There's no "one thing" in this essay that I am able to select and respond to right now! This is one that will, for me, have to be revisited.
I was definitely captured by the abortion speculation, especially since I know that a failed one occurs in The Wild Palms. (Semi-related, the speculation also brought to mind baby Alabama, her premature death, and Faulkner's subsequent donation of an incubator to the local hospital.)
I was then grabbed by the mention of Joel Williamson. I haven't read his Faulkner and Southern History in its entirety (...I hate spoilers, and in texts like that have to skip around to avoid plot and character details for works I haven't read yet). However, I continue to be very interested in this book and use it as a reference sometimes. The most recent example of this would be in reference to Lucius Priest. Williamson has this fictional man's name as Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Priest, which would make it nearly identical to the name of real-life southern politician Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar... but Donald King, one of the most-read members of the WFBC, said that the "C" is for "Carothers" and not "Cincinnatus". So, as a whole, I'm no longer confident about JW's conclusions.
Now, what got me most excited in this essay is that you knew and interacted with Joseph Blotner! If you remember my "Gen Z at a Taylor Swift concert" simile I used for the WF Scholar Roundtable, that is absolutely how I feel knowing that I am just one person removed from him, and I increasingly feel a need to document the first and second generations of Faulkner scholarship... Cowley, Meriwether, Kartinger, T. Davis, Lowe, Atkinson, Reiger etc.
There's no "one thing" in this essay that I am able to select and respond to right now! This is one that will, for me, have to be revisited.
I was definitely captured by the abortion speculation, especially since I know that a failed one occurs in The Wild Palms. (Semi-related, the speculation also brought to mind baby Alabama, her premature death, and Faulkner's subsequent donation of an incubator to the local hospital.)
I was then grabbed by the mention of Joel Williamson. I haven't read his Faulkner and Southern History in its entirety (...I hate spoilers, and in texts like that have to skip around to avoid plot and character details for works I haven't read yet). However, I continue to be very interested in this book and use it as a reference sometimes. The most recent example of this would be in reference to Lucius Priest. Williamson has this fictional man's name as Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Priest, which would make it nearly identical to the name of real-life southern politician Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar... but Donald King, one of the most-read members of the WFBC, said that the "C" is for "Carothers" and not "Cincinnatus". So, as a whole, I'm no longer confident about JW's conclusions.
Now, what got me most excited in this essay is that you knew and interacted with Joseph Blotner! If you remember my "Gen Z at a Taylor Swift concert" simile I used for the WF Scholar Roundtable, that is absolutely how I feel knowing that I am just one person removed from him, and I increasingly feel a need to document the first and second generations of Faulkner scholarship... Cowley, Meriwether, Kartinger, T. Davis, Lowe, Atkinson, Reiger etc.
There's no "one thing" in this essay that I am able to select and respond to right now! This is one that will, for me, have to be revisited.
I was definitely captured by the abortion speculation, especially since I know that a failed one occurs in The Wild Palms. (Semi-related, the speculation also brought to mind baby Alabama, her premature death, and Faulkner's subsequent donation of an incubator to the local hospital.)
I was then grabbed by the mention of Joel Williamson. I haven't read his Faulkner and Southern History in its entirety (...I hate spoilers, and in texts like that have to skip around to avoid plot and character details for works I haven't read yet). However, I continue to be very interested in this book and use it as a reference sometimes. The most recent example of this would be in reference to Lucius Priest. Williamson has this fictional man's name as Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Priest, which would make it nearly identical to the name of real-life southern politician Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar... but Donald King, one of the most-read members of the WFBC, said that the "C" is for "Carothers" and not "Cincinnatus". So, as a whole, I'm no longer confident about JW's conclusions.
Now, what got me most excited in this essay is that you knew and interacted with Joseph Blotner! If you remember my "Gen Z at a Taylor Swift concert" simile I used for the WF Scholar Roundtable, that is absolutely how I feel knowing that I am just one person removed from him, and I increasingly feel a need to document the first and second generations of Faulkner scholarship... Cowley, Meriwether, Kartinger, T. Davis, Lowe, Atkinson, Reiger etc.
There's no "one thing" in this essay that I am able to select and respond to right now! This is one that will, for me, have to be revisited.
I was definitely captured by the abortion speculation, especially since I know that a failed one occurs in The Wild Palms. (Semi-related, the speculation also brought to mind baby Alabama, her premature death, and Faulkner's subsequent donation of an incubator to the local hospital.)
I was then grabbed by the mention of Joel Williamson. I haven't read his Faulkner and Southern History in its entirety (...I hate spoilers, and in texts like that have to skip around to avoid plot and character details for works I haven't read yet). However, I continue to be very interested in this book and use it as a reference sometimes. The most recent example of this would be in reference to Lucius Priest. Williamson has this fictional man's name as Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Priest, which would make it nearly identical to the name of real-life southern politician Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar... but Donald King, one of the most-read members of the WFBC, said that the "C" is for "Carothers" and not "Cincinnatus". So, as a whole, I'm no longer confident about JW's conclusions.
Now, what got me most excited in this essay is that you knew and interacted with Joseph Blotner! If you remember my "Gen Z at a Taylor Swift concert" simile I used for the WF Scholar Roundtable, that is absolutely how I feel knowing that I am just one person removed from him, and I increasingly feel a need to document the first and second generations of Faulkner scholarship... Cowley, Meriwether, Kartinger, T. Davis, Lowe, Atkinson, Reiger etc.