Article Summary #12

Faulkner Link to Plantation Diary Discovered

This article is about William Faulkner and where he got his inspiration for all his books. Faulkner was childhood friends and eventually began adult friends with Edgar Wiggins Francisco Jr., whose great-grandfather, Francis Terry Leak, was a wealthy plantation owner in Mississippi. Francis Terry Leak kept a diary in the mid-1800 about the names, places, prices, and generally all details of his plantation. Edgar Jr.’s son Edgar III, who is now 79 years old, remembers from his childhood Faulkner frequenting his home often in Holly Springs, Mississippi in the 1930’s to read and take notes on the several volumes of the diary. Specialists are fascinated by this special look into the process of Faulkner’s writing. Edgar III recalls times when Faulkner would read Leak’s pro-slavery and pro-confederacy view and grow very angry. Faulkner would become so livid he would curse and drink excessively. Leak owned many slaves and most of their names can be found in Faulkner’s work, “Go Down, Moses” and a few others. According to many scholars, Faulkner gave these slave names to his white characters in order to give them a voice. Other references from the diary have been seen throughout Faulkner’s work as well, such as “the ticking sound of a watch that Quentin Compson is obsessed with in “The Sound and the Fury”; descriptions of building a plantation match Thomas Sutpen’s in “Absalom, Absalom!”
Leak’s diary was donated to the University of North Carolina in 1946; therefore, it is very familiar to scholars. “The original documents have been used by Southern economists and social historians for their insights into Mississippi’s plantation life, but no one has previously been aware that Faulkner, who died in 1962, had any connection to them.”

Cohen, Patricia. "Faulkner Link to Plantation Diary Discovered." The New York Times. 10 Feb. 2010. Web. 11 Feb. 2010.