"Faulkner
and His Contemporaries"
Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha 2002
Although
he spent the bulk of his life in Oxford, Mississippi—far
removed from the intellectual centers of Modernism
and the writers who created it—William Faulkner
proved to be the American novelist who grasped most
comprehensively what Modernism was about and implemented
it in his fiction in the most cogent and moving
way. “Faulkner and His Contemporaries,” the 29th
Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference, convened
July 21, 2002, with over 200 registrants on hand,
for the purpose of exploring the relationship between
the Southern writer, ensconced in his “postage stamp
of native soil,” and the contemporary world within
which he did his work.
Some of the significant players in that contemporary
world whose work was discussed during the conference
were fairly predictable: Joseph Conrad and Willa
Cather as crucial precursors, as noted by Peter
Mallios, of the University of Maryland, and Merrill
Skaggs, of Drew University, and Ernest Hemingway
as coevals sharing common themes and very much aware
of their status as competitors, as argued by Donald
Kartiganer, of the University of Mississippi, and
George Monteiro, of Brown University.
Other figures who emerged as influential or as tracing
parallel patterns were Walker Evans (Thomas Rankin,
Duke University), Eudora Welty (Danièle Pitavy-Souques,
the University of Burgundy in Dijon, France, and
Peggy Prenshaw, Louisiana State University), and
the Brazilian writer Guimaraes Rosa (Thomas Inge,
Randolph Macon College). Perhaps most surprising
was Henry Ford, who, for Deborah Clarke, of the
Pennsylvania State University, shared with Faulkner
not only a fascination with the automobile but a
complicated attitude toward history and culture
generally. For Kenneth Holditch, of the University
of New Orleans, the city of New Orleans was a major
contemporary force in Faulkner’s fiction, while
for Grace Elizabeth Hale, of the University of Virginia,
the history of civil rights in the latter part of
Faulkner’s career compelled him to deal in a new
way with the idea of Southerner as rebel.
Two dramatic changes of pace during the conference
were the paper delivered by Houston Baker, of Duke
University, who traced his own African American
reading of Faulkner from high school to Howard University
to the Sorbonne to his present professorship as
an example of shifting contemporaneity, and the
mid-conference week concert of Reckon Crew, whose
folk opera version of As I Lay Dying provided
a stirring example of Faulkner made contemporary
with our own present.
A selection from V. P. Ferguson’s “Days of Yoknapatawpha”—a
memoir of the writer’s relationship with Faulkner
during the early 1950s—was read
by George Kehoe; Steven Stankiewicz read the winning
entry—“The Rabbit”—of this year’s Faux Faulkner
parody contest; and Colby Kullman moderated the
third “Faulkner on the Fringe” open-mike session
at Milly Moorhead’s Southside Gallery. Other events
included presentations by members of Faulkner’s
family and friends, guided tours of North Mississippi,
and a closing party at Square Books. A highlight
of the conference continued to be the special “Teaching
Faulkner” sessions conducted by James B. Carothers,
Robert W. Hamblin, Arlie E. Herron, and Charles
A. Peek.
For the forth year, a group of high-school teachers,
the recipients of fellowships funded by Saks Incorporated,
on behalf of McRae’s, Profitt’s, and Parisian Department
Stores, attended the conference. Also attending
were an Elderhostel group led by Joan Popernik and
two groups of students, Phyllis Bridges’s from Texas
Woman’s University and Theresa Towner’s from the
University of Texas at Dallas.
Donald W. Kartiganer
2001
Saks Fellows
29th Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference
Hall
(seated), University of Mississippi, are Saks Incorporated
Fellows. The group of teachers from five Southern
states attended the 2002 Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha
Conference under a fellowship program made possible
by a four-year, $200,000 gift from the Saks Incorporated
Foundation to further the study of William Faulkner’s
works at the secondary school level. This is the
fourth year of the program.
ALABAMA
J. P. Hemingway
Birmingham
GEORGIA
Narci J. Drossos
Valdosta
LOUISIANA
Angie H. Edwards
Baton Rouge
Elizabeth
Kelsey
Baton Rouge
Nancy
Wohl
New Orleans
MISSISSIPPI
Jeannette L. Bailey
Southaven
Cleta
Ellington
Jackson
Nancy
N. Jacobs
Starkville
Carolyn
P. Matthews
Gulfport
Janey
Mattina
D’Iberville
Sheila W. Stone
Vicksburg
TENNESSEE
Helen Bain
Savannah
Julia
Field Goodwin
Collierville
Barbara
Ann Heiden
Brentwood
Diana
L. Womble
Centerville
