u/redleavesrattling

Here's a decent overview of Faulkner's time in Hollywood, focused mostly on his work with Howard Hawks. (Who was the director he worked with best.)

The writer seems a little naive, taking at face value some things that Faulkner said that maybe he should have thought a little more about, but I guess it was published in Garden and Gun, so maybe you can't put much nuance there.

I think it neglects a little just how unhappy being in Hollywood made Faulkner, and doesn't discuss at all the worse and worse contract terms he got every time, and finally an agent got him a really terrible contract that required him to be there far more than he wanted to be.

On the other hand, the article does do some to correct the idea that Faulkner was a bad screen writer. Many people were impressed with him, especially his ability to throw away the script and come up with new parts on the spot, as sometimes happened during filming. (The contract terms kept getting worse for him because he hated it and drank too much and was sometimes undependable.)

I had this as part of the Mod announcement post, but it got to be a little too long.

Here's some things I've seen recently that kind of rub me the wrong way and have me thinking about potential rules.

1. a page of text with one word highlighted and an image of something tangentially related to that word like “omg, I can't believe Faulkner is talking about this thing”. There are two of these recently. They seem pretty irrelevant to me.

2. a meme image with a decontextualized quote from Faulkner that has the uncensored n-word in it. Anyone who was familiar with Wash Jones and Thomas Sutpen would understand that it was making fun of people like Wash. However, it was really jarring to see it like that. Someone who doesn't know Absalom, Absalom! and sees the picture in their feed might get the wrong idea. I don't necessarily think it should be censored in quotes that are contextualized by being part of a discussion, but when it is a short quote stuck on a cartoon, probably it should be.

 

Examples of these two kinds of posts can be found somewhere in the newest ten to fifteen posts, if you want to scroll down and look at them. I haven't deleted them yet, but I probably will (pending some discussion here).

3. I have mixed feelings about image posts generally. I wouldn't want to ban them, but I may consider requiring some text with them. I mean, pictures of books are cool and all, but if it's the same edition you can get at Barnes and Noble right now, then who cares? What is there really to say about that?

It would be good to see some more discussion about these points, for or against, and anything else that we might want to consider discouraging.

Some of you may have noticed that this sub has gone without a moderator for a good while now. Between the couple looking for a third, the bot doing casino reviews, and a commenter on the Vonnegut subreddit pointing out that sub as being overrun with reposters, I decided that someone should start taking care of this subreddit. 

To introduce myself: 
Until about a year ago, I lived my whole life in the Memphis area, about an hour and a half from Oxford, MS. I have a BA in philosophy and an MA in English. Now I work as a software developer building internal applications for a small business. 

Reading The Sound and the Fury was a huge turning point in my life. I had always read a lot, but the Sound and the Fury was different. I didn't know books could do that. After that, I obsessively read and reread everything by Faulkner I could get my hands on, and also branched out to read the things he had mentioned, either in his work or in interviews, from Homer and the Bible to Joyce and Proust. Of course, each new thing leads to other new things, and I ended up getting a pretty good education as a side effect.

What about some rules:
I don't want to just start deleting posts. I would like us to discuss what kind of content we would not like to see in this community, and hopefully come to a broad agreement, if not a consensus. 
I've spun that discussion off into a separate post.

What do we want to see:
I'd like some feedback about what kinds of things we want to see more of here. Obviously, a lot of the traffic is going to be some of the same beginner questions that come up all the time, but what would be good for the rest of us? Would people like planned readings with discussions? What else could facilitate more in depth discussion? I've read a number of great insightful comments in my ten years in this subreddit, and it would be great if we could encourage a little more of that.

I plan on filling out the sidebar with some bibliographies and chronologies and other helpful information. Ideas for additions to that would be welcome. If anyone is knowledgeable enough to make a bibliography of essential Faulkner criticism, that would be great. The critical literature is kind of a weak point of mine. 

At some point in the next couple of months, I will probably look at adding a couple of additional mods, so if that interests you, keep it in mind. 

I'm not in a hurry with any of this. This is a slow moving sub right now, so it will take a good bit of tending to cultivate the kind of community we would like to see. For now, I'll be listening to what yall have to say here, and planning for the next steps.

I want to hear what you have to say. What would you like to see here? What would you like to not see here? What have you seen in other author oriented subs that might benefit r/faulkner?