Do You Write, Mr. Faulkner? ( Ron Rash, Feb 7, 2025, Sporting Classics Daily)
This anecdote tells us much about Faulkner, a private man who disdained the attention of intellectuals and literary critics, preferring instead the company of simple, unassuming men who, as he once put it, were not “even very literate, let alone literary.” He was also a man who, as an accomplished hunter and outdoorsman, was much more comfortable in the silence and isolation of the wilderness than in the sound and fury of a city.
The “big woods,” as he called them, offered Faulkner an escape from the pressures of his art, a turbid personal life and, at least late in his life, fame. But the hunt and the wilderness were more than just an escape for Faulkner; they were also an inspiration for some of his greatest literary works.
“He taught the boy the woods, to hunt, when to shoot and not to shoot, when to kill and when not to kill, and better, what to do with it afterward.” —Go Down, Moses, 1942
William Faulkner was probably destined to be a hunter and outdoorsman, for patience, self-discipline and an ability to work in solitude — the traits of both a writer and an outdoorsman, marked his character and temperament. These traits were developed amidst a family and society that made his interest in hunting and outdoors almost inevitable.