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.
Foreword , Sherwood Anderson and Other Famous Creoles . Compare R : D. Laing , The Divided Self ( New York , 1970 ) , p . 90. See also Spratling , “ Chronicle of a Friendship , ” as cited in the general note to this chapter . 7.
Drawing on previously unavailable sources--including letters, memoirs, and interviews with Faulkner's daughter and lovers--Jay Parini has crafted a biography that delves into the mystery of this gifted and troubled writer.
Allen Tate recalled Faulkner asking Tate's wife where he could get another drink, then vomiting all over her dress (WFSH ). The situation had gotten out of hand. Hal Smith, Faulkner's friend and publisher, finally reacted.
Equally important, Williamson uses these stories to underscore themes of race, class, economics, politics, religion, sex and violence, idealism and Romanticism--"the rainbow of elements in human culture"--that reappear in Faulkner's work.
Doyle, Don H. Faulkner's County: The Historical Roots of Yoknapatawpha. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001. Falkner, Murry C. The Falkners of Mississippi: A Memoir. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1967.
A New York Times Notable Book of 2020 How do we read William Faulkner in the twenty-first century? asks Michael Gorra, in this reconsideration of Faulkner's life and legacy.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL SOURCES Bassett , John E. Faulkner : An Annotated Checklist of Recent Criticism . Kent , Ohio : Kent State University Press , 1983 . Faulkner the Eighties : An Annotated Critical Bibliography . Metuchen , N.J .
“Jesus, I can't hardly wait,” I said. “You which?” Rosie hollered. “Jesus?” she hollered. “Jesus? You let your mamma hear you cussing and I bound you'll wait. You talk to me about a nickel! For a nickel ...
Their lives fragmented and harrowed by history and legacy, the character’s voices and actions mesh to create what is arguably Faulkner’s masterpiece and one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century.
Cain's name was Cornelius Franklin, not Robert or Bob. He usually was called by the nickname Tince. Cain owned stock in the First National Bank of Oxford, the financial institution begun in 1910 by J. W. T. Falkner, William Faulkner's ...