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Gail Wilson Kenna

Brother Will’s Passing

I found this article by Jim Faulkner in a book of William Faulkner’s short stories (Remember my idiosyncratic filling system?). The article is from the March 1992 Southern Living magazine. Yet in March 1992, I was living in Caracas, Venezuela; and a month earlier the Hugo Chavez golpe de estado took place. Hardly Southern Living territory!


Jim Faulkner with Brother Will














The point is I recently found this piece written by Faulkner’s nephew Jim. He was trying to ‘set the record straight,’ thirty years after his uncle’s 1962 death in Oxford, Mississippi. William did not choke to death, as reported. He was thrown from a horse named Stonewall that returned home to Rowan Oak without William. Jim claims his uncle “limped straight to the barn and got on Stonewall to prove to the horse he could ride him.” Then the 1949-50 Nobel Laureate took to his bed, refusing to have his back checked. ‘He had outlasted pain before.’  Only this time he didn’t; and weeks later William died in a private hospital, his body soon taken to Rowan Oak. There is obviously more to the story.


What did finding this article make me recall?  A story about Faulkner, one I heard in my senior English class at Fullerton High School. It is largely because of Mr. James Hines that I deeply love good literature. I do not remember this single, male teacher and singular man behind a lectern, though he was depicted this way in the annual. Male teachers all wore suits and ties then. Yet this English teacher was relaxed and informal despite mandated attire for men (and dresses for women).



Sometime during the school year of 1960-61, Mr. Hines told us about sitting beside William Faulkner in the deep South. I don’t remember when…the late 1940s or early 50s. The two were in a small, puddle-jumping, propellered-plane with few seats. Mr. Hines said the door to the plane had been closed but suddenly opened for the last passenger. Mr. Hines could not believe who it was, and the only empty seat was the one beside him. James Hines felt he would stop breathing. To have an hour beside an author he had read and reread with adoration. Yet he knew Faulkner was a private man, that he shunned publicity, that he could be a real SOB. What to say? Where to get the courage to speak? Yet if he said nothing, he would regret this forever. By then, we in the classroom, were alert and waiting to know what happened next. Mr. Hines said the plane had taken off and Faulkner had not looked his way or uttered a word. That’s when Mr. Hines found the courage to ask a simple question.

“Mr. Faulkner, would you care to talk?”

Everyone in class open-eared and eager to hear the answer. Had our English teacher conversed with Willliam Faulkner? 

“No.”   “What?” we asked.

Mr. Faulkner had said, “No.” Mr. Hines said they sat, the hour passed, and the esteemed American writer left the plane. Read him now, Mr. Hines counseled, read him again in middle age, and then again when you’re old and know something about life.  I have followed my fine teacher’s advice.   To be continued…

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