Faulkner Paper Progress 11

The edits: My professor was being nice. He made his edits in the doc and sent me that version. He also works on a Mac and I have a PC.

I finally get it open after having an unrelated issue with Word, and the document is nothing but gobble-gook. I'm used to seeing format go wonky, so I go looking for my text surround by wing-ding fonts. My text is not there and the only thing available in English is a line at the top: "This file must be converted with BinHex 4.0." Not panicking yet, go back to GMail and try to open it as an HTML document. Error. Try to open it as a Google Doc. Error. Call Suzanna since I sent her a copy of it while getting plans straight for the weekend. She has the same issue.

After much cussing and getting a cramp in my leg from restraining my urge to kick, I Google on BinHex 4.0. Find this article at No Geek Left Behind that explains the issue. Huzzah, there is a work around. Start to download the program needed, and Firefox goes into its "wait you want me to do something routine?" and freezes. I have to end program twice on it.

I finally get the download completed and get Firefox up to see the rest of the steps, and No Geek Left Behind went down. Fifteen minutes of ranting and raving, I finally remember Google's caching feature and get the text copy of the instructions. Print those out just in case Firefox wants to crash again.

Their work around worked and I was able to read my professor's editing suggestions two hours since I started fooling with Faulkner for the day. Mom thought lunch was a good time for me to take a break and talk things over with her and I hadn't even gotten started yet. *Headdesk* Two hours of a Saturday on just computer issues.

So this is it. Typing up my last edits for the final draft (4.0 for those keeping count) and sending it off today. Next comes grading and at some point I'm told the results.

Since I had to cut out my epiphany introduction for not being formal enough, I thought I would share it here along with my commentary from draft 2.5 (i.e. my rant). Enjoy or not.

From the second draft:

While Barak Obama was still campaigning to be the next President of the United States, the race issue in America swirled to the forefront of the media coverage. His association with controversial figures from the Civil Rights era was scrutinized. Statements from his former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, made national headlines. Everyone expected the first biracial candidate to be hit with the lingering national racial tension, but what was surprising was how Obama addressed the issue in a speech given in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on March 18, 2008.

This speech explained the relationship Wright and Obama had, which was expected since it was the current controversy. What was unexpected from a politician seeking the highest elected office in the United States was how frankly he spoke on the racial tension.

But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America—to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.

The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we’ve never really worked through—a part of our union that we have yet to perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American.

Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. As William Faulkner once wrote, “The past isn’t dead and buried. In fact, it isn’t even past.” We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow. (Sullivan “The Speech.”)

Some commentators wondered why Obama would quote William Faulkner, the Nobel Prize winning author best known for writing Southern gothic novels and short stories dealing with the fall of the Old South in the Civil War. The race issue in American can be traced back to slavery and the struggle to overcome it, but why quote a white man in a book by a white author when there are plenty of authors who address the issue from the side who suffered, from the African-American side?

An unnamed reader of the Daily Dish emailed Andrew Sullivan about it, and Sullivan shared the email with the rest of his readers later on March 18, 2008.

That Obama was signaling – “The past isn’t dead. It isn’t even past” – that his speech – and his candidacy – are about confronting history from a Faulknerian standpoint was, to me, the bravest thing he did. It signaled to me that he feels this discussion is more important than electoral success, and I can’t help but admire that. … Faulkner is too easily pigeonholed as being about race. Or about “The Fall of the Old South.” (You have never truly felt the urge to stab someone with a pen until you’re the only southerner in a room full of upper-Midwestern accents insisting upon fitting everything in Faulkner neatly into the later.) But both of those miss the point—Faulkner is about the past, and the struggle to both accept it as a part of oneself and continue into the future. (Sullivan “The Past Isn’t Dead. It Isn’t Even Past.”)

This was one of those interpretations that had never occurred to me before reading this post to hit like a lightening bolt. If Faulkner had been born and raised in a different portion of the United States, he would have a different Past to come to terms with. Out west, it could have been the racial tensions between white settlers and Native Americans, or changes to society because the railroads. Nathaniel Hawthorne was exploring some of the same issues about the Puritan influence in New England a century earlier, so too would have Faulkner if that had been his region. Not sure what he could have been writing about if Faulkner had been prairie-bred, but feel that it would have probably been polar opposite of Little House on the Prairie.

Faulkner set most of his novels within his lifetime. The Civil War and its aftermath had taken place only about three generations ago. That’s not ancient enough past for people not to be affected by it. The society he was raised in was still trying to come to terms with it, so it is no surprise the role remembering the Civil War and its heroes and the legacy of slavery plays in his works as themes.

From draft 2.5:

Here I am, hoping that the cliché the third time is the charm actually comes true, starting over from scratch because nothing I have said before is good enough on contributes to the greater Faulkner conversation. How can it when I’ve been forced into writing about race relations like everyone else does? And the sense of panic is from knowing I’m supposed to turn out a copy by October 15th to pass muster with everyone grading this and that’s so not on schedule.

It’s enough to make me pull out my hair. It has made me abandon academic voice in favor of this conversational style that will hopefully keep me motivated to get this last project done. Though I find this a perfect moment to add: paper is easier that a thesis project my ass! If events had worked out so I could have done a thesis, my short stories would already be done and I would be banging my head against the desk for a theme to tie them together. Instead, I decided writing on Faulkner was the lesser headache out of Ishiguro and Dante. At this point, I’m only positive about Ishiguro (I couldn’t subject Ziba to my hate of that book again), and I have not time to deal with a new topic.

So back to Faulkner and all the associated baggage. I can’t put a finger on what irks me the most—besides not having a draft I just need to polish instead of revamping. One irk is the handle I thought I had on this material has been repeatedly called not good enough and it was a frightening epiphany when I grasped it. See everyone writes on the race relations in Faulkner or on the Sound and the Fury. Right away, you have the how can I contribute something new problem. So I turned to Faulkner’s use of sex, which I consider abundant considering how censored other mediums were doing the time he wrote. Specifically incest came up because I was a little shocked by how often there seemed to allusions to it in other works on top of the blatant references in the Sound and the Fury, but my distaste for what I consider sexual abuse bled through that draft. And it didn’t tie into the epiphany I tried to explain in the introduction.

Out of all the Faulkner classes I have taken, I have never had to read Requiem for a Nun and I do not read Faulkner for pleasure. I give him his props as a Great Writer of the Twentieth Century, but a little stream of consciousness covers the same distance as the Mason-Dixon line did. So it was only when I read the commentary on one of President Obama’s election speeches that I understood a new context on my ambiguity over Faulkner’s theme and subtext.

Faulkner is too easily pigeonholed as being about race. Or about “The Fall of the Old South.” (You have never truly felt the urge to stab someone with a pen until you’re the only southerner in a room full of upper-Midwestern accents insisting upon fitting everything in Faulkner neatly into the later.) But both of those miss the point—Faulkner is about the past, and the struggle to both accept it as a part of oneself and continue into the future. (Sullivan “The Past Isn’t Dead. It Isn’t Even Past.”)

Kindra’s Faulkner issue #1: Get over the Civil War already. New context: the Civil War had only taken place three generations ago and people were alive who still remembered it when Faulkner wrote. It would be like telling someone to get over World War II or Vietnam today. Kindra’s Faulkner issue #2: Did all the punctuation keys on your typewriter break? Actually, it doesn’t help so much with that problem, but the epiphany that Faulkner is really concerned with the past of his region goes so far to explain the overabundance of Civil War-obsessed characters and race relation tensions. These themes both have roots in the past, effecting the present because the characters and the South as a whole have not dealt with that past.

12:50: *Waving at email program* Bye-bye Faulkner paper, bye-bye.