For two decades, I have begun the calendar year by reading a William Faulkner novel. My father died in September 2005, and he loved Faulkner. Reading stories by the Nobel Prize-winning author is a method for having a conversation with Dad, even if it’s internal, entirely private. Flem Snopes, after all, demands discussion. Furthermore, the American South’s greatest scribe helps me connect more deeply to the place where I live and the people who occupy the Mid-South, both present and past.
My January visit with Faulkner — and Dad — has me considering 2025 on a larger scale, one with current events in the mix, and beyond the Mid-South. We will inaugurate a new (though quite familiar) president on Martin Luther King Day. And it’s hard to imagine a greater contrast between two American men: the 47th president and the slain civil rights leader for whom the holiday is named. Faulkner would find such a character contrast fodder for a good tale: a latter-day Snopes taking the highest office in the land while the racial and ethical fabric of a country stretches to a ripping point. What is morality when there is profit to be made?
Reading Faulkner is hard. His plotlines are seldom linear. Characters are introduced with flashbacks and sudden trauma. I’m not sure stream of consciousness was even a thing before The Sound and the Fury. And William Faulkner does not do happy endings. The lone thread you’ll find connecting his entire canon: loss. The loss of a loved one. The loss of property or fortune. And, most poignantly, the loss of time. The fact is, we lose as we live, each passing day adding a new layer to the past we must both process and manage in tackling our next venture.
Whichever “side of the aisle” you prefer, the coming months and years will be abrasive for American life. A person driven by the attention he gains is in a position to shake the federal government in ways it’s not been shaken before. Millions adore him for this. Millions fear him for this. We may be one country, these United States, but we are living with a fissure deeper and darker than any Faulkner may have placed in Yoknapatawpha County.
And this is where we each have a role to play, each of us a character Faulkner may have dreamed up for a 21st-century version of The Hamlet, but with an entire nation as backdrop. (Shakespeare called us “players.” Imagine what the Bard would have to say about the current stage.) What kind of impact will you make on the town square? In the workplace? At the dinner table? How will you touch lives for the better? And, Faulkner would want to know, will impacting lives bring pleasure or pain? Life’s simpler for the likes of Flem, every relationship a net profit or loss. Don’t be Flem Snopes.
I visit Oxford, Mississippi, periodically. I find the grounds of Rowan Oak — Faulkner’s home — especially tranquil. I like to imagine the thinking and conversations that occurred on this lone patch of American real estate. I assure you, it wasn’t always linear, and there was plenty of loss. These days, you can even sit on a bench next to Faulkner (a bronze version) in Oxford’s town square. I’ve done so with my daughters. I’ve even worn my dad’s hat. Again, the conversations are internal, but very real. My next visit to Rowan Oak — sometime in 2025 — will include some thinking about how and why? They are challenging questions these days.
Faulkner was a young man during the Great War and an acclaimed author when Pearl Harbor was attacked in 1941. He knew hard times. They steered his writing and shaped his memorable characters. Were he to appear in 2025 America, I’m not convinced Faulkner would be any more afraid now than he was in the times that challenged his own life. This is humanity. It’s who we are. And yes, Snopes now and then.
William Faulkner accepted his Nobel Prize on December 10, 1950, and delivered a speech my father cherished, one I carry inside my own heart. “I believe that man will not merely endure: He will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.”
These are times to endure. May the wind be at your back.
Frank Murtaugh is the managing editor of Memphis Magazine. He writes the columns “From My Seat” and “Tiger Blue” for the Flyer.