William Faulkner (1897 – 1962)
Faulkner believed in a notion of truth that sounds a little out-of-date, or outright naive, today. Consider this passage from his address upon receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1949:
“… 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. … 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 old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed—love and honor and pity and pride and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. … He writes not of the heart but of the glands….”
Meghan O’Rourke, “Reading Faulkner with Oprah,” Slate Magazine, 18 September 2005
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