NEW BOOK SHEDS LIGHT ON AUGUST AMERICAN AUTHOR

When William Faulkner accepted the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950, most of his books were out of print and his work was not considered important enough to merit a college seminar. But the Nobel changed everything for the writer who has become known as "the American Shakespeare."

Now the Southern author has his own encyclopedia, co-edited by Dr. Robert Hamblin, director of the Center for Faulkner Studies at Southeast.

Hamblin initially hesitated when a publisher proposed the encyclopedia, daunted by the task of defining the work and life of the writer who has proved the fascination of his professional life. Finally, Hamblin acknowledged that 20 years of reading and teaching the novelist's writing and another 20 years of working with Southeast's Brodsky Collection of Faulkner books qualified him as much as anyone for the job.

His co-editor of the newly published "A William Faulkner Encyclopedia" is Charles A. Peek, a professor of English and director of the Prairie Institute at the University of Nebraska at Kearney. He is the associate editor of "Teaching Faulkner."

Like Shakespeare, Faulkner wrote both tragedies and comedies. And his historical fiction always was relevant to the present, a technique Hamblin calls writing in "the past present tense." Part of the problem he poses is a complexity and genius that require both readers and scholars to consult secondary sources to understand and appreciate him, Hamblin says.

But lately the secondary sources have been getting more attention than the writing.

The encyclopedia is an attempt to put the focus back on the books themselves, "Faulkner A to Z," Hamblin says.

The 490-page reference book includes nearly 500 alphabetically arranged entries about influences and contemporaries such as Carl Jung, Hemingway, Dickinson and Joyce, entries for Jesus and the Dixiecrats, Myth and Music. It details Faulkner's Hollywood years and the effect on his novel writing.

The encyclopedia reveals that Faulkner never finished high school and gained admission to Ole Miss as a special student his father was the university business manager and secretary in the writer's youth.

Faulkner made an A in French, a B in Spanish and a D in English in his first semester. He later held jobs at the university boiler room and as postmaster. He was fired as postmaster in 1924, accused of spending too much time reading newspapers and magazines that were not addressed to him.

Hamblin and Peek edited the work of nearly 50 contributing scholars, including themselves, in compiling the encyclopedia. The price of the book is $89.50.

The tension between love for Southern traditions and the need for change runs through much of the writer's work and is part of its appeal for Hamblin. He knew that tension himself.

He grew up at Brice's Crossroads, a town 60 miles from the Ole Miss campus in Oxford, the city where Faulkner spent most of his life. In 1962, Hamblin was part of the National Guard detachment sent to the Ole Miss campus during the so-called Battle of Oxford, riots in which two people died over integrating the campus.

"I was living out some of the implications of his books," Hamblin says.

At Delta State and Ole Miss, he studied under two of the principal Faulkner scholars of the day, T.D. Young and John Pilkington. It was the genius of "As I Lay Dying," a novel told by 15 different narrators, that stunned Hamblin into studying Faulkner.

"I try to get my students to see that Faulkner invented MTV," he says.

With L.D. Brodsky he has co-authored eight books on the collection, which includes 200 books signed or inscribed by the author. It is one of the four major Faulkner collections in the world.

Hamblin has a signed a contract with the encyclopedia publisher, Greenwood Press, to edit a book of essays for teachers of Faulkner's writing. Eventually he intends to write his own Faulkner book, tentatively titled "Faulkner and the Religion of Art."

If that sounds like a big book, it should be.

"I've been fortunate to spend my life with a writer who can repay almost 40 years of reading, writing, research and study," Hamblin says.