William Faulkner on Style and Writing in the Present Tense

William Faulkner speaking at the University of Virginia.

[emrahkorkmaz]

"The sound and the fury" is a good book.

[ivanbonet]

present tense has strength. Works great with action

[jackbuckley]

Faulkner seems never to have belittled his questioners, which was gentlemanly & courteous of him. He was Old South, through & through! I found his reply interesting & instructive, & perfectly logical besides. With his smooth mint julep & magnolia accent, I believe I could listen to him recite the phone book---as well as any critique of its writing style he may've held!

[zombieslyer]

You should post something about Spielberg.

[salimhasan]

اذا كان دوستويڤسكي قد قال : كلنا خرجنا من معطف غوغول ! وهو يقصد كل الكتاب الروس ! .. فيجب القول أن كل الصرعات في الرواية الحديثة خرجت من تحت ابط وليم فولكنر ..
أنه الروائي الفريد الذي عجز كل الكتاب عن مجاراته ...

[c.s.hayden]

Focus on saying something. The style is the method of delivery and should emerge in the writing process as you’re working out how to convey it all. It adds integral emphasis more than a dress. He clearly knows that because he’s William Faulkner.

[TheRealGnolti]

It is awkward in half a century's hindsight to hear a writer like Faulkner try to politely respond to questions about the writing process which are unanswerable at best and uninteresting at worst, though I'm sure at the time they were the kinds of questions people were encouraged to think about in writers' workshops, which were a very new thing then. Did Faulkner "mean" anything by adopting present tense in Light in August? Many languages don't even have a past or future tense. Does that mean anything?