Not a post this week--just an announcement. I will be the keynote at the 4th annual Faulkner Studies in the UK Colloquium. I am planning to discuss how the queer desire in As I Lay Dying that I've already explored in my book might be bigger than just "Gay Darl." I'll look at the legacy of Dewey Dell's character--and I will read her as possibly "Faulkner in Drag," to borrow from Carolyn Dinshaw's similar construct of the Wife of Bath as "Chaucer in Drag" in The Canterbury Tales. Her voice (and her fate) may seem to align with the patriarchal order of the novel, epitomized by her brothers--excluding Darl--but actually she is closer to Darl than she realizes, which explains the violence with which she rejects him at the end of the novel. Yet, somehow, her voice has influenced decidedly anti-patriarchal stories in our contemporary world: Deliver Us from Evie, by M. E. Kerr; If I Was Your Girl, by Meredith Russo; and most explicitly in Salvage the Bones, by Jesmyn Ward.
Still working on the paper--I'm in early draft stages. The goal is to imagine "Faulkner in Drag" not as a model for flamboyant imitation but as a step towards "realness" in creating a feminine voice that finds agency and self despite the enormous burdens placed on her as the actual life-giver to the re-establishment of a heteronormative order secured by the renunciation of Darl. Is it possible that Faulkner's "unflinching gaze" let him see "across" gender?
If Darl's fate is tragic, so, too, is Dewey Dell's--but both have the capacity to be understood for more than just their (self) sacrifice to the re-establishment of a flawed social order.
I have the pleasure of sharing the Zoom stage with Julie Beth Napolin. The colloquium is January 29 and 30, 2021. Info in the image above; also linked here:
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