Childhood and heritage , his paternal great-grandfather and namesake. Faulkner was born on September 25, 1897, in
New Albany, Mississippi, the first of four sons of Murry Cuthbert Falkner and Maud Butler. His family was upper middle-class, but "not quite of
the old feudal cotton aristocracy". After Maud rejected Murry's plan to become a rancher in Texas, the family moved to
Oxford, Mississippi in 1902, where Faulkner's father established a livery stable and hardware store before becoming the
University of Mississippi's business manager. Faulkner spent his boyhood listening to stories told to him by his elders – stories that spanned the
Civil War, slavery, the
Ku Klux Klan, and the Faulkner family. Young William was greatly influenced by the history of his family and the region in which he lived. Mississippi marked his sense of humor, his sense of the tragic position of "
black and
white"
Americans, his characterization of Southern characters, and his timeless themes, including fiercely intelligent people who are dwelling behind the façades of good ol' boys and simpletons. He was particularly influenced by stories of his great-grandfather
William Clark Falkner, who had become a near legendary figure in North Mississippi. Born into poverty, the elder Falkner was a strict disciplinarian and was a Confederate colonel. Tried and acquitted twice on charges of murder, he became a member of the
Mississippi House and became a part-owner of a railroad before being murdered by a co-owner. Faulkner incorporated many aspects of his great-grandfather's biography into his later works. Faulkner initially excelled in school and skipped the second grade. However, beginning somewhere in the fourth and fifth grades, he became a quieter and more withdrawn child. He occasionally played truant and became indifferent about schoolwork. Instead, he took an interest in studying the
history of Mississippi. The decline of his performance in school continued, and Faulkner wound up repeating the eleventh and twelfth grades, never graduating from high school. However, Estelle dated other boys during their romance, and, in 1918,
Cornell Franklin (five years Faulkner's senior) proposed marriage to her before Faulkner did. She accepted.
Trip to the North and early writings When he was 17, Faulkner met
Phil Stone, who became an important early influence on his writing. Stone was four years his senior and came from one of Oxford's older families; he was passionate about literature and had bachelor's degrees from
Yale and the University of Mississippi. Stone read and was impressed by some of Faulkner's early poetry, becoming one of the first to recognize and encourage Faulkner's talent. Stone mentored the young Faulkner, introducing him to the works of writers like
James Joyce, who influenced Faulkner's own writing. In his early 20s, Faulkner gave poems and short stories he had written to Stone in hopes of them being published. Stone sent these to publishers, but they were uniformly rejected. Through Stone, Faulkner met writers like
Sherwood Anderson,
Robert Frost, and
Ezra Pound. During the
First World War, Faulkner attempted to join the US Army. There are accounts of this that indicate he was rejected for being under weight and his short stature of 5'5". Although he initially planned to join the
British Army in hopes of being commissioned as an officer, Faulkner instead joined the
Royal Air Force (Canada) with a forged letter of reference and left Yale to receive training in
Toronto. He enlisted in Toronto on July 10, 1918, as a Private (II Class), No.173799, in the
RAF (C) but never saw active service overseas during the First World War, only training at the recruit depot in Toronto. On January 4, 1919, he was discharged as a Private (II Class) due to the end of the War, having served 179 days. Despite claiming so in his letters, Faulkner did not receive cockpit training or ever fly. Returning to Oxford in December 1918, Faulkner told acquaintances false war-stories and even faked a war wound. In 1918, Faulkner's surname changed from "Falkner" to "Faulkner". According to one story, a careless typesetter made an error. When the misprint appeared on the title page of his first book, Faulkner was asked whether he wanted the change. He supposedly replied, "Either way suits me." His 1918 Attestation Papers for the RAF (C) note his name as "Faulkner". In adolescence, Faulkner began writing poetry almost exclusively. He did not write his first novel until 1925. His literary influences are deep and wide. He once stated that he modeled his early writing on the
Romantic era in late 18th- and early 19th-century England. Faulkner joined the
Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity, and pursued his dream to become a writer. He skipped classes often and received a "D" grade in English. However, some of his poems were published in campus publications. In 1922, his poem "Portrait" was published in the New Orleans literary magazine
Double Dealer. The magazine published his "New Orleans" short story collection three years later. After dropping out, he took a series of odd jobs: at a New York City bookstore, as a carpenter in Oxford, and as the Ole Miss postmaster. He resigned from the post office with the declaration: "I will be damned if I propose to be at the beck and call of every itinerant scoundrel who has two cents to invest in a postage stamp."
New Orleans and early novels (pictured center yellow). While most writers of Faulkner's
generation traveled to and lived in Europe, Faulkner remained writing in the United States. Faulkner spent the first half of 1925 in
New Orleans, Louisiana, where many
bohemian artists and writers lived, specifically in the
French Quarter where Faulkner lived beginning in March. During his time in New Orleans, Faulkner's focus drifted from poetry to prose and his literary style made a marked transition from
Victorian to
modernist.
The Times-Picayune published several of his short works of prose. After being directly influenced by
Sherwood Anderson, Faulkner wrote his first novel, ''
Soldiers' Pay,
Anderson assisted in the publication of Soldiers' Pay
and Mosquitoes'' by recommending them to his publisher. The miniature house at 624 Pirate's Alley, just around the corner from
St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans, is now the site of Faulkner House Books, where it also serves as the headquarters of the Pirate's Alley Faulkner Society. During the summer of 1927, Faulkner wrote his first novel set in his fictional Yoknapatawpha County,
Flags in the Dust. This novel drew heavily from the traditions and history of the South, in which Faulkner had been engrossed in his youth. He was extremely proud of the novel upon its completion and he believed it a significant step up from his previous two novels—however, when submitted for publication to
Boni & Liveright, it was rejected. Faulkner was devastated by this rejection but he eventually allowed his literary agent, Ben Wasson, to edit the text, and the novel was published in 1929 as
Sartoris. Eventually Faulkner's daughter, Jill, would approach University of Virginia professor
Douglas Day about restoring the text. Almost a fourth of the original manuscript had been cut by Wasson to meet the demands of publishers Harcourt, Brace in 1929. Working from a surviving typescript, Day reinstated cut passages but also included at least one added section from the published text. This new edition, published in 1973, also restored Faulkner's original title,
Flags in the Dust. A third version by Noel Polk has since replaced Day's and is considered the definitive text by Random House, the current publishers of Faulkner's fiction.
The Sound and the Fury '' (1929) In autumn 1928, just after his 31st birthday, Faulkner began working on
The Sound and the Fury. He started by writing three short stories about a group of children with the last name Compson, but soon began to feel that the characters he had created might be better suited for a full-length novel. Perhaps as a result of disappointment in the initial rejection of
Flags in the Dust, Faulkner had now become indifferent to his publishers and wrote this novel in a much more experimental style. In describing the writing process for this work, Faulkner later said, "One day I seemed to shut the door between me and all publisher's addresses and book lists. I said to myself, 'Now I can write.'" After its completion, Faulkner insisted that Wasson not do any editing or add any punctuation for clarity. They honeymooned on the Mississippi Gulf Coast at
Pascagoula, then returned to Oxford, first living with relatives while they searched for a home of their own to purchase. In 1930, Faulkner purchased the
antebellum home
Rowan Oak, known at that time as The Shegog Place from Irish planter Robert Shegog.--> In 1929, Faulkner married Estelle Oldham, with Andrew Kuhn serving as best man at the wedding. Estelle brought with her two children from her previous marriage to
Cornell Franklin and Faulkner hoped to support his new family as a writer. Faulkner and Estelle had one child together, daughter Jill (1933–2008). He began writing
As I Lay Dying in 1929 while working night shifts at the
University of Mississippi Power House. The novel was published in 1930. Beginning in 1930, Faulkner sent some of his short stories to various national magazines. Several of these were published and brought him enough income to buy a house in Oxford for his family, which he named
Rowan Oak. Fueled by a desire to make money, Faulkner wrote
Sanctuary. With limited royalties from his work, he published short stories in magazines such as
The Saturday Evening Post to supplement his income.
Light in August and Hollywood years '' (1932) By 1932, Faulkner was in need of money. He asked Wasson to sell the serialization rights for his newly completed novel,
Light in August, to a magazine for $5,000, but none accepted the offer. Then
MGM Studios offered Faulkner work as a screenwriter in Hollywood. Faulkner was not an avid moviegoer and had reservations about working in the movie industry. As André Bleikasten comments, he "was in dire need of money and had no idea how to get it...So he went to Hollywood." It has been noted that authors like Faulkner were not always hired for their writing prowess but "to enhance the prestige of the ...writers who hired them." Initially, he declared a desire to work on
Mickey Mouse cartoons, not realizing that they were produced by
Walt Disney Productions and not MGM. His first screenplay was for
Today We Live, an adaptation of his short story "Turnabout", which received a mixed response. He then wrote a screen adaptation of
Sartoris that was never produced. In early 1944, Faulkner wrote a screenplay adaptation of
Ernest Hemingway's novel
To Have and Have Not. The
film was the first starring
Lauren Bacall and
Humphrey Bogart. Bogart and Bacall would star in Hawks's
The Big Sleep, another film Faulkner worked on. Faulkner was highly critical of what he found in Hollywood, and he wrote letters that were "scathing in tone, painting a miserable portrait of a literary artist
imprisoned in a cultural Babylon." Many scholars have brought attention to the dilemma he experienced and the predicament that caused him serious unhappiness. In Hollywood he worked with director
Howard Hawks, with whom he quickly developed a friendship, as they both enjoyed drinking and hunting. Howard Hawks' brother,
William Hawks, became Faulkner's
Hollywood agent. Faulkner continued to find reliable work as a screenwriter from the 1930s to the 1950s. He had an extramarital affair with Hawks' secretary and
script girl, Meta Carpenter. With the onset of World War II, in 1942, Faulkner tried to join the
United States Air Force but was rejected. He instead worked on local
civil defense. The war drained Faulkner of his enthusiasm. He described the war as "bad for writing". Amid this
creative slowdown, in 1943, Faulkner began work on a new novel that merged World War I's
Unknown Soldier with the
Passion of Christ. Published over a decade later as
A Fable, it won the 1954 Pulitzer Prize. The award for
A Fable was a controversial political choice. The jury had selected
Milton Lott's
The Last Hunt for the prize, but Pulitzer Prize Administrator Professor John Hohenberg convinced the Pulitzer board that Faulkner was long overdue for the award, despite
A Fable being a lesser work of his, and the board overrode the jury's selection, much to the disgust of its members. By the time of
The Portable Faulkners publication in 1946, most of his novels had been out of print. It was awarded at the following year's banquet along with the 1950 Prize to
Bertrand Russell. When Faulkner visited Stockholm in December 1950 to receive the Nobel Prize, he met Else Jonsson (1912–1996), who was the widow of journalist
Thorsten Jonsson (1910–1950). Jonsson, a reporter for
Dagens Nyheter from 1943 to 1946, had interviewed Faulkner in 1946 and introduced his works to Swedish readers. Faulkner and Else had an affair that lasted until the end of 1953. At the banquet where they met in 1950, publisher Tor Bonnier introduced Else as the widow of the man responsible for Faulkner winning the Nobel Prize. Faulkner's Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech on the immortality of the artists, although brief, contained a number of allusions and references to other literary works. However, Faulkner detested the fame and glory that resulted from his recognition. His aversion was so great that his 17-year-old daughter learned of the Nobel Prize only when she was called to the principal's office during the school day. He began by saying: "I feel that this award was not made to me as a man, but to my work – a life's work in the agony and sweat of the human spirit, not for glory and least of all for profit, but to create out of the materials of the human spirit something which did not exist before. So this award is only mine in trust. It will not be difficult to find a dedication for the money part of it commensurate with the purpose and significance of its origin." He donated part of his Nobel money "to establish a fund to support and encourage new fiction writers", eventually resulting in the
William Faulkner Foundation (1960–1970). Controversially, he is noted to have once told
J. Robert Oppenheimer at a buffet supper: "Television is for
niggers." Faulkner's biographer,
Joseph Blotner, attributes this remark to Faulkner's being "in a situation which had produced boredom and resentment, and he ... struck out verbally in response. He did not want to be there with these people, talking about television or anything else, and he simply choked off the conversation as quickly as he could." Critic Thomas Powers claims that this statement shows how "for many white southerners [like Faulkner] nothing changed with the end of slavery except slavery." In 1951, Faulkner received the
Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur medal from the government of
France. Faulkner served as the first Writer-in-Residence at the
University of Virginia at
Charlottesville from February to June 1957 and again in 1958. In 1961, Faulkner began writing his nineteenth and final novel,
The Reivers. The novel is a nostalgic reminiscence, in which an elderly grandfather relates a humorous episode in which he and two boys stole a car to drive to a
Memphis bordello. In summer 1961, he finished the first draft. During this time, he injured himself in a series of falls. On June 17, 1962, Faulkner suffered a serious injury in a fall from his horse, which led to
thrombosis. He suffered a fatal heart attack on July 6, 1962, at the age of 64, at Wright's Sanatorium in
Byhalia, Mississippi. ==Writing==