In the fall of 1961 I was an English major at the University of Virginia and William Faulkner was writer-in-residence there.

Mr. Faulkner was at that time finishing The Reivers , his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel that would be published the following spring. I was doing some rudimentary research into Shakespeare’s Richard III for a paper that would never be published.

One day an announcement appeared on the English Department bulletin board stating that for the next six Thursday evenings Mr. William Faulkner would be pleased to hold a small symposium, open only to English majors and graduate students. The number of attendees would be strictly limited to the first twenty who signed on.

I had studied Faulkner the previous year under Joseph BIotner, one of the foremost Faulkner scholars, and had found Faulkner’s work incomprehensible. However, many considered him America’s greatest living writer, and the chance to learn from such a figure proved decisive. I signed on.

The next Thursday at the appointed hour, the small band of disciples and curious gathered in a room in Cabell Hall to hear the great man. Faulkner was a shy person with unremarkable speaking abilities, and it soon became apparent that this evening symposium had clearly not been his idea.

The sessions were scheduled to last an hour but Faulkner’s routine was to amble up to the lectern about ten minutes late, make a few desultory remarks, and then throw the floor open to questions. About the fourth session, when the speaker asked for questions, a dedicated young graduate student deep in a thesis on Faulkner, who always sat in the front row taking copious notes, raised his hand. “Mr. Faulkner, in paragraph (such and such) of section (thus and so) of your short story The Bear,’ you make reference to (such and such). There has long been debate among scholars whether or not you were referring to the betrayal of Christ in that passage. Would you be so kind as to edify us on that point?”

Faulkner stared at the earnest young man for a long moment. He then leaned on the lectern and a small smile appeared beneath his white mustache. “Young man, I regret I cannot edify you. You see, I haven’t read that story in more than twenty years, and besides, I was dead drunk when I wrote it. I haven’t the slightest idea in hell what I had in mind when 1 wrote the passage to which you refer.”

Faulkner liked riding to hounds and would frequently join the hunt at the nearby Farmington Hunt Club or Keswick Hunt Club. Now it happened that I had friends who rode with both those packs, and 1, too, enjoyed a good hunt on a fine fall day.

Not too long after the incident in his symposium, I encountered the