There were three wars at work in the mind of William Faulkner: the American Civil War, World War I, and World War II. He did not fight in any of them--although for years he passed himself off as a veteran RAF fighter pilot in World War I--and yet they are all there, in novels, short stories, essays, and letters. The aim of “Faulkner and War” (July 22-27, 2001) is to explore the role that war played in the life and work of a writer whose career seems forever poised against a backdrop of wars going on or recently ended or in the volatile years between--or, perhaps most significant of all, the backdrop of that war that ended 32 years before he was born.     Two scholars appearing at the conference for the first time will be John Limon, of Williams College, and Nicole Moulinoux, of the University of Rennes. Limon, author of Writing after War: American War Fiction from Realism to Postmodernism and Stand-Up Comedy in Theory, Or, Abjection in America, will discuss Faulkner’s attempt to show how much of the sense of reality that the Great War produced could be rendered in fiction without explicit reference to it, as, for example, in one novel seemingly remote from the war, As I Lay Dying. Moulinoux is founder and president of the William Faulkner Foundation, France, inaugurated in 1994. She is editor in chief of three volumes of Faulkner criticism, has done translations of Faulkner, Henry James, and the poet Yusef Komunyakaa, and written a number of critical essays on Faulkner.          Returning to the conference will be Don Doyle, of Vanderbilt University, author of New Men, New Cities, New South: Atlanta, Nashville, Charleston, Mobile, 1860-1910 and, most recently, Faulkner’s County: The Historical Roots of Yoknapatawpha, 1540-1962, who will be discussing the Civil War in terms of how it was experienced in Lafayette County, whose history plays such a large role in Faulkner’s apocryphal Yoknapatawpha. Lothar Hönnighausen, director of the North American Program of the University of Bonn and author of William Faulkner: The Art of Stylization and William Faulkner: Masks and Metaphors, will take up the question of Faulkner’s evolving ideological attitudes toward war in Soldiers’ Pay, A Fable, and The Mansion. David Madden, of Louisiana State University, author of over a dozen works of fiction and criticism, including The Suicide’s Wife, and founding director of the United States Civil War Center, will address Absalom, Absalom! as a Civil War novel, “even though,” as he writes, “it is more alluded to than dramatized, but life in the South led up to it, was profoundly traumatized by it and, more emphatically, by Reconstruction, and it permeated in myriad ways Faulkner-Quentin's life.”

   Also returning to the conference will be Noel Polk, of the University of Southern Mississippi, author or editor of over a dozen volumes, including most recently Outside the Southern Myth, Children of the Dark House, and Reading Faulkner: “The Sound and the Fury,” who will speak on A Fable; and James Watson, University of Tulsa, author or editor of four volumes on Faulkner, including most recently William Faulkner, Self Presentation and Performance.             Included in the list of speakers will be a selection of papers submitted for the Call for Papers competition.

   In addition to formal lectures, the Rivendell Theatre Ensemble of Chicago will present a play, Faulkner's Bicycle. Praised by the Chicago Sun-Times as "one of those small, perfect pieces of stage magic that typify the glories of Chicago theater," the play is set concerns a fictional family in Oxford in 1962 and concerns a fictional family that finds itself intimately involved with the famous writer a few months before his death.

   Other program events will include discussions by Faulkner friends and family; sessions on “Teaching Faulkner” directed by James Carothers, University of Kansas, Robert Hamblin, Southeast Missouri State University, Arlie Herron, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, and Charles Peek, University of Nebraska at Kearney; and guided tours of North Mississippi. The University’s John Davis Williams Library will display Faulkner books, manuscripts, photographs, and memorabilia, and the University Press of Mississippi will exhibit Faulkner books published by university presses throughout the United States. Films relating to the author’s life and work will be available for viewing during the week.  

   The conference will begin on Sunday, July 22, with an exhibition of photographs at the University Museums entitled River Walk, as well as two exhibits from the Museums’ collections relating to the theme of the conference, one of Civil War memorabilia and the other of World War I posters. This will be followed by an afternoon program of readings from Faulkner and the announcement of the winners of the 12th Faux Faulkner Contest. Other events will include a Sunday buffet supper served at the home of Dr. and Mrs. M. B. Howorth Jr., “Faulkner on the Fringe”--an “open-mike” evening at the Southside Gallery, a picnic served at Faulkner’s home, Rowan Oak, on Wednesday, and a closing party Friday afternoon at the Gary home, in which Faulkner lived when he and his family moved to Oxford in 1902.

   For more information about the conference contact the Institute for Continuing Studies, P.O. Box 879, The University of Mississippi, University, MS 386770897; telephone 662-915-7282; fax 662-915-5138; e-mail cstudies@olemiss.edu.

Donald M. Kartiganer

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