“The man himself never stood taller than five feet, six inches tall, but in the realm of American literature, William Faulkner is a giant.”(Padgett, olemiss.edu) He was a Nobel Prize- winning novelist and a short story writer. Faulkner was acclaimed as one of the twentieth century’s greatest writers. From The Sound and the Fury in 1929 to Go Down, Moses in 1942, was considered his greatest artistic achievement and accomplished more artistically then most artists in their lifetime of writing. (Padgett, olemiss.edu)
William Cuthbert Falkner (as his named was then spelled) was born in New Albany, Mississippi on September 25, 1897. He was the first born of four sons to Murry and Maud Butler Falkner. He was named after his great- grandfather, William Clark Falkner. As a child, his family moved to Oxford, Mississippi. (Padgett, olemiss.edu) Around the age of 13, he began to demonstrate artistic talent. He also played quarterback on the football team at Oxford High School. But before graduating, he dropped out and briefly worked at his grandfather’s bank. (Liukkonen, kirjasto.sci.fi) “While still in his youth, he also made acquaintance of two individuals who would play an important role in his future: a childhood sweetheart, Estelle Oldham and a literally mentor, Phil Stone.” (Padgett, olemiss.edu)
Estelle was a popular, vivacious girl who was involved with William as a young man but would later be his wife. Phil Stone was his other close acquaintance which arose from their mutual interest in poetry. Stone read William’s work and immediately recognized William’s talent and set out to give him encouragement, advice, and models for study. He also invited William to stay with him in New Haven where William first took a job with Winchest...
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Liukkonen, Petri. "William Faulkner." Www.kirjasto.sci.fi. 2008. Web. 01 Mar. 2011. .
Padgett, John B. “William Faulkner: Frequently Asked Questions.” William Faulkner on the Web. 17 August 2006. 02 March 2011 .
Padgett, John B. "MWP: William Faulkner (1897-1962)." The University of Mississippi. 11 Nov. 2008. Web. 01 Mar. 2011. .
Powell, Janice A. "Teaching Faulkner, Southeast Missouri State University." Southeast Missouri State University. 15 Feb. 2011. Web. 01 Mar. 2011. .
"William Faulkner - Information, Facts, and Links." ENotes - Literature Study Guides, Lesson Plans, and More. 2011. Web. 02 Mar. 2011. .
Faulkner, William. "Barn Burning." The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Paul Lauter. 3th ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998. 1554-66.
"William Faulkner: The Faded Rose of Emily." Mr. Renaissance. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Mar. 2011 .
Faulkner, William. "A Rose for Emily." Literature and Its Writers. 6th ed. Boston, New York:
Faulkner, William. The Sound and The Fury: The Corrected Text with Faulkner's Appendix. Norton, 1994.
While I was watching the documentary William Faulkner, a Life on Paper I found it striking how the different people that were interviewed talked about two different sides of the author William Faulkner. His daughters, Jill Faulkner Sommers and his stepdaughter, spoke mainly about his alcohol abuse and his moodiness whereas Faulkner’s contemporaries from Oxford underlined Faulkner’s generosity and kindness. The documentary shows Faulkner not only as father of Jill and his stepdaughter but also as a father figure for many others. He had to take care of several families at once. At one point Faulkner had seventeen dependents to provide for. Many of the people that were interviewed describe Faulkner as being very generous and always willing to help others even when he had almost nothing himself. One special example is his brother Dean who died in an airplane accident and because Faulkner had bought the plane he apparently felt guilty about the death of his brother for the rest of his life as his sister-in-law says in the interview.
Growing up in Mississippi in the late Nineteenth Century and the early part of the Twentieth Century, young William Faulkner witnessed first hand the struggles his beloved South endured through their slow progression of rebuilding. These experiences helped to develop Faulkner’s writing style. “Faulkner deals almost exclusively with the Southern scene (with) the Civil War … always behind his work” (Warren 1310. His works however are not so much historical in nature but more like folk lore. This way Faulkner is not constrained to keep details accurate, instead he manipulate the story to share his on views leading the reader to conclude morals or lessons from his experience. Faulkner writes often and “sympathetically of the older order of the antebellum society. It was a society that valued honor, (and) was capable of heroic action” (Brooks 145) both traits Faulkner admired. These sympathetic views are revealed in the story “A Rose for Emily” with Miss Emily becoming a monument for the Antebellum South.
Growing up in the South, Faulkner gives a good perspective on what it was like for
William Faulkner was a twentieth century American author who won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Most famous for his novel The Sound and the Fury, Faulkner defines Southern literature. In his mythical county of Yaknapatawpha, Faulkner contrasted the past with the present era. The past was represented in Emily Grierson, Colonel Sartoris, the Board of Alderman, and the Negro servant. Homer Barron, the new Board of Alderman, and the new sheriff represented the present.
William Faulkner was a prolific writer who became very famous during his lifetime but who shied away from the spotlight as much as possible. 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, for, like so many of his literary characters, Faulkner was profoundly affected by his family.
Brooks, Cleanth. "William Faulkner: Visions of Good and Evil." Faulkner, New Perspectives. Ed. Richard H. Brodhead. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey : Prentice-Hall, 1983.
"In the decade that followed, Faulkner donned a host of other identities, alternately and aristocrat, a bohemian, or a derelict" (Zane 5). Faulkner established himself as a major novelist in 1929 with the book The Sound and the Fury (Larinde). He wrote twenty novels and many short stories (Zane 1). His greatest achievements were the Nobel Prize for literature in 1950, the National Book Award, and Pulitzer Prizes. All of these awards came after he was fifty (7).
William Faulkner is the author of Absalom, Absalom!, a Southern novel published in 1936. Faulkner dedicates his writing in Absalom, Absalom! to follow the story of ruthless Thomas Sutpen and his life as he struggles against the suspicion and doubt of the small-town folk that were born and raised in Jefferson, Mississippi. Himself a native-born Mississippian, Faulkner entered the world in September of 1897, and left it in July of 1962 at sixty-four years of age. He was the eldest of four brothers, and the son of parents whose prominent families had been destroyed and leveled to poverty with the advent of the Civil War in America during the 1860s. Faulkner was christened William Cuthbert Falkner after his great-grandfather, Colonel William Faulkner, who achieved relative literary success with his publication of The White Rose of Memphis during the 1880s.
Faulkner's style may give you trouble at first because of (1) his use of long, convoluted, and sometimes ungrammatical sentences, such as the one just quoted; (2) his repetitiveness (for example, the word "bleak" in the sentence just quoted); and (3) his use of oxymorons, that is, combinations of contradictory or incongruous words (for example, "frictionsmooth," "slow and ponderous gallop," "cheerful, testy voice"). People who dislike Faulkner see this style as careless. Yet Faulkner rewrote and revised Light in August many times to get the final book exactly the way he wanted it. His style is a product of thoughtful deliberation, not of haste. Editors sometimes misunderstood Faulkner's intentions and made what they thought were minor changes. Recently scholars have prepared an edition of Light in August that restores the author's original text as exactly as possible. This Book Note is based on that Library of America edition (1985), edited by Noel Polk and Joseph Blotner.
“He did not initially meet with success, but after World War II, critics took notice of his work and Faulkner is now regarded as one of the twentieth century’s greatest novelists”(Rose 1). Faulkner’s respected work earned him the prestigious award of a Nobel Prize for Literature. He was awarded with the Nobel Prize for his powerful and artistic addition to American literature and literature around the world. William Faulkner was given this award in 1949, and his speech was given on December 10, 1950 in Stockholm,
Kartiganer, Donald M. and Ann J. Abadie, eds. Faulkner in Cultural Context. University Press of Mississippi: Jackson. 1997.