Professor performs as Faulkner as part of literary conference

Sitting in the front row of the Redhawks Room at the University Center, John Dennis Anderson, in his guise as Southern writer William Faulkner, is concentrating on his remarks before taking to the podium at the Faulkner & Hurston Conference Thursday.

The conference, which runs through Saturday at Southeast Missouri State University, pairs Faulkner with fellow Southern writer Zora Neale Hurston, who wrote four novels and more than 50 published short stories, plays and essays. Her best-known novel is "Their Eyes Were Watching God."

Anderson, an associate professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Emerson College in Boston, has been performing as Faulkner since 1994. He presented a monologue titled "William Faulkner: A Chautauqua Performance," described the author's life and read from a couple of his works. About 50 people attended.

As Faulkner, Anderson covered everything from his dislike of interviews to his travels for the U.S. State Department, trying to represent the artist as an individual and writing screenplays in Hollywood, where his most successful collaborations were with director Howard Hawks.

The eldest of four brothers, Faulkner grew up in Oxford, Mississippi. He attended high school, but didn't finish. He joined the Canadian, and then the British Royal Air Force, then studied for about a year at the University of Mississippi.

While working for a New Orleans bootlegger, he met writer Sherwood Anderson. He wrote "Soldiers' Pay" and Anderson told him he would take Faulkner's book to his publisher if he didn't have to read it.

By 1929, Faulkner had written four books. He got a job at a power plant at the University of Mississippi and wrote "As I Lay Dying" between midnight and 4 a.m. in six weeks.

He also penned "Sanctuary," the story of a coed at the University of Mississippi who was raped and kept in a brothel. His publisher decided it was too awful to distribute, but changed his mind. When Faulkner saw the book in galley proofs, he realized it needed rewriting and had to pay for the privilege because it was already typeset, Anderson said.

The author hated the intolerance and injustice of the South, but he still loved being at home.

Faulkner also spent time in Hollywood writing 40 screenplays and getting credit for six, five of which were with Hawks. Two of those were "To Have and Have Not" and "The Big Sleep."

With some of the money he made, Faulkner bought a plane.

He wrote a novel called "Pylon" about a group of barnstorming pilots. After he wrote the book, his youngest brother, Dean, died in a crash in a plane Faulkner had sold him. "I blamed myself," Anderson said as Faulkner. "I encouraged him to take flying lessons and make flying his career."

rcampbell@semissourian.com

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