Value, Value, Value - Faulkner's "Turnabout" & the Hollywood Screenplay

I thought for my final blog I’d talk about the Hollywood screenplay in terms of authorship and value. The Hollywood screenplay is a collaborative work, not an artistic autonomous construction such as works we dealt with when discussing the literary canon. So, if the screenplay is a collective effort of say, the writer, producer, director (and maybe even the actors depending on the production) - how do we understand its authorship? What is even more confusing is when we realise the screenplay is often disregarded, reworked, adapted or merely used as a starting point to what will be eventually produced on the film. It is simply a step in the process of making a film. The screenplay belongs entirely to the production company rather than the writer themselves.

The autonomous writer is thus dishevelled and solely the producer governs the work. Faulkner’s first project for MGM in 1933 was based on his short story Turnabout, appearing in the Saturday Evening Post. The Faulkner we are dealing with here is indeed the same canonical author who wrote Absalom, Absalom! and The Sound of the Fury. In 1933, looking for work he turns to become a salaried, industrial writer, producing works to be for mass audiences in Hollywood. Turnabout became the 1933 film Today We Live, starring Joan Crawford and Gary Cooper, which apparently was a total flop at the box office.

So is there a place for Faulkner’s screenplays on the literary canon? I would suggest no - although Faulkner has already achieved his place in the canon, it does not mean that all of his works must be as well. Contextually Faulkner was in dire need of money after the 1929 Wall Street crash and worldwide depression. Here it seems that authorship and value are not intrinsically connected all the time. Yes, the canonical Faulkner is indeed the same as the industrial Faulkner. We can even identify splices of the experimental genius of As I Lay Dying (in his use of cinematic montage) in the Turnabout screenplay. Yet we cannot ignore that Faulkner’s commissioned work in Hollywood is not of the same level. He still appears as a cutting edge artist in the screenplay as he experiments with cinematic dissolves and sound but the work seems to be a typical Hollywood romance with hints of Faulknerian incest and a homoerotic sentiment.

Smith’s Contingencies of Value points out, ‘Value is impure; evaluation is contingent’ (p. 3). Perhaps instead of ascribing a particular value per se to Faulkner’s screenplay because value is ever changing, the first step is evaluating the text. But then, we are presented with yet another problem: ‘Evaluation is always compromised because value is always in motion: …”unknown” not because, like true love, it is beyond mortal cognition, but because it is constantly variable and eternally indeterminate.’ (p. 9) The value of Faulkner’s screenplay is immediately compromised when we learn he is working for Hollywood – specifically MGM, who produces for a mass audience. So where does this leave us?

Smith emphasises there is always an anticipation of the value of a work before we even begin reading it. So does Faulkner’s screenplay completely oust value we have placed on other Faulkner-esque work? Surely not, I hope. Our expectations toward texts are dependent on our ‘psychological “set” of our encounter with it: not the “setting” of the work or, in the narrow sense, its context, but rather the nature and potency of our own assumptions, expectations, capacities, and interests with respect to it.’ (p. 10) If we contend that Faulkner’s stint with Hollywood was an experimental one backed by an inherent need for financial security, we should have no problem believing Faulkner’s canonical works must not be devalued. Many students did vocalise in the seminar of their disappointment after reading Faulkner’s screenplay. This seems to prove the fundamental connection between our anticipation toward the text (our psychological assumptions about the author and other factors) and our experience of reading it. 

Excerpts from John Guillory's Cultural Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon Formation

Guillory’s dense excerpts deal with a new theoretical criticism of viewing the literary canon. Instead of looking at the representation of social groups and who is included or excluded (minority groups such as women and queers) in the selection of canonical texts or the aesthetic value ascribed to a text, Guillory wishes to view the literary canon in terms of the distribution of cultural capital. In order to view the representation or non-representation in terms of social identity, the author is brought back into the equation, after their supposed death with Barthes in 1968.

But what exactly is this “canon” we speak of? Guillory points out it is ‘an imaginary totality of works. No one has access to the canon as a totality…it never appears as a complete and uncontested list in any particular time and place.’ (p. 194). Traditional canonical texts are typically thought to reinforce the hegemony of their time determined by ruling elites. Noncanonical texts are those not included in the literary canon. They may endorse a transgressive sentiment or be the works of the modern day. The novel as a form was not included in the literary canon for a long time. It is evident of the canon’s value as a discursive instrument of transmission. Interestingly, Guillory points out that some texts deemed noncanonical primarily will often resurface in the canon itself, as a significant marker for the acknowledgement of a particular social group identified as making a contribution to the progression of society. An example of this might include Charles Dickens’ place in the literary canon and his concern with social reform in his depiction of the working class.

Within his new theoretical framework, Guillory looks to pedagogical institutions as the ‘locus of real power (for the distribution of cultural capital), and therefore a good place for political praxis to define its object.’ (p. 197). Literacy is not described in terms of binaries – either being able to write or to not, rather it is described as a matter of circumstance. What ‘literacy’ (in terms of the humanities) boils down to is the opportunity one has to gain access to these cultural capital goods rather than cultural images. The process of inclusion and exclusion for Guillory becomes an issue of whether people have access to literacy. Because not all of society has this access, the formation of the canon will forever be an unequal representation of the social order. The ‘school’ remains as a site of critique since it is responsible for the agency as well as production of unequal social relations.

In the seminar, I asked the class if there were any other particular sites in which the decisions were made of the distribution of cultural capital. The publishing industry came up, notably as part of their inclusion in ‘classics,’ such Penguin’s orange range. Yet the ‘school’ remained the imminent site for the exchange and distribution of cultural capital.

The Death of the Author, Roland Barthes

In one of perhaps the most contentious essays written in the late sixties, Barthes suggests a divisive act – to remove the author in any interpretation of their text. By doing so, he goes on to say, welcomes a multiplicity of interpretation through language itself, ‘…it is language which speaks, not the author; to write is, through a prerequisite impersonality…to reach that point where only language acts, ‘performs’, and not ‘me.’’ (p. 222). Barthes’ conception of the ‘readerly text’ – a traditional realist text thought to be a product of the author’s genius understands the reader as a passive ‘consumer’ of the text – relaying precisely what the author intended for the text to speak about. In contrast, the death of the author for Barthes engages his concept of the ‘writerly text’, one which engages with an active involvement of the reader in decoding its meaning.

Since the text no longer has a unitary meaning attached to its author, we begin to ask questions about originality and individualism. Barthes’ deconstruction of the transcendent notion of the ‘Author-God’ – that is, the single important figure in the explanation behind the text links it to network pathways and interconnected spheres, inviting multiple truths, ‘The text is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centres of culture.’ (p. 223). Thus, intertextuality is constantly at play in modern society – originality ceases to exist and the ‘world we perceive is one not of ‘facts’, but rather of ‘signs about facts’, which we encode and decode ceaselessly from signifying system to signifying system.’ (Onega, S. Structuralism and narrative poetics Literary Theory and Criticism Oxford Uni Press, 2006).  

Barthes mentions the influence of Surrealism and ‘automatic writing’ – the process of writers collaborating to create a piece of work flowing unaware in a quasi-subconscious manner. He also mentions the influence of Marcel Proust and his concept of ‘blurring’ the relationship between the writer and their characters. In doing so, the narrator of the text becomes ‘he who is going to write’ (p. 222).

Barthes predicates the author as a product of modernity – distilling meaning from authorial intentions and their biography imposes restricting limitations on that text. The author’s death is synonymous with an holistic transformation of the text itself, ‘(…the text is henceforth made and read in such a way that at all levels the author is absent.’ (p. 222). The modern scriptor’s (us, the readers!) birth is located with the birth of the text itself. The multiplicity begins and ends with the reader’s own interpretation, ‘…a text’s unity lies not in its origin but in its destination.’ (p. 224).

Barthes’ controversial essay generated an overwhelming response from contemporary theorists. Foucault’s response to Barthes with What is an Author? in 1969, in many ways challenged the complete dissociation of the author from their text. Instead, Foucault realised the limitations of linking the author holistically to their text but agued authorship cannot be moved entirely away from their intellectual property rights such the taxonomy of the text.

How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read

How to Talk about Books You Haven’t Read by Pierre Bayard

Bayard suggests an active pursual of “non-reading” – that is, engaging intelligently in discussion with peers or professors about books you have not read is a plausible (and almost essential) phenomenon in society. Analysing reading in the social, rather than private realm, Bayard speaks of situations where tentative discussion about literature may lead you to feelings of anxiety when asked to comment on books you have not read.

He outlines limitations to intense reading in the same way “non-reading” has, essentially through an impaired ability to maintain a perspective of how we can place the text in relation to other books. Through the activity of not reading, he suggests, one adopts ‘a stance in relation to the immense tide of books that protects you from drowning’ (p.13).

The solution lies in the systematizing of books citing the case of the librarian in Musil’s The Man Without Qualities who, foregrounded in an extreme “love” of all books, intriguingly decides not to read any fearing of loving one more than another. Bayard suggests this is which, ‘incites him to remain prudently on their periphery, for fear that too pronounced an interest in one of them might cause him to neglect the others’ (p. 8). The librarian acts as Bayard’s hyperbolic example for the absolute “non-reader,” demonstrating their capacity to feel comfortable discussing a wide body of literature. He remarks one can speak of Joyce’s Ulysses without even having picked it up, engaging effectively in intellectual discussion by its “location” – positing the text among other obligatory canonical works enabling the “non-reader” to speak of Ulysses even if they may know a limited means of its content.

Bayard’s book elicits an all-too-familiar fantasy of being able to know everything, suggesting the borders between knowledge and meta-knowledge, utilising “non-reading” to act as a bridge between the two. We are reminded of the capacity of humans as finite beings who will simply not posses the time to read the fathomless number of books that exist. In consequence, the readers are placed in a dialectical position – to read or not to read? It seems Musil’s non-reading librarian is Bayard’s humourous extremity – surely if you loved books so much you couldn’t help yourself but read as many books in your capacity? On the other side of the spectrum, as the librarian calculates, it would take tens of thousands of years to read all the books one may covet.

Bayard’s point in How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read focuses on the ability of readers to engage in an insightful discussion about books they have not read. It seems in this day and age it is inevitable you will be placed in a discussion of literature where you may feel anxious having not read, or only skimmed over the book in question. Bayard’s “how-to” text creates a platform to express potentially discomforting milieu, which we would rather not admit to. His playful honesty and negotiable solutions inspired many writers to offer advice of their same experiences, including Henry Hitchings and his follow up to Bayard in 2008, How to Really Talk About Books You Haven’t Read.