William Cuthbert Faulkner ( ; né Falkner; September 25, 1897 – July 6, 1962) was an American writer. He is best known for his novels and short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, a stand-in for Lafayette County where he spent most of his life. Winner of the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature, Faulkner is one of the most celebrated writers of American literature, often considered the greatest writer of Southern literature and regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of the 20th century.
Faulkner was born in New Albany, Mississippi, and raised in Oxford, Mississippi. During World War I, he joined the Royal Canadian Air Force, but did not serve in combat. Returning to Oxford, he attended the University of Mississippi for three semesters before dropping out. He moved to New Orleans, where he wrote his first novel Soldiers' Pay (1925). He went back to Oxford and wrote Sartoris (1927), his first work set in Yoknapatawpha County. In 1929, he published The Sound and the Fury. The following year, he wrote As I Lay Dying. Later that decade, he wrote Light in August; Absalom, Absalom!; and The Wild Palms. He also worked as a screenwriter, contributing to Howard Hawks's To Have and Have Not and The Big Sleep, adapted from Raymond Chandler's novel.Phillips (1980), p. 50.
Faulkner's reputation grew following publication of Malcolm Cowley's The Portable Faulkner (1946), and he was awarded the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature for "his powerful and unique contribution to the modern American novel." He is the only Mississippi-born Nobel laureate. Two of his works, A Fable (1954) and The Reivers (1962), won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Faulkner died from a heart attack on July 6, 1962, following a fall from his horse the month before. Ralph Ellison called him "the greatest artist the South has produced".
Life Childhood and heritage
Faulkner was born on September 25, 1897, in New Albany, Mississippi,Minter (1980), p. 1. the first of four sons of Murry Cuthbert Falkner and Maud Butler. His family was upper middle-class, but "not quite of the old feudal cotton aristocracy". After Maud rejected Murry's plan to become a rancher in Texas,Minter (1980), p. 7. the family moved to Oxford, Mississippi, in 1902,Minter (1980), p. 8. where Faulkner's father established a livery stable and hardware store before becoming the University of Mississippi's business manager.O'Connor (1959), p. 4. Except for short periods elsewhere, Faulkner lived in Oxford for the rest of his life.
Faulkner spent his boyhood listening to stories told to him by his elders – stories that spanned the Civil War, slavery, the Ku Klux Klan, and the Faulkner family.Minter, David L. William Faulkner, His Life and Work. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980; Young William was greatly influenced by the history of his family and the region in which he lived. Mississippi marked his sense of humor, his sense of the tragic position of "black and white" Americans, his characterization of Southern characters, and his timeless themes, including fiercely intelligent people who are dwelling behind the façades of good ol' boys and simpletons. He was particularly influenced by stories of his great-grandfather William Clark Falkner, who had become a near legendary figure in North Mississippi. Born into poverty, the elder Falkner was a strict disciplinarian and was a Confederate colonel. Tried and acquitted twice on charges of murder, he became a member of the Mississippi House and became a part-owner of a railroad before being murdered by a co-owner. Faulkner incorporated many aspects of his great-grandfather's biography into his later works.O'Connor (1959), pp. 4–5.
Faulkner initially excelled in school and skipped the second grade. However, beginning somewhere in the fourth and fifth grades, he became a quieter and more withdrawn child. He occasionally played truant and became indifferent about schoolwork. Instead, he took an interest in studying the history of Mississippi. The decline of his performance in school continued, and Faulkner wound up repeating the eleventh and twelfth grades, never graduating from high school. As a teenager in Oxford, Faulkner dated Estelle Oldham (1897–1972), the popular daughter of Major Lemuel and Lida Oldham, and he also believed he would marry her.Parini (2004), pp. 22–29. However, Estelle dated other boys during their romance, and, in 1918, Cornell Franklin (five years Faulkner's senior) proposed marriage to her before Faulkner did. She accepted.Parini (2004), pp. 36–37.
Trip to the North and early writings
When he was 17, Faulkner met Phil Stone, who became an important early influence on his writing. Stone was four years his senior and came from one of Oxford's older families; he was passionate about literature and had bachelor's degrees from Yale and the University of Mississippi. Stone read and was impressed by some of Faulkner's early poetry, becoming one of the first to recognize and encourage Faulkner's talent. Stone mentored the young Faulkner, introducing him to the works of writers like James Joyce, who influenced Faulkner's own writing. In his early 20s, Faulkner gave poems and short stories he had written to Stone in hopes of them being published. Stone sent these to publishers, but they were uniformly rejected. In spring 1918, Faulkner traveled to live with Stone at Yale, his first trip to the North.Zeitlin (2016), p. 15. Through Stone, Faulkner met writers like Sherwood Anderson, Robert Frost, and Ezra Pound.O'Connor (1959), p. 5.
During the First World War, Faulkner attempted to join the US Army. There are accounts of this that indicate he was rejected for being under weight and his short stature of 5'5". Other accounts purport to prove that the aforementioned accounts are false.Zeitlin (2016), pp. 17–18. Although he initially planned to join the British Army in hopes of being commissioned as an officer,Zeitlin (2016), pp. 15–17. Faulkner instead joined the Royal Air Force (Canada) with a forged letter of reference and left Yale to receive training in Toronto.Zeitlin (2016), pp. 17, 20. He enlisted in Toronto on July 10, 1918, as a Private (II Class), No.173799, in the RAF (C) but never saw active service overseas during the First World War, only training at the recruit depot in Toronto.
On January 4, 1919, he was discharged as a Private (II Class) due to the end of the War, having served 179 days. Despite claiming so in his letters, Faulkner did not receive cockpit training or ever fly.Zeitlin (2016), pp. 24–25. Returning to Oxford in December 1918, Faulkner told acquaintances false war-stories and even faked a war wound.Zeitlin (2016), pp. 26–27.
In 1918, Faulkner's surname changed from "Falkner" to "Faulkner". According to one story, a careless typesetter made an error. When the misprint appeared on the title page of his first book, Faulkner was asked whether he wanted the change. He supposedly replied, "Either way suits me."Nelson, Randy F. The Almanac of American Letters Los Altos, California: William Kaufmann, Inc., 1981: pp. 63–64. His 1918 Attestation Papers for the RAF (C) note his name as "Faulkner". In adolescence, Faulkner began writing poetry almost exclusively. He did not write his first novel until 1925. His literary influences are deep and wide. He once stated that he modeled his early writing on the Romantic era in late 18th- and early 19th-century England.
He attended the University of Mississippi, enrolling in 1919, studying for three semesters before dropping out in November 1920. Faulkner joined the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity, and pursued his dream to become a writer. He skipped classes often and received a "D" grade in English. However, some of his poems were published in campus publications.Coughlan, Robert. The Private World of William Faulkner, New York: Harper & Brothers, 1953 Porter, Carolyn. William Faulkner , New York: Oxford University Press, 2007; In 1922, his poem "Portrait" was published in the New Orleans literary magazine Double Dealer. The magazine published his "New Orleans" short story collection three years later.Koch (2007), p. 57. After dropping out, he took a series of odd jobs: at a New York City bookstore, as a carpenter in Oxford, and as the Ole Miss postmaster. He resigned from the post office with the declaration: "I will be damned if I propose to be at the beck and call of every itinerant scoundrel who has two cents to invest in a postage stamp."O'Connor (1959), p. 6.
New Orleans and early novels
While most writers of Faulkner's generation traveled to and lived in Europe, Faulkner remained writing in the United States.Pikoulis (1982), p. ix. Faulkner spent the first half of 1925 in New Orleans, Louisiana, where many bohemian artists and writers lived, specifically in the French Quarter where Faulkner lived beginning in March.Koch (2007), pp. 55–56. During his time in New Orleans, Faulkner's focus drifted from poetry to prose and his literary style made a marked transition from Victorian to modernist.Koch (2007), pp. 56, 58. The Times-Picayune published several of his short works of prose.Koch (2007), p. 58.
Beginning in 1925, Faulkner shared a St. Peter Street apartment with the architect and artist William Spratling. The following year they privately published Sherwood Anderson and Other Famous Creoles, a parody of Miguel Covarrubias's The Prince of Wales and Other Famous Americans, combining Spratling's caricatures of the French Quarter literary circle with captions and an introduction by Faulkner.
During the same period, Faulkner wrote his first novel, Soldiers' Pay, in New Orleans. Anderson helped secure its publication, as well as that of Mosquitoes, by recommending both works to his publisher.Hannon, Charles. "Faulkner, William". The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature. Jay Parini (2004), Oxford University Press, Inc. The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature: (e-reference edition). Oxford University Press These and Faulkner's other early works resembled those of contemporaries such as Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, at times nearly appropriating phrases.McKay (2009), pp. 119–121.
The miniature house at 624 Pirate's Alley, just around the corner from St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans, is now the site of Faulkner House Books, where it also serves as the headquarters of the Pirate's Alley Faulkner Society.
During the summer of 1927, Faulkner wrote his first novel set in his fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Flags in the Dust. This novel drew heavily from the traditions and history of the South, in which Faulkner had been engrossed in his youth. He was extremely proud of the novel upon its completion and he believed it a significant step up from his previous two novels—however, when submitted for publication to Boni & Liveright, it was rejected. Faulkner was devastated by this rejection but he eventually allowed his literary agent, Ben Wasson, to edit the text, and the novel was published in 1929 as Sartoris. The work was notable in that it was his first novel that dealt with the Civil War rather than the contemporary emphasis on World War I and its legacy.McKay (2009), p. 119. Eventually Faulkner's daughter, Jill, approached University of Virginia professor Douglas Day about restoring the text. Almost a fourth of the original manuscript had been cut by Wasson to meet the demands of publishers Harcourt, Brace in 1929. Working from a surviving typescript, Day reinstated cut passages but also included at least one added section from the published text. This new edition, published in 1973, also restored Faulkner's original title, Flags in the Dust. A third version by Noel Polk has since replaced Day's and is considered the definitive text by Random House, the current publishers of Faulkner's fiction.
The Sound and the Fury