to the blackest devil conscience and grace. You, sir, I entertain for one of my honour, only I do not like the fashion of your garments, you will say they are collegiate attire, but let them be changed . . ."

"That I guess is just a differing in opinion, at any rate I would like to thank you, and I realize . . ."

"The times have changed, they have been that when the brains were out, man would die, and there an end, but now you rise again."

"On behalf of the faculty and the student body, we hope Mr. Shakespeare, that you enjoy living and working with us this semester."

"'Tis sweating labour to bear, idleness so near the heart . . . yet, sufferance is the badge of all our tribe. If this be error, the upon me proved, I never writ nor . . . hell ! You Virginians art snobs." (Exeunt)

©1957 The University of Virginia

The Virginia Spectator Writer in Residence Issue (April 1957, vol. 118, no. 7, pp. 18-19)

Views of a Writer-in-Residence

By "Pablo"

"INDEED, we are fortunate to have with us this semester, Mr. William Shakespeare of the Elizabethan Drama Company. Mr. Shakespeare, as you all know, is one of Britain's most eminent playwrights, and he has produced such outstanding masterpieces as A Midsummer Night's Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, and Love's Labor's Lost. For the remainder of the term, Mr. Shakespeare will live on the grounds, give lectures, criticize our superannuated antiquated methods, or in short, try in every way to assist the English Department in making Virginians 'literary men of the world.' Mr. Shakespeare, would you like to say a few words?"

"The web of our lives is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together; our virtues would be proud if our faults whipped them not; and our crimes would despair if they were not cherished by our own virtues. Now, I'll step forth to whip hypocrisy; but, for this, I'll not tax you, you elements of eager knowledge; I'll give you Kingdom; yet, you'll owe me no subscription: let fall your pleasure; here I stand, your slave, a poor, infirm and weak old — "

". . .er, well, that's fine. I think everyone would like to know what you think of Virginia. How do you like it here, Mr. Shakespeare?"

"I have been absent in the spring, when proud-pied April, dressed in all her trim hath put a spirit of youth in everything. . ."

"Yes, we're proud of our weather; but, I meant what do you think of the University; you know, things like the general atmosphere, or Thomas Jefferson's praised architecture?"

"Hence! Unreal mockery."

"Oh! Not Jefferson, sir, but I see your point if you are citing the new Student Union Building; we call it the 'Ping-Pong Palace'."

"Selling eternity to get a toy. . .'tis not worth the dust which the rude wind blows upon its face."

"Yes. well you know we could take it up with the State, or perhaps with President Darden, only I doubt we'll get anywhere, besides, the president is resigning."

"Indeed tears live in an onion that should water this sorrow."

"Well, really sir. . ."

"Men have died from time to time and worms have eaten them, but not for love."

"Well sir, just to change the subject. . ."

"I know a man that had this trick of melancholy sold a goodly manor for a song; yet, the quality of worth is never strained, it. . ."

". . .as I was saying, ah, we have certain traditions here, such as the 'Virginia Gentlemen'. . ."

"Me thinks conceit is weakest bodies strongest works, but I dare damnation. To hell allegiance! Vows to the blackest devil conscience and grace. You, sir, I entertain for one of my honour, only I do not like the fashion of your garments, you will say they are collegiate attire, but let them be changed . . ."

"That I guess is just a differing in opinion, at any rate I would like to thank you, and I realize . . ."

"The times have changed, they have been that when the brains were out, man would die, and there an end, but now you rise again."

"On behalf of the faculty and the student body, we hope Mr. Shakespeare, that you enjoy living and working with us this semester."

"'Tis sweating labour to bear, idleness so near the heart . . . yet, sufferance is the badge of all our tribe. If this be error, the upon me proved, I never writ nor . . . hell ! You Virginians art snobs." (Exeunt)

©1957 The University of Virginia