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William Faulkner’s Nobel Prize Speech
Here’s an excerpt from William Faulkner’s 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature acceptance speech, actually presented to him in 1950. An optimistic view of a writer’s duty. The full text is below. Ladies and gentlemen, I feel that this award was not made to me as a man, but to my work – a life’s work in the agony and sweat of the human spirit, not for glory and least of all for profit, but to create out of the materials of the human spirit something which did not exist before. So this award is only mine in trust. It will not be difficult to find a dedication for the money…
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As I Lay Dying
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner Published: 1930 I tried to read this once before, but I eventually gave up after some confusion. I had the same issues this time around to begin with, but I decided to persevere. The plot is fairly simple, actually. It’s set in the fictional county of Yoknapatawpha, Mississippi, and it follows the family of newly deceased Addie Bundren as they try to uphold her wish to be buried in the town of Jefferson. Never has a book been so simple and yet so bloody confusing. The plot is straight-forward, and the writing isn’t too hard to follow, especially compared to some other stream-of-consciousness…