There is a heavily disputed topic in Professor of Comparative Literature Arnold Weinstein's family. It's not whether he or his twin brother Philip, a professor of English literature at Swarthmore College, is the more impressive William Faulkner scholar, or what exactly smells like dirt in Faulkner's "The Sound and the Fury." The question is, are the twins - both of whom have undergraduate degrees from Princeton University and doctoral degrees from Harvard University - fraternal or identical?
The brothers, who grew up in Memphis, Tenn., in the 1940s and 1950s, admit they are similar in many ways. Growing up, they played on the basketball team and were involved in all the same activities, Arnold said.
"We were pretty inseparable," he said.
Arnold said their mother had no idea she was having twins until he popped out, 10 minutes after Philip was born. The Weinsteins were tiny as babies, weighing around four pounds each.
"We were lucky to make it," Arnold said, adding that his mother said "she wept when she saw us ... we had fingers like matchsticks."
Arnold said he thinks the twins are identical and that most people agree.
"Somehow I think we really correspond more to the same model. We have too many of the same quirks," he said.
Philip, who teaches English at Swarthmore, said his mother always told the twins they were fraternal because there were two afterbirths.
"I think it's strange, if we're fraternal, that we're so alike," Philip said.
Whether identical or fraternal, the twins have always been able to complement each other without competition, Arnold said.
"My wife is convinced that it made both of us into good spouses," Arnold said. "From in the womb, we were used to sharing space."
Arnold said neither of the twins was well-read growing up, and Faulkner didn't show up on any of their high school reading lists. But when they enrolled at Princeton as undergraduates, where they were also roommates, each one developed a love for the iconic Southern writer.
One professor in particular, Lawrence Holland, taught an English course that Arnold said got him "hooked" on Faulkner for life.
Philip's appreciation for Faulkner took a while to develop: He said his high school attempts to read "Absalom, Absalom!"- one of Faulkner's densest novels - were short-lived. But his tastes soon matured.
"We were hooked by the time we were 19," Philip said.
Why did Faulkner, among the myriad authors they read, so enthrall the brothers?
"He is the most tragic writer," Arnold said. "He is able to write about human subjectivity and consciousness in a way that no other writer has ever done."
Because "his books are easily regarded as impenetrable and unreadable, to read him is also a form of self-discovery. His work can be off-putting but also very rewarding," Arnold said.
"There's an emotional intensity - he lets out all the stops," Philip said. "Baroque and tormented," he is "more experimental than any other 20th-century American novelist."
The twins also connected with Faulkner's view of race relations in the South. With the exception of their black housekeeper, the brothers, who grew up in the South during the years of segregation, never saw the large segment of the population that was black, according to Philip.
"Faulkner writes about race in a compelling way," he said. "He brings it all back to life."
"The race tragedy is one of the reasons neither Arnold or I could bear living in the South," Philip added.
Though neither brother will admit his place among the most highly regarded Faulkner scholars in the country, each twin had positive things to say about the other's career.
"I don't think I'm in that listing at all," Arnold said. "I think that my brother is part of a small group of top people - I think he's the best, but I may have a bias."
The brothers admitted they each approach Faulkner from different angles.
"We're oriented professionally a little differently," Philip said. "My work is probably more responsive to other critical writings and Faulkner as a topic in interpretation and critical theory. ... Arnold comes at him more from his own sensibility. Arnold is freer."
Arnold, who has not written any books exclusively on Faulkner, called his brother "much more of a card-carrying Faulkner scholar," though he said he still makes it his mission at Brown to make the author accessible to his students.
Arnold was asked by television host Oprah Winfrey to give four lectures on Faulkner in 2005 for her online Summer Book Club. He and his brother also each teach a course on Marcel Proust, James Joyce and Faulkner. Arnold said they are the only two scholars to teach a course specifically on these three writers.
Philip, former head of the William Faulkner Society, has published two books focusing on Faulkner - "Faulkner's Subject: A Cosmos No One Owns" and "What Else But Love? The Ordeal of Race in Faulkner and Morrison." Philip currently lives on Martha's Vineyard, Mass., and is working on his third Faulkner book.
So does the brothers' love of Faulkner seep into family dinner conversations?
Though Philip said the twins try to avoid boring the family with Faulkner discussions, Arnold acknowledged that the topic is somewhat unavoidable.
"We've had (those discussions) all our lives, and we still do," he said. "I think (Faulkner) is sort of the permanent furniture in our two brains. He's lodged there."
