So, I take it that everyone has heard the news that Oprah is going to be featuring three William Faulkner novels—As I Lay Dying, The Sound and the Fury, and Light in August—for her summer book club. I suppose I should be happy that the Greatest Writer Ever is getting some mainstream recognition, but after seeing Oprah’s TV movie adaptation of Their Eyes Were Watching God, I’m not so sure. I don’t know if Oprah started this trend or if she just vigorously maintains it, but I’ve noticed that my students often want to take even the most disturbing and unsettling of texts and read them as tales of uplift and triumph, of characters prevailing over impossible odds. It reminds me of this exchange from The Simpsons:
Lisa: [to Homer, about to go kill a bear]: Dad! You can’t seek revenge on an animal! That’s the whole point of Moby-Dick!Homer: Lisa! The point of Moby-Dick is Be Yourself!
Of course, some of this is Faulkner’s own fault; I’m sure that Oprah had in mind his Nobel Prize address when she picked these works—you know, “Man will not only endure, he will prevail.” All that stuff—the words of a Faulkner who had begun to see himself as a Cold Warrior and his art as evidence of the greatness of American individualism over Communist totalitarianism. Not to say he was wrong, necessarily, though enduring is really at the upward limit of what most of his characters are able to achieve, and you sure don’t see much prevailing, and even what prevailing you do see is always qualified and maybe ironic to boot, Faulkner’s fiction always being a lot more complicated than his speechifying. But are the legions of folks taking Faulkner to the beach going to read him closely enough to realize that? Is Oprah going to make a point of it, or will this be a summer-long project of Remembering Our Spirit, talking about what a strong woman Addie Bundren is and how sorry we feel for Benjy and how Joe Christmas might not have turned out so bad if his strict, religious folks had learned better parenting skills? I fret.
When I student-taught high school, our textbook included the Nobel address and “A Rose for Emily.” I wasn’t savvy enough then to realize that I should “teach the conflicts” and explicitly explore the contradictions in those two pieces, one of which, of course, features necrophilia, so I got a lot of very odd student papers about Miss Emily “prevailing” and “triumphing” over the town, or over the Yankees, or over, hell, someone, right, because the author says that’s what people do and if the author says it then why are you trying to make it complicated, Mr. Fury? Isn’t this story just expressing how he feels?
On the other hand, I have cause to hope that the sheer perversity of the texts themselves will complicate such superficial readings for anyone more sophisticated than the average 16-year-old. I notice that when I teach As I Lay Dying most of my students begin to abandon that line of thought about the time that Vardaman bores holes in the face of his dead mother’s corpse.
Let me be clear: this is not a criticism of the books Oprah chooses. Some of them are very, very good. And you have to admire her for doing the book club thing at all—she doesn’t have to be getting people to read, but she does, and often she’s exposing them to good works. So I don’t mean to sound snooty. Viva people reading Faulkner. Seriously.
I agree. Oprah’s readers are stupid. Keep on keepin’ on, P Fury!
Now, see, that’s just the thing I didn’t want to seem to be saying. Oprah’s readers are a-ok—it’s how her program tends to frame the books that they read that I find frustrating. Seriously. Hurray for Oprah and books.
I think the Oprah thing is going to ruin a good thing here in Mississippi. Faulkner’s ours, and we celebrate him and all, but no one has ever actually read his work. What will happen is that we will try, and fail, and then come to resent him, leading us directly into the arms of the enemy, John Grisham.
Or, you know, maybe people will really like him and want to learn more.
maybe it’s the meaning of “prevail” you’re having trouble with. for oprah, it seems (at least according to her magazine) that “prevailing” means overcoming whatever adversity in your life keeps/once kept you from being able to spend $25 million on a farm you can’t work, $300,000 on your 50th birthday gala, or even $250 on a “must-have” white, cotton blouse (Feb. ‘02, pg. 87).
people are starving; people are killing each other; people are hating themselves. maybe faulkner meant “prevail” like: one day man will figure out what he’s doing to himself and the planet and decide to try being compassionate for once. not “prevail” in the oprah sense: creating your “best life” by hanging out with every last scientologist on the planet, rearing a passel of “toy” cockerspaniels, losing 75 pounds every other year, and basically being a gossip for a living.
becoming famous does not translate to “prevailing,” no matter what the self-obsessive ms o. preaches. i can’t imagine it’s what faulkner ever had in mind.
i just sounded like a snooty britches. sorry. i have no idea what “my mother is a fish” is supposed to say to me, the average reader. i guess i just have this reverence of faulkner that makes me really scared to watch a bunch of day ladies try to decide and declare his intention.
not that i could say any better, myself. it just seems disrespectful to turn him into the latest discussion in that format. “today, pamela anderson; tomorrow j.lo; next friday, that mississippi madman william faulkner
”
Did anyone else follow Fury’s link to the official Oprah website? “She” describes As I Lay Dying as “a comical and sometimes twisted story of one family’s single-minded determination to carry out their dying mother’s last wish. ”
I just threw-up in my mouth.
Haw! (as jp might say). Rave on! No apologies necessary. Yeah, I’m pretty sure Faulkner—who said he liked three things in the world: whiskey, horses, and silence (try giving those away on “My Favorite Things Day,” O!)—would have been appalled at being roped into the all-surfaces-all-the-time Oprah format. Then again, Faulkner liked to sell his books and make money, so he’d prob’ly like that part of it okay, I guess. But yeah, I’m w/ you, V—that’s my big fear, that this whole thing is going to turn into a celebration of the triumph of the indomitable individual, by which we mean gaining the right to spend a bunch of money in an allegedly “classy” way.
Darren—holy crap. I missed that blurb. What’s frustrating is that, technically, it’s sort of right—it is twisted, it is funny in places, even if they’re all going for every reason but the one they say they’re going for—but you can just tell how they’re going to spin it. Oh, my worst fears are coming true.
Well, not my worst fears. My worst fears involve a rabid koala bear.
Okay, yeah, I just read some more of Oprah’s text about AILD. Like this: “it is the story of a family’s single-minded commitment to honor their mother and surmount obstacles in their way while wrestling with personal desires and crises of their own.”
Um. It’s not. I mean, open to interpretation and all that, but no, that’s wrong. Especially the first part.
“And next summer we’ll be reading Hamlet, William Shakespeare’s timeless tale of a lonely young man struggling to find his place in a family that seems to have left him behind.”
well said vendy!
I actually caught the moment at the end of the Oprah episode where she announced who the famous author was they’d be reading (Didn’t she quit her book club some time ago and isn’t that why katie Couric started one on Today?). I get the argument for starting with AILD and continuing to S&F, but surely AA would be a better final choice than LiA, except then she couldnt’ say “and we’ll finish with Light in August in August”. Oh, now get it!
I think O’s wack descrption of AILD, “to honor their mother and surmount obstacles in their way while wrestling with personal desires and crises of their own”, is basically “the plot” that O likes. The sad thing is the number of crappy bestsellers she has created that do tell that story (sorry for the Forsterian confusion of terms). As prof. Fury sez, it’s a frame job.
And “A Good Man is Hard to Find” is the story of a grandmother embarking on a trip across Georgia to find traditional values.
Oh!! I go away for a couple of days, and I get rewarded with sheer, delightful absurdity!
Here’s the best possible result from La Oprah’s Choice: people will actually READ Mr. Faulkner. And, like Sally says, in real life? We don’t.
Hell, I’m tremendously under-read in regards to him. The only book I can even really remember reading is AILD, which Wah purchased for me and amped me up to read.
That’s right: I didn’t read it as an assignment, or look for hidden meaning, I had a pal that dug it!
And that’s what Oprah is all about: reading for pleasure, and if there is A Serious Emotional Response or A Lesson to Be Learned, well, all the better to sit around and talk about with yer pals. I do believe she makes reading Fun to Do.
I’ve read a bunch of Oprah & Today show books, and enjoyed most of them, some quite a bit. To me, this is exactly why last nite I’m blaring “Since U Been Gone” on the way home rather than a Phillip Glass violin concerto. I enjoy both, but one I get to have FUN to.
That being said, can people have Fun with Faulkner? Um. I dunno, but I’m all for tryin’. But, uh, not me. I got a lotta comix & an Elvis biography in the works.
Dear Prof. Fury,
The title of this post? Gave me smile-cramps.
Yer Pal,
Gorjus
Aw, I think you can have fun with Faulkner—AILD is pretty damn funny in places and The Hamlet is a damn laff riot page-turner, no kidding. Faulkner, he combines the high-falutin with the low comedy.
Not to unfairly malign all Oprah books. Some of them are really good.
i can thank oprah for wally lamb. and for that, i owe her a lot. although, it was painful to see an awkward, shy lamb trying to explain his characters’ pain to women in the audience who are exactly like the mean girls in his novels.
reading for entertainment is great. but as consumers, it’s what our culture has come to expect/demand from anything in which we invest even the teensiest bit of time. my boss was going on about how greg iles is better than faulkner because his books have better plots, that he thinks literature types are snobs who stupidly care about characters more than story. and i’m thinking, you’re just mad because faulkner doesn’t read like mission impossible. nothing blows up in technicolor.
but when i get really depressed, i read lewis nordan because what i’m feeling is on the page. i’m not looking to be entertained. i’m needing someone to tell me that they’ve felt it all before or that they’ve fared worse, that my experience is symptomatic of the human condition. and i’ve read the sound and the fury for the same reason. though it’s depressing, i often read and reread quentin’s chapters because faulkner conveys the weight of humanity most perfectly. the purpose of art is to convey feeling and meaning, and the world doesn’t always give us a happy ending or a resolution. our literature shouldn’t either.
ps. i mean come on, “my sister smells like trees.”
By the way, Darren, great superfluous comma. And Vendela, you’re right on about Lewis Nordan. My copy of “Sugar among the Freaks” has a little notation on the title page by each story with the intials of Sally & the Floons, by their favorite story (mine is about the all-girl football team). I need to get yours, and Prof. Fury’s, too!
Mine is “The Sears and Roebuck Catalog Game.” Unless I change my mind.
mine is “porpoises and romance.” weddleman and i used to sit around, drink beer, and read those stories aloud to each other, back before we had things like children.
That’s mine, too, Prof. Fury!
[...] hoot him through the head with a crossbow bolt.] And hey, don’t forget to celebrate Faulkner’s birthday this Saturday! Faulkner said the only three things he liked were whiskey, horses, and sil [...]