Do You Talk Like William Faulkner?

“I think that nobody can say, ‘I’m going to use stream-of-consciousness as my method for writing.’ That’s-that’s wrong. He’d get into trouble. He must use that simply as a tool, only when nothing else will do the work. It’s much better to show the character in familiar terms of-of action, of speech, but sometimes that’s not sufficient. Then you have to use another tool, just as at times the carpenter realizes that his familiar tool is not quite enough to do what he wants to do, so he’s got to stop and make something, make a tool…”
–That’s William Faulkner, lecturing at University of Virginia’s Rouss Hall on May 15, 1957. And better than just reading, you can listen to it on audio tape at Faulkner at Virginia, a wonderful archive assembled by Stephen Railton, and English professor at the University, documenting the late southern lion’s two years as the school’s first writer-in-residence. Who cares who you write like? If you sound anything like the voice on these tapes, any Yankee with a drop of romance in his or her blood will melt at word one.