PEOPLE IN AMERICA - William Faulkner, Part 2

PEOPLE IN AMERICA - William Faulkner, Part 2
By Cynthia Kirk

Broadcast: Sunday, December 12, 2004

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VOICE ONE:

I'm Faith Lapidus.

VOICE TWO:

 
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And I'm Steve Ember with People in America in VOA Special English. Today, we finish the story of the writer William Faulkner. He created an area and filled it with people of the American South.

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VOICE ONE:

In nineteen-forty-five, all seventeen books William Faulkner had written by then were not being published. Some of them could not be found even in stores that sold used books.

The critic Malcolm Cowley says, Faulkner's "early novels had been praised too much, usually for the wrong reasons. His later and in many ways better novels had been criticized or simply not read. "

Even those who liked his books were not always sure what he was trying to say. Faulkner never explained. And he did not give information about himself. He did not even correct the mistakes others made when they wrote about him. He did not care how his name was spelled: with or without a "u. " He said either way was all right with him.

Once he finished a book he was not concerned about how it was presented to the public. Sometimes he did not even keep a copy of his book. He said, "I think I have written a lot and sent it off to be printed before I realized strangers might read it. "

VOICE TWO:

In nineteen-forty-six, Malcolm Cowley collected some of Faulkner's writings and wrote a report about him. The collection attempted to show what Faulkner was trying to do, and how each different book was part of a unified² effort.

Cowley agreed that Faulkner was an uneven³ writer. Yet, he said, the unevenness⁴ shows that Faulkner was willing to take risks, to explore new material, and new ways to talk about it.

In nineteen-twenty-nine, in his novel "Sartoris," Faulkner presented almost all the ideas he developed during the rest of his life. Soon after, he published the book he liked best, "The Sound and the Fury⁵." It was finished before "Sartoris," but did not appear until six months later.

VOICE ONE:

In talking about "The Sound and the Fury," Faulkner said he saw in his mind a dirty little girl playing in front of her house. From this small beginning, Faulkner developed a story about the Compson family, told in four different voices. Three of the voices are brothers: Benjy, who is mentally sick; Quentin, who kills himself, and Jason, a business failure. Each of them for different reasons mourns the loss of their sister, Caddie. Each has a different piece of the story.

It is a story of sadness and loss, of the failure of an old Southern family to which the brothers belong. It also describes the private ideas of the brothers. To do this, Faulkner invents a different way of writing for each of them. Only the last part of the novel is told in the normal way. The other three parts move forward and back through time and space.

VOICE TWO:

The story also shows how the Compson family seems to cooperate in its failure. In doing so the family destroys what it wants to save.

Quentin, in "The Sound and the Fury," tries to pressure his sister to say that she is pregnant⁶ by him. He finds it better to say that a brother and sister had sex together than to admit that she had sex with one of the common town boys of Jefferson.

Another brother, Jason, accuses others of stealing his money and causing his business to fail. At the same time, he is stealing from the daughter of his sister.

Missus Compson, the mother in the family, says of God's actions: "It can't be simply to…hurt me. Whoever God is, he would not permit that. I'm a lady."

VOICE ONE:

 
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Some of the people Faulkner creates, like Reverend Hightower in "Light in August," live so much in the past that they are unable to face the present. Others seem to run from one danger to another, like young Bayard Sartoris, seeking his own destruction. These people exist, Faulkner says, "in that dream state in which you run without moving from a terror in which you cannot believe, toward a safety in which you have no…[belief]."

As Malcolm Cowley shows, all of Faulkner's people, black or white, act in a similar way. They dig for gold after they have lost hope of finding it --like Henry Armstid in the novel, "The Hamlet." They battle and survive a Mississippi flood for the reward of returning to state prison -- as the tall man did in the story "Old Man." They turn and face death at the hands of a mob⁷ -- like Joe Christmas does in the novel, "Light in August." They act as if they will succeed when they know they will fail.

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VOICE TWO:

Faulkner's next book, "As I Lay Dying," was published in nineteen-thirty. It is similar to "The Sound and the Fury" in the way it is written and in the way it deals with loss. Again Faulkner uses a series of different voices to tell his story. The loss this time is the death of the family's mother. The family carries the body through flood and fire in an effort to get her body to Jefferson to be buried.

Neither "As I Lay Dying" nor "The Sound and the Fury" was a great success. Faulkner did not earn much money from them. He was adding to his earnings⁸ by selling short stories and by working from time to time on movies in Hollywood. Then to earn more money, he wrote a book full of sex and violence. He called it "Sanctuary⁹."

When the book was ready to be published, Faulkner went to New York and completely rewrote it. The changes were made after it was printed. So Faulkner had to pay for them himself.

VOICE ONE:

The main person in "Sanctuary" is a man called Popeye. He is a kind of mechanical man, a man, Faulkner says, without human eyes. Faulkner says he is a person with the depth of pressed metal. For Faulkner, Popeye represents everything that is wrong with modern society and its concern with economic capitalism¹⁰.

Popeye is a criminal, a man who "made money and had nothing he could do with it, spend it for. " He knows that alcohol will kill him like poison. He has no friends. He has never known a woman.

In later books he appears as a member of the Snopes family. The Snopes are a group of killers¹¹ and barn burners. They fear nothing, except nature. They love no one, except themselves. They cheat everyone, even the devil. They live in a private land without morals. Yet Flem Snopes ends as the president of the bank in Jefferson.

Like Popeye, they gain the ownership and use of things, but they never really have them. Flem Snopes marries into a powerful family but his wife does not even have a name for him. She calls him "that man. "

Faulkner says that nothing can be had without love. Love is the opposite of the desire for power. A person in one of Faulkner's stories says, "God created man, and he created the world for him to live in. And…He created the kind of world he would have wanted to live in if he had been a man. "

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VOICE TWO:

"Light in August" starts with the search by a woman, Lena Grove¹², for the man who promised to marry her. The story is also about two people who do not fit with other people. They are a black man named Joe Christmas, and a former minister John Hightower, who has lost his belief in God. Faulkner ties the three levels of individual psychology¹³, social history, and tragedy into a whole.

In nineteen-thirty-six, Faulkner followed "Light in August" with "Absalom, Absalom." Many consider this his best novel. It is the story of Joseph Sutpen, who wants to start a famous Southern family after America's Civil War. It is told by four speakers, each trying to discover what the story means. The reader sees how the story changes with each telling, and that the "meanings" are created by individuals. He finds that creating stories is the way a human being finds meaning. Thus, "Absalom, Absalom" is also about itself, as a work of the mind of man.

VOICE ONE:

Faulkner's great writing days were over by the end of World War Two. Near the end of his life, Faulkner received many honors for his writing. The last, and best honor, was the Nobel Prize for Literature in nineteen-fifty.

In a speech accepting the award, Faulkner spoke¹⁴ to young writers. It was a time of great fears about the atomic bomb. Faulkner said that he refused to accept the end of the human race. He said he believed that man will not only survive, he will rule. "Man is immortal," he said, "because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion¹⁵, sacrifice and endurance¹⁶. The writer's duty is to write about these things. "

William Faulkner died of a heart attack in nineteen-sixty-two. He was sixty-five years old.

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VOICE TWO:

This Special English program was written by Richard Thorman and produced by Lawan Davis. I'm Steve Ember.

VOICE ONE:

And I'm Faith Lapidus. Join us again next week for People in America in VOA Special English.

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1 graphic   

adj.生动的，形象的，绘画的，文字的，图表的

参考例句：

• The book gave a graphic description of the war.这本书生动地描述了战争的情况。
• Distinguish important text items in lists with graphic icons.用图标来区分重要的文本项。

2 unified   

(unify 的过去式和过去分词)； 统一的； 统一标准的； 一元化的

参考例句：

• The teacher unified the answer of her pupil with hers. 老师核对了学生的答案。
• The First Emperor of Qin unified China in 221 B.C. 秦始皇于公元前221年统一中国。

3 uneven   

adj.不平坦的，不规则的，不均匀的

参考例句：

• The sidewalk is very uneven—be careful where you walk.这人行道凹凸不平—走路时请小心。
• The country was noted for its uneven distribution of land resources.这个国家以土地资源分布不均匀出名。

4 unevenness   

n. 不平坦，不平衡，不匀性

参考例句：

• This unevenness comes about because topics are developed in a logical order. 所以出现这种不平衡，是因为课题是按逻辑顺序展开的。
• I sanded the corners to take away any unevenness in the joints. 我用砂纸磨边边角角的地方，去除接头处的不均。

5 fury   

n.狂怒，激烈，狂怒的人，（希神）复仇女神

参考例句：

• She felt a wave of wild fury overcame her.她顿时觉得怒不可遏。
• He flew into fury when I said I couldn't help him.当我说不能帮助他时，他立刻暴跳如雷。

6 pregnant   

adj.怀孕的，怀胎的

参考例句：

• She is a pregnant woman.她是一名孕妇。
• She is pregnant with her first child.她怀了第一胎。

7 mob   

n.暴民，民众，暴徒；v.大举包围，乱挤，围攻

参考例句：

• The king was burned in effigy by the angry mob.国王的模拟像被愤怒的民众烧掉以泄心中的愤恨。
• An angry mob is attacking the palace.愤怒的暴徒在攻击王宫。

8 earnings   

n.工资收人；利润，利益，所得

参考例句：

• That old man lives on the earnings of his daughter.那个老人靠他女儿的收入维持生活。
• Last year there was a 20% decrease in his earnings.去年他的收入减少了20%。

9 sanctuary   

n.圣所，圣堂，寺庙；禁猎区，保护区

参考例句：

• There was a sanctuary of political refugees behind the hospital.医院后面有一个政治难民的避难所。
• Most countries refuse to give sanctuary to people who hijack aeroplanes.大多数国家拒绝对劫机者提供庇护。

10 capitalism   

n.资本主义

参考例句：

• The essence of his argument is that capitalism cannot succeed.他的论点的核心是资本主义不能成功。
• Capitalism began to develop in Russia in the 19th century.十九世纪资本主义在俄国开始发展。

11 killers   

凶手( killer的名词复数 )； 消灭…者； 致命物； 极难的事

参考例句：

• He remained steadfast in his determination to bring the killers to justice. 他要将杀人凶手绳之以法的决心一直没有动摇。
• They were professional killers who did in John. 杀死约翰的这些人是职业杀手。

12 grove   

n.林子，小树林，园林

参考例句：

• On top of the hill was a grove of tall trees.山顶上一片高大的树林。
• The scent of lemons filled the grove.柠檬香味充满了小树林。

13 psychology   

n.心理，心理学，心理状态

参考例句：

• She has a background in child psychology.她受过儿童心理学的教育。
• He studied philosophy and psychology at Cambridge.他在剑桥大学学习哲学和心理学。

14 spoke   

n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说

参考例句：

• They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
• The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。

15 compassion   

n.同情，怜悯

参考例句：

• He could not help having compassion for the poor creature.他情不自禁地怜悯起那个可怜的人来。
• Her heart was filled with compassion for the motherless children.她对于没有母亲的孩子们充满了怜悯心。

16 endurance   

n.耐久力，忍耐力，耐久的时期，持续的时间

参考例句：

• She reached the end of endurance.她到了忍受的极限。
• The exercise obviously will improve strength and endurance.这种锻炼会明显改善体力增加耐力。