Country Music and William Faulkner

I must start out here by talking about country music lyrics and the great Southern Gothic writer, William Faulkner. Faulkner...wow, where to start with the literature of this son of the South, pride of the the state of Mississippi? Yes, folks, Faulkner's many, many works prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Southerners are the best of the American writers. Let me tell you something...I am a Brit Lit girl all the way...never could really get into the overly self-righteous, sanctimonious, down-right boring and dreary American writers. Brits rule the literary world, quite frankly.

HOWEVER, there are a handful of Southern writers -- Edgar Allen Poe, Eudora Welty, Flannery O'Connor (Catholic AND Southern...wow! What an anomaly!), Carson McCullers, Tennessee Williams (ironically, a native of Mississippi), and William Faulkner -- who certainly hold their own as great writers, in my opinion. And we ALL know that my opinion is what really counts, right?!

But...back to Willie Boy. His name has become synonymous with THE quintessential Southern author, the bees' knees of Southern writing at its best. Now, I certainly will not disagree with that, but there are some things that truly make me laugh. Let's talk about how Billy Boy's name shows up in the lyrics of numerous country music songs:

Collin Raye, "My Kind of Girl"..."you quoted William Faulkner and Martin Luther King..."

Tim McGraw, "Southern Voice"..."Hank Williams sang it. Number Three drove it. Chuck Berry twanged it. Will Faulkner wrote it..." (incidentally, this is a kick a** song!)

Eric Church, "Love Your Love the Most"..."I'm a fan of Faulkner books" (hey, man! So am I!)

Pam Tillis, "Maybe It Was Memphis"..."Read about you in a Faulkner novel/Met you once in a Williams play..."

Okay, you get the picture. It's that last one that I want to address. If you've ever heard the song, you understand that she meets this guy, has the hots for him, and...wow...it's MEMPHIS and those Southern nights that just blow her away and sweep her off her feet and causes her to fall for this guy.

And folks, if you've EVER read Faulkner and studied any of his characters, you just have to ask yourself what the blue blazes this woman is smoking. Faulkner's books and short stories are fantastic. His characters, on the other hand, have to be the most neurotic, psychotic, borderline personalities you will ever have the dubious pleasure of meeting. Every single time I hear this song, I ask myself which character this guy reminds her of so strongly...one of the Bundrens from As I Lay Dying? The smartest one of that bunch is poor little ol' Vardaman who utters the eternally famous phrase (and the shortest chapter in the book...), "My mother is a fish." Or maybe it's Quentin Compson from The Sound and the Fury. Poor guy is in love with his sister...yes, you read that right, his sister...and, as an honorable Southerner who is brilliant enough to get himself into Harvard (doesn't say a lot about Harvard...), he drowns himself in the Charles River at the end of his first year there. Maybe the winters didn't agree with him? How about the Sutpens from Absalom, Absalom...cold-hearted Thomas, not too bright Henry, or Charles Bon, the playboy from New Orleans? Let's not forget the various members of the Snopes Family who appear in several novels and epitomize "white trash."

Okay, so I could go on and on and on, but you get the picture. The thing is, my advice to anyone who meets a man who reminds her of a character from a Faulkner novel would be to RUN, do not walk, in the opposite direction! That advice also goes to any man who might run into a Faulkner female. They're just as loony, and often meaner than striped snakes to boot.

Ahhhh, Faulkner's South...good thing that's not where we live, huh? Or is it??!!!!