William Faulkner

William Cuthbert Faulkner (September 25, 1897 – July 6, 1962) was a Nobel Prize-winning novelist from Mississippi. He is regarded as one of America's most influential fiction writers.

Faulkner was known for using long, serpentine sentences and meticulously chosen diction, in stark contrast to the minimalist style of his longtime rival, Ernest Hemingway. Some consider Faulkner to be the only true American Modernist prose fiction writer of the 1930s, following in the experimental tradition of European writers such as James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Marcel Proust and Thomas Mann. His work is known for literary devices like stream of consciousness, multiple narrations or points of view, and narrative time shifts.

Along with Mark Twain and possibly Tennessee Williams, Faulkner is of the highest level of importance of "Southern" writers.

Life

Faulkner was born William Falkner (without a "u") in New Albany, Mississippi, and raised in and heavily influenced by that state, as well as by the history and culture of the South. 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 in nearby Tippah County. Perhaps most importantly, he wrote several novels and other works, establishing a literary tradition in the family. More relevantly, Colonel Falkner served as the model for Colonel John Sartoris in his great-grandson's writing.

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 position of 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 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 still did not see any of the World War I wartime action. The definitive reason for Faulkner's change in the spelling of his last name is still unknown. Some possibilities include adding an "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 influenced 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.

On writing, Faulkner remarked, "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," in an interview with The Paris Review in 1956.

Works

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). Faulkner was a prolific writer of short stories: his first short story collection, These 13 (1932), includes many of his most acclaimed (and most frequently anthologized) stories, including "A Rose for Emily," "Barn Burning," "Red Leaves," "That Evening Sun," and "Dry September." In 1931 in an effort to make money, Faulkner crafted Sanctuary, a sensationalist "pulp fiction"-styled novel. Andre Malraux characterised "Sanctuary" as "intrusion of Greek tragedy in the pulp fiction". Its themes of evil and corruption (bearing Southern Gothic tones) resonate to this day. A sequel to the book, Requiem for a Nun, is the only play that he 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 was also an acclaimed writer of mysteries, publishing a collection of crime fiction, Knight's Gambit, that featured Gavin Stevens (who also appeared in Light in August, Go Down, Moses, The Town, Intruder in the Dust, and the short story Hog Pawn), an attorney, wise to the ways of folk living in Yoknapatawpha County. He set many of his short stories and novels in his fictional Yoknapatawpha County, based on—and nearly identical to in terms of geography—Lafayette County, of which his hometown of Oxford, Mississippi, is the county seat; Yoknapatawpha was his very own "postage stamp" and it is considered to be one of the most monumental fictional creations in the history of literature. His former home in Oxford, Rowan Oak, is operated as a museum by the University of Mississippi. Faulkner 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, both directed by Howard Hawks). Faulkner started an affair with Hawks' secretary, Meta Carpenter. Faulkner was rather famous for drinking as well, and throughout his life was known to be an alcoholic.

An apocryphal story regarding Faulkner in his Hollywood period found him with a case of writer's block at the studio. He told Hawks he was having a hard time concentrating and would like to write at home. Hawks was agreeable, and Faulkner left. Several days passed,with no word from the writer. Hawks telephoned Faulkner's hotel and found that Faulkner had checked out several days earlier. It seems Faulkner had been quite literal and had returned home to Mississippi to finish the screenplay.

According to rumor, Faulkner's alcoholism was particularly severe after a major accomplishment, when he would go on prolonged binges. Normally, during his drinking bouts he would stay in bed and have various family members bring him his drinks and keep him company. An interesting anecdote describes Faulkner after his winning of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1949, when he drank heavily in anticipation of his departure for Stockholm. His nephew brought him a drink and began to talk about his triumphs in a recent football game, which had taken place on the same day Faulkner had been told he had to sail for the prize ceremony. Despite his inebriation, Faulkner put two and two together and realized that a family member had intentionally lied to him about the true date of his Nobel Prize reception in order to ensure his sobriety at the event; he then resumed drinking steadily until the actual date. It is said that his speech was not noted for its greatness until the next day, when it appeared in writing, because Mr. Faulkner 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. Recordings of the Nobel Prize speech—which appear on "Faulkner Reads" with sections from As I Lay Dying, The Old Man, and A Fable—were recorded in a studio after the actual event. In it he remarked, "I decline to accept the end of man [...] Man will not only endure, but prevail...." Both events were fully in character. 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. It is not specified whether this recording is live or if it was made later in a studio, but reverberation, echo, and ambient noises, along with hesitations and mispronunciations, plus minor differences of style from the published text, seem to indicate it is indeed live.

An unverified story has it that before Faulkner's death in 1962, the author John Steinbeck called him to ask for advice regarding his own Nobel Prize acceptance speech. The two great American authors were not known to be great mutual admirers, but Faulkner is said to have told Steinbeck that he had no advice to offer as he was too drunk to remember it.

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 (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 (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 (II)" (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

New World Encyclopedia writers and editors rewrote and completed the Wikipedia article in accordance with New World Encyclopedia standards. This article abides by terms of the Creative Commons CC-by-sa 3.0 License (CC-by-sa), which may be used and disseminated with proper attribution. Credit is due under the terms of this license that can reference both the New World Encyclopedia contributors and the selfless volunteer contributors of the Wikimedia Foundation. To cite this article click here for a list of acceptable citing formats.The history of earlier contributions by wikipedians is accessible to researchers here:

• William Faulkner  ^history

The history of this article since it was imported to New World Encyclopedia:

• History of "William Faulkner"

Note: Some restrictions may apply to use of individual images which are separately licensed.