Artists Who Inspire Me: William Faulkner

Welcome to my series on Artists Who Inspire Me. Each post will address a different artist, from any field, who has had a major impact on my life and/or my work. Some will be artists whose work I enjoy, others will be artists whose work I respect. All of them, however, will have had some type of major impact upon me, and I will explain why and how, here. Hopefully I can introduce you to some great artistic work, while simultaneously offering some insight into my personal growth as an artist and as a person.

Two Pulitzer Prizes. One Nobel Prize for Literature. Two National Book Awards. Stream-of-Consciousness royalty. William Faulkner. One of the most successful and enduring voices of the American south in the early 20th century.

But does that mean he's good? Does that mean he's enjoyable?

Not necessarily...

William Faulkner, without a doubt, is an inspiring force with regard to my writing, but that doesn't mean that I'm the world's biggest fan of his. In fact, while I have found some of Faulkner's work enjoyable, on the whole, I dread picking up a Faulkner novel with the knowledge that (because it's a strain for me to do otherwise) I'm going to have to finish it.

Pleasure isn't the only purpose of reading fiction. But that doesn't mean that I don't prefer pleasure to mental strain. And let's face it: Faulkner is difficult. Faulkner is deliberately difficult, in fact. It's not just a matter of "I just so happen to write really complex and occasionally incomprehensible literature, totally an accident". And we know this because his work isn't always so heavy. Some of it is very clear, in fact.

For example, "A Rose for Emily" (1930), almost without doubt his most famous short story, and one that will always stick with me. No, it's not constructed of simple sentences and short words, but it's a fairly straightforward and comprehensible story.

So we know Faulkner could write pleasurable-to-read stories when he wanted to.

But he didn't.

And hey, that's fair. We can't all write in the same style, or writing would be boring. We can't all enjoy the same types of literature, or a lot of successful authors would never have had careers.

But that doesn't mean that I, personally, have to enjoy every style that I read. And on the whole, I don't enjoy Faulkner.

Compared to other stream-of-consciousness writers (James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, etc.), I find Faulkner to be one of the most enjoyable.

But "more enjoyable" is not "enjoyable".

So why do I consider Faulkner to be a major influence upon me?

To be fair, a lot of it comes down to "A Rose for Emily". I love dark literature (and film, and music, and basically anything. Dark=good). I love unsettling concepts. And William Faulkner was my introduction to the Southern Gothic.

Quick, surface-level summary of the southern gothic: take gothic literature (horror, death, the uncanny, think gothic-style architecture and all of the dark concepts that have ever surrounded it, like Dracula, Frankenstein, etc.) and put it into the American south—crime, violence, gore, dirty settings.

And ever since I read "A Rose for Emily" and engaged in its grotesque, unsettling content, I've only wanted more. And yes, I always wanted grotesque and unsettling, but I mean this specific type of grotesque and unsettling, the kind that makes you feel grimy, that makes your stomach churn a little bit.

Since then, I've tried to capture that feeling in my writing on several occasions.

And that's not the end of Faulkner's influence. Stream-of-consciousness is a demanding type of literature to read, but it's one that fascinates me. Psychology has always been important to me and my concept of character. Now take it to its extreme: put me right in the messed-up head of my protagonists. It's difficult to read, it's frustrating, but that doesn't make it any less real.

I would never try to write a novel entirely in stream-of-consciousness, because I would hate it by chapter two (just as I often hate reading it by chapter two. Sorry to its fans). But there are points in many works where diving straight into the head of the character feels necessary, and this is where reading Faulkner has helped to guide my hand as to what to look for inside the heads of others, what to focus upon, what works (and what doesn't) when trying to create a feeling.

I first read Faulkner when I was in university, when "A Rose for Emily" was assigned to my class. The same anthology it was included in also contained As I Lay Dying, which I read a few weeks later.

And hated.

Since then, I've read a selection of other Faulkner works: "Barn Burning", Sanctuary, Knight's Gambit. I'm currently reading The Sound and the Fury. And every time, I really want to like what I'm putting myself through. And every time, I fall short.

But I'll keep going back to Faulkner, nonetheless, because he makes me read differently, he makes me look for different things, psychologically, because he makes me work to read the literature without putting me through as much pain as other artistic writers do.

And, therefore, Faulkner inspires me, even though I don't often enjoy his work.

I don't think I can fairly give a top 5 here, but I will ask for your recommendations. What William Faulkner book or short story should I read next?