William Faulkner

William Cuthbert Faulkner (September 25, 1897 – July 6, 1962) was a Nobel Prize-winning novelist from Mississippi who is regarded as one of America's most influential fiction writers. Some consider Faulkner to be the only truly Modernist American fiction-writer of the his times, following in the experimental tradition of European writers such as James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Marcel Proust and Thomas Mann. His work is known for its long, winding sentences and complex allusions, and for its use of the literary devices of Modernism such as stream-of-consciousness narration, multiple unreliable narrators, and non-chronological plot construction. Along with Mark Twain and Tennessee Williams, Faulkner is often considered one of the most important writers in the history of the American South. His ability to draw the reader into the heart of Southern culture—with all of its strife and tensions—while perserving a profound sense of American history is unrivalled, and Faulkner is frequently considered of the greatest American authors of all time.

Life

Faulkner was born William Falkner (without a "u") in New Albany, Mississippi. His great-grandfather, William Clark Falkner, was an important figure in northern Mississippi who served as a colonel in the Confederate Army, founded a railroad, and gave his name to the town of Falkner, Mississippi. Perhaps most importantly, Colonel Falkner wrote several novels and other works, establishing a literary tradition in the family.

It is understandable that the younger Falkner was influenced by the history of his family and the region in which they lived. Mississippi marked his sense of humor, his sense of the tragic relationship between blacks and whites, his keen characterization of usual Southern characters and his timeless themes, one of them being that fiercely intelligent people dwelled behind the façades of good old boys and Southern simpletons. After being snubbed by the United States Army because of his height, Faulkner first joined the Canadian and then the Royal Air Force, yet he did not see any combat action in World War I. Faulkner began to change the spelling of his name around this time, and the definitive reason remains a topic of speculation. Some possibilities include that he added the "u" to appear more British when entering the Royal Air Force, or so that his name would come across as more aristocratic. He may have also simply kept a misspelling that an early editor had made.

Although Faulkner is heavily identified with Mississippi, he was living in New Orleans in 1925 when he wrote his first novel, Soldiers' Pay, after being cajoled by Sherwood Anderson into trying fiction. The small house at 624 Pirate's Alley, just around the corner from St. Louis Cathedral, is now the premises of Faulkner House Books, and also serves as the headquarters of the Pirate's Alley Faulkner Society.

Faulkner the Writer

In an interview with The Paris Review in 1956, Faulkner had this to say on the art of writing: "Let the writer take up surgery or bricklaying if he is interested in technique. There is no mechanical way to get the writing done, no shortcut. The young writer would be a fool to follow a theory. Teach yourself by your own mistakes; people learn only by error. The good artist believes that nobody is good enough to give him advice. He has supreme vanity. No matter how much he admires the old writer, he wants to beat him."

Faulkner heeded his own advice. Although deeply influenced by a number of Modernist authors such as Proust and Joyce, the "old writer" that Faulkner most sought "to beat" was none other than Joseph Conrad. Faulkner was fascinated by Conrad's ability to juggle narrative layers in his fiction, concealing a story within a story within a story (as in Heart of Darkness), or telling a story from the point-of-view of a narrator who has never met any of the protagonists (as in Victory), and drew upon these techniques pioneered in Conrad's works for his own narratives of the American South. In Faulkner's fictions, the technique of shifting and at times unreliable points-of-view is central to an understanding of the themes, because it is through the combination of a number of often conflicting narrative voices that Faulkner is able illuminate the the contradictory mysteries of human experience in ways that no single, omniscient narrator could ever accomplish.

Faulkner's most celebrated novels include The Sound and the Fury (1929), As I Lay Dying (1930), Light in August (1932), The Unvanquished (1938), and Absalom, Absalom! (1936). In 1931 in an effort to make money, Faulkner crafted Sanctuary, a sensationalist "pulp fiction"-styled novel. Its themes of evil and corruption resonate to this day. A sequel to the book, Requiem for a Nun, is the only play that Faulkner published. It includes an introduction that is actually one sentence spanning more than a page. He received a Pulitzer Prize for A Fable, and won National Book Awards for his Collected Stories (1951) and A Fable (1955).

Faulkner set many of his short stories and novels in his fictional Yoknapatawpha County, based on Lafayette County, Mississippi; Yoknapatawpha was Faulkner's very own "postage stamp" and it is considered to be one of the most monumental fictional creations in the history of literature. Faulkner also wrote two volumes of poetry — The Marble Faun (1924) and A Green Bough (1933), neither of which was well received.

Later years

In the later years, Faulkner moved to Hollywood to be a screenwriter (producing scripts for Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep and Ernest Hemingway's To Have and Have Not]]).

An interesting anecdote describes Faulkner after his winning of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1949. It is said that his speech was not noted for its greatness until the next day, when it appeared in writing, because Mr. Faulkner was inebriated, had stood too far from the microphone, had mumbled, and had spoken with his usual deep Southern drawl, making it almost impossible for those in attendance to hear or understand him. Only when it appeared in print did many of the members of the Nobel Committee realize its profundity, and Faulkner's acceptance speech is now considered one of the greatest speeches delivered for the prize. In it he remarked, "I decline to accept the end of man [...] I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's duty is to write about these things." Faulkner donated his Nobel winnings "to establish a fund to support and encourage new fiction writers," eventually resulting in the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.

The text of the Nobel Prize speech is also available on the website of the Nobel Foundation [1], together with a partial audio recording.

Faulkner served as Writer-in-Residence at the University of Virginia from 1957 until his death in 1962 of a heart attack.

Bibliography

Novels

• Soldiers' Pay (1926)
• Mosquitoes (1927)
• Sartoris (Flags in the Dust) (1929)
• The Sound and the Fury (1929)
• As I Lay Dying (1930)
• Sanctuary (novel)|Sanctuary (1931)
• Light in August (1932)
• Pylon (1935)
• Absalom, Absalom! (1936)
• The Unvanquished (1938)
• If I Forget Thee Jerusalem (The Wild Palms/Old Man) (1939)
• Go Down, Moses (1942)
• Intruder in the Dust (1948)
• Requiem for a Nun (1951)
• A Fable (1954)
• The Reivers (1962)
• Flags in the Dust (1973)

Snopes Trilogy

• 1. The Hamlet (1940)
• 2. The Town (1957)
• 3. The Mansion (book)|The Mansion (1959)

Short stories

• "Landing in Luck" (1919)
• "The Hill" (1922)
• "New Orleans"
• "Mirrors of Chartres Street" (1925)
• "Damon and Pythias Unlimited" (1925)
• "Jealousy" (1925)
• "Cheest" (1925)
• "Out of Nazareth" (1925)
• "The Kingdom of God" (1925)
• "The Rosary" (1925)
• "The Cobbler" (1925)
• "Chance" (1925)
• "Sunset" (1925)
• "The Kid Learns" (1925)
• "The Liar" (1925)
• "Home" (1925)
• "Episode" (1925)
• "Country Mice" (1925)
• "Yo Ho and Two Bottles of Rum" (1925)
• "Music - Sweeter than the Angels Sing"
• "A Rose for Emily" (1930)
• "Honor" (1930)
• "Thrift" (1930)
• "Red Leaves" (1930)
• "Ad Astra" (1931)
• "Dry September" (1931)
• "That Evening Sun" (1931)
• "Hair" (1931)
• "Spotted Horses" (1931)
• "The Hound" (1931)
• "Fox Hunt" (1931)
• "Carcassonne" (1931)
• "Divorce in Naples" (1931)
• "Victory" (1931)
• "All the Dead Pilots" (1931)
• "Crevasse" (1931)
• "Mistral" (1931)
• "A Justice" (1931)
• "Dr. Martino" (1931)
• "Idyll in the Desert" (1931)
• "Miss Zilphia Grant" (1932)
• "Death Drag" (1932)
• "Centaur in Brass" (1932)
• "Once Aboard the Lugger (I)" (1932)
• "Lizards in Jamshyd's Courtyard" (1932)
• "Turnabout" (1932)
• "Smoke" (1932)
• "Mountain Victory" (1932)
• "There Was a Queen" (1933)
• "Artist at Home" (1933)
• "Beyond" (1933)
• "Elly" (1934)
• "Pennsylvania Station" (1934)
• "Wash" (1934)
• "A Bear Hunt" (1934)
• "The Leg" (1934)
• "Black Music" (1934)
• "Mule in the Yard" (1934)
• "Ambuscade" (1934)
• "Retreat" (1934)
• "Lo!" (1934)
• "Raid" (1934)
• "Skirmish at Sartoris" (1935)
• "Golden Land" (1935)
• "That Will Be Fine" (1935)
• "Uncle Willy" (1935)
• "Lion" (1935)
• "The Brooch" (1936)
• "Two Dollar Wife" (1936)
• "Fool About a Horse" (1936)
• "The Unvanquished" (1936)
• "Vendee" (1936)
• "Monk" (1937)
• "Barn Burning" (1939)
• "Hand Upon the Waters" (1939)
• "A Point of Law" (1940)
• "The Old People" (1940)
• "Pantaloon in Black" (1940)
• "Gold Is Not Always" (1940)
• "Tomorrow" (1940)
• "The Tall Men" (1941)
• "Two Soldiers" (1942)
• "Delta Autumn" (1942)
• "The Bear" (1942)
• "Afternoon of a Cow" (1943)
• "Shingles for the Lord" (1943)
• "My Grandmother Millard and General Bedford Forrest and the Battle of Harrykin Creek" (1943)
• "Shall Not Perish" (1943)
• "Appendix, Compson, 1699-1945" (1946)
• "An Error in Chemistry" (1946)
• "A Courtship" (1948)
• "Knight's Gambit" (1949)
• "A Name for the City" (1950)
• "Notes on a Horsethief" (1951)
• "Mississippi" (1954)
• "Sepulture South: Gaslight" (1954)
• "Race at Morning" (1955)
• "By the People" (1955)
• "Hell Creek Crossing" (1962)
• "Mr. Acarius" (1965)
• "The Wishing Tree" (1967)
• "Al Jackson" (1971)
• "And Now What's To Do" (1973)
• "Nympholepsy" (1973)
• "The Priest" (1976)
• "Mayday" (1977)
• "Frankie and Johnny" (1978)
• "Don Giovanni" (1979)
• "Peter" (1979)
• "A Portrait of Elmer" (1979)
• "Adolescence" (1979)
• "Snow" (1979)
• "Moonlight" (1979)
• "With Caution and Dispatch" (1979)
• "Hog Pawn" (1979)
• "A Dangerous Man" (1979)
• "A Return" (1979)
• "The Big Shot" (1979)
• "Once Aboard the Lugger" (1979)
• "Dull Tale" (1979)
• "Evangeline" (1979)
• "Love" (1988)
• "Christmas Tree" (1995)
• "Rose of Lebanon" (1995)
• "Lucas Beauchamp" (1999)

Poetry

• Vision in Spring (1921)
• The Marble Faun (1924)
• A Green Bough (1933)
• This Earth, a Poem (1932)
• Mississippi Poems (1979)
• Helen, a Courtship and Mississippi Poems (1981)

Discography

• The William Faulkner Audio Collection. Caedmon, 2003. Five hours on five discs includes Faulkner reading his 1949 Nobel Prize acceptance speech and excerpts from As I Lay Dying, The Old Man and A Fable, plus readings by Debra Winger ("A Rose for Emily," "Barn Burning"), Keith Carradine ("Spotted Horses") and Arliss Howard ("That Evening Sun," "Wash"). Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award.
• William Faulkner Reads: The Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech, Selections from As I Lay Dying, A Fable, The Old Man. Caedmon/Harper Audio, 1992. Cassette. ISBN 1-55994-572-9
• William Faulkner Reads from His Work. Arcady Series, MGM E3617 ARC, 1957. Faulkner reads from The Sound and The Fury (side one) and Light in August (side two). Produced by Jean Stein, who also did the liner notes with Edward Cole. Cover photograph by Robert Capa (Magnum).

Listen to

• William Faulkner reads the 1949 Nobel Prize acceptance speech and excerpts from As I Lay Dying, The Old Man and A Fable.

External links

• William Faulkner on the Web
• Faulkner literary criticism
• William Faulkner at the Mississippi Writers Project
• The Paris Review Interview
• Nobel Prize in Literature 1949 Acceptance Speech (text and audio)
• Machine translation or Faulkner?

Credits

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