© Opale

William FAULKNER

prix Nobel 1949

 

“novels which with their ever-varying form, their ever-deeper and more intense psychological insight, and their monumental characters - both good and evil - occupy a unique place in modern American and British fiction.”

William Falkner was born on the 25th of September 1897 in New Albany, Mississippi, the oldest of 4 sons of Murray Charles Falkner and Maud Butler Falkner. William was named after his great grand father, known as The Colonel, who was a lawyer, writer, politician, entrepreneur and colonel in the Civil War. The memory of the Colonel would preside over William and the rest of his family of years to come.

Just prior to his 5th birthday, the family moved to Oxford Mississippi. William showed considerable artistic talent at a young age. He wrote poetry at high school, mainly romantic in tone, influenced by Burns and Swinburne. During his youth he met Estelle Oldham, with whom he would fall in love. She would marry another man however, a law student, in 1918.

In June 1918 Falkner began his training for the Royal Air Force in Canada. He had tried to enrol in the US Army but was rejected for being too short (he was 5’5”). In his application for the RAF he attempted to convince the officers that he was English, even spelling his name Faulkner, believing it looked more British. He managed to begin training but the war finished before he had the chance to take to the air. Nonetheless he would spin innumerable yarns, most of them considerably embellished, about his exploits in the air force, and would pose proudly for photos in his uniform.

In1919, he enrolled in The University of New Orleans ( known as “Ole Miss’) under a special provision for war veterans. Whilst he was a student there he published poems and short stories in the student newspaper The Mississippian. He was also one of the founders of a drama group known as The Marionettes, for whom he wrote a one act play, that was never performed at the time. After only three terms of study at the university he left in 1920.

>From that point Faulkner wrote a considerable amount of poetry and prose, at the same time exercising a series of menial jobs with characteristic insouciance. One notable stint of employment was as post master at the university. He spent most of his time losing the letters, reading or playing cards. After a visit from his supervisor revealed his slack working habits, it was quietly agreed that he should resign. He then became a chief scout for the Oxford Boy Scouts. Again he was asked to hand in his resignation, this time for “moral reasons”, probably drinking.

In December 1924, with the help of his friend Phil Stone, Faulkner published his first collection of poetry The Marble Faun, in an edition of 1000 copies.

In 1925 Faulkner moved to New Orleans where he became involved with a literary group centred around the review The Double Dealer, which published extracts of work by Ernest Hemingway, Edmund Wilson and Hart Crane. It was in this review that Faulkner first published his essays. Significanlty he met Sherwood Anderson, who encouraged his endeavours. He also wrote his first novel during this period, Soldier’s Pay, which was accepted by the editor Horace Liverrirght.

After that Faulkner sailed to Europe. He travelled in Italy but spent most of his time in Paris. He lodged near the Luxembourg gardens where he went for frequent walks - indeed a description of the gardens is found at the of end of Sanctuary. He also frequented the same café as James Joyce, but never had the courage to speak to him. At the end of the year he returned to America.

His second novel Mosquitoes takes place in New Orleans, and drawa upon the literary milieu that Faulkner discovered there. The novel was coldly received by the critics. As a result of this disappointment he considered the idea of yoking his narrative to a more familiar setting, in his native region, within its history and geography. He would use in particular the stories of the colonel to enrich this partially imagined landscape. Thus he created the region and the myth of “Yoknapatawpha County.”

The next novel that he tried to publish was Sartoris. It too was poorly received. Eventually he managed to have it published but only with extensive cutting. This novel was the first of his 15 novels that take place in Yoknapatawpha County. Discouraged by the critical reaction, Faulkner began to reconsider his career as a writer. He started to write a novel for his personal pleasure. This novel, which was revolutionary in form and style, borrowed a line from Shakespeare as its foundation ( a “tale told by an idiot”) was called The Sound and The Fury. This novel would be one of his most famous works, and was published in 1929.

Faulkner began to focus more and more upon earning money from his literary endeavours. He wrote Sanctuary with the sole aim, according to him, of making money. In 1930 he married Estelle Oldham, his childhood sweetheart, who already had two children from her former marriage. Faulkner was at this point working nights in a power plant. He wrote As I lay dying in 6 weeks, without changing a single word, or so he claimed. The novel is undoubtedly a powerful and poetic work, in the stream of consciousness style so associated with high modernism. In 1930 the novel was published.

That year was particularly important for Faulkner, in part because he bought a house in Oxford. The house was a dilapidated antebellum mansion built in 1844 and he named it Rowan Oak. The purchase would plunge Faulkner into enormous debts, but would also provide him with a place of solace and respite for the rest of his life. 1930 also saw the first publication of one of his short stories in a National newspaper. A Rose for Emily appeared in the magazine Forum. Faulkner would depend throughout his life on short stories as a source of financial support.

In 1931 Estelle gave birth to a baby girl, Alabama, who died a few days later.

In 1932 Faulkner went to Hollywood to begin a career as a screenwriter. Following a trip to New York where he made numerous contacts, among them the actress Tallulah Bankhead, he signed a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1931. In Los Angeles he met the director Howard Hawks who shared with him a love of hunting and flying. Over the following years, Faulkner would write 5 films for Hawks.

When his father died suddenly in August Faulkner returned to Oxford, but soon realised that he needed money and went back to Hollywood. He sold the rights for Sanctuary which became a film entitled The Story of Temple Drake in 1933. That year was marked by both success and tragedy for the Faulkner family. His only daughter Jill was born, but his brother died in a crash in the Waco monoplane that William had bought and given him.

His next project was again based in Hollywood, this time at 20th century fox with Howard Hawks. He embarked upon an affair with Hawk’s secretary Meta Carpenter, one of several extra marital affairs.

The life of William Faulkner was plagued by alcoholism. He would enter into periods of binge drinking that might correspond to a stage in his writing process and then, as he did in 1936, go to Wright’s Sanatorium, a facility in Byhalia, Mississippi. This time the binge coincided with him finishing the manuscript of the novel entitled originally Dark House, which became Absalom Absalom. This novel dealt with questions of history, family and race.

In 1939 Faulkner was elected to the National Institution of Arts and Letters, and Wild Palms was published. In 1940 he introduced the Snopes family in the novel The Hamlet published by Random House. The Snopes represented a working class redneck community clambering upwards in society without respect for their heritage or cultural background.

During this period sales for his novels begin to drop. He decided to return to Hollywood therefore in order to write several more screen plays, this time at Warner Brothers. In 1943 he wrote To Have or Have Not, the first film that would feature Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart together. In 1944 he began to undertake the adaptation of the Raymond Candler novel The Big Sleep, for cinema., which would also star Bogart and Bacall. He also collaborated with Jean Renoir on the film The Southerner, which came out in 1945. These three films represented the pinnacle of Faulkner’s screenwriting career.

By 1945 Faulkner was no longer widely read as a novelist, nor was there much critical interest in his literary production. At that point however he was corresponding with Malcolm Cowley who published The Portable Hemingway for Viking Press. Cowley suggested to Faulkner to publish a similar version for his work. The Portable Faulkner contained novels, and extracts that represented as closely as possible the Yoknapatawpha County saga. Published in 1946, The Portable Faulkner inspired a renewed public and critical interest in his work.

In 1949 he won The Nobel Prize for Literature. At first he refused to go to Stockholm to receive the prize, but after pressure form the US State Department, the Swedish ambassador to the United States and his own family, he accepted. He drank a considerable amount before he acceptance speech. His family had foreseen this possibility, and one of them even tried to convince Faulkner the ceremony was on a different day, so that he would not be able to plan a binge in advance, but he realised. He gave his speech in a voice that was slurred and mumbling, scarcely audible to the audience. The next day when the speech was printed however, the value of his words was quickly recognised. Today the speech is considered one of the finest ever given for the Nobel Prize for Literature.

The 1950s saw Faulkner become more successful on an international level. In November 1953 Albert Camus asked if he could have the right to stage an adaptation of Requiem for a Nun. In 1956 the play premiered at the Théâtre des Mathurins in Paris. At the same time he began to speak more openly about politics, and particularly the question of segregation. In 1955 he made a tour of Japan, Manila and Italy. During his stay in Rome he wrote an article condemning the murder of Emmett Till, a black teenager from Chicago, who was brutally killed in Mississippi. Faulkner’s position on the issue of segreration laid him open to much criticism. Whilst he opposed it, he did not favour the intervention of the federal government.

In 1957 he became Writer in Residence at the University of Virginia, to which he bequeathed his manuscripts. In June 1961 Faulkner was injured falling from a horse. He asked to be taken to Wright’s Sanatorium, for the first time in his life, of his own volition. On the 6th of July (the date of the Colonel’s birthday), he died of a heart attack.