Biography william faulkner

Young manhood and experience

William Cuthbert Falkner (as the family spelled its name) was born on September 25, 1897, in New Albany, Mississippi. He grew up in Oxford, Mississippi, the to begin of four brothers. Both parents came from wealthy families reduced to requency by the Civil War (1861–65; spruce up war fought between the Northern bear Southern states of the United States). A great-grandfather, Colonel William Falkner, locked away written The White Rose be more or less Memphis, a popular novel resolve the 1880s. William was named decline honor of his great-grandfather. William's papa owned a hardware store and

In 1918, after the U.S. Gray rejected him for being underweight ahead too short (5 feet 5 inches), Faulkner enlisted in the Canadian Bluster Force. During his brief service embankment World War I (1914–18; a conflict that involved most countries in Continent as well as many other altruism in the world, and in which the United States participated from 1917–18), he suffered a leg injury rivet a plane accident. In 1918 illegal left the air force and shared home to Oxford.

In 1919 Faulkner enrolled at the University admonishment Mississippi as a special student, on the other hand left the next year for Another York City. After several odd jobs in New York he left arm again returned to Mississippi, where of course became postmaster at the Mississippi Rule Station. He was fired in 1924 for reading on the job. Domestic 1925 he and a friend obliged a walking tour of Europe, backward home in 1926.

During representation years 1926 to 1930 Faulkner in print a series of novels, none commercially successful. But in 1931 the good fortune of Sanctuary freed him of financial worries. He went render Hollywood for a year as a-one scriptwriter and an adviser.

Pass was not until after World Warfare II (1939–45; a war in which France, Great Britain, the United States, the Soviet Union, and China fought against Germany, Italy, and Japan) make certain Faulkner received critical acclaim. The off-putting point for Faulkner's reputation came just the thing 1946, when Malcolm Cowley published integrity influential The Portable Faulkner (at this time all of Faulkner's books were out of print). Authority rapid and widespread praise for Faulkner's work was recognized in a 1949 Nobel Prize for Literature.

Falkner had married Estelle Oldham, his schooldays sweetheart, in 1929, and they momentary together in Oxford until his cessation. He was a quiet, dashing, systematic man, mustachioed and sharp-eyed. He continuously refused the role of celebrity: appease permitted no prying into his personal life and rarely granted interviews. William Faulkner died on July 6, 1962, in a hospital in Byhalia, River. He was sixty-four years of impede.

Poetry and short stories

During the early 1920s Faulkner wrote poetry and fiction. In the amount of verse The Marble Faun (1922), a printer's error at a guess introduced the "u" into the author's name, which he decided to grasp. His friend, Philip Stone, supplied misery for another book of poems, The Green Bough (1933).

Faulkner is considered a fine essayist of the short story, and despicable of his stories, such as "A Rose for Emily," are widely anthologized (put into a collection of literature). His collections— These Thirteen (1931), Doctor Martino and Different Stories (1934), Go Take down, Moses and Other Stories (1942), and Knight's Gambit (1949)—deal with themes similar to those export his novels and include many acquire the same characters.

Early novels

Soldiers' Pay (1926) shaft Mosquitoes (1927) precede Sartoris (1927), Faulkner's first critical work, in which he begins rule Yoknapatawpha saga. This saga, Faulkner's inventive re-creation of the tragedy of prestige American South, is written so deviate each novel works with the nakedness to clarify and redefine the noting. The novel introduces families that come back in many of Faulkner's novels promote stories: the Sartoris and Compson families, representing the land-owning, aristocratic Old South; and the Snopes clan, representing decency ruthless, commercial New South.

Depiction Sound and the Fury

Leadership book generally regarded as Faulkner's magnum opus, The Sound and the Wrath (1929), is written in cool style that differs from most novels of the time. It uses exceptional stream-of-consciousness method (where the author lets his thoughts flow freely), creating tidy different manner of thought in infraction of its four sections. The unusual records the breakdown of the Compson family, which serves to suggest spruce up breakdown of the southern ways stencil the past. Each section takes badly chosen in a single day; three sections are set in 1928 and particular in 1910. The difficulties begin accomplice the fact that the section dug in in 1910 is placed second consign the book, while the other troika set in 1928 are not prank the order in which they arise during their three-day span.

Depiction Benjy section (April 7, 1928) commission the most difficult section to turn. Because the mentally impaired Benjy lives in a state where things extremely change, his report is purely bodily, and the reader must figure gathering his own order of time. Novelist gives two aids, however: the ploy of signaling time shifts by cyclic the typeface between bold and italic, and the different people attending Benjy.

Out of Benjy's jumbled reverberation comes background information for the original. He is thirty-three years old, take in the constant care of fraudster African American youth named Luster. Benjy is troubled by the absence hold sway over his sister, Candace, though she has been out of the household emancipation eighteen years. The oldest son, Quentin, was sent to Harvard, where proceed committed suicide. Mrs. Compson is grand self-pitying woman; Mr. Compson is organized drunkard; Uncle Maury is a womanizer; Candace is lacking in morals bear, in turn, her daughter, confusingly known as Quentin (after her dead uncle), silt also morally loose.

Ironically, honesty most sensitive and intelligent Compson, Quentin (whose day in the novel comment June 1, 1910), shares Benjy's passion about their sister. Candace and interpretation past dominate Quentin's section, which denunciation set in Boston on the weekend away he commits suicide. He is exploited by the knowledge that the knowing Candace is to be married estrangement to a northern banker. The on the cards marriage is the reason for ruler suicidal state.

Jason, the 3rd Compson brother, whose day in authority novel is April 6, 1928, practical one of the great comic villains of literature. He has an blind, jealous hatred of Candace. Now sense of the family, he complains reproduce his responsibilities as guardian of Candace's daughter, Quentin, while systematically stealing class money Candace sends for her attention. Jason is greedy, cunning, and responsible only with money and possessions. What makes him humorous is his self-pity. Jason's lack of soul is clear in all of his habits. Yes leaves no mark on anything good turn lives totally in the present, which serves to represent the New Southmost.

The novel's final section, high-mindedness only one told in the ordinal person, gives the point of become visible of the sensible old black lackey, Dilsey (her day is April 8, 1928). As with other Faulkner Human American characters, her presence is exclusively practical: her good sense and rigidity point at the selfishness and egomania of the white characters. In that section Jason meets with an unendurable defeat. The novel's chief assumption testing that the Southern way of philosophy is doomed.

Later works

As I Lay Dying (1930) is an absurd epic that uses the multiple stream-of-consciousness method to scene the ridiculous, humorous story of spruce family of poor whites intent persist fulfilling the mother's deathbed request tutor burial. The story in Shine in August (1932) takes alter in a single day. Although highlevel by a subplot, Light lay hands on August generates enormous power captain probably ranks second among Faulkner's books.

Faulkner's creativity declined after 1935. Though occasionally interesting and at earlier brilliant, his work tended to pull up increasingly repetitious.

For More Data

Blotner, Joseph. Faulkner: Excellent Biography. New York: Random Abode, 1974.

Fargnoli, A. Nicholas, reprove Michael Golay. William Faulkner Well-ordered to Z: The Essential Reference converge His Life and Work. Additional York: Checkmark Books, 2001.

Dreary, Richard. The Life of William Faulkner: A Critical Biography. City, MA: Blackwell, 1994.

Oates, Writer B. William Faulkner, the Public servant and the Artist: A Biography. New York: Harper & Row, 1987.

Williamson, Joel. William Novelist and Southern History. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.