William Faulkner

William Faulkner

William Faulkner has been one of the most prolific and influential writers of the twentieth century. He is remembered as both a gentlemanly southern eccentric and an arrogant, snobbish alcoholic. But perhaps the best way to describe Faulkner is to describe his heritage. Like so many of his literary characters, Faulkner was profoundly affected by his family.

William Faulkner is viewed by many as America's greatest writer of prose fiction. He was born in New Albany, Mississippi on September 25, 1897. In 1905, Faulkner entered the first grade at the tender age of eight, and immediately showed signs of talent. Throughout his early education, he would work conscientiously at reading, spelling, writing, and arithmetic. However, he especially enjoyed drawing. When Faulkner got promoted to the third grade, he was asked by his teacher what he wanted to be when he grew up. He replied, "I want to be a writer just like my great granddaddy"(Minter 18). Faulkner took interest in poetry around 1910, but no one in Oxford, Mississippi, could tell him what to do with his poems. Faulkner, who was very talkative, would always entertain Estelle Oldham by telling her vividly imaginary stories. Eventually, Faulkner grew very fond of Estelle. She became the sole inspirer and recipient of Faulkner's earlier poems. Not long after Faulkner began seeing Estelle regularly, he met a man named Phil Stone who was dating one of Estelle's friends, Katrina. Katrina had told Stone about Faulkner and his poetry. So one afternoon, Stone went to Faulkner's house to get to know him better, and during his visit he received several written verses from Faulkner's poetry. Stone not only became a very close friend of Faulkner's, but also a mentor to the young writer at the beginning of his career. Stone immediately gave the potential poet encouragement, advice, and models for his study of literature (Minter 29).

As Faulkner grew older he began to lose interest in his schoolwork and turned his attention to athletics, such as football and baseball, which caused his grades to start to fall. Eventually, he quit both athletics and school altogether. In 1919, his first literary work was acknowledged and published. The poem is a forty-line verse with a French title that acknowledges the influence of the French Symbolists. "From Mallarme he took the title of his first published poem; from Verlaine's 'Le Faune' he took the central device of The Marble Faun"(Minter 36). "The Marble Faun brings Pastoral art and modern aestheticism into a conjunction that not only exposes the weaknesses of pastoral poetry, particularly its artificiality, but also establishes the pertinence of those weaknesses to our understanding of modern aestheticism" (Brinkmeyer).

Faulkner enrolled at the University of Mississippi, and did not let his academic years distract him from writing more poems. The Mississippian, the student paper, published "Landing in Luck." The short story, nine pages in length was created directly from his direct experience in the Royal Air Force flight training in 1916. Eventually he started to get tired of school once again. He started cutting classes and finally stopped going altogether. In the summer of 1921, Faulkner decided to take a trip to New York to receive some professional instruction from editors and critics, because Stone was busy with his academic studies. Faulkner stayed in New York and shared an incredibly small apartment with a man named Stark Young (Minter 35-40). During Faulkner's stay in New York, Stone became worried about him and his financial troubles. So Stone immediately went to work on behalf of his friend and became the Assistant District Attorney. "Within a few months, his restlessness had taken him back to Oxford and the most improbable job he would ever hold"(Minter 42). Stone pulled some strings and got Faulkner appointed to the job of postmaster at the university post office. Even as postmaster, Faulkner still found time to write. When Faulkner finished the typescript for Soldier's Pay, he it sent to a publisher who gave him two hundred dollars in advanced pay. He used the money to pay for his trip to Europe. While in Paris, Faulkner began to work on the novel Elmer. Unfortunately, it was never completed, but it still exists today in several versions. After spending some time in France Faulkner decided to return home to America (Minter 46-50). Upon returning to New York, he immediately began his next novel Mosquitoes, which was published a year later.

In September of 1927, Faulkner finished yet another novel entitled Flags in the Dust. Once this novel was sent to the publisher, it was cut down to 110,000 words and the title was replaced as Sartoris. Within the same month, Faulkner began The Sound and The Fury, which would later become his greatest novel (Minter 72). He completed the final edition of the novel while in New York in October 1928 (Millgate 26). "In the summer of 1929 Faulkner was married. Estelle Oldham Franklin had divorced her husband and returned to Oxford with the two children of the marriage, Malcolm and Victoria" (Millgate 28). "In October 1930, about four months after Faulkner and his wife had moved into Rowanoak, As I Lay Dying was published"(Millgate 29). None of his novels where bringing in very much income, and he had a new family to think about. He had to write something that would bring some income. Sanctuary, his sixth novel, was published in 1931. This novel brought him "financial success"(Volpe 11). "Faulkner's first major purchase was an old mansion, one of the finest in Oxford"(Volpe 11). Faulkner settled down in Oxford, while he raised his family.

From the early 1930's to the early 1940's Faulkner spent a lot of his time writing. Before the end of 1942, he published seven novels, two collections of short stories, and a book of poems (Volpe 12). Light in August and Absalom, Absalom! were written in this time period. These two novels rank among the greatest novels in contemporary literature. Faulkner was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950 (Volpe 12). As Faulkner was coming to the end of his life, he spoke to the cadets at West Point. In his speech he read from his last novel called "The Reivers, which became, with in a few days of publication, a national best seller"(Volpe 13). Shortly there after, on July 6, 1962, the great author died of a heart attack.

Faulkner was known for his realistic novels and true-to-life short stores. From 1926 to 1962, Faulkner published nineteen novels and more than seventy- five short stories. Most of the novels and a good many of the short stories are about the people living in a fictional county in the northern regions of Mississippi called Yoknapatawpha