Shelby Foote on William Faulkner and the American South

author and historian shelby foote how would you describe william faulkner that'd be difficult to do one thing about him is falten was about five feet four or five but you never got an impression that he was a small man he made a distinct impression on you so that his his lack of height uh wasn't part of the father thing you always surprised sometimes find yourself looking down at him it had to do with his reputation which enlarged him in your eyes but he never seemed short to anybody i think it's kind of strange now what describe his personality what was he like in terms of his exercises famous for being tested unwilling to respond to questions and bullying people with his silence i think he did some of that but he was not that way with me he was outgoing friendly a genial host a present companion i think a lot of people had trouble with him because he wanted something from him going to take his picture against his autograph neither which he had any useful but i never wanted anything from him and he knew that and uh we had a good cultural relationship now exactly when did you two actually meet and how we met completely by my volition walk percy and i were driving from greenville mississippi my hometown up to swaney tennessee to spend part of the summer and we led through oxford if we wanted to so i said we should stop by there and see see william farknow and walker said i i don't know that man i'm gonna not gonna knock on his door i said hell he's a writer it's all it's all right so um we stopped in the yard there there's a lot of seed of trees leading up to the porch we walked outside there and i got out and went and knocked at the door a whole bunch of dogs in the yard sort of waded through the dogs knocked at the door and it was william faulkner came to the door and i said mr program shelby foote for my mother at greenville and i just wanted to come by and find out if you can tell me how i can find a copy of the mobile phone i didn't want to copy them all before and i just wanted to speak to faulkner that was my cover story he said i don't have one here but you might be able to get one from my agent whose name is leland haywood and i said thank you he said are you from over the dale today i said uh he said let's walk down this way so we walk down through the line and see this walker stayed in the car he wouldn't get out the phone said uh i just this morning finished the story about your country over in the delta and uh i said what's it called he said it's called if i forget the jerusalem i didn't know what to make of that but he said it's about the flood 27 flood and various things i said that's fine so he turned and came over back and he saw walker in the car and i said that's will percy's boy that walker person and uh they were about 30 feet apart sort of nodded to each other but didn't shake hands or get closer before i went on back in the house and we drove on off that's the first time i ever saw him and what year was that that was um i'm guessing it was about 37 something like that now you spent some considerable considerable time at roanoke his home in oxford but not considerable time i spent the night there once i had done that two or three times um faulkner was as i said a genuine host and uh he just just a pleasure to be around in his in his own home he sort of enjoyed the notion of being about outgoing and friendly and funny he did a funny story now was he a different person at home than he would be out in public he was certainly different at home for what he'd be in a crowd of people at a party or something that's when he was standoffish and what about his relationship with alcohol well we we we were going to um we were going to shiloh i was going to take him over the field we drove up and stopped in cars it was a sunday morning and lord knows where we're going to get a bottle of whiskey was prohibition still in those days this was in 52. so we were standing and looked through the current hotel which has just disappeared but it was there then and just inside the entrance there was a shoeshine stand and the fella's getting his shoes shined and falcon said uh you'll know where we can get some whiskey i said no i think he's probably getting his shoes trying to go to church the dog said go ask him so i went over to the thing and said excuse me my friend and i are trying to find a bootlegger we just passed through it can you tell me how to find one and he said i was just fixing to go out there myself i'll ride with you that's usually how much better fallen judges than i did so we got in the car and went outside right got a pint of whiskey i think it was old taylor which is a coincidence farmer lived on old taylor road it was a pint of old trailer and we sat in a cafe there we had a drink when i was a car took cold cold with us had another drink and stopped down the road a little further along i wanted another drink folks didn't know us that's plenty so all this stuff about falling drinking his head all said it wasn't true in in that case but did he did he drink while while he was writing or i do not think so nobody knows what he did while he was writing he wouldn't allow anybody within 20 feet of while he's right i don't believe that he drank while he's right i've often heard it i'm a writer myself you can't write when you're drunk now faulkner's depiction of the south in the late 20s and 1930s uh was that a accurate depiction of the south no good writing is ever what you call accurate in the realistic factual sense uh it's elongated heightened lengthened whatever you want to call it but it is basically true i think that's kind of cure itself really pictured black folks in a more accurate way than anybody had done in american fiction up to that time he taught people an awful lot about that he knew the sound and the voices he knew the syntax he knew the words uh and he knew how to how to uh communicate all that knowledge that was one of faulkner's real real contribution not by any means the greatest one but a very important one you know what do you think he was ahead of his time in terms of his views on on race well it wasn't hard to be ahead of your time in mississippi in the 1930s if you had the slightest glimmer of a notion about equality of any kind you uh you were ahead of your time and he was into that when the thing really got into our world talking said it's all up the black people now the whites have already lost their minds and he was dependent on the innate wisdom of the black people to avoid the kind of trouble everybody thought was coming there was a lot to that too i often wondered what falkland would have done if he'd lived a few couple of months longer he'd have been there for that september at ole miss he died in july so it was only about two and a half months later that uh ole miss exploded i think he would have been dismayed at what happened in many different ways mr foot the the sound in the fury william faulkner's book was published in 1929 describe the south forest around that time period the late twenties early thirties well frogger has done that quite well in sound in fury it was a different place from what anybody who didn't live at the time would ever be able to tell you uh some of it sounds horrible it was really rather pleasant some of it sounds pleasant it was really very horrible a backward view doesn't work the relations between the races were very very good so far as anybody knew and underneath it it turns out later there was a cross current that was stronger than we knew anything about all we should have it'd be very difficult to describe what was going on because there were so many misconceptions at the time and so many uh false assumptions the truth about it is when i was a boy in a mississippi delta uh let's be cautious about what i'm saying but there's truth in this it was an inherent belief that a was somewhere between an animal and a human being and that's a terrible thing to say but it had its compassionate side to it too uh it sounds so ugly to talk about that it's difficult to talk about it but there was that mistaken belief and it caused people to have a lot of charity and thoughts caused people to have a lot of fear it was a misconception it led to a great deal of trouble it came on later but at the time it was a it was a matter of concern to people uh if the mistress of plantation somebody got sick on it she would go herself and help her as she would an injured animal or something this is all terrible stuff but it's true and at the same time there was an absolute admission those superiority of individuals of doing certain things like among extremely skilled bricklayers a topiary artist or whatever you want on same street teachers singers preachers it's very difficult to talk about because it's so much out of step with the terms and you sound like you were benign faulkner is not admired at all by a lot of my black friends they don't have much use for faulkner's view of the race question so what are you considered a racist everybody in mississippi delta was racist white or black racism was built into our bones it's a thing that we'll never recover from having committed but it also had its side that we'll always benefit from both blacks and whites i'm convinced on that i lived in a society was filled with horrors and you look back on it they were not horrors at the time there's a woman who worked first named natalie lloyd she came to work for three dollars fifty cents a week she worked for her for close to thirty years at the end of that time she was making i think fifteen dollars a week well that sounds absolutely outrageous well that's the bottom of the depression including that you see hamburger was 15 cents a pound a loaf of bread was neck on so 15 went a lot further than 150 does now and i'm not joking about that comparison uh so there's a lot it takes a lot of understanding and people people depended on each other in a way that's hard to understand now white's depended on blacks and blacks depended on whites it was a mutual thing and it seemed to work injustice came in the inequality before the law the lack of a true independence that allowed you to go where you want to go and do what you wanted to do within the law that was not allowed in certain places people couldn't go and certain things you couldn't do if you had a black skin but those things were not as oppressive as they sound today it's hard to defend them and i'm not defending them as a proper thing today but they worked in that day and uh it's very difficult to get people to see that and if i hadn't been there myself i would have trouble seeing it explain the concept of the white southerner of the 1930s his concept was not much of what i'm talking was not conscious uh he was unconscious of these things i'm talking about it's only about a back book that you try to analyze it you more or less took things as it came and that's the way you think it were so they seemed all right it's very difficult to talk about it and somewhat i'm embarrassed to talk about it so much it was so bad that we didn't see we thought everybody was happy all the time and that ain't so but we thought so we use that belief as an excuse for all kind of what now appear to be outrageous like low pay and subservience the uh some of those things even in those days i had a black friend that worked in a gin where i was working as a whale he got stabbed in an argument he took me to the hospital and i've never been in a black hospital before and i went to see him in greenville took gardner's egress and i never saw such a dreadful place in my life maybe utterly ashamed to be in the same community with somebody who'd be put in that situation the beds were practically touching each other the conditions were so poor that was that was when it came across to me there was something bad wrong what is your favorite faulkner novel it's always difficult to pick favorites because you might pick one on monday and then third to pick another one but for the novel as novel um i'd pick light in august for the novel as novel it comes closest to being a straight novel of any of faulkner's work and i think it's got a power to it that carries it through any kind of test you want to put it to my favorite of his book so is the hamlet and i rather suspect it was his favorite although he always said sound fury was he considered sound a furious favorite because it was his breakthrough book writers do that they write two or three books then they write one they break through into what's going to be their real style and sound fury did that for him but the hamlet is first found in that trilogy and it's miles superior to the next two in the trilogy but it's uh it's a collection of stories really wrote over that period of time about those people from snow for the rest of them frogger once said a funny thing he said it to ben wasson there was a green villain and he had been to school his father he said ben people don't mind i've got genius i don't know about that but i know one time i had genius is when i named those people smokes he now and i have a quote from william faulkner uh from 1958 he was asked about uh superior books or superior writing among contemporary writers and he cited you as a novelist quote that shows promise right i was greatly pleased with that uh i was pleased here he also had it they said he said he'll get better when he writes a little less fault with a little more foot and i was imitating him and i learned an awful lot from him now did he incorporate much of his own life experiences in in his fiction certainly would that be fair to say all right let's do that of course uh a biography of forest of faulkner although he's uh he was violently opposed to this uh a biography forest of fault is very illuminating of fogginess fiction just as it is with any writer you study dickens life you'll understand understand why he wrote many of the things he wrote and why he wrote them same way with fault his fascination with aviators for instance came out of his afraid yes aviator his experiences with farmers and all comes in profits trying to run a farm now if you look back on your own life and you recall your own uh your family triumphs and and tragedies uh growing up in mississippi and growing up in the south now do any of those memories that you have of your family parallel with faulkner's interpretation of the southern family yes yes that's inevitable folks saw a lot of truths and he taught us to see them too and he was accurate in his judgment of things he had he had certain flaws as we all do his his middle class people don't don't swing right and his upper class people have false as as portraits but he does a better job than anybody else i know nobody gets it right and what what other personal stories i know we've talked about roanoke and uh and your time that you spent with him there do you have other personal stories about faulkner yeah one time uh i was in new york staying at the algonquin and so was faulkner and stanley kubrick the movie director wanted me to write a script for him and uh i was one didn't want to break my stride on my writing by going out to hollywood and i certainly didn't want to go out there but i needed the money real bad so i just thought what he thought i'll do he said go ahead take the money but let me give you some advice never take the work seriously but always take the people seriously because they can hurt you he said hollywood is the only place on earth where you can get stabbed in the back while you're climbing a ladder that's that tickle me and i took his advice in reverse i didn't go i told cooper i'd be glad to do the script but i couldn't come out there he said that's all right we made new york feel it all worked out now in terms of faulkner and the residents of oxford what kind of relationship did he have with the residents of oxford the residents of oxford at the time that i'm talking about this is back in the 30s i remember the first time i went there is before i ever saw him and never went to his house in it but i just wanted to see the house so i just remain on the square there can you tell me where william falcon lives and he turned his head sideways and spot on the ground and looked back and said you go down to the mall here you get the old taylor road and you take a right there but his content for faulkner was so clear and his definition of how to get there to be almost unbelievable and you think that was that was the reflection of everybody a lot of people i don't know about everybody but faulkner lived with an awful awful lot of that if it made him standoffish i don't want to he was known as a corncob man this kind of thing uh sanctuary was scandalous book he he he weathered all that quite well he he he adopted the problems of not caring what people thought how much he cared i'm not too sure but he certainly had a policy not care what they thought i've had people in town tell me following a strange fella he'd speak to you all he wouldn't on the street when he passed it but they took allowance for that man carrying that much talent had a right to some peculiarities or being withdrawn now what are the misconceptions about william faulkner as a person one of the misconceptions we mentioned earlier is he's done a lot of talk about his writing while he was drunk i don't believe that's true at all not for instance other misconceptions was that uh he pretended to belong to a sort of horsey society and everything which really didn't suit him or fit him although he thought he did he was very happy to be a member of the virginia arts club he brought him to our club here in memphis and i don't know there's an irony in it the horses had a great deal to do with father being badly hurt and dying damn horses in it always hard feet and all those teeth out front like that i wouldn't mess with i want you what would you consider faulkner's fault consider falcons what his faults i guess i guess it was a thing people complain about uh he was uh so protective of himself in his youth right through his young manhood he had manufactured so many different stories that he had to cover him up in all kinds of ways like war adventures and airplane things and he had to be protective against he had to protect himself against newspapermen who would interview him and everything that was a part of it why do you think he did that i think he got a certain satisfaction out of pretending to be what he wasn't at that time coming home with his lieutenant's uniform which he had no right to and walking around town with it he was actually stuck there asleep like an englishman certain affectations gave him pleasure i think and what do you what do you consider faulkner's legacy to the south and in terms of his work the thing that ought to be gotten straight all these academics is talking about falcons themes and this and the other what we can probably could do but any writer i know of certainly an american is to communicate sensation he could describe the texture of things whether it's a surface here or waking up a dawn in the woods he can communicate exactly the feeling the emotion that's aroused by certain things he could do that wonderfully well he described the writer's predicament he said it's the human heart in conflict with itself and that's what he writes about and faulkner's uh views of hemingway and fitzgerald and other writers around that time what what are your thoughts on that i i think everybody could have a favorite out of those four frog was my favorite out of the four and i think fault was more apt to last than either hemingway or fitzgerald or wolf i think that the academics will save fallen what academics are attracted to us is an artist that will take a great deal of examination the number one example is dante but falcons rather like nante in that respect you can write about this aspect of that aspect of faulkner whereas with hemingway is there's very little to write about really now i have i have probably had a sort of a very different kind of naturalism from say hemingway who wanted to get to the heart of the motion if only didn't believe that the truth lay in the heart of things it was in the compact it conflicted the whole thing he would bring the whole thing at you instead of trying to narrow it down i have a quote from 1953 from william faulkner he wrote a friend quote now i realized for the first time what an amazing gift i had uneducated in every formal sense without even literate let alone literary companions yet to have made the things that i made i don't know where it came from i don't know why god or god's or whoever it was elected me to be the vessel why would he say that in 1953 and he was writing to a girl he was he was he was sort of boasting in reverse uh he knew where it came from he knew what he'd done he had a lot of he had a pretended simplicity he maintained he had never read ulysses for instance and he quotes from unless he's quite often in his work it's just not true and uh he he is right about not living among the literati and thank god he didn't but that that that letter is uh is a particular example of father posing as a simple person but he wasn't simple at all not at all he's extremely complex but so what do you think uh faulkner would say about the the south of today i don't know what he would think i think he'd be rather disappointed that we didn't do a better job he'd be pleased that we've done as well as we have but he would think we should have done better he was one of the things he was most frightened about is his belief it was the most valid things about south were the black people that they were race itself and he was frightened that they would be changed that they would lose their good qualities and their bad qualities would come to the front as a result of being led by people who didn't appreciate what he considered a good quality and that that borrowed him that bothered him i don't mean by that that everything he feared has come to pass but some of it is mr thank you very much sure it's great to be with you

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Length: 29min 25sec (1765 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 07 2020