William Benbow

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Faulkner (Originally Falkner), William [Harrison] (1897–1962), grew up in Oxford, Miss., the great‐grandson of William C. Falkner and a member of a family like that of the Sartoris clan in his novels centered on “Jefferson” in his mythical Yoknapatawpha County. After desultory education he joined the British Royal Air Force in Canada because he was too slight for U.S. requirements, but World War I ended before he was commissioned or saw service beyond training. Following the war he took some courses at the University of Mississippi and published The Marble Faun (1924), pastoral poems. Drifting to New Orleans, where he worked on a newspaper and also wrote the fiction collected in New Orleans Sketches (1958), he met Sherwood Anderson, who helped him publish Soldiers' Pay (1926), his first novel, about the homecoming of a dying soldier, in the vein of the “lost generation.” Following a brief stay in Europe (1925), he issued Mosquitoes (1927), a satirical novel set in New Orleans, later the site of his minor novel Pylon (1935), about aviators at a Mardi Gras.

With the publication of Sartoris (1929) he found his own themes and setting, for it is the first novel in his long, loosely constructed Yoknapatawpha saga, whose themes include the decline of the Compson, Sartoris, Benbow, and McCaslin families, representatives of the Old South, and the rise of the unscrupulous Snopes family, which displaces them. The life of the region is treated from the days of Indian possession, through the pre‐Civil War era, down to modern times. The saga of macabre violence and antic comedy is written in a sensitive but often baroque style and depicts its region as a microcosm in which its subjects often achieve mythic proportions. The Sound and the Fury (1929) introduces the significant but decadent Compson family in a remarkably structured story. As I Lay Dying (1930) reveals the psychological relationships of a subnormal poor‐white family on a pilgrimage to bury their mother. Sanctuary (1931) is a sadistic horror story, ostensibly written to make money but carefully reworked before publication as a serious novel. Light in August (1932), although also filled with horrors, is a more balanced contrast of positive and negative forces of life in its presentation of violent adventures involved in the relations between men and women, black and white. Absalom, Absalom! (1936), set in early 19th‐century Jefferson, shows the tragic downfall of the dynastic desires of the planter Colonel Sutpen. The Unvanquished (1938) uses earlier short stories to create a novel about the Sartoris family in the Civil War. The Wild Palms (1939) shows the effects of a Mississippi flood on the lives of a hillbilly convict and a New Orleans doctor and his mistress. The Hamlet (1940), the first volume of a trilogy, shows the rise to power of the depraved Snopes family. Intruder in the Dust (1948) is a more compassionate tale of a black man on trial and the concomitant growing moral awareness of a white boy. Requiem for a Nun (1951), a sequel to Sanctuary, combines the forms of play and novel to treat the tortured redemption of Temple Drake. A Fable (1954, Pulitzer Prize) is a lengthy parable of the Passion of Christ set in a framework of false armistice and actual mutiny in World War I. The Town (1957) carries on the story of the white trash Flem Snopes and his coming to Jefferson, while The Mansion (1960) concludes the Snopes story by treating the family in the first half of the 20th century. The Reivers (1962, Pulitzer Prize), published just before the author's death, is an amusing fictive “reminiscence” of a boy's various misadventures in 1905. Many of the novels' characters, settings, and themes appear in stories collected in These 13 (1931); Idyll in the Desert (1931); Miss Zilphia Gant (1932); Dr. Martino (1934); Go Down, Moses (1942), including the symbolic novelette “The Bear”; Knight's Gambit (1949); Big Woods (1955), hunting tales; and Uncollected Stories (1979). Salmagundi (1932) gathers early essays and poems, and A Green Bough (1933) collects poems. Other works include Early Prose and Poetry (1962), Essays, Speeches and Public Letters (1965) and Flags in the Dust (1973), the original uncut text of Sartoris.

During the 1930s he was off and on in Hollywood as a script writer, but his works for film are not accounted as being of much consequence. Critical views stated while teaching in Japan, at the University of Virginia, and at West Point appear in Faulkner at Nagano (1956), Faulkner in the University (1959), and Faulkner at West Point (1964). Lesser works include posthumously published juvenilia, Marionettes: A Play in One Act (1975) and Mayday (1976), while The Wishing Tree (1967) is a book for children. Vision in the Spring (1984) publishes 14 poems that he gathered in 1921. Selected Letters appeared in 1977. For his literary accomplishments Faulkner was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1950 and in acceptance made a brief but important statement about his belief “that man will not merely endure: he will prevail …because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance” and “the writer's duty is to write about these things.”

Yoknapatawpha County, fictional setting in northern Mississippi for the saga of 14 novels and many stories by William Faulkner. Based on Lafayette County and its capital, Oxford, Faulkner's mythical land, whose capital is called Jefferson, has an area of 2400 square miles and a population of 6298 whites and 9313 blacks, according to the map that its creator printed in the 1951 edition of Absalom, Absalom! The name of the county is presumably of Chickasaw derivation, for these Indians, such as Ikkemotubbe, are presented as the original possessors of the land. In order of their publication, the novels set in whole or in part in this land are Sartoris, The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, Sanctuary, Light in August, Absalom, Absalom!, The Unvanquished, The Hamlet, Intruder in the Dust, Knight's Gambit, Requiem for a Nun, The Town, The Mansion, and The Reivers, and the stories set there include The Bear and other tales in Go Down, Moses. The characters involved in the life of this land include the Benbow, Compson, De Spain, McCaslin, Sartoris, Snopes, Stevens, Sutpen, and Varner families. (See also individual entries for titles and characters.)