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The Life of William Faulkner

 (1897-1962)

            William Faulkner was a prolific American novelist known for his depictions of the south, as well as for the difficulty of reading his works. Faulkner centered the majority of his novels on the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, where he hosted such novels as SARTORIS (1929), THE SOUND AND THE FURY (1929), AS I LAY DYING (1930), and the Snopes trilogy, which included THE HAMLET (1940), THE TOWN (1957), and THE MANSION (1959). Though he suffered in obscurity for a good portion of his literary career, Faulkner was finally rewarded for all of his effort after the publication of THE PORTABLE FAULKNER with the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1949 "for his powerful and artistically unique contribution to the modern American novel."

            William Faulkner was born William Cuthbert Falkner in New Albany, Mississippi, in 1897, to Murray Charles and Maud Butler Falkner. Faulkner came from a family with a rich history of adventure and wartime heroics. After spending a good amount of time in his grandfather's massive library, Faulkner began to write poetry, sparking a lifelong interest, although he later admitted he was a "failed poet." Though he was the quarterback of Oxford High School's football team, Faulkner did not excel so easily in the classroom environment. Instead of sticking with school, Faulkner dropped out and tried to join the army to fight in World War One.

            However, because of his height, Faulkner was rejected for service. Instead, Faulkner joined the Royal Canadian Air Force. Despite serving in the RAF during WWI, Faulkner was never in combat. It was around this time that William Falkner became William Faulkner after an error on his enlistment papers. After the armistice in 1918, Faulkner began studying literature at the University of Mississippi. Here, Faulkner continued to write second-rate poetry (at least, it was in the eyes of his professors and peers). At the age of twenty-three, Faulkner left the university and moved to New York City. Without a degree, Faulkner had to take whatever he could find. He became a bookstore clerk that same year and made associations with the wife of Sherwood Anderson. She introduced the two later in New Orleans and began a long-lasting friendship between the two men. After spending some time in New York, Faulkner returned to Oxford, Mississippi, and became a postmaster at the University of Mississippi. The job would not last long, though, as he Faulkner was soon fired for reading on the job. The jobless author proceeded to Louisiana.

            In New Orleans, Faulkner spent time under his pseudo-mentor and deeply impacting literary influence, Sherwood Anderson. After publishing a collection of poems entitled THE MARBLE FAUN (1924), Anderson suggested that Faulkner write fiction. The young writer took this advice to heart, and began writing a novel. SOLDIER'S PAY (1926) was the story of a World War One soldier who returns to the United States after being damaged physically and emotionally during the war. The novel was published with the help of Anderson, who had earlier become well-known throughout the literary scene after the publication of his novel, WINESBURG, OHIO. He said he would get Faulkner's novel published if and only if he didn't have to read it. Faulkner agreed to the deal, and SOLDIER'S PAY was published in 1926. The novel received mixed reviews and was largely ignored by the public.

            Though his first novel was considered a failure, Faulkner was undeterred. What got him through defeat after defeat in his career was an inner confidence inherent throughout his entire being. Years later, Faulkner would be playing a game of golf in Hollywood with a friend and actor Gary Cooper, who later starred in a film for which Faulkner wrote the script. When Cooper asked him who he thought the greatest authors of the time were Faulkner dutifully recited a list that included James Joyce. The last name, however, he said with some pride because it was his own. "Oh, you're a writer?" Cooper asked Faulkner, to which the author replied, "Yes I am. What do you happen to do?" It was this narcissism that enabled the novelist to keep on writing, though his literary career appeared to be going no where time and time again.

            After his first novel, Faulkner wrote MOSQUITOES (1927), a depiction of the life of artists and intellectuals living in New Orleans at the time. The second novel was also unsuccessful with critics and in sales. The next novel that Faulkner wrote was SARTORIS (1929), the first novel to be located in the fictional region Yoknapatawpha County. The novel was retitled FLAGS IN THE DUST when it was republished years later in 1973. The novel failed to capture much interest, but a legend was born. The fictional region of Mississippi is home to the Bundrens of AS I LAY DYING, the Compsons of THE SOUND AND THE FURY, and the Snopes family of THE HAMLET, THE TOWN, and THE MANSION.  Almost all of the novels concerning the inhabitants of Yoknapatawapha County that Faulkner wrote were experimental in nature, with different, writing styles and narrative styles being used in each story. On thing that is consistent throughout all of these novels are the recurring themes of racism, the disintegration of the southern family, the mysticism inherent in the south, the improbability of the survival of the south, and the class division among the poor folks and wealthy plantation owners.

            In 1929, at the age of thirty-two, Faulkner married Estelle Oldham Franklin, whom he had known earlier during his childhood. That following year, Faulkner and his bride moved into an antebellum house that Faulkner called Rowan Oak after the legend of the Rowan tree mentioned in Sir James Frazer's The Golden Bough. The gigantic mansion was located in Oxford, Mississippi, where Faulkner had grown up. He spent long hours refurnishing and restoring the old house.

            It was here where Faulkner finished THE SOUND AND THE FURY (1929), a novel that got its name from a Shakespearean quote stating, "It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." Indeed, a large part of the novel centers around a retarded man named Benjy Compson who spends his time wandering around the golf course of a country club and reminiscing about the past. The rest of the novel depicts the rest of the Compson clan at different times in their lives, including Quentin Compson, who later reappeared in ABSALOM, ABSALOM! (1936). THE SOUND AND THE FURY was the first Faulkner novel to gain some recognition, and he regarded it as his "most splendid failure."

            The following year, Faulkner wrote AS I LAY DYING (1930) during the night shift of his job as an electrician. The novel concerns the Bundren family and their epic struggle to bring the corpse of Addie Bundren to her birth place, Jefferson, Mississippi. Along the way, the family meets many obstacles, but manages to overcome. Through the use of first-person narratives for each and every member of the Bundren family, Faulkner makes it apparent that many of the Bundrens are interested in going to Jefferson for their own reasons. For Dewey Dell Bundren, it is abortion pills, and for Anse Bundren, who was husband to Addie, it is the prospect of getting a new set of dentures. Things naturally go awry before the novel's end. The book was published to a meager reception, but today it s considered one of Faulkner's masterworks.

            Following these two financial failures, Faulkner wrote a novel was "deliberately conceived to make money." In SANCTUARY (1931), a Mississippi debutante named Temple Drake is kidnapped, raped, and left to find solitude in a brothel in Memphis. In this novel, Faulkner experiments with page-long sentences, new forms of sentence structure, narrative methods similar to AS I LAY DYING and THE SOUND AND THE FURY, and small details that are spoken once and required for readers to know in order to fully understand the novel's story as a whole. This story of murder, rape, and violence was the only novel by Faulkner to achieve any measure of success  commercially until THE PORTABLE FAULKNER in 1946. Until then, though, Faulkner had to find a way to support his wife and himself. Faulkner moved to Hollywood shortly after the publication of SANCTUARY, and began earning money by writing movie scripts. among the films he wrote scripts for are THE BIG SLEEP, adapted from the Raymond Chandler novel, and TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT, a work by Ernest Hemingway that he felt was a failure. Not wanting to get his hands dirty on adapting a novel he didn't enjoy writing in the first place, Hemingway refused to write the script for the latter film, so it was given to Faulkner. During this period of writing solely for money, Faulkner wrote a number of novels that sold no better than his earlier works. Among these novels are PYLON (1934), ABSALOM, ABSALOM! (1936), and THE WILD PALMS (1939).

            After leaving Hollywood for a brief period of time, Faulkner returned in 1945. The next year came the publication of THE PORTABLE FAULKNER, who reintroduced the author to the world, and gained him a measure of fame at the age of forty-nine. In 1949, Faulkner was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. However, Faulkner had spent too many years drinking in excess after the failure of his books in the marketplace. He was an alcoholic, and his wife was addicted to drugs. Faulkner considered divorcing her, but instead began to carry on an affair with a young woman who was an aspiring writer herself. He later collaborated with her in writing REQUIEM FOR A NUN (1951), which is unlike all of Faulkner's other works in that it is a play. Following this play was A FABLE (1954), which was the story of a Christ figure living and dying during WWI. For this novel, Faulkner won the Pulitzer Prize. After the writing of A FABLE, Faulkner moved away from Hollywood, and back to Mississippi.

            Following A FABLE, Faulkner concluded the Snopes trilogy with THE TOWN in 1957, and the MANSION in 1959. In 1962, Faulkner wrote his last novel, THE REIVERS, which depicted a young man who takes his grandfather's car and proceeds to live life with reckless abandon. For this final effort, Faulkner was awarded the Pulitzer Prize once more now, alcoholism had taken its toll on the novelist, and on July 7, 1962, William Faulkner died of a coronary occlusion. His life's work spent "in the agony and sweat of the human spirit" was rewarded during his lifetime, and he remains one of the few truly great authors to live to see his success. Unlike the unfortunate Fitzgerald, Faulkner managed to spend his life toiling away at writing without ever depending on the bottle as much as his contemporary, but in the end, alcoholism caught up with both of these great writers.

 The Works of William Faulkner

Written by Cyanne Topaum

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