William Faulkner?

When I interviewed Mark Pinsky about Disney and the Disney corporation, he confided in me that what particularly piqued his interest in my summer project was the name William Faulkner.  In summary, this was his mindset.  Walt Disney's work is accessible to anyone.  J.R..R. Tolkien wrote books that have a wide popular following and little critical acclaim.  But William Faulkner is not very accessible at all.  He is critically acclaimed and popularly unknown.  His prose is dense and nuanced.  He writes on a dark stage with few heroes, while Disney and Tolkien are all about the lead characters who bear light and hope.

To be honest, I still am figuring out where Faulkner fits in all this.  I chose him because I love his writing style and complexity.  His pictures of the South are pregnant with layered meanings and ambiguities.  You can feel the stifling heat and social mores in every sentence he writes.

I thought first about Faulkner because he was a contemporary of Disney and Tolkien.  He was shaped by the same global culture that produced the others.  While his world is clearly "Southern" in its sensibilities, he was certainly shaped by coming of age during The Great War.

Tolkien fought in France, although an illness limited his exposure to the trench warfare there.  Disney was too young to join the armed services, but he lied about his age and became a red cross ambulance driver also serving in France.

Like Disney, Faulkner was too young to fight for his country in World War I.  Also like Walt, his desire to be a part of the action led him to prevaricate to serve.  William Faulkner fled to Canada, effected a new persona who was old enough to join and enlisted in the RAF.

The only problem was the armistice came before he had completed his training.  So Faulkner took his earnings and bought a full RAF uniform.  He wore this upon his return to Oxford, but also now had an accent, a cane and a limp that he hadn't had when he left for the North.  In fact, he seems not to have had them when he began his journey back home.

He told those that asked that he had been injured in the service.  The people of Oxford seemed to have not thought much of Faulkner's new war hero stance.  They took to calling him "Count No Count."  This was their shorthand for the prominent view that the dandy Faulkner was a no account count.

William Faulkner was as colorful as the characters in his fiction.  It is going to be a fun month!