William Cuthbert Faulkner (/ˈfɔːknər/;[1][2] 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. A Nobel laureate, Faulkner is one of the most celebrated writers of American literature and often is considered the greatest writer of Southern literature.
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 the fictional 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. The former film, adapted from Ernest Hemingway's novel, is the only film with contributions by two Nobel laureates.[3]
Faulkner's reputation grew following publication of Malcolm Cowley's The Portable Faulkner, and he was awarded the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature for "his powerful and unique contribution to the modern American novel."[4] 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".
Faulkner was born on September 25, 1897, in New Albany, Mississippi,[5] the first of four sons of Murry Cuthbert Falkner and Maud Butler.[6] His family was upper middle-class, but "not quite of the old feudal cotton aristocracy".[7] After Maud rejected Murry's plan to become a rancher in Texas,[8] the family moved to Oxford, Mississippi in 1902,[9] where Faulkner's father established a livery stable and hardware store before becoming the University of Mississippi's business manager.[10][9] Except for short periods elsewhere, Faulkner lived in Oxford for the rest of his life.[6][11]
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.[12] 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.[13] 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 his co-owner. Faulkner incorporated many aspects of his great-grandfather's biography into his later works.[14]
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.[12] 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.[15] 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.[16][note 1]
.jpg/1280px-William_Faulkner_in_Toronto,_Canada_(1918).jpg)
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 their being published. Stone sent these to publishers, but they were uniformly rejected.[17] In spring 1918, Faulkner traveled to live with Stone at Yale, his first trip to the North.[18] Through Stone, Faulkner met writers like Sherwood Anderson, Robert Frost, and Ezra Pound.[19]
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".[19] Other accounts purport to prove that the aforementioned accounts are false.[20]Although he initially planned to join the British Army in hopes of being commissioned as an officer,[21] Faulkner then joined the Canadian RAF with a forged letter of reference and left Yale to receive training in Toronto.[22] Records indicate that Faulkner was never actually a member of the British Royal Flying Corps and never saw active service during the First World War.[23] Despite claiming so in his letters, Faulkner did not receive cockpit training or ever fly.[24] Returning to Oxford in December 1918, Faulkner told acquaintances false war-stories and even faked a war wound.[25]
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."[26] 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.[6]
He attended the University of Mississippi, enrolling in 1919, studying for three semesters before dropping out in November 1920.[27] Faulkner joined the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity, and pursued his dream to become a writer.[28] He skipped classes often and received a "D" grade in English. However, some of his poems were published in campus publications.[17][29] 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.[30] 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."[31]
While most writers of Faulkner's generation traveled to and lived in Europe, Faulkner remained writing in the United States.[32] 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.[33] 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.[34] The Times-Picayune published several of his short works of prose.[35]
After being directly influenced by Sherwood Anderson, Faulkner wrote his first novel, Soldiers' Pay,[6] in New Orleans. Soldiers' Pay and his other early works were written in a style similar to contemporaries Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, at times nearly exactly appropriating phrases.[36] Anderson assisted in the publication of Soldiers' Pay and Mosquitoes by recommending them to his publisher.[37]
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.[38]
During the summer of 1927, Faulkner wrote his first novel set in his fictional Yoknapatawpha County, titled 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.[29][37][note 2] 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.[39]
.jpg/1280px-The_Sound_and_the_Fury_(1929_1st_ed_dust_jacket).jpg)
In autumn 1928, just after his 31st birthday, Faulkner began working on The Sound and the Fury. He started by writing three short stories about a group of children with the last name Compson, but soon began to feel that the characters he had created might be better suited for a full-length novel. Perhaps as a result of disappointment in the initial rejection of Flags in the Dust, Faulkner had now become indifferent to his publishers and wrote this novel in a much more experimental style. In describing the writing process for this work, Faulkner later said, "One day I seemed to shut the door between me and all publisher's addresses and book lists. I said to myself, 'Now I can write.'"[40] After its completion, Faulkner insisted that Wasson not do any editing or add any punctuation for clarity.[29]
In 1929, Faulkner married Estelle Oldham, with Andrew Kuhn serving as best man at the wedding. Estelle brought with her two children from her previous marriage to Cornell Franklin and Faulkner hoped to support his new family as a writer. Faulkner and Estelle later had a daughter, Jill, in 1933. He began writing As I Lay Dying in 1929 while working night shifts at the University of Mississippi Power House. The novel was published in 1930.[41]
Beginning in 1930, Faulkner sent some of his short stories to various national magazines. Several of these were published and brought him enough income to buy a house in Oxford for his family, which he named Rowan Oak.[42] Fueled by a desire to make money, Faulkner wrote Sanctuary.[43] With limited royalties from his work, he published short stories in magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post to supplement his income.[44]
.jpg/1280px-Light_in_August_(1932_dust_jacket_cover).jpg)
By 1932, Faulkner was in need of money. He asked Wasson to sell the serialization rights for his newly completed novel, Light in August, to a magazine for $5,000, but none accepted the offer. Then MGM Studios offered Faulkner work as a screenwriter in Hollywood. Faulkner was not an avid movie goer and had reservations about working in the movie industry. As André Bleikasten comments, he "was in dire need of money and had no idea how to get it…So he went to Hollywood."[45] It has been noted that authors like Faulkner were not always hired for their writing prowess but "to enhance the prestige of the …writers who hired them."[45] He arrived in Culver City, California, in May 1932. The job began a sporadic relationship with moviemaking and with California, which was difficult but he endured in order to earn "a consistent salary that supported his family back home."[46]
Initially, he declared a desire to work on Mickey Mouse cartoons, not realizing that they were produced by Walt Disney Productions and not MGM.[47] His first screenplay was for Today We Live, an adaptation of his short story "Turnabout", which received a mixed response. He then wrote a screen adaptation of Sartoris that was never produced.[44] From 1932 to 1954, Faulkner worked on around 50 films.[48] In early 1944, Faulkner wrote a screenplay adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's novel To Have and Have Not.[49] The film was the first starring Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart. Bogart and Bacall would star in Hawks's The Big Sleep, another film Faulkner worked on.[50]
Faulkner was highly critical of what he found in Hollywood, and he wrote letters that were "scathing in tone, painting a miserable portrait of a literary artist imprisoned in a cultural Babylon."[51] Many scholars have brought attention to the dilemma he experienced and that the predicament had caused him serious unhappiness.[52][46][53] In Hollywood he worked with director Howard Hawks, with whom he quickly developed a friendship, as they both enjoyed drinking and hunting. Howard Hawks' brother, William Hawks, became Faulkner's Hollywood agent. Faulkner continued to find reliable work as a screenwriter from the 1930s to the 1950s.[37][42] While staying in Hollywood, Faulkner adopted a "vagrant" lifestyle, living in brief stints in hotels like the Garden of Allah Hotel and frequenting the bar at the Roosevelt Hotel and the Musso & Frank Grill where he was said to have regularly gone behind the bar to mix his own Mint Juleps.[54][55] He had an extramarital affair with Hawks' secretary and script girl, Meta Carpenter.[56]
With the onset of World War II, in 1942, Faulkner tried to join the United States Air Force but was rejected. He instead worked on local civil defense.[57] The war drained Faulkner of his enthusiasm. He described the war as "bad for writing".[58] Amid this creative slowdown, in 1943, Faulkner began work on a new novel that merged World War I's Unknown Soldier with the Passion of Christ. Published over a decade later as A Fable, it won the 1954 Pulitzer Prize.[59][60] The award for A Fable was a controversial political choice. The jury had selected Milton Lott's The Last Hunt for the prize, but Pulitzer Prize Administrator Professor John Hohenberg convinced the Pulitzer board that Faulkner was long overdue for the award, despite A Fable being a lesser work of his, and the board overrode the jury's selection, much to the disgust of its members.[61]
By the time of The Portable Faulkner's publication, most of his novels had been out of print.[32]
_(photo_by_Carl_van_Vechten).jpg/1280px-William_Faulkner_1954_(2)_(photo_by_Carl_van_Vechten).jpg)