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.”
