"During his most fertile years, Faulkner wrote at a frenetic pace. He once wrote to his mother that he wrote 10,000 words a day..."

"... working from ten in the morning to midnight. 'I write when the spirit moves me, and the spirit moves me every day.'"

 From "10 Legendary Writers & Their Daily Word Counts/Is there a perfect amount of words to write every day?" (Writing Cooperative).

Andrea, Jennifer, and The 2 Williams.

I assured you that I would write this post. It's something that should be very fun for me, but I've made it obligatory. I said "It's one of my favorite stories ever." And then, fooling about in the comments:

Every task seems like more fun than the subject I regard as the ripest of the week, Andrea, Jennifer, and The 2 Williams. 

What is wrong with me? I just got up to make my 5th cup of coffee! 

Did William Shakespeare drink coffee? Did William Faulkner?... 

"He didn't have coffee, he didn't have vanilla, he didn't have cocoa. Imagine writing Hamlet without a cup of coffee. That's amazing."... 

Faulkner drank, but not so much coffee. 

"Jeezus Christ! Have you ever heard of anyone who drank while he worked? You’re thinking of Faulkner. He does sometimes—and I can tell right in the middle of a page when he’s had his first one"

So, yes, the "2 Williams" are Shakespeare and Faulkner. They were in the news last night because Andrea — Andrea Mitchell, the NBC News chief Washington correspondent — tweeted something so mind-bogglingly stupid — stupid, evil, and hilarious — and Jennifer — Jennifer Rubin, the WaPo columnist — lunged horribly after Andrea's tweet. These people — Mitchell and Rubin — are supposed to be the elite, but they are not even elite enough to keep from stumbling over a high-school level literary reference or even to think of making sure — with the quickest Google — they're not making a gaffe. 

Andrea saw what looked like it might be an opportunity to mock Ted Cruz.

"Local TV stations across the country set to air discredited 'Plandemic' researcher's conspiracy theory about Fauci."

CNN reports.

In this week's episode of "America This Week," [Eric] Bolling spoke with Judy Mikovits, the medical researcher featured in the discredited "Plandemic" video that went viral earlier this year and which was banned from platforms such as Facebook and YouTube. Throughout the segment, the on-screen graphic read, "DID DR. FAUCI CREATE COVID-19?"...

During the interview Mikovitz told Bolling that Fauci had over the past decade "manufactured" and shipped coronaviruses to Wuhan, China, which became the original epicenter of the current outbreak. Bolling noted that this was a "hefty claim," but did not meaningfully challenge Mikovits and allowed her to continue making her case....

But Bolling, a former Fox News host, told CNN Business in a series of text messages that he invited Mikovits onto his show to "question and challenge her beliefs." Bolling also said he does not control the on-screen graphics that appear during his show.

"I did challenge her," Bolling said, noting he called her claim "hefty."

When pressed over whether calling a claim "hefty" constituted effectively challenging the conspiracy theory Mikovits pushed, Bolling said that he did believe he challenged her.

Interesting debate over the meaning of "hefty." He's saying calling it "hefty" was like saying, That's a mighty big claim you're making, so you'd better have some very substantial evidence. CNN is  saying — more believably — that calling a claim "hefty" is saying it has weight, so it seems as though it's substantial on its own, without evidence.

I was motivated to look up the word "hefty" in the OED. "Heft" means weight, and "hefty," meaning weighty, is originally U.S. dialect. Early examples all sound like rural Americans talking:

1867 F. H. Ludlow Little Brother 167 I reckon I could forgive him..but I'm afeard it'd come hefty on me.
1871 N.Y. Tribune 21 Jan. He is, as a Yankee would say, a little hefty for the ideal lover.
1873 ‘Josiah Allen's Wife’ My Opinions & Betsey Bobbet's 372 I never looked well in the saddle any way bein’ so hefty.

Ha ha. It seems to have been a way to call someone fat.

Oddly enough, it also meant (in the U.S.) "Easy to lift or handle": "It should be hefty, light and of a form that can be easily held in the hand" (1885). That makes sense because "heft," the verb, means (in U.S. dialect) "to lift."

1932 W. Faulkner Light in August xiv. 308 He was hefting the bench leg.

So even if something had heft — in that it was weighty — it could be hefty — if it was liftable. That's why "Hefty" is good branding for trash bags. The bags themselves aren't heavy, but they make what might be heavy relatively easy to lift.

"In a seminar... Mary [Trump] and her 15 or so fellow students analyzed the Compson family portrayed in novels such as 'The Sound and the Fury.' The Compsons bore some similarities to her own family..."

"...Like Donald Trump’s mother, the Compsons immigrated to the United States from Scotland, and the family was riven by dysfunction. At the time, Donald Trump was running his Atlantic City casinos, which went into bankruptcy, and preparing to divorce his first wife, Ivana, and marry Marla Maples."

From "Mary Trump once stood up to her uncle Donald. Now her book describes a ‘nightmare’ of family dysfunction" (WaPo).

The Compson family, eh? Here's the rundown of the supposedly Trump-like clan:

Jason Compson III – father of the Compson family, a lawyer who attended the University of the South: a pessimist and alcoholic, with cynical opinions that torment his son, Quentin. He also narrates several chapters of Absalom, Absalom!.
Caroline Bascomb Compson – wife of Jason Compson III: a self-absorbed neurotic who has never shown affection for any of her children except Jason, whom she seems to like only because he takes after her side of the family. In her old age she has become an abusive hypochondriac.
Quentin Compson III – the oldest Compson child: passionate and neurotic, he commits suicide as the tragic culmination of the damaging influence of his father's pessimistic philosophy and his inability to cope with his sister's sexual promiscuity....
Candace "Caddy" Compson – the second Compson child, strong-willed yet caring. Benjy's only real caregiver and Quentin's best friend. According to Faulkner, the true hero of the novel. Caddy never develops a voice; rather, her brothers' emotions towards her provide the development of her character.
Jason Compson IV – the bitter, openly racist third child who is troubled by monetary debt and sexual frustration. He works at a farming goods store owned by a man named Earl and becomes head of the household in 1912. Has been embezzling Miss Quentin's support payments for years.
Benjamin (nicknamed Benjy, born Maury) Compson – the mentally disabled fourth child, who is a constant source of shame and grief for his family...

Which one is Trump? Obviously, none, but WaPo is likening these characters to the Trump family, as if Mary Trump's book is a literary work like something by William Faulkner. There's even a long quote from the professor in that long-ago college seminar. He remembers here — 40 years later — as "smart and accomplished." She wrote "absolutely stunning papers, long, deep and elegant."

"This style—let’s call it 'Faulknerian,' after its other Nobel-winning master—is heady and clause-dense."

"Long associated with the South, Faulkner’s great theme, it eddies and circles, with an often maddening indirection. The Faulknerian style’s weakest imitators simply view it as a license to slather adjectives and metaphors all over the page. Morrison, who hated seeing her fiction described as 'lyrical' or 'poetic,' had a deeper understanding of Faulkner’s stratagems. In her Paris Review interview (a must for any appreciator of Morrison’s genius), she delivers a brilliant dissection of Absalom, Absalom, a novel that fascinated her: Faulkner, she says, 'spends the entire book tracing race and you can’t find it. No one can see it, even the character who is black can’t see it. … Do you know how hard it is to withhold that kind of information but hinting, pointing all of the time? … So the structure is the argument.' The elliptical nature of Faulkner’s style epitomizes the paralyzed condition of Southern culture: Everything in it gestures toward the one thing it can’t bring itself to talk about. This paradox gives Faulkner’s fiction its power, but for any writer seeking to follow in his footsteps, it leads to a dead end."

From an article at Slate by Laura Miller that I clicked on because of the teaser "How Toni Morrison’s Revolutionary Novels Broke Open American Literature." I wondered what this "breaking open" consisted of. For these words to make sense it would need to be that many other writers followed along. The headline at the article is more modest "Toni Morrison Reshaped the Landscape of Literature/Her novels made moves that no other novelist, black or white, attempted." There's no revolution, no breaking open, no implication that other writers followed on, only that she did something alone. She reshaped, she didn't break. And it's not a military metaphor — revolution. It's a landscape. From front page to inside page, it seems we moved from masculine to feminine. Is that analogous to the difference between Faulkner and Morrison?

Let me read the thing I would not have read without that overheated teaser. Okay. I read it. There's no mention of other writers! I see no argument that Morrison reshaped the literary landscape (or led a revolution). All I'm seeing here is that Morrison put some things on the surface that Faulker "pushed below the surface."

"The president of the United States has many faults, but let’s not ignore this one: He cannot write sentences."

"If a tree falls in a forrest and no one is there to hear it … wait: Pretty much all of you noticed that mistake, right? Yet Wednesday morning, the president did not; he released a tweet referring to 'forrest fires' twice, as if these fires were set by Mr. Gump. Trump’s serial misuse of public language is one of many shortcomings that betray his lack of fitness for the presidency. Trump’s writing suggests not just inadequate manners or polish—not all of us need be dainty—but inadequate thought. Nearly every time he puts thumb to keypad, he exposes that he has never progressed beyond the mentality of the precollegiate, trash-talking teen."

Writes John McWhorter in "Trump’s Typos Reveal His Lack of Fitness for the Presidency/They suggest not just inadequate manners or polish, but inadequate thought."

I got there via "A Letter to Professor John McWhorter" by Seth Barrett Tillman, who writes:

We (Americans) have had many talented wordsmiths in the White House. I see no connection between such talents, and adopting & putting into effect substantively sound policies. Woodrow Wilson—a university academic—comes to mind. But very few can explain precisely why the U.S. entered WWI or offer any justification for Wilson's allowing the federal civil service to be (re)segregated by race. He was good with words.

Your article amounts to a non-instrumental claim that elites who share your specific skill set should have power and those who do not share that skill set should not.... It is certainly better for the President to spell "forest" with a single R rather than two Rs. But ... it is probably more important that better policies be put in place to stop similar future disasters....

That was linked by Glenn Reynolds, who writes:

Good writing, like good shooting, is a valuable skill. Neither has a moral component. The Supreme Court’s best writer was Oliver Wendell Holmes, who told us — eloquently — that it was okay to sterilize people society didn’t like.

Let me add that there's a big difference between good writing and good spelling! Some great writers have had bad spelling — notably William Faulkner:

One of Faulkner's editors at Random House, Albert Erskine, said, "I know that he did not wish to have carried through from typescript to printed book his typing mistakes, misspellings (as opposed to coinages), faulty punctuation and accidental repetition. He depended on my predecessors, and later on me, to point out such errors and correct them; and though we never achieved anything like a perfect performance, we tried."...

And Ernest Hemingway:

Whenever his newspaper editors complained about it, he'd retort, "Well, that's what you're hired to correct!"

And John Keats:

In a letter to his great love Fanny Brawne, Keats spelled the color purple, purplue. This generated a longer conversation between the two, as Keats tried to save face by suggesting he'd meant to coin a new portmanteaux [sic] - a cross between purple and blue.

And Jane Austen:

She once misspelled one of her teenage works as "Love and Freindship" and is infamously known to have spelt scissors as scissars.

And F. Scott Fitzgerald:

The original draft of The Great Gatsby contained literally hundreds of spelling mistakes, some of which are still confounding editors. These include “yatch” (instead of “yacht”) and “apon” (instead of “upon”). One of his most famous gaffes, which occurs toward the end of the novel, inspires debate to this day.

Here's that gaffe:

After Fitzgerald’s death, Edmund Wilson changed the spelling from “orgastic” to “orgiastic” in the famous closing line: “Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us.”

So many great writers were bad spellers that I've got to wonder whether bad spelling goes along with great writing. Maybe there's something about the brain of a bad speller. Have many Spelling Bee winners gone on to write great books?

John McWhorter thinks bad spelling is evidence of "inadequate thought," but — ironically — he needs to give that thought a little more thought.

ADDED: John Irving, the author of "The World According to Garp," was called "stupid" and "lazy" when he was a child and later found out he had dyslexia. I'm reading his "How to Spell." Excerpt:

You must remember that it is permissible for spelling to drive you crazy. Spelling had this effect on Andrew Jackson, who once blew his stack while trying to write a Presidential paper. “It’s a damn poor mind that can think of only one way to spell a word!” the President cried.

When you have trouble, think of poor Andrew Jackson and know that you’re not alone.

And remember what’s really important about good writing is not good spelling. If you spell badly but write well, you should hold your head up. As the poet T.S. Eliot recommended, “Write for as large and miscellaneous an audience as possible”--and don’t be overly concerned if you can’t spell “miscellaneous.” Also remember that you can spell correctly and write well and still be misunderstood. Hold your head up about that, too.

"Almost every journalist has met people like Mr. McLemore, sources who email you under pseudonyms with tips a little too good to be true."

"Often they seem to mostly want someone to talk to, and to have their experiences validated by a journalist, whose job, after all, is to decide what’s important and true. Most reporters would stop taking those calls when the story ideas don’t bear fruit, but not [Brian] Reed. He finds [John B.] McLemore’s life important in and of itself, and a whole world opens up to him."

Writes Amanda Hess (in the NYT) about the new podcast "S-Town." She avoids spoilers. You can listen to all 7 episodes here.

I highly recommend it. I listened to the whole thing in 3 days and immediately went back to Episode 1 to relisten (and am up to Episode 3). I consider it a work of art — perhaps a great work of art. The second go-round will tell. The first time through, you're pulled along by wanting to figure out who all these people are and what happened. There are layers of revelations. On re-listen, you see the first hints of what is to come. You see the repetitions of themes — such as time (McLemore is a restorer of clocks, sundials have sad inscriptions about time). You know as characters show up and start speaking in their own way from their own perspective what part they will play in the whole story. If it is a great work of art, it will be better the second time. That's my test.

I'm reading some other articles about "S-Town." Aja Romano has a piece in Vox with a headline that overstates the argument: "S-Town is a stunning podcast. It shouldn't have been made." The text says: "I’m not sure it should have been made." One might say that Reed invested so much of his time — speaking of time — gathering audio and got such great material that he just had to use it, and he processed it brilliantly. It may be so good because Reed, et al, were so desperate to justify using what they had. And McLemore's vivid raving is so wonderful, so fascinating, that it's hard to say it should be suppressed for the reason that you will know if you get to the end of episode 2.

Here are links to the Reddit threads discussing the show episode-by-episode. The top comment at the linked page is:

I wish I had a cousin like Tyler's uncle Jimmy to be my own personal hype man whenever I talk.

"Yeah!"

"Yes sir!"

"You goddamn right!"

Is there an ethical problem or are we free to enjoy Uncle Jimmy? Here's how Hess in the fit-to-print NYT referred to him: "Uncle Jimmy, who communicates exclusively through shouted affirmations." Jimmy is a man with a bullet lodged in his head.

Katy Waldman in Slate says that McLemore "embodies rightwing fantasies about the judgmental elitism of the left." Don't misread that. McLemore is obsessed with everything that's wrong with the world, especially global warming. He rants about it continually, enlarging talk on just about any subject into all the terrible things that are happening in the world. That is, he seems to be a lefty that popped out of rightwinger's fervid caricature. But "S-Town" isn't making a hero of him because he's into lefty issues. In fact, the show lets it become clear that his ravings on these subjects is symptomatic of his devastating personal problems.

Beyond clocks, McLemore also tended to his garden — lots of flowers and an elaborate circular hedge maze. People have found the maze on Google maps, and you can see photographs here.

Despite all the horror at the troubles of the world and the refuge in gardening, the show never mentions Voltaire's "cultivate your garden" resolution of "Candide." But the show does have literary references, notably the William Faulkner story "A Rose for Emily," which I was motivated to read yesterday. The story is mentioned early on, and every episode ends with the beautiful recording "A Rose for Emily" by The Zombies. Listen to that here. That's from the "Odessey and Oracle" album, which came out 50 years ago. Talk about time! (The Zombies are touring, playing the music from that album, and I hear they're great. They'll be in Madison on April 15th. Get your tickets here. I've got mine.)

"I used to have a patchwork theory about the makers of children’s literature: that they were not so much people who spent a lot of time with kids as people who were still kids themselves."

"Among the evidence was that Beatrix Potter had no children, Maurice Sendak had no children, Margaret Wise Brown had no children, Tove Jansson had no children, and Dr. Seuss had no children. Even Willems began writing for children before he had a child. But what makes these adults so in touch with the distinct color and scale of the emotions of children? I now have a new theory: Tove Jansson began her Moomin series during the Nazi occupation of Finland; Paddington Bear was modelled on the Jewish refugee children turning up alone in London train stations. Arnold Lobel, the creator of the Frog and Toad books, came out to his children as gay and died relatively young, from AIDS. I wonder if the truer unity among children’s-book authors is sublimated outrage at the adult world. If they’re going to serve someone, it’s going to be children."

From "Mo Willems's Funny Failures/How the author teaches young readers to confront problems and be resilient" by Rivka Galchen (in The New Yorker).

I haven't read children's books in a long time, so I'd never heard of Mo Willems. I greatly enjoyed reading about him, especially: "Many parents have told me that they find Pigeon too angry or too snarky or too adult. And Pigeon is angry and snarky.* Years ago, many grownups were similarly skeptical of the tantrums of Max, in Maurice Sendak’s 'Where the Wild Things Are.' The children of those grownups are now grownups who name their children Max."

And that line "If they’re going to serve someone, it’s going to be children" reminded me of 2 things: One that I blogged recently:

"The writer's only responsibility is to his art. He will be completely ruthless if he is a good one. He has a dream. It anguishes him so much he must get rid of it. He has no peace until then. Everything goes by the board: honor, pride, decency, security, happiness, all, to get the book written. If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate; the 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' is worth any number of old ladies." — William Faulkner

And the other is something that long ago got wedged into my consciousness: David Foster Wallace (in "How Tracy Austin Broke My Heart") wrote:

Obviously, a good commercial memoir's first loyalty has got to be to the reader, the person who's spending money and time to access the consciousness of someone he wishes to know and will never meet. But none of [Austin's memoir's] loyalties are to the reader. The author's primary allegiance seems to be to her family and friends....

_______________________________

* Here's the book "Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!"

"The writer's only responsibility is to his art. He will be completely ruthless if he is a good one."

"He has a dream. It anguishes him so much he must get rid of it. He has no peace until then. Everything goes by the board: honor, pride, decency, security, happiness, all, to get the book written. If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate; the 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' is worth any number of old ladies."

William Faulkner.

Toni Morrison in The New Yorker: "Making America White Again/The choices made by white men, who are prepared to abandon their humanity out of fear of black men and women, suggest the true horror of lost status."

Spoiler alert if you haven't read William Faulkner's "Absalom, Absalom," but Morrison seems to think it's valuable in understanding what just happened in the election. Here's how her essay ends:

On Election Day, how eagerly so many white voters—both the poorly educated and the well educated—embraced the shame and fear sowed by Donald Trump....

William Faulkner understood this better than almost any other American writer. In “Absalom, Absalom,” incest is less of a taboo for an upper-class Southern family than acknowledging the one drop of black blood that would clearly soil the family line. Rather than lose its “whiteness” (once again), the family chooses murder.

"In Paul Theroux’s new book, 'Deep South,' the superficial stereotypes pile up at once."

"In the first scene, it’s a 'hot Sunday morning' in Tuscaloosa, Ala., and there’s mention of snake-handling and talking in tongues, poverty, holy-roller churches, a black barbershop, gun shows, college football, the requisite Faulkner quote ('The past is not dead . . . ') and even a sassy black lady ('You lost, baby?'). So far, I haven’t left the first page."

Jack Hitt hits the rueful Theroux.

That's all very interesting, but I'm just going to say a couple things about that Faulkner quote, which, Hitt slightly misses, putting "not" where the dramatic and time-related word "never" belongs: "The past is never dead. It's not even past."

This line is often paraphrased, as it was by then-Senator Barack Obama in his speech "A More Perfect Union."  In 2012, Faulkner Literary Rights LLC filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Sony Pictures Classics over a scene in the film Midnight in Paris, in which a time-traveling character says, "The past is not dead! Actually, it's not even past. You know who said that? Faulkner. And he was right. And I met him, too. I ran into him at a dinner party." In 2013, the judge dismissed Faulkner Literary Rights LLC's claim, ruling that the use of the quote in the film was de minimis and constituted "fair use." 

Obama's paraphrase was: "The past isn't dead and buried. In fact, it isn't even past."

William Faulkner is never dead. He just needs to get the hell out of court.

So the estate of William Faulkner sued Sony Pictures Classics over the line "The past is not dead. Actually, it's not even past," spoken by the Owen Wilson character in the Woody Allen movie "Midnight in Paris." The line is a paraphrase of a famous Faulkner quote "The past is never dead. It's not even past."

The judge said: "The copyrighted work is a serious piece of literature lifted for use in a speaking part in a movie comedy, as opposed to a printed portion of a novel printed in a newspaper, or a song's melody sampled in another song. This transmogrification in medium tips this factor in favour of transformative, and thus, fair use."

Oh, good lord. I'm sure we're allowed to quote that quote whenever we want, in newspapers and songs, even pretending we just thought it up, without getting permission from the Faulkner people and without crediting Faulkner.

"The writer ... is too busy dealing with people to have time to deliver messages to anyone."

"The messages happen just by chance. That he is interested in — in creating flesh and blood people to do the — the tragic or the comic things which people do for — for pleasure. That is, I think that one should read for pleasure, that one doesn't necessarily have to read for pleasure, but I myself read for pleasure, not for ideas. That if it's — I've got to hunt around in a book to — looking for an idea, then I'd rather do something else. I'd rather do something that's more fun than that. It won't be reading."

That's William Faulkner on an occasion labeled "Evening Meeting with Wives of Law Students," dated May 16, 1957. There is audio at the link. There are many more audio recordings, newly available at the Faulkner at Virginia archive. (Via NPR.)

Do you read for pleasure or find something that's more fun than reading?
	Yes. I read only to the extent that it's pleasurable.
	I read for pleasure, but I also read to work at digging out messages.
	Reading is work, but I do it and then look for other things for pleasure.
	Reading is work, but I like work. Pleasure-seeking isn't my way.
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