Welcome back to Just Listen.  We return today to the fictional town of Jefferson, Mississippi, made somewhat famous by William Faulkner as the locus for many of his short stories.  A Nobel laureate, Faulkner is one of the most celebrated writers of American literature and often is considered the greatest writer of Southern literature.

In a l956 interview with The Paris Review,  Jean Stein asked Faulkner, "Some people say they can't understand your writing, even after they read it two or three times. What approach would you suggest for them?" Faulkner replied: "Read it four times."

Today’s story brings together several interesting literary elements.  The point of view is that of a seven-year-old boy named Georgie, who also suffices as our narrator, and who brings together all the dialect and runaway speech patterns endemic to Faulkner’s local natives.  The text often rambles into the then-exploratory stream of consciousness style of writing made famous during this period by practitioners such as Henry James and Virginia Woolf.

Let us listen as Georgie manages the sea of adults in his life in order to fill his pockets with coins.

And now, “That Will Be Fine” by William Faulkner…we begin….