ABSTRACT

Ifwriting remain one of the Arts-with a capital A and be damned to the current mode ofsplitting it two ways in a poem or a fresco on a wall-ifits sensitive execution still demand the heart and the endurance which have kept artists lying prone on scaffoldings painting year in, year out, and if its success depend on its acceptance as convincing tragedy or comedy, then it can quite simply be said of Faulkner that he is the rare, the curious, the almost ludicrously authentic thing. In this book, as in his others, he writes with that 'fierce desireofperfection' which contemporaries said Michelangelo evidenced when 'flinging himself on the material of marble,' vehemently seeking expression for 'the human elements of fervor and tenderness.'