“AS I LAY DYING” – NOBEL LAUREATE - WILLIAM FAULKNER
William Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer and Nobel Prize laureate from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays, and screenplays. He was the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1949. He also won two Pulitzer Prizes and twice the National Book Award for his works.
Faulkner created an impressive literary legacy and remains a revered writer of the rural American South, having expertly captured the immense complexities of both the region's beauty and its dark past.
A popular American Band based in San Diego, California, founded in the year 2000, is known as ‘As I Lay Dying.’
Famous quotes of William Faulkner –
William Faulkner (1897–1962), born into an old Southern family, grew up in Oxford, Mississippi. He briefly served in both the Canadian and British Royal Air Forces during World War I, attended the University of Mississippi for a short time, and worked in New York and New Orleans. Aside from a few trips abroad and short periods in Hollywood as a scriptwriter, he spent most of his life on a farm in Oxford, writing novels and short stories.
In an attempt to create a saga of his own, Faulkner has invented a host of characters typical of the South's historical growth and subsequent decadence. The human drama in Faulkner's novels is then built on the model of the actual, historical drama extending over almost a century and a half. Each story and each novel contributes to the construction of a whole —the imaginary Yoknapatawpha County and its inhabitants. Their theme is the decay of the old South, as represented by the Sartoris and Compson families, and the emergence of ruthless and brash newcomers, the Snopeses. Theme and technique - the distortion of time through the use of the inner monologue is fused particularly successfully in The Sound and the Fury (1929), the downfall of the Compson family is seen through the minds of several characters. The novel Sanctuary (1931) is about the degeneration of Temple Drake, a young girl from a distinguished southern family. Its sequel, Requiem For A Nun (1951), written partly as a drama, centred on the courtroom trial of a Negro woman who had once been a party to Temple Drake's debauchery. In Light in August (1932), prejudice is shown to be most destructive when it is internalised, as in Joe Christmas, who believes, though there is no proof of it, that one of his parents was a Negro. The theme of racial prejudice is brought up again in Absalom, Absalom! (1936), in that book, a young man is rejected by his father and brother because of his mixed blood. Faulkner's most outspoken moral evaluation of the relationship and the problems between Negroes and whites is to be found in Intruder in the Dust (1948).
In 1940, Faulkner published the first volume of the Snopes trilogy, A Hamlet, to be followed by two volumes, The Town (1957) and The Mansion (1959), all of them tracing the rise of the insidious Snopes family to positions of power and wealth in the community. The Reivers, his last - and most humorous - work, with a great many similarities to Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn, appeared in 1962, the year of Faulkner's death.
From Nobel Lectures, Literature 1901-1967, Editor Horst Frenz, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1969.
This autobiography/biography was written at the time of the award and first published in the book series Les Prix Nobel. It was later edited and republished in Nobel Lectures. To cite this document, always state the source as shown above.
William Faulkner’s major works –
A brief Biography –
A Southern writer through and through, William Cuthbert Falkner (the original spelling of his last name) was born in the small town of New Albany, Mississippi, on September 25, 1897. His parents, Murry Falkner and Maud Butler Faulkner, named him after his paternal great-grandfather, William Clark Falkner, an adventurous and shrewd man who seven years prior was shot dead in the town square of Ripley, Mississippi. Throughout his life, William Clark Falkner worked as a railroad financier, politician, soldier, farmer, businessman, Lawyer and—in his twilight years—best-selling author (The White Rose of Memphis).
The grandeur of the "Old Colonel," as almost everyone called him, loomed large in the minds of William Clark Falkner's children and grandchildren. The Old Colonel’s son, John Wesley Thompson, opened the First National Bank of Oxford in 1910. Instead of later bequeathing the railroad business to his son, Murray, however, Thompson sold it. Murry worked as the business manager for the University of Mississippi. Murry’s son, author William Faulkner, held tightly to his great-grandfather’s legacy, writing about him in his earliest novels set in the American South.
As much as the older men in Faulkner's family made an impression on him, so did the women. Faulkner's mother, Maud, and grandmother Lelia Butler were voracious readers, as well as fine painters and photographers, and they taught him the beauty of line and colour. Faulkner’s "mammy," as he called her, was a black woman named Caroline Barr. She raised him from birth until the day he left home, and was fundamental to his development. At her wake, Faulkner told the mourning crowd that it was a privilege to see her out, that she had taught him right from wrong and was loyal to his family despite having borne none of them. In later documents, Faulkner points to Barr as the impetus for his fascination with the politics of sexuality and race.
As a teenager, Faulkner was taken by drawing. He also greatly enjoyed reading and writing poetry. In fact, by the age of 12, he began intentionally mimicking Scottish romantics, specifically Robert Burns, and English romantics, A. E. Housman and A. C. Swinburne. Despite his remarkable intelligence, or perhaps because of it, he found school a bore, and he never earned a high school diploma. After dropping out, Faulkner worked in carpentry and sporadically as a clerk at his grandfather’s bank.
During this time, Faulkner met Estelle Oldham. At the time of their meeting, she was both popular and exceedingly effervescent and immediately stole his heart. The two dated for a while, but another man, named Cornell Franklin, proposed to her before Faulker did. Estelle took the proposal lightheartedly, partly because Franklin had just been commissioned as a major in the Hawaiian Territorial Forces and was leaving soon to report for duty. Estelle hoped it would dissolve naturally, but several months later, he mailed her an engagement ring. Estelle’s parents bade her accept the offer, as Franklin was a law graduate of the University of Mississippi and came from a family of high repute.
Estelle Oldham
Afflicted by Estelle’s engagement, Faulkner turned to new mentor Phil Stone, a local attorney who was impressed by his poetry. Stone invited Faulkner to move and live with him in New Haven, Connecticut. There, Stone nurtured Faulkner's passion for writing. While delving into prose, Faulkner worked at the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, a distinguished rifle manufacturer. Lured by the war in Europe, he joined the British Royal Flying Corps in 1918 and trained as a pilot in the first Royal Canadian Air Force. He had earlier tried to enlist in the U.S. Forces, but was rejected due to his height (he was slightly under 5'6"). To enlist in the Royal Air Force, he lied about several facts, changing his birthplace and surname—from Falkner to Faulkner—to appear more British.
Faulkner trained on British and Canadian bases and finished his time in Toronto just before the war ended, never finding himself in harm's way. A man of skilled exaggeration, Faulkner embellished his experiences and sometimes completely fabricated war stories for his friends back home. He even donned the uniform of a lieutenant to bolster his reputation and wore it when he returned to Mississippi.
By 1919, Faulkner had entered the University of Mississippi, where he contributed poems and short pieces to the student newspaper, the Mississippian. After three semesters of largely indifferent study, he left the university. He spent a brief period in New York City working as an assistant in a bookstore, later served for two years as the university’s postmaster, and even took on a short-lived role as a scoutmaster for a local troop.
In 1924, Phil Stone brought Faulkner’s poetry collection The Marble Faun to a publisher. Soon after its small run of 1,000 copies, Faulkner relocated to New Orleans. There, he contributed essays to The Double Dealer, a local magazine that connected and supported the city’s literary community.
Back in Louisiana, American writer Sherwood Anderson, who had become a friend, gave Faulkner some advice: He told the young author to write about his native region of Mississippi—a place that Faulkner surely knew better than northern France. Inspired by the concept, Faulkner began writing about the places and people of his childhood, developing a great many colourful characters based on real people he had grown up with or heard about, including his great-grandfather, William Clark Falkner. For his famous 1929 novel, The Sound and the Fury, he created the fictional Yoknapatawpha County—a place nearly identical to Lafayette County, where Oxford, Mississippi, is located. A year later, in 1930, Faulkner released As I Lay Dying.
Faulkner became known for his faithful and accurate dictation of Southern speech. He also boldly illuminated social issues that many American writers left in the dark, including slavery, the "good old boys" club and Southern aristocracy. In 1931, after much deliberation, Faulkner decided to publish Sanctuary, a story that focused on the rape and kidnapping of a young woman at Ole Miss. It shocked and appalled some readers, but it was a commercial success and a critical breakthrough for his career. Years later, in 1950, he published a sequel that was a mix of conventional Prose and Play forms, Requiem for a Nun.
Personally, Faulkner experienced both elation and soul-shocking sadness during this time in his career. Between the publishing of The Sound and the Fury and Sanctuary, his old flame, Estelle Oldham, divorced Cornell Franklin. Still deeply in love with her, Faulkner promptly made his feelings known, and the two were married within six months. Estelle became pregnant, and in January of 1931, she gave birth to a daughter, whom they named Alabama. Tragically, the premature baby lived for just over a week. Faulkner’s collection of short stories, titled These Thirteen, is dedicated to "Estelle and Alabama."
Faulkner's next novel, Light in August (1932), tells the story of outcasts in Yoknapatawpha County. In it, he introduces his readers to Joe Christmas, a man of uncertain racial makeup; Joanna Burden, a woman who supports voting rights for blacks and is later brutally murdered; Lena Grove, an alert and determined young woman in search of her baby's father; and Rev. Gail Hightower, a man besieged by visions. Time magazine listed it—along with The Sound and the Fury—as one of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005.
After publishing several notable books, Faulkner turned to screenwriting. Starting with a six-week contract at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, he co-wrote 1933's Today We Live, starring Joan Crawford and Gary Cooper. After Faulkner's father died, and in need of money, he decided to sell the rights to film Sanctuary, later titled The Story of Temple Drake (1933). That same year, Estelle gave birth to Jill, the couple's only surviving child. Between 1932 and 1945, Faulkner travelled to Hollywood a dozen times to toil as a scriptwriter and contributed to or wrote countless films. Uninspired by the task, however, he did it purely for financial gain.
During this period, Faulkner also published several novels, including the epic family saga Absalom, Absalom! (1936), the satirical The Hamlet (1940) and Go Down, Moses (1942).
In 1946, Malcolm Cowley published The Portable Faulkner and interest in Faulkner's work was revived. Two years later, Faulkner published Intruder in the Dust, the tale of a black man falsely accused of murder. He was able to sell the film rights to MGM for $50,000.
One of Faulkner's greatest professional moments came when he was awarded the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature. The committee deemed him one of the most important writers of American letters. This attention brought him more awards, including the National Book Award for Fiction for Collected Stories and the Legion of Honor in New Orleans. He also won the 1951 National Book Award for The Collected Stories of William Faulkner. A few years later, Faulkner was awarded the 1955 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction along with another National Book Award for his novel A Fable, set in France during WWI.
In January 1961, Faulkner willed all his major manuscripts and many of his personal papers to the William Faulkner Foundation at the University of Virginia. On July 6, 1962, coincidentally the same date as the Old Colonel's birthday, William Faulkner died of a heart attack in Mississippi, United States of America.
He was posthumously awarded his second Pulitzer in 1963 for The Reivers.
William Faulkner’s Library in his house
Filmography –
William Faulkner, one of the 20th century's most gifted novelists, wrote for the movies in part because he could not make enough money from his novels and short stories to support his growing number of dependents. The author of such acclaimed novels as "The Sound and the Fury" and "Absalom, Absalom!", Faulkner received official screen credits for several theatrical releases, five of which were with director Howard Hawks.
Director Howard Hawks once related that he took Faulkner and Clark Gable along on a hunting trip. Hawks was friends with both, but neither Faulkner nor Gable knew each other, and Hawks didn't tell either one who the other was. During the trip, the conversation turned to writers, and Gable asked Faulkner who he considered the best. Faulkner replied, Willa Cather, Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, Thomas Mann and me." Gable said, "Oh, do you write, Mr Faulkner?" Faulkner replied, "Yes. And what do you do, Mr Gable?"
"Two Soldiers" is indeed a powerful story that captures the emotional weight of war, family, and sacrifice. The narrative focuses on the bond between two brothers, showcasing the impact of conflict on personal relationships. The adaptation into a short film by Aaron Schneider helps to convey the story’s themes visually, bringing to life the poignant moments that highlight the innocence and bravery of youth amidst the harsh realities of war. Winning an Oscar for Best Short Film in 2004 further emphasizes the film's emotional depth and resonance with audiences, reflecting the universal experiences of love, loss, and loyalty in times of crisis.
His screenplay for Ernest Hemingway's novel To Have and Have Not (1944) marks the only time in film history that two Nobel Prize-winning authors were associated with the same motion picture.
William Faulkner’s famous quote, “You cannot swim for new horizons until you dare to lose sight of the shore", greatly influenced me, and I found the same one of my most liked and selected quotations of all time.
My penchant to choose Nobel Laureates for JOHNNY’S BLOG found William Faulkner featured this time in my Blog post.
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