Quentin Tarantino's Escape from History

Like any great figure of mythology, Quentin Tarantino’s first name alone contains his very essence, a kind of emblem in the oldest sense. His mother named him Quentin in honor of two of her favorite fictional characters: Quint Asper, a half-white, half-Cherokee played by Burt Reynolds in 50 episodes of the TV series Gunsmoke; and a character from Faulkner’s The Sound and The Fury—not the Harvard educated suicide Quentin, but rather his niece, Miss Quentin, she with “the fire in her eyes and on her mouth.”