William Faulkner is an American novelist, poet, and playwright, one of the most influential writers in the history of American literature, and a representative of stream-of-consciousness literature in the United States.
In 1949, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for "a powerful and artistically unparalleled contribution to the contemporary American novel."
His works have influenced a large number of later people, and the great writers we know as Márquez, Llosa, and Mo Yan are all faulkner's fans, and the writer Yu Hua's writing is also deeply influenced by him, calling Faulkner his master.
Text | Yu Hua
Originally titled William Faulkner of Oxford
In 1999, I had a one-month trip to the United States, three of which were in Oaksford, Mississippi, the hometown of my master William Faulkner.
There are actually many writers who have influenced me, such as Yasunari Kawabata and Kafka, such as ..., and for example... some writers I am aware of, and there are many more writers that I may gradually realize later, or never realize.
But to become my master, I think only William Faulkner. My reason is that the master can't just talk on paper, but should pass on the apprentice's tricks by hand.
William Faulkner passed on a trick to me on how to deal with psychological depictions.
Before that, what I was most afraid of was psychological depiction. I think that when a character's inner wind and waves are calm, it is possible to carry out psychological description, but when his inner soldiers are panicked, psychological description is difficult, it is difficult to go to the sky.
The problem is that when the heart is calm, there is always no need to describe, it is always the turbulent psychology that needs to be described, ecstasy, rage, ecstasy, ecstasy, frenzy, screaming, arrogance, ecstasy, ecstasy, and all other madness, no matter how many words are written, it is useless,
Even if you have the ability to list all the subtle emotions, you have no ability to express the rapid changes between them. At this time, I read a short story by my master, "Wosh".
When a poor white man kills a rich white man, and the murderer's feelings are mixed at a moment, I discover how the master deals with psychological descriptions.
His narrative is simple, it is to stop the character's heart and open his eyes. A series of numb visual depictions vividly highlight the complex psychology of a murderer after killing.
Since then, I have never been afraid of psychological depictions, and I know that true psychological depictions are actually no psychology.
When I re-read Dostoevsky and Stendhal, I later saw that these two masters of psychological depiction in my impression did not actually do any work on psychological description.
I don't know who is my master's master, in literary terms who is the pioneer in this area?
It may be a well-known figure or a nobody, and it doesn't matter anymore. Moreover, my master is very talented, and it is entirely possible that he found out by himself.
So the first time I went to the United States, I had to visit my master, William Faulkner. A friend named Wu Zhengkang and I flew to Memphis and then rented a car to Goxford.
While waiting for my luggage at the Memphis airport, Wu Zhengkang told me that there had been a big singer named Elvis Presley. I said I'd never heard of a singer called that name.
As we drove into Memphis, I saw a statue of Elvis Presley and I blurted out. Wu Zhengkang said that this person was Elvis Presley.
I once read in the article that William Faulkner often drove from Oaksford to Memphis in the late afternoon and indulged in drinks in Memphis bars until dawn.
He once famously said that a writer's home is best to live in a brothel, and that he can write in silence during the day and live by laughing and laughing at night.
In search of the bar william Faulkner frequented, we went to the police station in Memphis to inquire, and a fat cop told us: This is Elvis Presley's territory, and looking for William Faulkner should go to Oaksford.
My master is a great writer, in life he is a man who likes to brag, and one of his most modest words is that he has written a stamp-sized place all his life.
When I got to Oaksford, I saw a typical southern town with a small square in the middle with a statue of a southern general in the center, a circle of houses, and nothing else.
I think he's still bragging at his most modest, this Oaksford is smaller than a stamp.
If it weren't for the University of Mississippi next to it, Oaksford would have been even more sparsely populated. William Faulkner once found a job at the University of Mississippi Post Office, distributing letters.
How could my master seriously do such a thing, his only interest was to steal letters, read other people's privacy, and throw the letter into the waste paper pile after reading it.
He received many complaints, and the result, of course, was that he was fired.
When I was at the University of Missouri, a professor who studied William Faulkner told me a lot of anecdotes about him.
William Faulkner had always wanted to get ahead, and he had wanted to enlist in the army as a general, because he was short and had been brushed off when he picked up his body.
He went to Canada, learned British English, came back claiming to have joined the Royal Air Force, and in an air battle he shot down his own plane and fell from the sky, only to break a leg, which was a miracle.
He didn't care if the Oaksford people believed it or not, so he dressed himself as a cripple and began to take to the streets on crutches.
A few years later, he thought it was boring to play as a combat hero on crutches, so he threw away his crutches and began to fly in Oaksford, stunned the townspeople.
He was a bad role model in Oaksford at the time, and no one knew he was writing novels, only that he was a idle second-rate man.
When his Temple was published, it became so popular that the people of Oaksford did not yet know it.
A reporter who had traveled from New York to cover the interview, before meeting the figure he revered, first went to the small town barber shop to tidy up his hair, and it happened that the barber was also surnamed Faulkner.
He asked the barber what his relationship was with William Faulkner, and the barber felt ashamed, saying, "That second-rate boy is my nephew."
William Faulkner was so drunk that he eventually died of alcohol. He fell off his horse, and this time he really broke his leg.
On the way to the hospital, in order to relieve the pain, he drank a lot of whiskey, and when he arrived at the hospital, it was not his broken leg that had to be rescued, but his alcohol poisoning, and he died in the hospital.
He had broken up with his wife before his death, and he had published a statement in the newspaper that his wife's bill had nothing to do with him. It is certain that he did not want to lie with his wife after his death,
The unfortunate thing was that he died in front of him, which was up to him. His wife took care of all his aftermath, and when his wife died, she naturally lay by his side.
When my master is alive, he can still be separated from this woman he does not like, and after death, he can only be possessed by her permanently.
Faulkner was writing
Now William Faulkner is Oaksford's most ostentatious pride.
Wherever American literature comes, William Faulkner is considered one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century.
But in Oaksford, there will be no "one" after it, and the Oaksford people will cleanly delete the "one" they don't like.
And for a long time, William Faulkner, who was once considered a second-rate man, has been the embodiment of a certain spirit in the American South.
When Bill Clinton was still president of the United States, he had dinner with García Márquez, Carlos Fuentes and William Stellen, and when william Faulkner was mentioned,
Clinton, who is also a Southerner, suddenly got excited, saying that when he was a child, he often took a truck from Arkansas to Oaksford, Mississippi.
Visit William Faulkner's former home to convince yourself that there is something else in the American South besides racial discrimination, the Ku Klux Klan, lynchings, and church burning.
Faulkner House
William Faulkner's former home is a three-story white house hidden in tall, dense woods, a house we often see in American movies.
When we went to visit, there happened to be a group of American Faulkner fans who were also visiting, we could go to the living room, we could go to the kitchen, we could go to other rooms, we just couldn't go into Faulkner's bedroom and study, and there was a rope at the door.
William Faulkner wrote the most important work of his life in this white house, now the William Faulkner Memorial.
The curator is an American female writer, she knows that I am a writer from distant China, she said that she knows Kitajima,
She said she had already published four novels, and stressed that it was published by Landon House, and that she and William Faulkner belonged to the same publishing house.
Then quietly told me that when the other visitors were gone, she could let me into Faulkner's bedroom and study.
We stood in the corridor and talked to each other, and when there was no one else, she took down the rope that stopped at the door and let Wu Zhengkang and me go in.
In fact, there is nothing special about walking into Faulkner's bedroom and study, it is similar to standing in the doorway and looking inside.
The most interesting experience at Oxford was to find Faulkner's cemetery. May in the South of the United States is already very hot, and we drive to the cemetery of the town, where there are men and women from Oaksford for generations.
We parked under a large, thick tree and walked into a cemetery with a large tombstone. Walking into the cemetery is like walking into a labyrinth, and we see that more than half of the tombstones are engraved with Faulkner's last name.
Just like walking into China's Wangjiazhuang and Liujia Village, we looked around under the scorching sun for the tombstone whose name was William, sweating profusely, all the while finding my weak limbs and not finding my master William.
Finally, feeling that almost all the tombstones had been seen, or there was no William, we began to wonder if there were other cemeteries.
At noon, we had dinner with a Faulkner professor at the University of Mississippi who said we hadn't looked in the wrong place, just hadn't found it. After lunch, he drove us there.
We found Faulkner's cemetery right next to the tree where we had parked the previous time, and we searched all the distances, not looking up close.
Faulkner Cemetery
I sat down in front of William Faulkner's tombstone, which was not much different from someone else's, next to his wife's tombstone, slightly smaller.
I had traveled thousands of miles to see my master's grave, but when I saw it, I didn't feel anything.
I just felt that the scorching sun in the South of the United States was really a scorching sun, and I was weak from the sun.
In retrospect, I did this only to fulfill a wish that had been so intense before it was done, and when it was done, I suddenly felt like there was nothing left.
The professor who studied Faulkner told us at lunch that every year people from all over the world come to Oaksford to see William Faulkner's cemetery.
Then the professor told a true story, he said that almost ten years ago, a short foreign man like Faulkner came to Oaksford.
He came in a coach called "Greyhound" by Americans, and he made a circle around the town, which was smaller than a postage stamp, and then went to Faulkner's cemetery.
He was seen sitting for a long time in front of Faulkner's tombstone, and he sat there alone, not knowing whether he spoke or not, or whether Faulkner heard it or not.
Later he got up and left the cemetery and walked back to town. At that time, "Greyhound" had not yet arrived at the station, and he had to wait for a while before entering the bookstore in the town.
Bookstores in small American towns, like teahouses in small Chinese towns, always gather some chatters.
The old foreign man went into the bookstore, he found a book, found a quiet corner, sat down, and read quietly.
The townspeople were talking in the bookstore, and the bookstore owner was talking to them while observing the foreign old man in the corner, and he always felt that this person was somewhat familiar, and he couldn't remember where he had seen this face.
The bookstore owner continued to talk to his friends in the town, and as he spoke, he suddenly remembered who this old foreign man was, and he shouted excitedly into the corner:
"García Márquez!"
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