While F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in The Great Gatsby that "You can't repeat the past" -- another novelist, William Faulkner (1897 - 1962), wrote "The past is never dead. It's not even past."
So which way is it?
You can't repeat the past? -- or -- You're doomed to repeat the past and keep on repeating it?
Dueling authors.
(If this was an episode of Friends Joey would be saying, "OK, who do you think would win in a fight between William Faulkner and F. Scott Fitzgerald?")
The Faulkner quote was used in a 2008 speech by Barack Obama.
In 2012 the quote was utilized in the Woody Allen movie, Midnight in Paris. According to Wikipedia ------------------- [excerpt] ------------------ Faulkner Literary Rights LLC filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Sony Pictures Classics over a scene in the Allen film, where a time-traveling character says,
"The past is not dead! Actually, it's not even past. You know who said that? Faulkner. And he was right. And I met him, too. I ran into him at a dinner party."
In 2013 the judge dismissed Faulkner Literary Rights LLC's claim, ruling that the use of the quote in the film was de minimis and constituted "fair use". ------------------------- [end / Wikipedia excerpt]
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De minimis -- Latin for "too trivial or minor to merit consideration, especially in law."
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"I recently ran into Faulkner at a dinner party."
LOL
Midnight in Paris happens to be on Netflix, right now (I think) -- we can watch it!
a sample of Faulkner's writing:
1
Sitting beside the road, watching the wagon mount the hill toward her, Lena thinks, 'I have come from Alabama: a fur piece. All the way from Alabama a-walking. A fur piece.' Thinking although I have not been quite a month on the road I am already in Mississippi, further from home than I have ever been before. I am now further from Doane's Mill than I have been since I was twelve years old
She had never been to Doane's Mill until after her father and mother died, though six or eight times a year she went to town on Saturday, in the wagon, in a mailorder dress and her bare feet flat in the wagon bed and her shoes wrapped in a piece of paper beside her on the seat. She would put on the shoes just before the wagon reached town. After she got to be a big girl she would ask her father to stop the wagon at the edge of town and she would get down and walk. She would not tell her father why she wanted to walk in instead of riding. He thought that it was because of the smooth streets, the sidewalks. But it was because she believed that the people who saw her and whom she passed on foot would believe that she lived in the town too.
When she was twelve years old her father and mother died in the same summer, in a log house of three rooms and a hall, without screens, in a room lighted by a bugswirled kerosene lamp, the naked floor worn smooth as old silver by naked feet. She was the youngest living child. Her mother died first. She said, "Take care of paw." Lena did so. Then one day her father said, "You go to Doane's Mill with McKinley. You get ready to go, be ready when he comes." Then he died. McKinley, the brother, arrived in a wagon. They buried the father in a grove behind a country church one afternoon, with a pine headstone. The next morning she departed forever, though it is possible that she did not know this at the time, in the wagon with McKinley, for Doane's Mill. The wagon was borrowed and the brother had promised to return it by nightfall.
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{Light in August, by William Faulkner. 1932. Publisher: Smith & Haas.}
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