William Faulkner (post 7): In 1958 audio recording of interview, Faulkner says, “I think that a writer is a perfect case of split personality”

Today, I noticed that some unidentified visitor to the blog was looking at an old 2014 post on William Faulkner. So I was prompted to do some online browsing on Faulkner, and came upon an audio recording of an interview.

There is no explanation of why the interview was done by a department of psychiatry. It appears that Faulkner was a visitor (not a patient), and that the psychiatrists had invited him to discuss the psychology of being a writer and human nature, since writers and psychiatrists have a mutual interest in understanding people.

This is an excerpt from the audio recording and transcript:

William Faulkner: …I think that—that a writer is a—a perfect case of split personality, that he is one thing while he is a writer, and he is something else while he's a—a—a denizen of—of the world. It may be that—that that's not—that he can't be rid of that split…(1).

1. http://faulkner.lib.virginia.edu/display/wfaudio28_1