Words from the achiever
“When I was really young, I read mainly junior books. I remember books about basketball players in Indiana, high school competition. I read books on Indians too. I did a whole biography series on different Indians, and I would read about their life story. And about states. The state of New Mexico, the state of Alabama, the state of Louisiana. And then I would read all of the black books. Like The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Soul on Ice. My father had those books. I would read a wide range of things. Mainly I liked biography — to read about somebody’s life, or to read about geographical locations. Australia was my favorite continent. I would read about the koala bear, and the marsupials, and eucalyptus trees. This is when I was seven and eight and nine. I’d say one day I’m going to go to Australia, I’m going to be able to hold a koala bear, and the kangaroos jumping up and down, and the Aborigines, and the didgeridoo. That kind of stuff.But as I grew older, then I started reading more books, collections of people, like Edgar Allan Poe. Then I’d read Charles Dickens, Herman Melville, and then I’d read Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner. I’d just go from person to person to person. I really like William Faulkner. He’s from the South, just the poetry of his language and the type of people he is describing — it’s like people that I knew. I like his writing and I like Hemingway too, for the short sentences. Just the style. It’s like the Lester Young style in jazz, whereas William Faulkner, that style is more like Art Tatum, or Coltrane, like real virtuosic runs, or just long two-hour sentences.”
About the book
This boldly experimental novel tells the tragic story of the haunted Compson family of Yoknapatawpha, Mississippi.