--- jacquesdebierue <
jacquesdebierue@yahoo.com> wrote:
> So maybe the hardboiled boys weren't as good
as
> Faulkner, but their
> effect was enormous. Well, OK, none of them was
as
> good as Faulkner.
*************************************************** To a
large extent, Faulkner WAS a hardboiled boy. He wrote the
script for Hawk's THE BIG SLEEP and several others. INTRUDER
IN THE DUST was a very crdible answer to Perry Mason and
precursor to TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD. SANCTUARY was as lurid a
tale as any Cain or Thompson told, if a lot more complicated
in the telling. So was THE SOUND AND THE FURY, very
comparable to Cain's THE BUTTERFLY. The real difference
between Faulkner and the hardboiled boys was ambition. The
hardboiled boys were happy to find a lurid tale and tell it
in such a way that an awful lot of people were willing to
spend their twenty-five cents to read it. Faulkner was making
the same twenty-five cents on his reprints, but the
complexities of his writing style made his books less
accessible to an impatient public. Fortunately for him,
Faulkner enjoyed an academic following comparable later to
that of Kurt Vonnegut or musically to Bob Dylan. You just
weren't hip in colleges of the 1940s & 50s if you didn't
dig Faulkner. His poetic use of sounds, images, and time are
both beautiful and thought provoking. But his iconoclastic
use of language was not appreciated by everyone. Hemingway
called THE SOUND AND THE FURY "drunk writing," and if anyone
would know, Hemingway would. Unquestionably, as did virtually
all his contemporaries, Faulkner suffered greatly from
alcoholism. This problem may have gotten tangled in his
writing. His stature among academics & critics may have
prevented his editors (I think it was Max Perkins, just like
Fitzgerald, Hemingway & Steinbeck) from paring back some
of the less comprehansible paragraphs. There are some
sentences by Faulkner that defy parsing, in English, anyway.
Winning the Nobel Prize put him beyond criticism. I think of
all the great writers of the 20th Century, Faulkner is the
hardest sell to a young audience, today. Frankly, neither
Fitzgerald nor Hemingway ever had a story to tell as
original, as dark, or as well-plotted as any of Faulkner's,
but your brain has to chip around the complexities of his
voice to figure out what the hell he's talking about.
Personally, I find the first part of THE SOUND & THE
FURY, told from the point of view of a retarded man, a very
ambitious and brilliant effort, particularly when you
understand where the story's going. I'm glad he didn't keep
the device up for the rest of the book, though.
In my personal opinion, I think a writer who uses language to
get his story across plainly, and has a story that resonates
with readers, is preferable to one who's language is so
peculiar the reader notices the language before they hear the
story its telling. Probably Faulkner's most successful
protege, or acolyte, anyway, is the American writer, Joyce
Carol Oates. She's even more prolific than Faulkner was, and
while her output is uneven in my opinion, her novels like
WONDERLAND, WE WERE THE MULVANEYS, and MIDDLEAGE are as good
as anyone's writing at present. Very
"noir" too. Oats may be the ultimate female "noir"
writer.
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