“I think that anyone, the painter, the musician, the writer works in a kind of insane fury. He is demon-driven” (194). William Faulkner (1897–1962), the Nobel laureate for literature (1949), aired this opinion during his “University and Community Public” engagement of 30 May 1957, while writer in residence at the University of Virginia.1 “I don’t think there’s much object in being a second-rate painter” (294).2 W. Somerset Maugham’s (1874–1965) semi-autobiographical protagonist Philip Carey airs this opinion in Of Human Bondage (1915), a copy of which Faulkner owned, and which he read, as his signatures testify, on at least two occasions between 1930 and 1940.3 “Faulkner did not, like many readers, scribble his reactions to his reading on the pages themselves,” relates Joseph Blotner in William Faulkner’s Library: A Catalogue (1964). “Neither did he mark words or lines. There is only one reliable sign of esteem for books in his library. Those he cared about he inscribed, usually with his name, the date, and the place in ink” (7). Faulkner marked two hundred and fifty-five books in this manner; “at the time of his death in July, 1962, he had close to twelve hundred volumes drawn from the literature of more than two dozen countries” (3–4); those he signed were rare; those he signed twice were even rarer.4