Faulkner Speaking

Novelist William Faulkner, notably tight-lipped on home soil, last week found tongue for some reflections on life, letters and Faulkner, while attending the International Congress of Writers in Brazil.

P: "I confess honestly that A Fable [his latest novel, TIME, Aug. 2] does not please me. It took nine years to write that book and I once tore up its first version. "Generally I don't read my countrymen's books. In fact, I read little. At my age , I prefer to read Flaubert, Balzac, Cervantes' Don Quixote and the Bible . . . The few times I tried to read Truman Capote, I had to give up . . . His literature makes me nervous.

P: "I do not necessarily have a system to work. Normally I write at any time, but for me expression comes easier when it is hot, or precisely during summertime when the blood boils in my veins, or during sleepless nights when I work until early morning. I always carry pencil and paper with me, since at certain moments on the saddle of a horse or leaning on a fence, I proceed with work under way.

P: "Failure brings me stimulation to try to do better in each new book. I have something to say, but I know I will not have time to write all the books I want. I hope to write three or four more . . . I am happy to be a novelist, but I would like to be a poet. In fact, I am a frustrated poet.

P: "American literature and poetry are being killed by our mechanical civilization. We Americans once had the beautiful dream of every man's being free. What happened to that dream? . . . We failed in that we forgot the needs of the rest of mankind, perhaps because we are too self-contented and too rich."

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