Audio: William Faulkner at the University of Virginia
The author in a classroom at U.Va.
During his time at U.Va., William Faulkner lectured in classes and gave readings for students and the Charlottesville community. Many of his talks were recorded, resulting in forty-five reels of unique audiotapes. Preservation Services recently conserved these recordings, digitizing them for accessibility and saving them from irreversible deterioration.
The following 1-minute clips from the recordings capture question-and-answer exchanges between Faulkner and lecture/reading attendees.
- Deliberating on his impressions of Virginians (MP3, 2.5 MB)
- Discussing his sighting of “Snopses”** in Albemarle County (MP3, 2.1 MB)
- Explaining his views on freshman English (MP3, 1.7 MB)
Other audio and film clips can be viewed at the William Faulkner at the University of Virginia exhibition on the ground floor of the Harrison Institute/Small Special Collections Library.
**”Snopses” is a reference to the Snopes family that Faulkner wrote about in the trilogy of The Hamlet, The Town, and The Mansion; they were also present in most of his other novels. To Faulkner, the Snopes family epitomized the worst elements in the modern South.
Recently, an endangered collection of unique audio recordings featuring author William Faulkner was on the verge of irreversible deterioration—until Preservation Services came to the rescue.
The forty-five reels of tape conserved by Preservation include Faulkner reciting brief works, such as "The Town" and "Spotted Horses," or sections of his novels, such as The Sound and the Fury.