Author Profile: William Faulkner

William Faulkner

BIO

William Faulkner was one of America's most innovative novelists. In a career lasting more than three decades, Faulkner published 19 novels, more than 80 short stories, 2 books of poems, and numerous essays. He was born in New Albany, Mississippi on September 25, 1897 and lived most of his life in Oxford. Faulkner received the 1949 Nobel Prize for Literature, and two of his novels, A FABLE (1954) and THE REIVERS (1962), each won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. On the morning of July 6, 1962, after twenty days of suffering from back injury, Faulkner died of an unexpected heart attack. He was buried in St. Peter's Cemetery of Oxford.

--- William Faulkner (then named "Falkner") was born in September 1897 in New Albany, Mississippi.

--- Faulkner knew at an early age what he wanted to do with his life. When he entered third grade (after having skipped second) and was asked what he wanted to do when he grew up, he responded, "I want to be a writer like my great-granddaddy."

--- When the United States entered World War I in 1917, Faulkner (still spelled "Falkner" at this time) tried to enlist in the Army Air Corps as a pilot. When he was rejected for being too short, he decided to spell his name "Faulkner" and adopted a British persona, even affecting an English accent, hoping to join the Royal Air Force in Canada. He was accepted and reported for duty in Toronto on July 9, 1917. Nevertheless, he never flew in combat. When the war ended on November 11, 1918, Cadet Faulkner was stationed at the School of Military Aeronautics in Toronto in the third and final phase of pre-flight training. He returned home to Oxford in December 1918, having never left North America for the skies over Europe.

--- Faulkner's most notorious stint as a working man was his role of postmaster at the University of Mississippi post office, which incredibly he held for nearly three years. By all accounts, he was a terrible postmaster. When a postal inspector came to investigate, Faulkner agreed to resign.

--- At the same time Faulkner was working as postmaster, he also volunteered as a scoutmaster for the Oxford Boy Scout troop --- but he was relieved of his duties because of his drinking.

--- Faulkner twice used "Dark House" as a working title for a novel in progress, and both times he changed it for a more impressionistic title: LIGHT IN AUGUST and ABSALOM, ABSALOM!

--- When he was trying to get THE SOUND AND THE FURY published, Faulkner suggested using colored ink as a means of delineating the multiple time periods represented in Benjy's section rather than simply indicating a shift in time with italics, but he was told publishing was not advanced enough to accomplish it.

--- In Faulkner's first Yoknapatawpha novel, SARTORIS, the epitaph he had chosen for John Sartoris, a pilot who dies in the novel, was "I bare him on eagles' wings and brought him unto me." In 1935, when Faulkner's youngest brother, Dean Swift Faulkner, died crashing the airplane Faulkner had sold to him, the same epitaph was used on his gravestone.

--- Faulkner felt tremendous guilt over the death of his brother Dean: he had sold the airplane to Dean, and he had encouraged him in his flying. At the time of Dean's death, Faulkner was writing ABSALOM, ABSALOM!, a novel in which the central mystery concerns the murder of a brother by his brother.

--- According to Faulkner's nephew, James Faulkner, the church which Thomas Sutpen "rode fast to" --- and in which he was married --- in ABSALOM, ABSALOM! is the same church, College Hill Presbyterian Church, in which Faulkner married Estelle Oldham Franklin in 1929.

--- The Compson home in THE SOUND AND THE FURY was based on the Chandler House in Oxford, a few blocks away from Faulkner's childhood home. Faulkner's first-grade teacher, Miss Chandler, lived there with her family, which included a mentally retarded brother who may have been a model for Benjy Compson.

--- When Faulkner first went to MGM to work as a screenwriter in 1932, he volunteered to Story Department chief Samuel Marx to write not feature films but two types of movies he claimed he was most familiar with: newsreels and Mickey Mouse cartoons.

--- Faulkner's film adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's novel TO HAVE AND TO HAVE NOT marks the only time in film history that two Nobel Prize winners, Faulkner and Hemingway, were associated with the same motion picture.

--- William Faulkner was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for 1949, but he did not actually receive the award until 1950 because the Nobel committee could not reach a decision in time.

--- Faulkner was unwilling to buy a new suit to wear when he received the Nobel Prize, so he rented one. Afterwards, he told his publisher, Bennett Cerf, that he wanted to keep the suit. When asked what he would do with it, Faulkner said, "Well, I might stuff it and put it in the living room and charge people to come in and see it, or I might rent it out, but I want that suit." Random House bought the suit for him.

--- When Faulkner delivered his Nobel Prize speech, no one could understand what he said --- he stood too far from the microphone, and his Southern accent and rapid delivery made it even more difficult to understand what he was saying. But when they discovered what he said the next morning, the impact was tremendous. For years afterward, according to one scholar, Faulkner's speech would be recalled as the best speech ever given at a Nobel dinner.

--- The United States Postal Service issued a first-class 22-cent stamp commemorating Faulkner in 1987 --- an ironic honor, considering Faulkner's notorious stint as a postmaster. The stamp's first-day cancellation was held in Oxford, Mississippi, Faulkner's hometown, on August 3, 1987.

INTERVIEW

His family was neither educated nor literary. He never graduated from high school, and he never received a college degree. He lived in a small town in one of the poorest states in the country. He was an alcoholic, who never enjoyed good health, and for most of his life he lived on the edge of financial ruin --- taking odd jobs to support his family while he wrote his novels and short stories. His most well-known novels were written over a 12-year span, from 1929 to 1942.

Yet William Faulkner, long after his books were out of print and his name was an obscure footnote in literary circles, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1949.

More than any other writer I know of, his accomplishments were the result of his passion for writing, and his willingness to sacrifice almost anything in order to write. He worked, variously, in a bookstore (he was fired for reading too much), as a postmaster (he was fired for misplacing and losing the mail), as a scoutmaster (he was asked to resign for "moral" reasons --- probably drinking too much), and as a janitor, about which he said, "The best job that was ever offered to me was to become a landlord in a brothel. In my opinion it's the perfect milieu for an artist to work in. It gives him perfect economic freedom; he's free of fear and hunger, he has a roof over his head and nothing whatever to do except keep a few simple accounts and to go once every month and pay off the local police. The place is quiet during the morning hours, which is the best time to work. There's enough social life in the evening, if he wishes to participate, to keep him from being bored."

He is one of the most complex writers you will ever encounter --- if you've read THE SOUND AND THE FURY, you know what I mean. The first chapter is written from the point of view of an idiot, and just getting through it can test the mettle of the most dedicated reader. But the more you read, the more he grows on you. His prose is magnificent, and the stories he told in his various novels about the people in his mythical Yoknapatawpha County literally leave footprints on your heart.

Beginning with THE SOUND AND THE FURY (published in 1929), and continuing with AS I LAY DYING (published in 1930), LIGHT IN AUGUST (published in 1932) and ABSALOM, ABSALOM (published in 1936), Faulkner chronicled the lives, loves and struggles of several families who lived in small Southern towns. Writing in a stream-of-conscious voice, Faulkner reveals the hopes, dreams and the deepest secrets of his characters. His work is a remarkable blend of humor, tragedy and psychological insight.

His novels were outstanding literary successes, but they were not best sellers. To make money, he also wrote short stories which were commercially successful. And if you aren't quite ready to take on his novels, you might want to pick up THE COLLECTED STORIES OF WILLIAM FAULKNER to introduce yourself to his work.

He was not only a wonderful writer, he was also a fascinating person. He lived on the edge --- never hesitating to take a risk or seize an opportunity to try something new. While biographies about him abound, one of the best is WILLIAM FAULKNER by Patrick Hoffman. It is part of the Twayne's American Authors series, and it offers not only a perspective on his life, but also on his work. The book is a wonderful companion and guide to both the man and his writing.

His speech to the Swedish Academy upon his acceptance of the Nobel Prize has been praised as the most brilliant speech ever given at a Nobel ceremony. He said, "It is his [the poet's] privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail."

Faulkner's characters do endure, and we can learn much about the courage and honor and hope and pride of mankind through his work.

--- Judith Handschuh (JHSCRIBA@aol.com)