Faulkner win tastes better than porridge

JACKSON, Miss. - A Virginia man's wordy parody of Goldilocks and the Three Bears was neither too serious nor too silly, but just right. Judges selected his spoof as the winner of the 14th annual Faux Faulkner contest.

Michael Edens said his idea for Appendix: The Sound and the Furry, hit him in a flash. He imagined how William Faulkner, whose The Bear is a staple of high school literature courses, would handle "two more bears."

Edens composed the story quickly.

"It only took me a couple of days, maybe an hour a crack each time," he said. "I just wrote about half of it, and then half and just fiddled with it."

A few months ago, he submitted the piece to a panel of celebrity writers who chose it as the year's best parody of the style, if not the substance, of Nobel laureate William Faulkner, whose stream of consciousness tales of complex Southern souls have won acclaim the world over.

"Goldilocks," he wrote. "Slim blond avatar of unreasoning womankind: who loved not the porridge itself, nor even the act of reiving it from whatever unknown animal might have been responsible for its preparation ..."

And so his Faulkneresque sentence continues unabated, another 133 words, commonplace and arcane, through the ursine world of domesticity, until it winds down to this: "... and I can no longer remember the subject of my sentence."

"That's the one everyone remarks about," Edens said with a laugh.

Larry Wells of Oxford, Miss., is founder and coordinator of the Faux Faulkner contest with his wife, Dean Faulkner Wells, the author's niece. He said Edens' parody works because it reflects the vocabulary and cadence of Faulkner's fiction.

Second place went to Gordon Runte' of New York for his Abs Begone, Abs Begone, about an infomercial hawking pills guaranteed to give the user a midsection with "rows sexpartite and distinct one from the other" - six-pack abs.

Third went to Orange County, Calif.'s Shan Wu for his Signifying Nothing, about a shopping trip to Target.

All three stories were published in United Airlines' Hemispheres magazine.

Edens, 43, lives in Earlysville, Va., and makes his living as a wordsmith. He is supervisor of technical publications for Northrop Grumman's Sperry Marine Division in Charlottesville.

He has been a Faulkner fan since he was required to read The Sound and the Fury 20 years ago at Wake Forest University.

"It's not just my favorite Faulkner novel. It's my favorite novel of all time," Edens said.

He said he admires the universal quality of Faulkner's work.

"I really feel like Faulkner speaks for the South, for America and for the world, that he's on all three of those pages," Edens said.

Edens - whose story was selected by judges including George Plimpton, Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and John Berendt - will read his entry during the 30th Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference that runs today through Thursday in Oxford.

Faulkner Wells said the contest is growing more popular and attracted entries from around the world, including one from Kuwait.

"It was very, very mystical, true stream of consciousness - somewhere between Arabic and English," she said. "Pappy would have been, I think, amazed."

To read the winners, go to www.hemispheresmagazine.com and click on fiction.

To enter the 15th Faux Faulkner contest, send a typed, double-spaced entry of no more than 500 words to:

Yoknapatawpha Press, Faux Faulkner contest

P.O. Box 248

Oxford, Miss. 38655.

Entries also may be sent to faulkner@watervalley.net

The deadline is March 1.

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