ST. LOUIS — The Center for Faulkner Studies has added hundreds of pages of government documents to its collection on the Nobel Prize-winning author.
The center at Southeast Missouri State University has acquired copies of about 400 pages of U.S. State Department records that relate to William Faulkner's visits to eight foreign countries during the 1950s, including Japan, Greece, Italy, France and Venezuela.
The original documents remain at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. Vera Ekechukwu, research assistant to the J. William Fulbright Papers which are kept there, said the Faulknerrelated papers are housed in special collections at the university's Mullins Library, and have been available to researchers since1994.
"I've been doing Faulkner studies for 30 years, and it took me two years to figure out where they were," said Robert Hamblin, director of the Faulkner center in Cape Girardeau, Mo., about 115 miles south of St. Louis.
Faulkner, who won the Nobel in 1949, served as a U.S. cultural ambassador, making visits to foreign lands on behalf of the United States Information Service, a cultural adjunct to the State Department. The Mississippi author is considered one of the great writers of the 20th century for works including The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying and Absalom, Absalom!
Hamblin said Faulkner was well-received abroad, and his work remains extraordinarily popular in many foreign nations. He believes Faulkner traveled to other lands - doing readings, giving interviews and attending cultural events - as a service to his country, but said the quiet writer had reservations about it, as he struggled with alcoholism and depression.
The UA's providing copies to the Center for Faulkner Studies in Missouri should make it more convenient for Faulkner scholars to research. "It's more practical to have them all together there," she said. The UA can also assist researchers seeking copies of the documents in its collections, she said.
Style, Pages 62 on 10/28/2007