William Faulkner, The Art of Fiction No. 12 Interviewed by Jean Stein

William Faulkner was born in 1897 in New Albany, Mississippi, where his father was then working as a conductor on the railroad built by the novelist's great-grandfather, Colonel William Falkner (without the “u”), author of The White Rose of Memphis. Soon the family moved to Oxford, thirty-five miles away, where young Faulkner, although he was a voracious reader, failed to earn enough credits to be graduated from the local high school. In 1918 he enlisted as a student flyer in the Royal Canadian Air Force. He spent a little more than a year as a special student at the state university, Ole Miss, and later worked as postmaster at the university station until he was fired for reading on the job.

Encouraged by Sherwood Anderson, he wrote Soldier's Pay (1926). His first widely read book was Sanctuary (1931), a sensational novel which he says that he wrote for money after his previous books—including Mosquitoes (1927), Sartoris (1929), The Sound and the Fury(1929), and As I Lay Dying (1930)—had failed to earn enough royalties to support a family.

A steady succession of novels followed, most of them related to what has come to be called the Yoknapatawpha saga: Light in August (1932), Pylon (1935), Absalom, Absalom! (1936), The Unvanquished (1938), The Wild Palms (1939), The Hamlet (1940), and Go Down, Moses, and Other Stories (1941). Since World War II his principal works have beenIntruder in the Dust (1948), A Fable (1954), and The Town (1957). His Collected Storiesreceived the National Book Award in 1951, as did A Fable in 1955. In 1949 Faulkner was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Recently, though shy and retiring, Faulkner has traveled widely, lecturing for the United States Information Service. This conversation took place in New York City, early in 1956.

INTERVIEWER

Mr. Faulkner, you were saying a while ago that you don't like interviews.

WILLIAM FAULKNER

The reason I don't like interviews is that I seem to react violently to personal questions. If the questions are about the work, I try to answer them. When they are about me, I may answer or I may not, but even if I do, if the same question is asked tomorrow, the answer may be different.

INTERVIEWER

How about yourself as a writer?

FAULKNER

If I had not existed, someone else would have written me, Hemingway, Dostoyevsky, all of us. Proof of that is that there are about three candidates for the authorship of Shakespeare's plays. But what is important is Hamlet and A Midsummer Night's Dream, not who wrote them, but that somebody did. The artist is of no importance. Only what he creates is important, since there is nothing new to be said. Shakespeare, Balzac, Homer have all written about the same things, and if they had lived one thousand or two thousand years longer, the publishers wouldn't have needed anyone since.

INTERVIEWER

But even if there seems nothing more to be said, isn't perhaps the individuality of the writer important?

FAULKNER

Very important to himself. Everybody else should be too busy with the work to care about the individuality.

INTERVIEWER

And your contemporaries?

FAULKNER

All of us failed to match our dream of perfection. So I rate us on the basis of our splendid failure to do the impossible. In my opinion, if I could write all my work again, I am convinced that I would do it better, which is the healthiest condition for an artist. That's why he keeps on working, trying again; he believes each time that this time he will do it, bring it off. Of course he won't, which is why this condition is healthy. Once he did it, once he matched the work to the image, the dream, nothing would remain but to cut his throat, jump off the other side of that pinnacle of perfection into suicide. I'm a failed poet. Maybe every novelist wants to write poetry first, finds he can't, and then tries the short story, which is the most demanding form after poetry. And, failing at that, only then does he take up novel writing.

INTERVIEWER

Is there any possible formula to follow in order to be a good novelist?

FAULKNER

Ninety-nine percent talent . . . ninety-nine percent discipline . . . ninety-nine percent work. He must never be satisfied with what he does. It never is as good as it can be done. Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself. An artist is a creature driven by demons. He don't know why they choose him and he's usually too busy to wonder why. He is completely amoral in that he will rob, borrow, beg, or steal from anybody and everybody to get the work done.

INTERVIEWER

Do you mean the writer should be completely ruthless?

FAULKNER

The writer's only responsibility is to his art. He will be completely ruthless if he is a good one. He has a dream. It anguishes him so much he must get rid of it. He has no peace until then. Everything goes by the board: honor, pride, decency, security, happiness, all, to get the book written. If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate; the “Ode on a Grecian Urn” is worth any number of old ladies.

INTERVIEWER

Then could the lack of security, happiness, honor, be an important factor in the artist's creativity?

FAULKNER

No. They are important only to his peace and contentment, and art has no concern with peace and contentment.

INTERVIEWER

Then what would be the best environment for a writer?

FAULKNER

Art is not concerned with environment either; it doesn't care where it is. If you mean me, the best job that was ever offered to me was to become a landlord in a brothel. In my opinion it's the perfect milieu for an artist to work in. It gives him perfect economic freedom; he's free of fear and hunger; he has a roof over his head and nothing whatever to do except keep a few simple accounts and to go once every month and pay off the local police. The place is quiet during the morning hours, which is the best time of the day to work. There's enough social life in the evening, if he wishes to participate, to keep him from being bored; it gives him a certain standing in his society; he has nothing to do because the madam keeps the books; all the inmates of the house are females and would defer to him and call him “sir.” All the bootleggers in the neighborhood would call him “sir.” And he could call the police by their first names.

So the only environment the artist needs is whatever peace, whatever solitude, and whatever pleasure he can get at not too high a cost. All the wrong environment will do is run his blood pressure up; he will spend more time being frustrated or outraged. My own experience has been that the tools I need for my trade are paper, tobacco, food, and a little whiskey.

INTERVIEWER

Bourbon, you mean?

FAULKNER

No, I ain't that particular. Between Scotch and nothing, I'll take Scotch.

INTERVIEWER

You mentioned economic freedom. Does the writer need it?

FAULKNER

No. The writer doesn't need economic freedom. All he needs is a pencil and some paper. I've never known anything good in writing to come from having accepted any free gift of money. The good writer never applies to a foundation. He's too busy writing something. If he isn't first rate he fools himself by saying he hasn't got time or economic freedom. Good art can come out of thieves, bootleggers, or horse swipes. People really are afraid to find out just how much hardship and poverty they can stand. They are afraid to find out how tough they are. Nothing can destroy the good writer. The only thing that can alter the good writer is death. Good ones don't have time to bother with success or getting rich. Success is feminine and like a woman; if you cringe before her, she will override you. So the way to treat her is to show her the back of your hand. Then maybe she will do the crawling.

INTERVIEWER

Can working for the movies hurt your own writing?

FAULKNER

Nothing can injure a man's writing if he's a first-rate writer. If a man is not a first-rate writer, there's not anything can help it much. The problem does not apply if he is not first rate because he has already sold his soul for a swimming pool.

INTERVIEWER

Does a writer compromise in writing for the movies?

FAULKNER

Always, because a moving picture is by its nature a collaboration, and any collaboration is compromise because that is what the word means—to give and to take.

INTERVIEWER

Which actors do you like to work with most?

FAULKNER

Humphrey Bogart is the one I've worked with best. He and I worked together in To Have and Have Not and The Big Sleep.

INTERVIEWER

Would you like to make another movie?

FAULKNER

Yes, I would like to make one of George Orwell's 1984. I have an idea for an ending which would prove the thesis I'm always hammering at: that man is indestructible because of his simple will to freedom.

INTERVIEWER

How do you get the best results in working for the movies?

FAULKNER

The moving-picture work of my own which seemed best to me was done by the actors and the writer throwing the script away and inventing the scene in actual rehearsal just before the camera turned on. If I didn't take, or feel I was capable of taking, motion-picture work seriously, out of simple honesty to motion pictures and myself too, I would not have tried. But I know now that I will never be a good motion-picture writer; so that work will never have the urgency for me which my own medium has.

INTERVIEWER

Would you comment on that legendary Hollywood experience you were involved in?

FAULKNER

I had just completed a contract at MGM and was about to return home. The director I had worked with said, “If you would like another job here, just let me know and I will speak to the studio about a new contract.” I thanked him and came home. About six months later I wired my director friend that I would like another job. Shortly after that I received a letter from my Hollywood agent enclosing my first week's paycheck. I was surprised because I had expected first to get an official notice or recall and a contract from the studio. I thought to myself, the contract is delayed and will arrive in the next mail. Instead, a week later I got another letter from the agent, enclosing my second week's paycheck. That began in November 1932 and continued until May 1933. Then I received a telegram from the studio. It said: “William Faulkner, Oxford, Miss. Where are you? MGM Studio.”

I wrote out a telegram: “MGM Studio, Culver City, California. William Faulkner.”

The young lady operator said, “Where is the message, Mr. Faulkner?” I said, “That's it.” She said, “The rule book says that I can't send it without a message, you have to say something.” So we went through her samples and selected I forget which one—one of the canned anniversary-greeting messages. I sent that. Next was a long-distance telephone call from the studio directing me to get on the first airplane, go to New Orleans, and report to Director Browning. I could have got on a train in Oxford and been in New Orleans eight hours later. But I obeyed the studio and went to Memphis, where an airplane did occasionally go to New Orleans. Three days later, one did.

I arrived at Mr. Browning's hotel about six p.m. and reported to him. A party was going on. He told me to get a good night's sleep and be ready for an early start in the morning. I asked him about the story. He said, “Oh, yes. Go to room so-and-so. That's the continuity writer. He'll tell you what the story is.”

I went to the room as directed. The continuity writer was sitting in there alone. I told him who I was and asked him about the story. He said, “When you have written the dialogue I'll let you see the story.” I went back to Browning's room and told him what had happened. “Go back,” he said, “and tell that so-and-so—. Never mind, you get a good night's sleep so we can get an early start in the morning.”

So the next morning in a very smart rented launch all of us except the continuity writer sailed down to Grand Isle, about a hundred miles away, where the picture was to be shot, reaching there just in time to eat lunch and have time to run the hundred miles back to New Orleans before dark.

That went on for three weeks. Now and then I would worry a little about the story, but Browning always said, “Stop worrying. Get a good night's sleep so we can get an early start tomorrow morning.”

One evening on our return I had barely entered my room when the telephone rang. It was Browning. He told me to come to his room at once. I did so. He had a telegram. It said: “Faulkner is fired. MGM Studio.” “Don't worry,” Browning said. “I'll call that so-and-so up this minute and not only make him put you back on the payroll but send you a written apology.” There was a knock on the door. It was a page with another telegram. This one said: “Browning is fired. MGM Studio.” So I came back home. I presume Browning went somewhere too. I imagine that continuity writer is still sitting in a room somewhere with his weekly salary check clutched tightly in his hand. They never did finish the film. But they did build a shrimp village—a long platform on piles in the water with sheds built on it—something like a wharf. The studio could have bought dozens of them for forty or fifty dollars apiece. Instead, they built one of their own, a false one. That is, a platform with a single wall on it, so that when you opened the door and stepped through it, you stepped right off onto the ocean itself. As they built it, on the first day, the Cajun fisherman paddled up in his narrow, tricky pirogue made out of a hollow log. He would sit in it all day long in the broiling sun watching the strange white folks building this strange imitation platform. The next day he was back in the pirogue with his whole family, his wife nursing the baby, the other children, and the mother-in-law, all to sit all that day in the broiling sun to watch this foolish and incomprehensible activity. I was in New Orleans two or three years later and heard that the Cajun people were still coming in for miles to look at that imitation shrimp platform which a lot of white people had rushed in and built and then abandoned.

INTERVIEWER

You say that the writer must compromise in working for the motion pictures. How about his writing? Is he under any obligation to his reader?

FAULKNER

His obligation is to get the work done the best he can do it; whatever obligation he has left over after that he can spend any way he likes. I myself am too busy to care about the public. I have no time to wonder who is reading me. I don't care about John Doe's opinion on my or anyone else's work. Mine is the standard which has to be met, which is when the work makes me feel the way I do when I read La Tentation de Saint Antoine, or the Old Testament. They make me feel good. So does watching a bird make me feel good. You know that if I were reincarnated, I'd want to come back a buzzard. Nothing hates him or envies him or wants him or needs him. He is never bothered or in danger, and he can eat anything.

INTERVIEWER

What technique do you use to arrive at your standard?

FAULKNER

Let the writer take up surgery or bricklaying if he is interested in technique. There is no mechanical way to get the writing done, no shortcut. The young writer would be a fool to follow a theory. Teach yourself by your own mistakes; people learn only by error. The good artist believes that nobody is good enough to give him advice. He has supreme vanity. No matter how much he admires the old writer, he wants to beat him.

INTERVIEWER

Then would you deny the validity of technique?

FAULKNER

By no means. Sometimes technique charges in and takes command of the dream before the writer himself can get his hands on it. That is tour de force and the finished work is simply a matter of fitting bricks neatly together, since the writer knows probably every single word right to the end before he puts the first one down. This happened with As I Lay Dying. It was not easy. No honest work is. It was simple in that all the material was already at hand. It took me just about six weeks in the spare time from a twelve-hour-a-day job at manual labor. I simply imagined a group of people and subjected them to the simple universal natural catastrophes, which are flood and fire, with a simple natural motive to give direction to their progress. But then, when technique does not intervene, in another sense writing is easier too. Because with me there is always a point in the book where the characters themselves rise up and take charge and finish the job—say somewhere about page 275. Of course I don't know what would happen if I finished the book on page 274. The quality an artist must have is objectivity in judging his work, plus the honesty and courage not to kid himself about it. Since none of my work has met my own standards, I must judge it on the basis of that one which caused me the most grief and anguish, as the mother loves the child who became the thief or murderer more than the one who became the priest.

INTERVIEWER

What work is that?

FAULKNER

The Sound and the Fury. I wrote it five separate times, trying to tell the story, to rid myself of the dream which would continue to anguish me until I did. It's a tragedy of two lost women: Caddy and her daughter. Dilsey is one of my own favorite characters, because she is brave, courageous, generous, gentle, and honest. She's much more brave and honest and generous than me.

INTERVIEWER

How did The Sound and the Fury begin?

FAULKNER

It began with a mental picture. I didn't realize at the time it was symbolical. The picture was of the muddy seat of a little girl's drawers in a pear tree, where she could see through a window where her grandmother's funeral was taking place and report what was happening to her brothers on the ground below. By the time I explained who they were and what they were doing and how her pants got muddy, I realized it would be impossible to get all of it into a short story and that it would have to be a book. And then I realized the symbolism of the soiled pants, and that image was replaced by the one of the fatherless and motherless girl climbing down the drainpipe to escape from the only home she had, where she had never been offered love or affection or understanding.

I had already begun to tell the story through the eyes of the idiot child, since I felt that it would be more effective as told by someone capable only of knowing what happened but not why. I saw that I had not told the story that time. I tried to tell it again, the same story through the eyes of another brother. That was still not it. I told it for the third time through the eyes of the third brother. That was still not it. I tried to gather the pieces together and fill in the gaps by making myself the spokesman. It was still not complete, not until fifteen years after the book was published, when I wrote as an appendix to another book the final effort to get the story told and off my mind, so that I myself could have some peace from it. It's the book I feel tenderest toward. I couldn't leave it alone, and I never could tell it right, though I tried hard and would like to try again, though I'd probably fail again.

INTERVIEWER

What emotion does Benjy arouse in you?

FAULKNER

The only emotion I can have for Benjy is grief and pity for all mankind. You can't feel anything for Benjy because he doesn't feel anything. The only thing I can feel about him personally is concern as to whether he is believable as I created him. He was a prologue, like the gravedigger in the Elizabethan dramas. He serves his purpose and is gone. Benjy is incapable of good and evil because he had no knowledge of good and evil.

INTERVIEWER

Could Benjy feel love?

FAULKNER

Benjy wasn't rational enough even to be selfish. He was an animal. He recognized tenderness and love though he could not have named them, and it was the threat to tenderness and love that caused him to bellow when he felt the change in Caddy. He no longer had Caddy; being an idiot he was not even aware that Caddy was missing. He knew only that something was wrong, which left a vacuum in which he grieved. He tried to fill that vacuum. The only thing he had was one of Caddy's discarded slippers. The slipper was his tenderness and love, which he could not have named, but he knew only that it was missing. He was dirty because he couldn't coordinate and because dirt meant nothing to him. He could no more distinguish between dirt and cleanliness than between good and evil. The slipper gave him comfort even though he no longer remembered the person to whom it had once belonged, any more than he could remember why he grieved. If Caddy had reappeared he probably would not have known her.

INTERVIEWER

Does the narcissus given to Benjy have some significance?

FAULKNER

The narcissus was given to Benjy to distract his attention. It was simply a flower which happened to be handy that fifth of April. It was not deliberate.

INTERVIEWER

Are there any artistic advantages in casting the novel in the form of an allegory, as the Christian allegory you used in A Fable?

FAULKNER

Same advantage the carpenter finds in building square corners in order to build a square house. In A Fable, the Christian allegory was the right allegory to use in that particular story, like an oblong, square corner is the right corner with which to build an oblong, rectangular house.

INTERVIEWER

Does that mean an artist can use Christianity simply as just another tool, as a carpenter would borrow a hammer?

FAULKNER

The carpenter we are speaking of never lacks that hammer. No one is without Christianity, if we agree on what we mean by the word. It is every individual's individual code of behavior, by means of which he makes himself a better human being than his nature wants to be, if he followed his nature only. Whatever its symbol—cross or crescent or whatever—that symbol is man's reminder of his duty inside the human race. Its various allegories are the charts against which he measures himself and learns to know what he is. It cannot teach man to be good as the textbook teaches him mathematics. It shows him how to discover himself, evolve for himself a moral code and standard within his capacities and aspirations, by giving him a matchless example of suffering and sacrifice and the promise of hope. Writers have always drawn, and always will draw, upon the allegories of moral consciousness, for the reason that the allegories are matchless—the three men in Moby Dick, who represent the trinity of conscience: knowing nothing, knowing but not caring, knowing and caring. The same trinity is represented in A Fable by the young Jewish pilot officer, who said, “This is terrible. I refuse to accept it, even if I must refuse life to do so”; the old French Quartermaster General, who said, “This is terrible, but we can weep and bear it”; and the English battalion runner, who said, “This is terrible, I'm going to do something about it.”

INTERVIEWER

Are the two unrelated themes in The Wild Palms brought together in one book for any symbolic purpose? Is it, as certain critics intimate, a kind of aesthetic counterpoint, or is it merely haphazard?

FAULKNER

No, no. That was one story—the story of Charlotte Rittenmeyer and Harry Wilbourne, who sacrificed everything for love and then lost that. I did not know it would be two separate stories until after I had started the book. When I reached the end of what is now the first section of The Wild Palms, I realized suddenly that something was missing, it needed emphasis, something to lift it like counterpoint in music. So I wrote on the “Old Man” story until “The Wild Palms” story rose back to pitch. Then I stopped the “Old Man” story at what is now its first section and took up “The Wild Palms” story until it began again to sag. Then I raised it to pitch again with another section of its antithesis, which is the story of a man who got his love and spent the rest of the book fleeing from it, even to the extent of voluntarily going back to jail where he would be safe. They are only two stories by chance, perhaps necessity. The story is that of Charlotte and Wilbourne.

INTERVIEWER

How much of your writing is based on personal experience?

FAULKNER

I can't say. I never counted up. Because “how much” is not important. A writer needs three things, experience, observation, and imagination—any two of which, at times any one of which—can supply the lack of the others. With me, a story usually begins with a single idea or memory or mental picture. The writing of the story is simply a matter of working up to that moment, to explain why it happened or what it caused to follow. A writer is trying to create believable people in credible moving situations in the most moving way he can. Obviously he must use as one of his tools the environment which he knows. I would say that music is the easiest means in which to express, since it came first in man's experience and history. But since words are my talent, I must try to express clumsily in words what the pure music would have done better. That is, music would express better and simpler, but I prefer to use words, as I prefer to read rather than listen. I prefer silence to sound, and the image produced by words occurs in silence. That is, the thunder and the music of the prose take place in silence.

INTERVIEWER

Some people say they can't understand your writing, even after they read it two or three times. What approach would you suggest for them?

FAULKNER

Read it four times.

INTERVIEWER

You mentioned experience, observation, and imagination as being important for the writer. Would you include inspiration?

FAULKNER

I don't know anything about inspiration because I don't know what inspiration is—I've heard about it, but I never saw it.

INTERVIEWER

As a writer you are said to be obsessed with violence.

FAULKNER

That's like saying the carpenter is obsessed with his hammer. Violence is simply one of the carpenter's tools. The writer can no more build with one tool than the carpenter can.

INTERVIEWER

Can you say how you started as a writer?

FAULKNER

I was living in New Orleans, doing whatever kind of work was necessary to earn a little money now and then. I met Sherwood Anderson. We would walk about the city in the afternoon and talk to people. In the evenings we would meet again and sit over a bottle or two while he talked and I listened. In the forenoon I would never see him. He was secluded, working. The next day we would repeat. I decided that if that was the life of a writer, then becoming a writer was the thing for me. So I began to write my first book. At once I found that writing was fun. I even forgot that I hadn't seen Mr. Anderson for three weeks until he walked in my door, the first time he ever came to see me, and said, “What's wrong? Are you mad at me?” I told him I was writing a book. He said, “My God,” and walked out. When I finished the book—it was Soldier's Pay—I met Mrs. Anderson on the street. She asked how the book was going, and I said I'd finished it. She said, “Sherwood says that he will make a trade with you. If he doesn't have to read your manuscript he will tell his publisher to accept it.” I said, “Done,” and that's how I became a writer.

INTERVIEWER

What were the kinds of work you were doing to earn that “little money now and then”?

FAULKNER

Whatever came up. I could do a little of almost anything—run boats, paint houses, fly airplanes. I never needed much money because living was cheap in New Orleans then, and all I wanted was a place to sleep, a little food, tobacco, and whiskey. There were many things I could do for two or three days and earn enough money to live on for the rest of the month. By temperament I'm a vagabond and a tramp. I don't want money badly enough to work for it. In my opinion it's a shame that there is so much work in the world. One of the saddest things is that the only thing a man can do for eight hours a day, day after day, is work. You can't eat eight hours a day nor drink for eight hours a day nor make love for eight hours—all you can do for eight hours is work. Which is the reason why man makes himself and everybody else so miserable and unhappy.

INTERVIEWER

You must feel indebted to Sherwood Anderson, but how do you regard him as a writer?

FAULKNER

He was the father of my generation of American writers and the tradition of American writing which our successors will carry on. He has never received his proper evaluation. Dreiser is his older brother and Mark Twain the father of them both.

INTERVIEWER

What about the European writers of that period?

FAULKNER

The two great men in my time were Mann and Joyce. You should approach Joyce'sUlysses as the illiterate Baptist preacher approaches the Old Testament: with faith.

INTERVIEWER

How did you get your background in the Bible?

FAULKNER

My Great-Grandfather Murry was a kind and gentle man, to us children anyway. That is, although he was a Scot, he was (to us) neither especially pious nor stern either: he was simply a man of inflexible principles. One of them was everybody, children on up through all adults present, had to have a verse from the Bible ready and glib at tongue-tip when we gathered at the table for breakfast each morning; if you didn't have your scripture verse ready, you didn't have any breakfast; you would be excused long enough to leave the room and swot one up (there was a maiden aunt, a kind of sergeant-major for this duty, who retired with the culprit and gave him a brisk breezing which carried him over the jump next time).

It had to be an authentic, correct verse. While we were little, it could be the same one, once you had it down good, morning after morning, until you got a little older and bigger, when one morning (by this time you would be pretty glib at it, galloping through without even listening to yourself since you were already five or ten minutes ahead, already among the ham and steak and fried chicken and grits and sweet potatoes and two or three kinds of hot bread) you would suddenly find his eyes on you—very blue, very kind and gentle, and even now not stern so much as inflexible—and next morning you had a new verse. In a way, that was when you discovered that your childhood was over; you had outgrown it and entered the world.

INTERVIEWER

Do you read your contemporaries?

FAULKNER

No, the books I read are the ones I knew and loved when I was a young man and to which I return as you do to old friends: the Old Testament, Dickens, Conrad, Cervantes, Don Quixote—I read that every year, as some do the Bible. Flaubert, Balzac—he created an intact world of his own, a bloodstream running through twenty books—Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Shakespeare. I read Melville occasionally and, of the poets, Marlowe, Campion, Jonson, Herrick, Donne, Keats, and Shelley. I still read Housman. I've read these books so often that I don't always begin at page one and read on to the end. I just read one scene, or about one character, just as you'd meet and talk to a friend for a few minutes.

INTERVIEWER

And Freud?

FAULKNER

Everybody talked about Freud when I lived in New Orleans, but I have never read him. Neither did Shakespeare. I doubt if Melville did either, and I'm sure Moby Dick didn't.

INTERVIEWER

Do you ever read mystery stories?

FAULKNER

I read Simenon because he reminds me something of Chekhov.

INTERVIEWER

What about your favorite characters?

FAULKNER

My favorite characters are Sarah Gamp—a cruel, ruthless woman, a drunkard, opportunist, unreliable, most of her character was bad, but at least it was character; Mrs. Harris, Falstaff, Prince Hal, Don Quixote, and Sancho of course. Lady Macbeth I always admire. And Bottom, Ophelia, and Mercutio—both he and Mrs. Gamp coped with life, didn't ask any favors, never whined. Huck Finn, of course, and Jim. Tom Sawyer I never liked much—an awful prig. And then I like Sut Lovingood, from a book written by George Harris about 1840 or 1850 in the Tennessee mountains. He had no illusions about himself, did the best he could; at certain times he was a coward and knew it and wasn't ashamed; he never blamed his misfortunes on anyone and never cursed God for them.

INTERVIEWER

Would you comment on the future of the novel?

FAULKNER

I imagine as long as people will continue to read novels, people will continue to write them, or vice versa; unless of course the pictorial magazines and comic strips finally atrophy man's capacity to read, and literature really is on its way back to the picture writing in the Neanderthal cave.

INTERVIEWER

And how about the function of the critics?

FAULKNER

The artist doesn't have time to listen to the critics. The ones who want to be writers read the reviews, the ones who want to write don't have the time to read reviews. The critic too is trying to say “Kilroy was here.” His function is not directed toward the artist himself. The artist is a cut above the critic, for the artist is writing something which will move the critic. The critic is writing something which will move everybody but the artist.

INTERVIEWER

So you never feel the need to discuss your work with anyone?

FAULKNER

No, I am too busy writing it. It has got to please me and if it does I don't need to talk about it. If it doesn't please me, talking about it won't improve it, since the only thing to improve it is to work on it some more. I am not a literary man but only a writer. I don't get any pleasure from talking shop.

INTERVIEWER

Critics claim that blood relationships are central in your novels.

FAULKNER

That is an opinion and, as I have said, I don't read critics. I doubt that a man trying to write about people is any more interested in blood relationships than in the shape of their noses, unless they are necessary to help the story move. If the writer concentrates on what he does need to be interested in, which is the truth and the human heart, he won't have much time left for anything else, such as ideas and facts like the shape of noses or blood relationships, since in my opinion ideas and facts have very little connection with truth.

INTERVIEWER

Critics also suggest that your characters never consciously choose between good and evil.

FAULKNER

Life is not interested in good and evil. Don Quixote was constantly choosing between good and evil, but then he was choosing in his dream state. He was mad. He entered reality only when he was so busy trying to cope with people that he had no time to distinguish between good and evil. Since people exist only in life, they must devote their time simply to being alive. Life is motion, and motion is concerned with what makes man move—which is ambition, power, pleasure. What time a man can devote to morality, he must take by force from the motion of which he is a part. He is compelled to make choices between good and evil sooner or later, because moral conscience demands that from him in order that he can live with himself tomorrow. His moral conscience is the curse he had to accept from the gods in order to gain from them the right to dream.

INTERVIEWER

Could you explain more what you mean by motion in relation to the artist?

FAULKNER

The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life. Since man is mortal, the only immortality possible for him is to leave something behind him that is immortal since it will always move. This is the artist's way of scribbling “Kilroy was here” on the wall of the final and irrevocable oblivion through which he must someday pass.

INTERVIEWER

It has been said by Malcolm Cowley that your characters carry a sense of submission to their fate.

FAULKNER

That is his opinion. I would say that some of them do and some of them don't, like everybody else's characters. I would say that Lena Grove in Light in August coped pretty well with hers. It didn't really matter to her in her destiny whether her man was Lucas Burch or not. It was her destiny to have a husband and children and she knew it, and so she went out and attended to it without asking help from anyone. She was the captain of her soul. One of the calmest, sanest speeches I ever heard was when she said to Byron Bunch at the very instant of repulsing his final desperate and despairing attempt at rape, “Ain't you ashamed? You might have woke the baby.” She was never for one moment confused, frightened, alarmed. She did not even know that she didn't need pity. Her last speech for example: “Here I ain't been traveling but a month, and I'm already in Tennessee. My, my, a body does get around.”

The Bundren family in As I Lay Dying pretty well coped with theirs. The father having lost his wife would naturally need another one, so he got one. At one blow he not only replaced the family cook, he acquired a gramophone to give them all pleasure while they were resting. The pregnant daughter failed this time to undo her condition, but she was not discouraged. She intended to try again, and even if they all failed right up to the last, it wasn't anything but just another baby.

INTERVIEWER

And Mr. Cowley says you find it hard to create characters between the ages of twenty and forty who are sympathetic.

FAULKNER

People between twenty and forty are not sympathetic. The child has the capacity to do but it can't know. It only knows when it is no longer able to do—after forty. Between twenty and forty the will of the child to do gets stronger, more dangerous, but it has not begun to learn to know yet. Since his capacity to do is forced into channels of evil through environment and pressures, man is strong before he is moral. The world's anguish is caused by people between twenty and forty. The people around my home who have caused all the interracial tension— the Milams and the Bryants (in the Emmett Till murder) and the gangs of Negroes who grab a white woman and rape her in revenge, the Hitlers, Napoleons, Lenins—all these people are symbols of human suffering and anguish, all of them between twenty and forty.

INTERVIEWER

You gave a statement to the papers at the time of the Emmett Till killing. Have you anything to add to it here?

FAULKNER

No, only to repeat what I said before: that if we Americans are to survive it will have to be because we choose and elect and defend to be first of all Americans; to present to the world one homogeneous and unbroken front, whether of white Americans or black ones or purple or blue or green. Maybe the purpose of this sorry and tragic error committed in my native Mississippi by two white adults on an afflicted Negro child is to prove to us whether or not we deserve to survive. Because if we in America have reached that point in our desperate culture when we must murder children, no matter for what reason or what color, we don't deserve to survive, and probably won't.

INTERVIEWER

What happened to you between Soldier's Pay and Sartoris—that is, what caused you to begin the Yoknapatawpha saga?

FAULKNER

With Soldier's Pay I found out writing was fun. But I found out afterward not only that each book had to have a design but the whole output or sum of an artist's work had to have a design. With Soldier's Pay and Mosquitoes I wrote for the sake of writing because it was fun. Beginning with Sartoris I discovered that my own little postage stamp of native soil was worth writing about and that I would never live long enough to exhaust it, and that by sublimating the actual into the apocryphal I would have complete liberty to use whatever talent I might have to its absolute top. It opened up a gold mine of other people, so I created a cosmos of my own. I can move these people around like God, not only in space but in time too. The fact that I have moved my characters around in time successfully, at least in my own estimation, proves to me my own theory that time is a fluid condition which has no existence except in the momentary avatars of individual people. There is no such thing aswas—only is. If was existed, there would be no grief or sorrow. I like to think of the world I created as being a kind of keystone in the universe; that, small as that keystone is, if it were ever taken away the universe itself would collapse. My last book will be the Doomsday Book, the Golden Book, of Yoknapatawpha County. Then I shall break the pencil and I'll have to stop.

Source: The Paris Review

No respite

I know how to resist nationwide general shutdowns called by “whoever” it may be. Walk about one hour from home to work and vice versa. Bandhs may be leisure time for some, but many suffer enormously. Bandhs cost our nation millions, if not billions. It is the ordinary people who are worst affected, be it the bandhs or the wait for the constitution. The people remain the losers whatever the case. The politicians will never stop playing politics because that is their job, and create trouble for us.

Santosh Kalwar, Chitwan 


Published: The Himalayan Times
Letter to the Editor

End of Terror+ism

The intelligent US forces have finally killed the World’s most wanted terrorist in anxious times. Mr. Bin Laden came into limelight by terrorizing hundreds and thousands of American people and by masterminding 9/11 attacks. Does this mean that there is an end to terrorism? I do not think so and I hope you too, will agree with me, on this front. My stupid mind suggests that we are living in very anxious times. There are many faces of this mother earth and something big is happening every day. There is revolution in Middle East (e.g. Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Syria); there is climatic disaster (e.g. Tsunami in Japan, Australian flood, New Zealand earthquake, Tornadoes in many states of US etc) and, there was/is war on terrorism.

Terrorism –a word that in itself is very scary. Two subjugates combine this world such as, “terror” and “ism”. Terrorism goes hand-in-hand with many “ism” such as Hinduism, Islamism, and Buddhism and so on. Anything that stays for longer period becomes a religion. Terrorism is another form of religion worshipped by extremist people with their own harsh pre-defined set of protocols. There are many terrorist organizations in the world and Al qaeda is one of the top-most terrorist organizations. These terrorist organizations organize “terror” and raise fear among ordinary civilians. The only way these organization works is by raising fear. However, with the death of most prominent leader in terror industry, people are most likely to breathe with a sigh of relief.

On one hand, there lies Osama bin laden—leader of famous terrorist organization. On the other hand, there is Obama—leader of US. Many conspiracy theorists in US speculated that Osama was Obama and demanded “birth certificate” of the President. It seems to be that US president has finally, won the battle against all his critics. Unlike two faces of a coin, terrorism does not have two different faces, it has one single face to raise fear, to kill innocent people, to abide by their pre-defined set of rules, to follow their path and to raise their industry—“fear industry”.

In my opinion, there is no end to terrorism like there is no end to poverty. When there is big division of class, culture, religion, sect, faith and money among ordinary people, there will be no end to either terrorism or poverty. The only possible solution would be to narrow the gap rose among divisions. Going by the news report, many politicians and diplomats feel that the world is safer place to live (with the death of Osama bin laden). They have forgotten the fact that terrorism does not necessarily end with a terrorist. Undoubtedly, Osama bin Laden was a terrorist and his religion was terrorism. Although, he was a leader of famous terrorist organization called al Qaeda his death does not eradicate terrorism as per se. 

Real men do not buy girls

Very recently, popular actor of Holly-something-wood, Demi Moore visited Nepal for her CNN project on slavery. By definition, Sex is one of the fundamental psychological and physiological needs of human beings. Every young lad desires to get laid someday and can pay almost anything to fulfil such psychological need.  As far as my own personal travel experiences are concerned, I am quite aware of the fact that there are several places where sex trade is done legally. But to find sexual pleasure neither do we have to visit cities such as, Frankfurt in Germany nor London in UK.

It is evident that sex trade is very common in our so called “freak street” (also based on my observation). It seems that in the Freak Street or, similar places sex trade is practiced illegally. Despite illegalities, those people in need can buy and sell sex in Nepal. For an instance, it is also very common to find people who sell/buy sex e.g. in massage center or in some spa/pub/restaurants.

Many illiterate young, poor girls are fooled every day. People are selling young girls to foreign land for example, in India or Middle East. Those who sell people for sex trade promise them a rosy job in foreign land or something fancy that deceives girls, eventually.  A simple question is how to reduce sex trade from the grassroots level.

Every country has problems as if every individual living on this bright blue planet. In our developing world sex slavery, human trafficking, and corruption are at peak. Many people have been a victim of violence and brutal act by sex traders. In a civilized society, sex if practiced with mutual consent of a partner is considered as a normal behavior whereas sex if practiced forcefully is immoral act or is regarded as a rape. Therefore, we must bring forth, a shared and common understanding to solve the problem. There are many NGO and I-NGO, which are helping on to solve sex crisis (unlike energy crisis). Our government should encourage organization which aid in reducing sex slaves. A highest priority should be given to these organization that deal with sex slavery and it should be upgraded as a national agenda. A national protocol has to be established to address the problem of sex trafficking. In addition, nationwide newspaper, radio and television programs should be widely launched, broadcasted and popularized.

Finally yet importantly, women are emotional animals. Women are highly sensitive towards words, expression, sentiments, emotion, love and feelings. Furthermore, it is highly likely that an illiterate woman would easily believe pimps or sex traders. Therefore, there is an ultimate need of professionals and experts to solve sex crisis in Nepal. I would also like to request our lawmakers, politicians and elite decision makers to solve sex crisis by empowering women at various upstream of the society. Perhaps, "real men do not buy girls; they protect them”, do you not? Maybe, we should ask some of our, Kolly-something-wood actors or maybe-not.

The birth of Venus

R.I.P, Sai Baba

When I met Satya Sai Baba with bunch of my hubbies while pursuing my undergraduate studies in Bengaluru (previously the “garden city” was also called Bangalore), I felt a sense of immense love, compassion and peace at his second ashram. Sai Baba I saw was simply dressed in red robe, very calm and peaceful. He stepped very slowly towards his followers and blessed them with gifts and/or ‘vibhuti’.

His sudden demise has bought shock waves across Indian sub-continents. From politicians to sportsmen, all are paying their last homage to Sai Baba. Indian cricketing legend so-called, “god of cricket”, Sachin Tendulkar cancelled his birthday celebration because of his sudden death. Before his death, all the followers and well-wishers of Baba were praying that he would recover to good health. Tendulkar wrote on his official twitter account that “I m praying for Shri Sathya Sai Baba's quick recovery. Hope everyone will join me in praying for his return to good health.”

Death is inevitable and when a time comes, everybody must simply leave. The bitter truth is that nobody (or any scientific advancement can control death) can stop anyone from dying. After the death of Satya Sai Baba, condolences poured in, everybody from Bollywood to Kollywood, from politicians to journalist, and from Indian PM to Nepalese PM has shown their condolences to the great spiritual guru.

Satya Sai Baba contribution to society is one-too-many. He has established, “Satya Sai Trust” where he has build hospitals and universities. Hundreds and thousands of people study and are treated freely daily.However, every bright side also has some darker side. Satya Sai baba was once also attributed for fake miracles that he performed with his followers. In my opinion, whatever tricks and miracles he performed, was less towards scientific values and more towards spiritual values. Thus, he denied all the accusations that were made against him.

I think Satya Sai Baba was a true man and a great character. He not only contributed a great deal towards the society but also he showed spiritual art of living. However, because of his excellent contribution to the society, some of his followers also named him, “God”. Nevertheless, a man can and never will be, “God”. Some of his prophecies never became true. He said that he will die in his mid nineties but he has to go early. Now, many of his followers are hoping that he would reincarnate in another form in Mysore with the name of “Prem baba”.

Previously, people used to have long and religious life. Nowadays, people have short and technical life. How many years do you expect baba to live? Just mere fourteen years less than a century, Satya Sai Baba has to depart on Easter Sunday. According to Hindu scriptures dying on Sundays and Tuesdays are regarded well simply because a person reincarnates in the form of another human being.  I am aware of the bitter fact but let us hope he comes-back in same humane form again.

Reviews: 25 Sexy Poem by ReadersFavorite.com

The book Praise for 25 Sexy Poems is a difficult read. I think poetry should have something for the reader to think about. The poems in this book, are very abstract and graphic in relation to a "sexy" style of writing. I would not recommend this poetry book to anyone with a reserved and an ultra-conservative lifestyle.

Most every poem in the book has extreme use of profanity in which one profanity word (the f-bomb) is used more than once in each line. The other form of poetry is written as a depiction of violence, with graphic detail. For instance in the poem titled "Rapist", a female is being violently raped, and as written, she sees the rape as a sense of pleasure and well accepted. In "Homicide Sex" it reads, "She was seen naked with her throat slashed." I envisioned a victim of death instead of a vision of romance.

This book perhaps should be used as a learning tool for a creative writing course with a sex research institution.


Rating  2/5
ReadersFavorite.com, Lisa M. (May 7, 2011)

Remarks by the President on Osama Bin Laden Death

Remarks by the President on Osama Bin Laden

East Room

11:35 P.M. EDT

     THE PRESIDENT:  Good evening.  Tonight, I can report to the American people and to the world that the United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of al Qaeda, and a terrorist who’s responsible for the murder of thousands of innocent men, women, and children.

It was nearly 10 years ago that a bright September day was darkened by the worst attack on the American people in our history.  The images of 9/11 are seared into our national memory -- hijacked planes cutting through a cloudless September sky; the Twin Towers collapsing to the ground; black smoke billowing up from the Pentagon; the wreckage of Flight 93 in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where the actions of heroic citizens saved even more heartbreak and destruction.

And yet we know that the worst images are those that were unseen to the world.  The empty seat at the dinner table.  Children who were forced to grow up without their mother or their father.  Parents who would never know the feeling of their child’s embrace.  Nearly 3,000 citizens taken from us, leaving a gaping hole in our hearts.

On September 11, 2001, in our time of grief, the American people came together.  We offered our neighbors a hand, and we offered the wounded our blood.  We reaffirmed our ties to each other, and our love of community and country.  On that day, no matter where we came from, what God we prayed to, or what race or ethnicity we were, we were united as one American family.

We were also united in our resolve to protect our nation and to bring those who committed this vicious attack to justice.  We quickly learned that the 9/11 attacks were carried out by al Qaeda -- an organization headed by Osama bin Laden, which had openly declared war on the United States and was committed to killing innocents in our country and around the globe.  And so we went to war against al Qaeda to protect our citizens, our friends, and our allies.

Over the last 10 years, thanks to the tireless and heroic work of our military and our counterterrorism professionals, we’ve made great strides in that effort.  We’ve disrupted terrorist attacks and strengthened our homeland defense.  In Afghanistan, we removed the Taliban government, which had given bin Laden and al Qaeda safe haven and support.  And around the globe, we worked with our friends and allies to capture or kill scores of al Qaeda terrorists, including several who were a part of the 9/11 plot.

Yet Osama bin Laden avoided capture and escaped across the Afghan border into Pakistan.  Meanwhile, al Qaeda continued to operate from along that border and operate through its affiliates across the world.

And so shortly after taking office, I directed Leon Panetta, the director of the CIA, to make the killing or capture of bin Laden the top priority of our war against al Qaeda, even as we continued our broader efforts to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat his network.

Then, last August, after years of painstaking work by our intelligence community, I was briefed on a possible lead to bin Laden.  It was far from certain, and it took many months to run this thread to ground.  I met repeatedly with my national security team as we developed more information about the possibility that we had located bin Laden hiding within a compound deep inside of Pakistan.  And finally, last week, I determined that we had enough intelligence to take action, and authorized an operation to get Osama bin Laden and bring him to justice.

Today, at my direction, the United States launched a targeted operation against that compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.  A small team of Americans carried out the operation with extraordinary courage and capability.  No Americans were harmed.  They took care to avoid civilian casualties.  After a firefight, they killed Osama bin Laden and took custody of his body.

For over two decades, bin Laden has been al Qaeda’s leader and symbol, and has continued to plot attacks against our country and our friends and allies.  The death of bin Laden marks the most significant achievement to date in our nation’s effort to defeat al Qaeda.

Yet his death does not mark the end of our effort.  There’s no doubt that al Qaeda will continue to pursue attacks against us.  We must –- and we will -- remain vigilant at home and abroad.

As we do, we must also reaffirm that the United States is not –- and never will be -– at war with Islam.  I’ve made clear, just as President Bush did shortly after 9/11, that our war is not against Islam.  Bin Laden was not a Muslim leader; he was a mass murderer of Muslims.  Indeed, al Qaeda has slaughtered scores of Muslims in many countries, including our own.  So his demise should be welcomed by all who believe in peace and human dignity.

Over the years, I’ve repeatedly made clear that we would take action within Pakistan if we knew where bin Laden was.  That is what we’ve done.  But it’s important to note that our counterterrorism cooperation with Pakistan helped lead us to bin Laden and the compound where he was hiding.  Indeed, bin Laden had declared war against Pakistan as well, and ordered attacks against the Pakistani people.

Tonight, I called President Zardari, and my team has also spoken with their Pakistani counterparts.  They agree that this is a good and historic day for both of our nations.  And going forward, it is essential that Pakistan continue to join us in the fight against al Qaeda and its affiliates.

The American people did not choose this fight.  It came to our shores, and started with the senseless slaughter of our citizens.  After nearly 10 years of service, struggle, and sacrifice, we know well the costs of war.  These efforts weigh on me every time I, as Commander-in-Chief, have to sign a letter to a family that has lost a loved one, or look into the eyes of a service member who’s been gravely wounded.

So Americans understand the costs of war.  Yet as a country, we will never tolerate our security being threatened, nor stand idly by when our people have been killed.  We will be relentless in defense of our citizens and our friends and allies.  We will be true to the values that make us who we are. And on nights like this one, we can say to those families who have lost loved ones to al Qaeda’s terror:  Justice has been done.

Tonight, we give thanks to the countless intelligence and counterterrorism professionals who’ve worked tirelessly to achieve this outcome.  The American people do not see their work, nor know their names.  But tonight, they feel the satisfaction of their work and the result of their pursuit of justice.

We give thanks for the men who carried out this operation, for they exemplify the professionalism, patriotism, and unparalleled courage of those who serve our country.  And they are part of a generation that has borne the heaviest share of the burden since that September day.

Finally, let me say to the families who lost loved ones on 9/11 that we have never forgotten your loss, nor wavered in our commitment to see that we do whatever it takes to prevent another attack on our shores. 

And tonight, let us think back to the sense of unity that prevailed on 9/11.  I know that it has, at times, frayed.  Yet today’s achievement is a testament to the greatness of our country and the determination of the American people. 

The cause of securing our country is not complete.  But tonight, we are once again reminded that America can do whatever we set our mind to.  That is the story of our history, whether it’s the pursuit of prosperity for our people, or the struggle for equality for all our citizens; our commitment to stand up for our values abroad, and our sacrifices to make the world a safer place. 

Let us remember that we can do these things not just because of wealth or power, but because of who we are:  one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you.  May God bless you.  And may God bless the United States of America.
         
                        END               11:44 P.M. EDT

Source: White house

Costly Bandas

INDEED it was quite a while before we got to witness children sharpening their criceting skills out on the Kathmandu streets ("Strike one", April 28, Page 6). And yes, the banda eased the pero-crisis, be it for a day. Didn't all the major political parties sign on not to organize any bandas during the Nepal Tourism Year 2011? Foregin tourists will soon stop trusting the words of our leaders and choose to keep away from the hassle-filled destination when they have so many more peaceful and as beautiful countries to choose from.

Santosh Kalwar
Chitwan
Published: The Kathmandu Post
Letter to Editor/Voice of People

Nepal Today

The pleasure of books by William Lyon Phelps

The habit of reading is one of the greatest resources of mankind; and we enjoy reading books that belong to us much more than if they are borrowed. A borrowed book is like a guest in the house; it must be treated with punctiliousness, with a certain considerate formality. You must see that it sustains no damage; it must not suffer while under your roof. You cannot leave it carelessly, you cannot mark it, you cannot turn down the pages, you cannot use it familiarly. And then, some day, although this is seldom done, you really ought to return it.

But your own books belong to you; you treat them with that affectionate intimacy that annihilates formality. Books are for use, not for show; you should own no book that you are afraid to mark up, or afraid to place on the table, wide open and face down. A good reason for marking favorite passages in books is that this practice enables you to remember more easily the significant sayings, to refer to them quickly, and then in later years, it is like visiting a forest where you once blazed a trail. You have the pleasure of going over the old ground, and recalling both the intellectual scenery and your own earlier self.

Everyone should begin collecting a private library in youth; the instinct of private property, which is fundamental in human beings, can here be cultivated with every advantage and no evils. One should have one's own bookshelves, which should not have doors, glass windows, or keys; they should be free and accessible to the hand as well as to the eye. The best of mural decorations is books; they are more varied in color and appearance than any wallpaper, they are more attractive in design, and they have the prime advantage of being separate personalities, so that if you sit alone in the room in the firelight, you are surrounded with intimate friends. The knowledge that they are there in plain view is both stimulating and refreshing. You do not have to read them all. Most of my indoor life is spent in a room containing six thousand books; and I have a stock answer to the invariable question that comes from strangers.

 "Have you read all of these books?"

"Some of them twice." This reply is both true and unexpected.

There are of course no friends like living, breathing, corporeal men and women; my devotion to reading has never made me a recluse. How could it? Books are of the people, by the people, for the people. Literature is the immortal part of history; it is the best and most enduring part of personality. But book-friends have this advantage over living friends; you can enjoy the most truly aristocratic society in the world whenever you want it. The great dead are beyond our physical reach, and the great living are usually almost as inaccessible; as for our personal friends and acquaintances, we cannot always see them. Perchance they are asleep, or away on a journey. But in a private library, you can at any moment converse with Socrates or Shakespeare or Carlyle or Dumas or Dickens or Shaw or Barrie or Galsworthy. And there is no doubt that in these books you see these men at their best. They wrote for you. They "laid themselves out," they did their ultimate best to entertain you, to make a favorable impression. You are necessary to them as an audience is to an actor; only instead of seeing them masked, you look into their innermost heart of heart.

William Lyon Phelps - 1933

Trend of brain-drain

Nepal is in deep crisis, and everybody must be aware of the problematic situation. We are not only facing the energy crisis, but also many other problems. Among the many other crisis, an eye-catching one is migration of intellectuals to foreign land. It is not sad that we are poor, underdeveloped and less educated, but it is regrettable that many are migrating abroad for the sake of rosy jobs, higher education and opulent income.

The money that is earned comes with energy and efforts in a foreign land. When we are young, the best option is always to go abroad for the so-called higher education. However,

recent data suggest that few graduate with a degree or with quality/skill. Many divert from their real goal to do some alternative form of work either in restaurants or something similar. People should always focus on their real goal/objective.

The increasing trend of brain-drain is not only due to opportunities, political and economic stability, social and financial risk, liberty and healthy living, but also because of family and cultural impact. People tend to think if somebody has gone abroad, earned a hefty sum of money, and also built his own house, why not my son/daughter?” But, many diaspora are well aware of the bitter truth of foreign land. There are goodies to be fetched if one puts a lot of effort. People are moving quite a lot these days.

It is evident that many intellectuals who fly out will try their luck for an “American dream” or “European holidays”. But, who will look after the prosperity of Nepal? If only women and children are left behind, who will provide the helping hand? The crisis deepens when these scholars come back after spending quality time in foreign land, in their old age. It might also be hard for them to adapt in their own land. I would like to request all the Nepalese intellectuals and scholars to think about their priorities, to love their motherland, to put culture and bravery as their stereotypes, to love themselves and to use their level of thinking. Please consider coming back to your land, we need you.


Published: The HImalayan Times
Letter to the Editor
2011-04-14

Santosh Kalwar, Tandi,Chitwan 

I Am Dead Man Alive reviewed by ReadersFavorite.com

Santosh Kalwar is a prolific writer. His latest offering is a book of poetry with the theme of death. I Am Dead Man Alive’s verses are short. "God Save The Flag" speaks of the many patriots that sacrifice their blood for the flag. "O Dream" speaks of the release of death. "The Child" speaks of the death of a child. 

"Old Women" was one of my favorites. It made me think of someone dear to me. There comes a time when death is a welcome release. Our friends and family have gone before us, and we seem to be left behind. Another favorite was "Nobody Remembered Me." We will be remembered for only a short time after our death. 

Santosh Kalwar speaks with great wisdom. Death is inevitable. It happens to all living things. A tiny seed sprouts, pushes its head through the soil, and eventually blooms. Slowly the bloom dries out and the plant withers away to make room for the next generation. Death is a vital part of life. 

I Am Dead Man Alive is a short book at a mere 60 pages. The poetry is well-done. Santosh has penned several books. I believe this one to be his best. 


Source: Readers Favorite 
Rating: 5/5

Second International Airport

The idea of spending $600 million to build one more international airport in Nijgadh as advanced in the editorial and the news 2nd Int'l airport possible in 4 years at $600 million (April 10) is indeed a praiseworthy view if the estimated amount gets spent for the completion of the project. But if it goes into hands of top-notch politicians, bureaucrats, leaders and officers, this colossal investment will only warm up their pockets and people and the nation will gain nothing.

Santosh Kalwar
via email
Published: Republica
Your Say/Letter to Editor

Facing death

MAR 06 -
Last year, Girija babu left our bright planet. And just days ago, we lost the great legend of the Nepali Congress (NC) and former prime minister, Krishna Prasad Bhattarai.

Kishunji was an inspirational leader—he wasn’t involved in any corruption scandals, was heartily followed by many and had a great sense of humour. Now that he is no more, it will be hard for his followers to cope-up with his peaceful demise. His contributions to the NC and Nepal in general will surely be extolled in golden words. As he was accepted as one of the great Nepali political legends, his death has sent shock waves across the entire nation. We have lost great charismatic leader.

However, the bitter truth of his demise has forced everyone to think about death. Sadly, no one escapes death. Death is a fact of life for everyone, and it often comes without displaying any traces, signs, symptoms, or predictability. The true beauty of death is that nobody knows much about it.

Everybody is fearful of something in their life, and many people fear death. But death is not something to be feared. Everybody is born and everybody has to die—there is no escape from this cycle of life. There are plenty of views on death. Some views and ideas emerge from religious beliefs and some from science—but no matter the theory, it is a part of life. Everybody is aware of biological causes of death—a certain disease or condition ranging from cancer to heart failure, or perhaps an accident.

According to Hindu doctrines, there are three fundamental stages of human life: birth, marriage and death. Undoubtedly, every human being must born, marry and die. Nevertheless, most of us find excitement in the first two stages but somehow remain terrified with the idea of death. We should appreciate each of these vital stages equally, no matter what.

The reasons based in religion and science are not satisfactory. The primary reason for this is that, despite their contributions, they don’t actually help us better understand death. The fundamental question of life—where do we come from, why are we here, and where will we go—is an unsolved mystery and will remain unsolved. But perhaps rather than trying to espouse the mysteries of death, it is better that we just accept its reality and live each moment to its limit.

Kishunji has inspired many generations of leaders in Nepali politics. I hope those inspired leaders will display their true talent and pass on his ideologies, philosophies and aspiration towards younger generation. Kishunji, we salute you for your outstanding contribution to Nepali politics. Rest in peace.

Posted on: 2011-03-07 07:58
Published: The Kathmandu Post

The continuous affair

Two things drive human motion: evolution and revolution. I am not so much worried about human evolution, but I am worried about human revolution. It seems to unfold slowly but steadily. Signs and symptoms of people acting revolutionaries in pre-historic times and post-historical times, against dictators, kings and rulers, can be identified. It all has come to change the status quo, with hopes of a better future, hopefully.

As Darwin had pointed out, we are all evolving creatures. And, to my mind we all are revolutionary creatures as well. No, it is not ridiculous to think so. If you were an addictive newsreader (like me), you would know of global events like the Egyptian revolution, and Mubarak quitting. Of course, Tunisian event preceded that. Now, Libya, Bahrain, Yemen, Oman and Iran are facing the same crisis. Dictatorship is NOT going to work in tech-savvy, social media bound twittering world. I personally believe that people have more power than politicians or leaders in today’s digital workspace. It had always been the people power, not the political power, running any great nation or territory. A mandate for common rule or protocols is only possible if the majority of the people vote for it democratically, peacefully.

Today, if all Nepalese citizens gather to fight for their basic rights such as food, electricity, clothes, jobs, social security, and privacy, nobody can stop them. The people have proved themselves many times in the past, so the political bosses must act sincerely taking them into consideration.

With the world population hitting the seven billion milestone, problems are bound to multiply the world over. I envision a world where there would be less value for art, words and self-respect. There would be more value for oil, food, technology, safety, security, and balance. As a young scientist, ‘balance’ is not to be worried about as Nature wouldl balance herself in some ways (climate change, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, meteor strikes etc).

If the people’s needs are unfulfilled, a revolution will simply begin at any point in time. Nothing remains forever, as everything is finite.

As the wise man said, “Every beginning has an end and every end has a new beginning.” This is what makes the human beings look forward to something better.


Source: The Himalyan Times
Published: 02-March-2011

Benazir Bhutto Speech

Benazir Bhutto Speech - Male Domination Of Women

Benazir Bhutto, Prime Minister of Pakistan
Beijing, 4 September 1995

As the first woman ever elected to head an Islamic nation, I feel a special responsibility about issues that relate to women. In addressing the new exigencies of the new century, we must translate dynamic religion into a living reality. We must live by the true spirit of Islam, not only by its rituals. And for those of you who may be ignorant of Islam, cast aside your preconceptions about the role of women in our religion.

Contrary to what many of you may have come to believe, Islam embraces a rich variety of political, social and cultural traditions. The fundamental ethos of Islam is tolerance, dialogue, and democracy.

Just as in Christianity and Judaism, we must always be on guard for those who will exploit and manipulate the Holy Book for their own narrow political ends, who will distort the essence of pluralism and tolerance for their own extremist agendas.

To those who claim to speak for Islam but who would deny to women our place in society, I say:

The ethos of Islam is equality, equality between the sexes. There is no religion on earth that, in its writing and teachings, is more respectful of the role of women in society than Islam.

My presence here, as the elected woman prime minister of a great Muslim country, is testament to the commitment of Islam to the role of women in society.

It is this tradition of Islam that has empowered me, has strengthened me, has emboldened me.

It was this heritage that sustained me during the most difficult points in my life, for Islam forbids injustice; injustice against people, against nations, against women.

It denounces inequality as the gravest form of injustice.

It enjoins its followers to combat oppression and tyranny.

It enshrines piety as the sole criteria for judging humankind.

It shuns race, colour, and gender as a basis of distinction amongst fellowmen.

When the human spirit was immersed in the darkness of the Middle Ages, Islam proclaimed equality between men and women. When women were viewed as inferior members of the human family, Islam gave them respect and dignity.

When women were treated as chattels, the Prophet of Islam (Peace Be Upon Him) accepted them as equal partners.

Islam codified the rights of women. The Koran elected their status to that of men. It guaranteed their civic, economic, and political rights. It recognised their participative role in nation building.

Sadly, the Islamic tenets regarding women were soon discarded. In Islamic society, as in other parts of the world, their rights were denied. Women were maltreated, discriminated against, and subjected to violence and oppression, their dignity injured and their role denied.

Women became the victims of a culture of exclusion and male dominance. Today more women than men suffer from poverty, deprivation, and discrimination. Half a billion women are illiterate. Seventy percent of the children who are denied elementary education are girls.

The plight of women in the developing countries is unspeakable. Hunger, disease, and unremitting toil is their fate. Weak economic growth and inadequate social support systems affect them most seriously and directly.

They are the primary victims of structural adjustment processes which necessitate reduced state funding for health, education, medical care, and nutrition. Curtailed resource flows to these vital areas impact most severely on the vulnerable groups, particularly women and children.

This, Madam Chairperson, is not acceptable. It offends my religion. It offends my sense of justice and equity. Above all, it offends common sense.

That is why Pakistan, the women of Pakistan, and I personally have been fully engaged in recent international efforts to uphold women’s rights. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights enjoins the elimination of discrimination against women.

The Nairobi Forward Looking Strategies provide a solid framework for advancing women’s rights around the world. But the goal of equality, development, and peace still eludes us.

Sporadic efforts in this direction have failed. We are satisfied that the Beijing Platform of Action encompasses a comprehensive approach toward the empowerment of women. This is the right approach and should be fully supported.

Women cannot be expected to struggle alone against the forces of discrimination and exploitation. I recall the words of Dante, who reminded us that "The hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of moral crisis."

Today in this world, in the fight for the liberation of women, there can be no neutrality.

My spirit carries many a scar of a long and lonely battle against dictatorship and tyranny. I witnessed, at a young age, the overthrow of democracy, the assassination of an elected prime minister, and a systematic assault against the very foundations of a free society.

But our faith in democracy was not broken. The great Pakistani poet and philosopher Dr. Allama Iqbal says, "Tyranny cannot endure forever." It did not. The will of our people prevailed against the forces of dictatorship

But, my dear sisters, we have learned that democracy alone is not enough.

Freedom of choice alone does not guarantee justice.

Equal rights are not defined only by political values.

Social justice is a triad of freedom, an equation of liberty:

Justice is political liberty.

Justice is economic independence.

Justice is social equality.

Delegated, sisters, the child who is starving has no human rights.

The girl who is illiterate has no future.

The woman who cannot plan her life, plan her family, plan a career, is fundamentally not free….

I am determined to change the plight of women in my country. More than sixty million of our women are largely sidelined.

It is a personal tragedy for them. It is a national catastrophe for my nation. I am determined to harness their potential to the gigantic task of nation building….

I dream of a Pakistan in which women contribute to their full potential. I am conscious of the struggle that lies ahead. But, with your help, we shall persevere. Allah willing, we shall succeed.

Quote Me Everyday --a quote

Here is one video created by friend of mine who has great video company Sesam Production Oy in Lappeenranta, Finalnd... you may visit his webpage at http://www.sesamproduction.fi/

This video is simple presentation of a quote from book, Quote Me Everyday, see Jaunary 6th in the book...



The book is available at Amazon

Featured poem on Mad Swirl

One poem accepted and published by 'Mad Swirl Poetry' Journal entitled, "Tell". You may read a poem here:http://www.madswirl.com/content/poetryforum.html ...
Now, I am also one of the Contributing Poets here on Mad Swirl. Check out my new page at: http://www.madswirl.com/content/poetry/Santosh_Kalwar.htmlThank you and happy reading... :)