Beauty Unheard by the Audience

The most touching part of Faulkner's Nobel speech, to me, was when he mentioned the "conflicts of the heart" that are the only things worth writing about.

To me, this is not only true to Faulkner's style, but true in general. It may be true when people say that there is "nothing new under the sun" but that's a limited statement, and Faulkner shows us why. Perhaps the only thing worth writing about is something that is perpetuated in each of us over and over and over, but that doesn't mean we're always writing about the same thing. Faulkner definitely stuck true to his general knowledge, and didn't write about things that he wasn't well saturated in, or things he didn't care about. This produced a body of work so vast, and so beautiful. If he would have attempted to solve all the world's problems, essentially, in his works instead of just writing about what HE cared about, it probably wouldn't be as eloquent or mean as much to an audience.

Writers today, I feel, are often trying to overstep their knowledge range in order to produce what they have in mind to be the new "great american novel." However, going about it that way turns it into a false feat. Like I said before, the reason Faulkner created what he created is because he wrote what was inside of him, what he knew, and what he loved. Even though there are a number of made-up characters and situations, Faulkner wrote his truths. Even when he wrote about the slaves and had a very limited view of the slaves he wrote about, his limited knowledge was, in itself, a truth. He didn't pretend to know more than he did. He didn't try to create a false south. The south bled on all of Faulkner's pages with horror and sadness and death—and also beauty and magic and love.

When Faulkner says "until he learns these things, he will write as though he stood among and watched the end of man" he means that until a writer starts writing what's in his heart, what he cares about, the whole saying that there's "nothing new under the sun" assumes it's presumed fatalistic meaning, and the world of writing is over. Not to say that experimentation is wrong, we can see clearly Faulkner experimented with style and narration and broke all sorts of grammar rules. Also, just because someone is from a certain region in no way limits them to that certain region like Faulkner only wrote about the south. What he's trying to say, though, is don't tell lies on paper. A writer has to basically strip themselves naked in front of their audience, and Faulkner doesn't want writers who claim that they're naked but still have concealed or changed parts of their body. He could see through them, and in this speech, is urging us all to disrobe entirely.