Quote:
Originally posted by leagleaze
I *hated* "As I lay dying". I think it was just one long run-on sentence.
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Though containing the brutish yet pedestrian term "hate," I feel that this comment was directed not at me personally but instead at my work, a product of the sweat and the agony of the human spirit, and that this criticism, if it may be called that, is a reflection of the general unwillingness to peer deeply into the heart and see what might be found there.
Despite the regularity with which this criticism is made, I would like to use this particular moment as a pinnacle from which I might be listened to by the young men and women already dedicated to the same anguish and travail on this particular board. Because although the topics are often common, such as books not read, purity of athletic swings, or the anatomical possibilities of double anal, there still remains the possibility, however remote, that one of those present here will some day stand where I am standing, whose prose will be acknowledged and praised as sufficiently impenetrable. (Though embryonic in its development, perhaps even Mr. Chinaski's work deserves recognition in this regard.)
Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only one question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat. He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid: and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed--love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, and victories without hope and worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands.
Though it sometimes seems that this community is wholly dedicated to those glands, I might suggest that you strive to uncover those universal truths and reveal them to the world, so that they may be seen, admired and valued.
Sincerely,
Wm. Faulkner
