In the hands of a great novelist, you know you’re in presence of something magical. In a sentence or two, that writer can stop you in your tracks, take your breath away or make you wonder about serious moments in your own life. He or she moves your head and heart like they’re play things on a board. Arthur Golden did that for me and millions of others in his 1997 masterpiece, Memoirs of a Geisha. Chapter 6 in Faulkner’s Light in August begins with “memory believes before knowing remembers”. When I read the book in college, I couldn’t work out what the line meant, so I asked my professor, a man from the Deep South. “The best way to read Faulkner, Mr Oliver,” he told me in his thick drawl, “is real slow with a Southern accent and on the third whiskey”. This I did but gained no insight, still I love Faulkner for his magic.
© 2024 John Oliver
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