"Faulkner in Dry September — or Light in August, or even in The Sound and the Fury — can really get at (as you put it, "to the bone") the truth of what the black-white relationship is in the South, and how what a dark force it is in the Southern personality. At the same time, Faulkner, as a man, as a citizen of Mississippi, is committed to what in Mississippi seems to be their past. It is one thing for Faulkner to deal with the Negro in his imagination, where he can control him; and quite another thing to deal with him in life, where he can't control him. In life, obviously the Negro, the uncontrollable Negro, simply is determined to overthrow everything in which Faulkner imagines himself to believe. It is one thing to demand justice in literature, and another thing to face the price that one has got to pay for it in life."
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Novelists from the United StatesShort story writers from the United StatesPoets from the United StatesScreenwriters from the United StatesPlaywrights from the United States
Original Language: English
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Sources
James Baldwin, 1961 interview, in Louis H. Pratt and Fred L. Standley (eds.) Conversations with James Baldwin (1989)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Faulkner
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William Faulkner
1897 – 1962
US-amerikanischer Schriftsteller
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