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William Faulkner (1897–1962) once said of his novels and stories, “I am telling the same story over and over, which is myself and the world.” This biography provides an overview of the life and career of the famous author, demonstrating the interrelationships of that life, centered in Oxford, Mississippi, with the characters and events of his fictional world. The book begins with a chapter on Faulkner's most famous ancestor, W. C. Falkner, “the Old Colonel,” who greatly influenced both the content and the form of Faulkner's fiction. Robert W. Hamblin then proceeds to examine the highlights of Faulkner's biography, from his childhood to his youthful days as a fledgling poet, through his time in New Orleans, the creation of Yoknapatawpha, the years of struggle and his season of prolific genius, and through his time in Hollywood and his winning of the Nobel Prize. The book concludes with a description of his last years as a revered author, cultural ambassador, and university writer-in-residence. In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Faulkner spoke of “the agony and sweat of the human spirit” that goes into artistic creation. For Faulkner, that struggle was especially acute. Poor and neglected for much of his life, suffering from chronic depression and alcoholism, and unhappy in his personal life, Faulkner overcame tremendous obstacles to achieve literary success. One of the major themes of his novels and stories remains endurance, and his biography exhibits that quality in abundance. Faulkner the man endured and ultimately prevailed.
A “timely and essential” (New York Times Book Review) reconsideration of William Faulkner’s life and legacy that vitally asks, “How should we read Faulkner today?” With this “rich, complex, and eloquent” (Drew Gilpin Faust, Atlantic) work, Pulitzer Prize finalist Michael Gorra charts the evolution of an author through his most cherished—and contested—novels. Given the undeniable echoes of “Lost Cause” romanticism in William Faulkner’s fiction, as well as his depiction of Black characters and Black speech, Gorra argues convincingly that Faulkner demands a sobering reevaluation. Upending previous critical traditions and interweaving biography, literary criticism, and rich travelogue, the widely acclaimed The Saddest Words recontextualizes Faulkner, revealing a civil war within him, while examining the most plangent cultural issues facing American literature today.
By the end of volume 1 of The Life of William Faulkner ("A filling, satisfying feast for Faulkner aficianados"— Kirkus), the young Faulkner had gone from an unpromising, self-mythologizing bohemian to the author of some of the most innovative and enduring literature of the century, including The Sound and the Fury and Light in August. The second and concluding volume of Carl Rollyson’s ambitious biography finds Faulkner lamenting the many threats to his creative existence. Feeling, as an artist, he should be above worldly concerns and even morality, he has instead inherited only debts—a symptom of the South’s faded fortunes—and numerous mouths to feed and funerals to fund. And so he turns to the classic temptation for financially struggling writers—Hollywood. Thus begins roughly a decade of shuttling between his home and family in Mississippi—lifeblood of his art—and the backlots of the Golden Age film industry. Through Faulkner’s Hollywood years, Rollyson introduces such personalities as Humphrey Bogart and Faulkner’s long-time collaborator Howard Hawks, while telling the stories behind films such as The Big Sleep and To Have and Have Not. At the same time, he chronicles with great insight Faulkner's rapidly crumbling though somehow resilient marriage and his numerous extramarital affairs--including his deeply felt, if ultimately doomed, relationship with Meta Carpenter. (In his grief over their breakup, Faulkner—a dipsomaniac capable of ferocious alcoholic binges—received third-degree burns when he passed out on a hotel-room radiator.) Where most biographers and critics dismiss Faulkner’s film work as at best a necessary evil, at worst a tragic waste of his peak creative years, Rollyson approaches this period as a valuable window on his artistry. He reveals a fascinating, previously unappreciated cross-pollination between Faulkner’s film and literary work, elements from his fiction appearing in his screenplays and his film collaborations influencing his later novels—fundamentally changing the character of late-career works such as the Snopes trilogy. Rollyson takes the reader on a fascinating journey through the composition of Absalom, Absalom!, widely considered Faulkner’s masterpiece, as well as the film adaptation he authored—unproduced and never published— Revolt in the Earth. He reveals how Faulkner wrestled with the legacy of the South—both its history and its dizzying racial contradictions—and turned it into powerful art in works such as Go Down, Moses and Intruder in the Dust. Volume 2 of this monumental work rests on an unprecedented trove of research, giving us the most penetrating and comprehensive life of Faulkner and providing a fascinating look at the author's trajectory from under-appreciated "writer's writer" to world-renowned Nobel laureate and literary icon. In his famous Nobel speech, Faulkner said what inspired him was the human ability to prevail. In the end, this beautifully wrought life shows how Faulkner, the man and the artist, embodies this remarkable capacity to endure and prevail.
Forty-two stories make up this magisterial collection by the writer who stands at the pinnacle of modern American fiction. Compressing an epic expanse of vision into hard and wounding narratives, Faulkner’s stories evoke the intimate textures of place, the deep strata of history and legend, and all the fear, brutality, and tenderness of the human condition. These tales are set not only in Yoknapatawpha County, but in Beverly Hills and in France during World War I. They are populated by such characters as the Faulknerian archetypes Flem Snopes and Quentin Compson, as well as by ordinary men and women who emerge so sharply and indelibly in these pages that they dwarf the protagonists of most novels. Penguin Random House Canada is proud to bring you classic works of literature in e-book form, with the highest quality production values. Find more today and rediscover books you never knew you loved.
Charles S. Aiken, a native of Mississippi who was born a few miles from Oxford, has been thinking and writing about the geography of Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County for more than thirty years. William Faulkner and the Southern Landscape is the culmination of that long-term scholarly project. It is a fresh approach to a much-studied writer and a provocative meditation on the relationship between literary imagination and place. Four main geographical questions shape Aiken's journey to the family seat of the Compsons and the Snopeses. What patterns and techniques did Faulkner use--consciously or subconsciously--to convert the real geography of Lafayette County into a fictional space? Did Faulkner intend Yoknapatawpha to serve as a microcosm of the American South? In what ways does the historical geography of Faulkner's birthplace correspond to that of the fictional world he created? Finally, what geographic legacy has Faulkner left us through the fourteen novels he set in Yoknapatawpha? With an approach, methodology, and sources primarily derived from historical geography, Aiken takes the reader on a tour of Faulkner's real and imagined worlds. The result is an informed reading of Faulkner's life and work and a refined understanding of the relation of literary worlds to the real places that inspire them.
"This jewel of a book is a great pleasure to read. In point of fact, it is not a book one reads but savors."--Narciso G. Menocal, author of Architecture as Nature
Faulkner's first novel, published in 1926, is one of the most memorable works to emerge from the First World War.
In the 1970s and 1980s, Sally Wolff and Floyd C. Watkins, both of Emory University, took students of southern literature to Lafayette County, Mississippi, to explore the region where William Faulkner lived. They visited Faulkner’s home, Rowan Oak, in Oxford, Mississippi; trekked around the countryside; and met people who were the prototypes for some of his characters. During these excursions, they discovered firsthand how profoundly Faulkner’s family, community, and region imprinted themselves on his imagination and then both shaped and enriched his work. Their primary guide was Jimmy Faulkner, who was once described by his famous uncle as “the only person who likes me for what I am.” Like his uncle, Jimmy is a born storyteller, and his recollections provide profound as well as intimate details about Faulkner as author, father, member of the unusual Faulkner clan, and resident of the model for what may be the most famous county in American literature. In these interviews, and in the forty-three splendid black-and-white photographs that accompany them, we move through Faulkner’s home territory and encounter the sources of his sense of place and its past: antebellum Rowan Oak, with its scuppernong vines and outside kitchen; old plantation homes and dogtrot houses; narrow one-lane bridges and creeks with Indian names; country churches and cemeteries. Jimmy’s comments often link specific sites with particular episodes or settings in Faulkner’s works, and his humorous stories sometimes mingle fact with fiction. Two colorful local personalities who knew Faulkner—Pearle Galloway, proprietor of a general store near Oxford for over thirty years, and Motee Daniel, owner of various enterprises, including a roadhouse, a general store, and a bootlegging operation—also tell tales about him. Galloway and Daniel provide, in turn, fascinating glimpses of the kind of people who intrigued Faulkner and about whom he wrote. While his work was most certainly influenced by his surroundings, Faulkner, through his stories and novels, likewise transformed the memories, perceptions, and interpretations of his family, his community, and his readers. Talking About William Faulkner deepens our knowledge of Faulkner’s everyday life and our understanding of the world in which he lived and of which he wrote.
Set in Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, As I Lay Dying tells the story of the dysfunctional Bundren family as they set out to fulfill Addie Bundren’s dying wish. Told by fifteen narrators, including Jewel, Cash, Darl and Dewey Dell, As I Lay Dying uses stream of consciousness to unveil each character’s motivations for carrying out Addie’s wish, along with a multitude of lies they have been hiding from each other. As I Lay Dying was Faulkner’s fifth novel and is included in the Modern Library’s list of 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. The novel inspired a number of critically-acclaimed books including Graham Swift’s Last Orders and Suzan-Lori Parks’s Getting Mother’s Body: A Novel. The title, which inspired the name of the Grammy-nominated band As I Lay Dying, is derived from Homer’s The Odyssey. HarperPerennial Classics brings great works of literature to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in ebook production and celebrating reading in all its forms. Look for more titles in the HarperPerennial Classics collection to build your digital library.