What Did Faulkner Know, and When Did He Know It?

‘William Faulkner in Holly Springs’By Sally WolffUniversity Press of Mississippi, 196 Pages“Faulkner Link to Plantation Diary Discovery,” a headline over a February 10, 2010, New York Times article by Patricia Cohen ran. Here was the source of those riveting plantation ledgers that Faulkner created in “Go Down, Moses,” a novel that remains one of the greatest portrayals of slavery and its impact on Black and white people, exposing in documentary fashion the daily toll of the “peculiar institution.”What made Faulkner’s ledgers so powerful was not just what they said but what they looked like, as if his characters and readers were examining the yellowed pages and faded ink of the very stuff of primary sources that historians study in order to construct their narratives of the past. Where did Faulkner come by such a palpable record—unlike anything else he had ever created in a novel? Ms. Cohen announced that a Faulkner scholar, Sally Wolff, had discovered the origins of the novelist’s material — the ledgers of slaveholder Francis Terry Leak, which Faulkner was said to have perused on several occasions in the company of Leak’s great-grandson, Edgar Wiggin Francisco Jr.What made Ms. Wolff’s discovery, published in her 2010 book “Ledgers of History: William Faulkner, an Almost Forgotten Friendship, and an Antebellum Plantation Diary,” so powerful was that no biographer had so much as mentioned what Francisco’s son deemed a close friendship between his father and Faulkner. Edgar Wiggin Francisco III, went on to provide many memories and anecdotes that revealed Faulkner’s deep interest in the Holly Springs area, where the Francisco family had lived for generations. Francisco III’s memories were so specific and so full of information not to be found elsewhere that his accounts seemed too good to be true.That is what left Jack D. Elliott, then historical archeologist for the state of Mississippi, wondering: How could this oral history be so detailed and nothing like the normal, imperfect sort of recollections that he had spent decades recovering and analyzing? Every time he challenged Ms. Wolff and Francisco to corroborate Faulkner’s presence in Holly Springs and at the Francisco home, the result was new memories from Francisco III about his father and Faulkner. There was just too much of that for Mr. Elliott and then other Faulkner scholars to accept.Although Ms. Wolff’s research continues to have supporters, she has done herself no good in this new book, which includes Francisco III’s unconvincing rebuttal to Mr. Elliott that consists mainly of accusing Mr. Elliott of ignorance about Francisco family history. On the central question — what did Faulkner learn from Francisco Jr. and the Leak diaries — we are no closer to an answer, and that may be because Faulkner never saw the diaries or knew Francisco and his son.While researching my biography of Faulkner, I read a letter of his referring to a book he had borrowed, John Spencer Bassett’s “The Plantation Overseer as Revealed in His Letters,” which convinced me that this book was all Faulkner needed to create his own plantation ledgers in “Go Down, Moses.”Ms. Wolff’s new book follows the same methodology employed in “Ledgers of History” — namely, citing names and locations and anecdotes related to Holly Springs that are the basis of characters and events in several Faulkner novels. Virtually every time Ms. Wolff provides a Holly Springs source, though, she has to qualify her claim by saying she is merely suggesting what “may be” a source while admitting there are sources closer to home in the vicinity of Oxford where Faulkner lived.Even in cases where Faulkner surely did visit Holly Springs, what he may have learned there at best supplements what he already knew about incidents and people that influenced his fiction. In other words, would Faulkner’s fiction have looked much different if he had never been to Holly Springs? I don’t think so.Faulkner’s novels are so transformative, so creative, that it is hard to see what we actually learn about his life or work that would be lacking if we did not have Ms. Wolff’s persistent cataloguing of every Holly Springs name and home that is identical to or suggestive of Faulkner’s nomenclature. By trying to prove too much, Ms. Wolff proves too little. Mr. Rollyson’s most recent work on Faulkner is “Faulkner On and Off the Page: Essays in Biographical Criticism.”

What Did Faulkner Know, and When Did He Know It?

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