Quote:
Originally Posted by pynch
To those who can’t name a favourite episode because they haven’t yet read the book: please follow William Faulkner’s advice (in his really fantastic interview for the Paris Review). |
I happened to read that interview as a little kid, before I'd actually read
The Sound and the Fury. I don't even know which came first for me, the experiences that shaped my credo or this comment by Faulkner which codifies it (though in the expansive style of conversation, of course, not the compressed or aphoristic ideal):
Quote:
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In my opinion, if I could write all my work again, I am convinced that I would do it better, which is the healthiest condition for an artist. That's why he keeps on working, trying again; he believes each time that this time he will do it, bring it off. Of course he won't, which is why this condition is healthy. Once he did it, once he matched the work to the image, the dream, nothing would remain but to cut his throat, jump off the other side of that pinnacle of perfection into suicide.
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It's also a necessary defense of what some regard as Joyce's unnecessary refinements in
FW. In certain ways, Joyce was an epic miniaturist. How could he not continue to weight and perfect each detail?