Considered one of the most important Modernist writers, William Faulkner is known for his searing excavations into the core of the pain, pride, and prejudices of the antebellum South. His novels explore many subjects in many voices. His narrators range from...
[more]Considered one of the most important Modernist writers, William Faulkner is known for his searing excavations into the core of the pain, pride, and prejudices of the antebellum South. His novels explore many subjects in many voices. His narrators range from children to murderers, the insane, and the dead -- sometimes within the same book. Together, Faulkner uses these shifting voices to make inroads into the heart of a damaged cultural psyche.
Faulkner's obsession with Southern mythology may stem from his family history; his grandfather was a Civil War hero-cum-railroad baron who was killed by a business rival in 1889. Though the young Faulkner excelled as a student, he soon lost interest in formal education, preferring to develop his own mind. Like many writers, he suffered through a series of day jobs, increasingly alienating his family with his lack of career and focus. His first literary ambitions were poetic, and he wrote a style of verse described as a mix of "Shakespeare, pastoral, Victorian, and Edwardian modes, with a dollop of French symbolism and T.S. Eliot added." He actually managed to publish a book of poetry, "The Marble Faun," in 1924.
In 1925, Faulkner moved to New Orleans from his adopted home of Oxford, Mississippi, where he mingled with literary types such as Sherwood Anderson. Anderson, a heavyweight of American fiction, recommended Faulkner's first novel, "Soldier's Pay," to his own publisher -- it debuted in 1926.
After a brief tour of Europe, Faulkner bought a ruined mansion and sat down to write the Southern Gothic novels for which he is now famous. "As I Lay Dying" appeared in 1929, followed by "The Sound and the Fury" in 1930; their patchwork narratives, shifting perspectives, and tonal variations -- which range from the humorous to the grotesque -- drew a very small audience. Like other Modernist writers, he experimented with rendering time as it is experienced rather than chronologically. Though it was perplexing to some readers, his stream-of-consciousness techniques would become one of Faulkner's marks of greatness.
Luckily, however, Faulkner's short stories were being widely published in small magazines. Readers gradually became familiar with his style, and began to tackle his larger fiction. While Faulkner waited for his audience to develop, he wrote the hard-boiled "Sanctuary," a novel that featured a plot sordid enough to gain a popular readership. To complete the sell-out process, Faulkner began writing movies, becoming a favorite of Howard Hawks and penning two films for Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall.
However, Faulkner continued writing his innovative novels, producing such classics as "Go Down Moses" and "Absalom, Absalom!" before his death at age 65.
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