faulkner

From his introduction to The Sound and The Fury

“…I have tried to escape and I have tried to indict. After five years, I look back at The Sound and The Fury and see that that was the turning point: in this book I did both at one time. When I began the book, I had no plan at all. I wasn’t even writing a book. Previous to it, I had written three novels, with progressively decreasing ease and pleasure, and reward or emolument. The third one was shopped about for three years during which I sent it from publisher to publisher with a kind of stubborn and fading hope of at least justifying the paper I had used and the time I had spent writing it. This hope must have died at last, because one day it suddenly seemed as if a door had clapped silently and forever to between me and all publishers’ addresses and booklists and I said to myself, Now I can write. Now I can just write.”