William Faulkner: On Good Writing

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William Faulkner is considered to be one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. His depiction of the American south, a painting colored in a combination of dramatized fiction and accurate accounts, sets the stage for his award winning novels. His Nobel Prize speech discusses the difference between good and bad writing, the purpose of good writing, and the purpose of a writer’s work in a society.

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Video Links:
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William Faulkner: Nobel Prize Speech
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William Faulkner reads from his novel As I Lay Dying RARE AUDIO OF FAMOUS WRITER "Tull" ANALYSIS

Movies and television shows referenced:
The Walking Dead
Z Nation
Guardians of the Galaxy
X-Men Days of Future Past
Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Roman Holiday

Tracklist:
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jinsang – moonlight [part 2]
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waterwarm & cowode – where the buffalo roam
waterwarm & cowode – mountain top
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Aso – Clair De Lune
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idealism – monster gambling in Tokyo
idealism – nagashi

[eaglechick]

John Grit, a successful writer of action-adventure, most certainly learned from Faulkner (and Hemingway's) writing style. Here is are a few words from his "Feathers on the Wings of Love and Hate."

"The fifteen-year-old boy ran from death and towards life. The killers who hunted him were from the city. He designed to draw them into his world far from concrete and wheels where they must put their feet down into the same mud he must and every bush is a hiding place, every trail a kill zone.

"He ran. Above him, towering pines and wide oaks draped with Spanish moss, below, knee, waist, and chest-high saw-toothed palmetto stem and green frond, fringed with brown. And at his ankles, turkey oak and blades of grass in the sun-freckled places he skirted - both small and large glades. And then under the shadow of subtropical forest canopy he ran.

"His feet tread on layers moldering leaves and sunk into the mud of Adam. Down into slough, across creek and deep into the swamp he ran.

"The unmarked timeless footpaths he knew so well were of primordial ancestors who too fought for freedom and killed for family and died for life. Each step took him deeper into the primitive. The wall of green five, ten yards, before him and closed in behind as he ran beckoned him into the emerald obscurity of forest and swamp. Deeper into the anachronistic places he raced, far from modernity and the government's advantages. The last remnants of places still in a timeless struggle to outlast eternity. Just north of where Acuera once endured the death hunt and fought the first slave hunters, distant brother to Osceola, another patriot of his people and land. His feet tread where Osceola fought Andrew Jackson and his soldiers until he was lured to a "peace council" and arrested.

"On this day, killers sent by new slave masters hunted the boy who ran not from the fight but to, not out of fear but rage.

"Body unloosed, every cell of each muscle willing ever more speed. The body's pain be damned, wails and screams of pain unheard, their protestations voided, drowned out by a deeper pain that knew no bottom, no height, no breadth, such a pain that could not be measured by any yardstick of dimensions."

That is just the beginning of the first scene of this wonderful novel.

[mellingmichael]

Nice video but why does it seem like everyone that does this sort of thing feel they need to add distracting background music?

[alexraphael]

A great watch with quality narration. Thanks!

[nolongeranihilist]

Great video, I am waiting for your next video with patience ;-).

[paulkossak]

My 3 favorite are, as I lay dying, light in August and sancturary.

[karlschwinbarger]

This is not an interview with Faulkner. He's in there somewhere but it is no interview.

[BekeroParyin]

1.25 speed sounds more like normal human speech

[garmbrister]

This is not good. Superfluous, bad music, hardly any actual Faulkner, just some guy saying unimportant things to hear himself speak.

[ca]

" .. in which his characters live in...?"

[TrustMe]

You didn’t need the music in the background

[berengerdietiker]

You forgot William Faulkner's feud with Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway's writing was as simplistic as Faulkner's was complex.

[TrustMe]

The music drive you nuts you didn’t need it

[bagotoetags]

I could never understand why there has to be background music in every documentary/information video. It is very distracting and forces one to listen harder to the words. I'm only interested in the content and not the jazzy annoying music. Because of this I do not listen long and usually stop the video less than three minutes in. Too bad, I really wanted to know what Faulkner had to say about good writing. Oh well. . .

[Billy-Box]

The voice in the video speaks incessantly, almost completely without pauses. Stressful background music.

[Oromia]

Great vid. How about one on George RR Martin?

[drhanzo]

I would rather read The Sound And The Fury backwards, than finish this video. Its that bad.

[castelodeossos]

Very sorry, although 'The Sound and the Fury' is clever, it is not IMHO great literature. Because to a great many people, it is unreadable. Same goes for, for example, Samuel Beckett's Trilogy ('Molloy', 'Malone Dies', 'The Unnamable'), which I for the same reason do not consider great literature, even though it was the most important book in my youth.
Faulkner's 'Absalom, Absalom' is, however, on my list of the ten best novels I've read. And one of my favourite quotations is from 'As I Lay Dying': 'Pa shaves every day now, because my mother is a fish.'

[TheRedverb]

Too many "he said" "she said" so and so "said's"
Read out loud anything Faulkner has written and this point will become un-ignorable.
A small thing? For some, maybe, but not for me. It's insurmountably distracting and not something I can forgive, thus, I could never be as much a fan of Faulkner as I am of his more talented successor, Cormac McCarthy.

[sturmbergi]

Faulkner knew how to write a good sentence, but he had no sense for tension what so ever. Imo, he never wrote stories, but rather things happening. He merely goes from A to B to C, and so on, never really managing any depth.