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The texts of William Faulkner, to be sure, have never been very far away from “Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha.” Nineteen novels, 125 short stories, a dozen plays and screenplays, not to mention the published letters and essays—these have always been the staple of the 34 Faulkner conferences that have taken place since 1974, and they will continue to be the staple of Number 35: “The Returns of the Text.”
The difference is part of a trend occurring in literary study generally, a realization that, for all the significance of the contexts of literature—the social, political, and cultural settings in which books are written—the texts of major writers constitute a unique rendering of, and response to, the materials they draw upon. The text is primary: not an illustration of forces at work in the world, an “example” of truths that can be told in nonliterary terms, but rather an original language that gives a new order, a new understanding, of just what it means to exist in a particular time and place.
For Owen Robinson, New Orleans and Haiti are pivotal sites feeding into and evolving out of—but now freshly recreated—the novel Absalom, Absalom!; Arthur Kinney studies Flags in the Dust not so much as the birth of Yoknapatawpha, but as the birth of Faulkner’s “poetics,” the particular way of meaning he created for his fiction; Taylor Hagood looks at narrative style in the Benjy section of The Sound and the Fury in the context of secrecy and perception. In a lecture entitled “Weird Stuff,” Theresa Towner provides readings of some of the lesser-known short stories. James Carothers analyzes the Faulkner text “in conflict with itself”; Martyn Bone compares the treatments of migration and biracial identity in Light in August and Nella Larsen’s Quicksand; Thadious Davis also examines Light in August, but in relationship to Ralph Ellison’s Juneteenth; and Ethel Young-Minor studies the African American religious tradition, as Faulkner recreates it in The Sound and the Fury.
The “returns” of the text, then, have multiple implications: emphasis on precisely what Faulkner did with words; on how those words engage a world sometimes considered to be the cause of the work rather the effect; and what the “returns”—the profit—can be when we read Faulkner in this way.
Scholars selected from the “Call for Papers” competition are Ted Atkinson, Augusta State University; Nehama Baker, Tel-Aviv University; Serena Haygood Blount, University of Alabama; Sanders Creasy, independent scholar; James Harding, University of Sussex; Timothy Ryan, Northern Illinois University, and Irene Visser; University of Groningen.
In addition to the formal lectures, Chris Cranford, a documentary filmmaker, will show the film Brother Will and Colonel Jim, a series of interviews with the late Jimmy Faulkner, recalling stories of his famous uncle; two exhibitions of photographs will be on display: William Christenberry Site: Possession at the University Museum and Katrina: Mississippi Women Remember, by Melody Swaney Golding, at the Gammill Gallery in Barnard Observatory. The University’s
John Davis Williams Library will display Faulkner books, manuscripts, photographs, and memorabilia. Other program events will include sessions on “Teaching Faulkner”; a discussion of “Collecting Faulkner” by Seth Berner; guided daylong tours of North Mississippi, the Delta, and Memphis, including a visit to the National Civil Rights Museum; a picnic served at Faulkner’s home, Rowan Oak; and “Faulkner on the Fringe”—an “open mike” evening at the Southside Gallery.
For full information about the conference and online registration, visit www.outreach.olemiss.edu/events/faulkner.
SOUTHERN WRITING CONFERENCE
The 14th annual Southern Writers, Southern Writing Graduate Student Conference will be held at the University of Mississippi July 17–19, 2008. Creative and critical readings will address various topics on or about the South. Critical topics are not restricted to literature; we welcome submissions from other disciplines and are particularly interested in interdisciplinary perspectives. Students whose papers are accepted may register for the 35th annual Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference at a reduced rate of $100 registration fee. For more information, visit www.outreach.olemiss.edu/events/faulkner or write to swswgradconference @gmail.com.
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