A re-post from 2005
J.M. Coetzee reviews Jay Parini's Life of William Faulker:
"Now I realise for the first time," wrote William Faulkner to a woman friend, looking back from the vantage point of his mid-fifties, "what an amazing gift I had: uneducated in every formal sense, without even very literate, let alone literary, companions, yet to have made the things I made. I don't know where it came from. I don't know why God or gods or whoever it was, selected me to be the vessel."
A fascinating piece, even for non-Faulkner fans, which might tell you all you need to know about him. Click here: The New York Review of Books: The Making of William Faulkner