He writes not of the heart but of the glands
What Are You Going Through“He writes not of the heart but of the glands” is William Faulkner’s sharp distinction between literature that attends to the human heart and writing narrowed to bodily impulse. In the book, the sentence first names a failure of courage and artistic purpose, then returns in a defense of fairy tales as stories of deeper truth.
Faulkner’s Critique
The phrase appears in the narrator’s account of Faulkner chastising a younger writer for writing as if he stood among people and watched humanity end. Faulkner’s criticism moves beyond subject matter: the problem is not simply that the writing confronts catastrophe, but that fear has constricted its vision. “He writes not of the heart but of the glands” gives that constriction a memorable, bodily contrast, setting human feeling against a view of life reduced to physical drives.
Fear and Literary Duty
Faulkner identifies the fear of being blown up as a fear shared by writers and everyone else. But, as the narrator recounts his argument, a writer’s duty is to rise above it. The alternative is an act of valor expressed through a return to universal truths: “love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice.” The glands-and-heart opposition thus belongs to an ethical claim about what writing should make possible: not denial of danger, but a vision that does not let fear become the whole measure of human experience. Faulkner warns that without those larger truths, a story will last only a day.
Reappearance in the Defense of Fairy Tales
The sentence’s contrast returns when the narrator’s friend distinguishes fairy tales from mystery stories. Mystery stories may simplify guilt and innocence and provide a kind of closure that real life often withholds; fairy tales, despite their familiar formulas, reach deeper truths. The friend calls them real and mysterious, and the discussion closes by describing them as “of the heart, not of the glands.” The echo turns Faulkner’s phrase into a measure of lasting imaginative power: fairy tales endure not because they escape fear or uncertainty, but because their formal simplicity can carry truths that go beyond sensation and immediate entertainment.
