The only known photograph of William Faulkner (right) with his eldest brother, John, was taken in 1949. Like his brother, John Faulkner was also a writer, though their writing styles differed considerably.
My grandfather, John Murphey, (born 1910) grew up in Oxford, Mississippi and knew both Johncy and “Bill” Faulkner. He told me that Bill was a very bashful shy man. Johncy was outgoing and would be very friendly and would love to stop and visit.
My grandfather was in the moving business and he had moved Johncy several times, but Johncy still had several outstanding bills. Then one day Johncy told my grandfather to take the bills to his brother and he would pay them in full. I don’t know the exact date, but my grandfather was told that Faulkner had got his first big check from a publisher and I am guessing that it was in the early 1930’s.
I just got finished watching Woody Allen’s latest movie “Midnight in Paris” and I loved it. In that movie there are several famous writers and artists that appear in the film. I am doing a series of posts that takes a look at this great writers and artists.
By the way, I know that some of you are wondering how many posts I will have before I am finished. Right now I have plans to look at Cole Porter, Fitzgerald, Heminingway, Juan Belmonte,Gertrude Stein, Gauguin, Lautrec, Geores Brague, Dali, Rodin,Coco Chanel, Modigliani, Matisse, Luis Bunuel, Josephine Baker, Van Gogh, Picasso, Man Ray, T.S. Elliot and several more.
William Faulkner is one of those writers. Here below is another review of the film:
June 10, 2011
Midnight in Paris (2011)
Midnight in Paris is not only Woody Allen’s best movie in decades, it is also one of the most joyous, warm-hearted and magical movies of his entire career. A sumptuous love letter to both the city of Paris and its rich history, Allen’s romantic fantasy is also a touching ode to art and the artist that has (or had) created it. Above all that, though, the film is a look at the perils of trying to escape from an imperfect present into a mythically “perfect” era of the past.
Self-described hack Hollywood screenwriter Gil (Owen Wilson) has come to Paris with his fiance Inez (Rachel McAdams) to both help plan their upcoming wedding and to finish his first attempt at a literary novel. While Gil adores Paris and its history, Inez is contemptuous of both the city and Gil’s love for it. Inez’s mother (Mimi Kennedy) and father (Kurt Fuller) are even less supportive. The already stressed relationship between Gil and Inez cracks all the more when the couple meets the pedantic Paul (Michael Sheen), a former flame of Inez’s, and Carol (Nina Arianda).
While Inez spends more and more time with Paul, Gil just wanders Paris at night. For when the clock strikes midnight, that is when the true magic of the City of Light is revealed.
Ah, to be in 1920s Paris and to be able to rub shoulders with the likes of Ernest Hemingway (a hilarious Corey Stoll), Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald (Allison Pill and Tom Hiddleston, respectively), and Salvador Dali (an even more hilarious Adrien Brody). How cool would it be able to have Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates) herself critique your first novel? Being a reader of Hemingway and Fitzgerald and a huge fan of William Faulkner (who is only mentioned in the film and not seen) I so wanted to be able to experience Owen Wilson’s lost-in-his-own-generation character’s time hoping adventure for myself. My first words to my wife after the movie ended were, “Now I want to go to Paris!”
In my review of Woody Allen’s 1987 drama September
Owen Wilson’s struggling writer character, however, is far more sympathetic and, even more important, a more honest character than Brolin’s scheming loser had been. I was rooting for him to find his way to happiness and fulfillment, which are things that Allen routinely denies his more sympathetic characters. Remembering the fate of the struggling writer in You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger
I will not answer that question in this review, but I will say that I left the move theater with a smile on my face and a glow in my heart.
Four stars out of four and one of the year’s best films.
Posted at 12:13 AM in Movie Review (Comedy), Movie Review (Fantasy), Woody Allen | Permalink
Photo by W.C. Odiorne
Jimmy heard many family stories growing up and he too loved to tell stories. One of Jimmy Faulkner’s favorite stories was about how his famous uncle went to see the film Gone With The Wind seven times when it came out in 1939. “Brother Will (Faulkner was Jimmy’s uncle, but Jimmy called him Brother Will), never saw the ending,” Jimmy Faulkner said. “He always walked out the first time a Yankee came on the screen.” Jimmy also takes great pride in the often quoted description of Jimmy as “the only person who likes me (William Faulkner) for who I am.”
Jimmy Faulkner describes his taking Brother Will to the hospital the night before he died in the new introduction to his father’s book My Brother Bill . He writes, “I checked him in, and stayed with him until about 10 that night. When I was ready to leave, I went to his bedside, reached down and took his hand. I told him, ‘Brother Will, when you’re ready to come home, let me know and I’ll come get you. He said “Yes, Jim, I will.’” He never got home alive. He died around 2 in the morning on July 6, 1962.
___________________________
William Faulkner, The Art of Fiction No. 12
Interviewed by Jean Stein in 1956 for Paris Review
INTERVIEWER
How did you get your background in the Bible?
FAULKNER
My Great-Grandfather Murry was a kind and gentle man, to us children anyway. That is, although he was a Scot, he was (to us) neither especially pious nor stern either: he was simply a man of inflexible principles. One of them was everybody, children on up through all adults present, had to have a verse from the Bible ready and glib at tongue-tip when we gathered at the table for breakfast each morning; if you didn’t have your scripture verse ready, you didn’t have any breakfast; you would be excused long enough to leave the room and swot one up (there was a maiden aunt, a kind of sergeant-major for this duty, who retired with the culprit and gave him a brisk breezing which carried him over the jump next time).
It had to be an authentic, correct verse. While we were little, it could be the same one, once you had it down good, morning after morning, until you got a little older and bigger, when one morning (by this time you would be pretty glib at it, galloping through without even listening to yourself since you were already five or ten minutes ahead, already among the ham and steak and fried chicken and grits and sweet potatoes and two or three kinds of hot bread) you would suddenly find his eyes on you—very blue, very kind and gentle, and even now not stern so much as inflexible—and next morning you had a new verse. In a way, that was when you discovered that your childhood was over; you had outgrown it and entered the world.
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