Email journal: July 31, 2005, Charlottesville, Virginia This week got off to a much better start than the previous one as I was able to get into the library easily on Monday morning. Now I have a much better sense of how to use the special collections database to find useful material. This past week, I examined letters from Faulkner to Malcolm Franklin (his stepson), original reviews of These Thirteen and The Sound and the Fury, The Faulkner-Cowley File, and a critical study Faulkner: Masks and Metaphors. Interestingly enough, as far as I can tell, there are absolutely no personal journals here. I would not actually be too surprised if none existed at all anywhere, considering Faulkner’s fervent disinterest in biography; in an interview someone queried, “Do you like Dostoevsky?” To which Faulkner responded, “I know nothing about Dostoevsky. I like The Brothers Karamazov.” In the mid-1950s, due mainly to Faulkner’s high international reputation and his achievement of the Nobel Prize for Literature, the State Department sent him on a variety of cultural ambassadorship missions to promote goodwill abroad. Or, as the State Department put it in their internal correspondence, to promote a positive view of the United States and cultivate American prestige abroad. I was able to find the file of State Department material, mainly comprised of letters, Foreign Service briefs, and translated foreign newspaper articles. In particular, I looked extensively at material from his trips to Peru, the Philippines, Greece, Germany, Iceland and France, and tended to ignore the material from Japan--most of which has been published and can be easily accessed later. The newspaper articles were especially useful as they tend to quote Faulkner at length, and provide a variety of impressions. He was unanimously well received abroad and practically every Foreign Service brief from his various destinations called his visit, “one of the major cultural events of the year.” It was curious to read the briefs that evaluated the press response to Faulkner in each country as they carefully scrutinized communist papers. At one point, an internal State Department document suggests that Faulkner, as a Nobel Laureate, was chosen to counter Soviet claims disparaging American culture. Regardless, it seems as though the trip was mutually beneficial, and has provided me with a wealth of information. There is also an incredible exhibit on the ground floor of the Special Collections Library, titled “American Journeys: Columbus to Kerouac,” and boasts such material as an original 1495 map and a first edition of On the Road. Highlights of the collection include first editions of: John Smith, James Fennimore Cooper, Frederick Douglas, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, Stephen Crane, etc. They also have a James Fennimore Cooper manuscript, letters of Thomas Jefferson, and William Faulkner’s pipe on display. It is highly advised that any student interested in this sort of research should invest in a laptop, as taking notes for hours with a pencil has the potential to be tedious (as many faculty members shake their head at me). Cheers, Michael