Reading Faulkner’s Readers: Reputation and the Postwar Reading Revolution

Abstract

This chapter examines the reception history of Faulkner's work, focusing on what his encounters with midcentury readerships reveal about how they approached his work and indeed literature more generally. It utilizes recently digitized sound recordings of Faulkner's interview sessions at the University of Virginia in 1957 and 1958 as “a previously neglected archive of reader response” that documents how everyday readers experienced Faulkner as author and oeuvre. Highlighting their questions rather than Faulkner's answers, the chapter explores four distinct lines of response. Readers “engaged with cultural hierarchies,” often challenging the boundaries between highbrow and lowbrow literary forms; they “enacted formalist reading strategies,” marshaling their close-reading skills to pose questions about symbolism, irony, point of view, and style; they “interrogated the function of literature,” querying Faulkner about reading protocols and literary value; and they exhibited a preoccupation with “matters of rank and reputation,” inviting Faulkner to join them in constructing an American literary canon.