by S. Bates

Created on: October 29, 2009

I really don't get many opportunities to just sit down, relax, and read a good book. In fact, it seems like every time I think about how much I would love to do just that, there is something that I just have to do instead, that can't be put off, and I end up putting off reading the book. However, when I was taking English Comp 101 about 9 years ago, at the good ole age of 50, I had to slow down enough to write an essay on an American author. Since William Faulkner is from Mississippi, as I am, I had something I could relate to with the author. So I decided to see if I could find one of his stories that would suffice.

Suffice is such a lowly word to use, the word that began my thoughts of Mr. Faulkner's writings. Now I look back and wonder how many more really great literary masters have I missed simply because I didn't see anything outstanding enough to slow me down to sample their writing skills. And I really regret having lost all the time that I could have been experiencing William Faulkner's stories. 'Cause that is exactly what it is like once you begin reading just a short story, maybe simply named WASH. It is nothing catchy or promising, but can prove to be a mind blowing epiphany, for lack of a better word right now. Ahh, but just keep reading, as if you could put it down anyway. I don't know when it happens, but at a certain time in the story, you begin experiencing all the emotions, smells, sights, no matter how gross or humiliating, imagining the physical characteristics of each person, you know the pain and suffering that particular character is going through. Faulkner shows the reader exactly how each character relates to the core meaning of the story. The core which he will eventually deliver you to, however, you may not know it at that particular time, not until he is ready for you to stop and say Well, I'll be darn, so that's what he is talking about.

Also, being from the south, particularly the same state as William Faulkner, I have a very rare opportunity of understanding all his slang and southern words. And being from the country, not a hundred miles from his beloved Oxford, I haven't found many that I didn't hear from my grandparents and aunts and uncles when I was growing up. The more I have thought about this, the more I believe this is one reason I can get deeper into the feeling and meaning of his southern stories. There is just so much I can relate to, as in the story of WASH, as I mentioned earlier. So many of his early writings were just about the everyday acts of friends, neighbors, and kinfolks, which were nothing new to him, but were very different to the outside world. And he, also, wrote of stories that were passed down from his grandparents, or aunts and uncles, and friends and other family members. These were stories of the south as they knew it earlier, before, during and after the Civil War.

This literary genius could use such descriptive details in his writings; I could almost tell you what little southern town he was writing about, even though he used a ficticious name. There are not too many people lucky enough to have the opportunity to experience such a wealth of written works about something they were raised experiencing. It is not only an honor to experience the great skill this master of words had to make it look so easy, and flow so smoothly, or to put pen to paper and entrap the reader in a totally separate world, but to enter his world.

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