Thursday, July 15, 2010

William Faulkner


For those of you who are devotees of Garden & Gun, you’ve probably seen this feature in a recent e-mail from the magazine. And for those of you who haven't, I’m going to “borrow” the topic for today’s post.

One of Hubby’s favorite authors is William Faulkner: A great writer and true Southerner. Faulkner is featured in this month’s online edition of G&G because the University of Virginia -- where he was the writer-in-residence for two years -- has a new audio archive of the author reading, lecturing and answering questions. It’s now available online and features 15 years of his work and about 30 hours of audio transferred from open-reel tapes.

I had to include the photo above of W.F. dressed in his fox hunting finery – very Virginia, wouldn’t you agree? The G&G folks were quick to point out that the funning looking object in his left hand is a flask, because, you know, that’s always a good thing to have on hand when riding a horse. He’s joined by Grover Van Devender at the Farmington Hunt Club in Charlottesville, 1960.

Can you imagine being a student of Faulkner's at UVA? If you could take a writing class from any author, living or dead, who would it be? I’ll go first: it’s hard to pick just one, so my choice for below the Mason-Dixon line would be Flannery O’Conner (with Robert Penn Warren a close second); above the line would be Edith Wharton.

Happy Thursday, everyone! One more day and we can then slide into the weekend.
Photo from Garden & Gun, by way of the University of Virginia's Library Archives

10 comments:

Teresa Hatfield ~ Splendid Sass said...

My daughter and I receive Garden and Gun. Loved the drawl. There is just something wonderful and suger-coated about our southern men.
Loved the post,
Teresa (Splendid Sass)

Teresa Hatfield ~ Splendid Sass said...

make that sugar-coated, lol.
Teresa

Beth Dunn said...

I finally ordered that magazine!
xoxo
SC

Creativechaos said...

My cousin, Dawn (who I blog with) did her graduate thesis (I think that is what is was called) on him. I'll will have to show her this post! She will be so excited.

Amanda

James said...

Your Hubby continues to display such good taste. There was a Virginia born outdoor writer in the 50s and 60s named Havilah Babcock. He was a teacher at USC ( the good guys in Carolina) and a journalist. While his books are about bird hunting, they are "songs of the South" also. His descriptions of life in the Post Reconstruction Era are masterpieces. I would loved to have been in one of his classes just to her the stories firsthand.

Leelee said...

Love Southern Lit...Flannery O'Connor is my favorite...also love Carson McCullar.....Pat Conroy is a present day favorite as well...thanks for reminding me to pull out some of my classics!

Metropolitan Mum said...

It had to be John Irving. I am keen to find out how he managed to describe Owen Meany in a way that I wanted to get him out of the book and shake him, shout at him, but wasn't able to put the book down at the same time. How? How? How?

North of 25A said...

Thank you so much for this great post. I am currently listening to "The Sound & the Fury" in my car and I really feel like a need a Faulkner class. I can only manage my own stream of consciousness! This is so exciting; can't wait to go have a listen.
Best,
Colleen

Michelle said...

I love Garden and Gun! LOL And I ended up pulling out an old copy of A Light in August after their recent Faulkner email.

I wanted to say hi and popped over from the Blog Hop!

Aron said...

What a great photo!