American writer and Nobel Prize winner William Cuthbert Faulkner was born on September 25, 1897. He was regarded as one of the 20th century’s most influential authors. His novels, short tales, and novellas are the foundation of his reputation. Faulkner was a scriptwriter on occasion and a published poet as well. In his native state of Mississippi, Faulkner wrote the majority of his writings. He was relatively unknown until he was awarded the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature, despite his writings being routinely published from the mid-1920s (The New York Times). Faulkner is currently regarded as one of America’s most influential writers. This paper will examine Faulkner’s background and how his early years influenced his literary works. While doing so, it will reflect on some of his earlier works that helped him become a well-known American novelist.
William Cuthbert Faulkner was born in New Albany, Mississippi, in a white southern middle-class family. Most of his boyhood was then spent in Oxford, Mississippi, where he later relocated (Bleikasten 39). Throughout most of his youth, Faulkner had a traditional Southern upbringing, learning how to ride horses and engaging in hunting at an early age. He was hesitant throughout his teens to experience the independence of adulthood and become aware of the world around him. He was unable to complete high school as a result and devoted himself leisurely to exploratory reading instead. Faulkner shifted from studying alone to reading with Phil Stone, a family acquaintance with a keen interest in literature, as his unguided reading habit grew more indulgent (Bleikasten 47). Stone regularly gave Faulkner magazines and books to read, learn and research.
Faulkner planned to fulfill his boyhood dream of joining the British Royal Air Force and participating in World War I when he entered his late twenties. He never completed ground school, though, and instead went home to pursue his studies once the war ended and peace was declared. Faulkner attended college at the University of Mississippi, which is close to his home Oxford (Bleikasten 61).
Stone helped him submit an application at the post office and had poetry printed in the student newspapers (Bleikasten 61). Interestingly, he addressed his short wartime service in a number of his poetry. At the university, Joseph Conrad, Charles Dickens, and Sherwood Anderson were just a few of the well-known writers on both sides of the Atlantic whose works William Faulkner read. Faulkner’s longtime mentor Phil Stone gave him the financial support he needed in 1924 to release his well-known poem, The Marble Faun (Millgate). The first version of Faulkner’s fictional novel started when he was on a half-year voyage to New Orleans, which was a famous city for literature at the time.
On his farm near Oxford, Faulkner kept writing his books and short tales as he got older. Thus, this information demonstrates how significant Faulkner’s hometown was to his writing. He developed a group of imaginary Southern characters using the concept of the fictitious Yoknapatawpha County in an effort to lay the groundwork for his literary career. This was primarily based on Lafayette County and Oxford with some inspiration from Ripley, and it featured several repetitions of the same characters, settings, and themes (The New York Times). The same repeating motifs appeared in his whole body of work.
Despite having little desire to publish The Sound and the Fury, Faulkner finally achieved his major breakthrough with its publication in October 1929. A year later, he purchased Rowan Oak, a home close to Oxford, where Faulkner finally made his home and married Estelle Oldham, with whom he ultimately had a daughter. After The Sound and the Fury, his first significant book was published, Faulkner went on to publish As I Lay Dying. The elements of both comedy and tragedy were brilliantly combined in this work to create a tragicomedy. Faulkner published several short stories and novels during his literary career, which helped him ascend to the summit of the international literature industry.
Following the release of his first two significant novels, Faulkner gained fame, and publications like Saturday Evening Post and Collier’s started to include his short stories. Then he published the compelling book Sanctuary, which detailed the violent sexual assault of a young college student from the South. His sales were substantially augmented by this sincere book’s popularity, which allowed him to spend lavishly on assets like a modest Waco biplane which he subsequently gifted to his younger brother, Dean. The novel Absalom, written by Faulkner later, tells the narrative of a plantation master during the American Civil War (Padgett 418).
This book is regarded as one of the best examples of modernist literature. Faulkner makes his most emphatic moral appraisal of the connection and the difficulties between black people and Whites in yet another of his later books, Intruder in the Dust (The New York Times). This illustrates that Faulkner regularly portrayed his works’ historical background and backdrop.
Faulkner authored a number of additional well-known books throughout the years, such as The Hamlet and Go Down, Moses, which are still widely read and purchased today. Finally, in 1949, Faulkner was awarded the Nobel Prize, a highly prestigious prize that was credited to him being named the most influential American author (The New York Times).
The exposure from the Nobel Prize earned him further recognition and, eventually, other literary accolades, notably the 1952 National Volume Award for The Collected Stories of William Faulkner, a book comprising several of his short stories. Regrettably, Faulkner died unexpectedly in July 1962 of cardiac arrest. After his tragic death in 1963, he received his second Pulitzer Prize for The Reivers. The Reivers was released the same year as Faulkner’s death, and his best comic book shares many characteristics with other well-known novels, such as Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn. It is clear that Faulkner’s writing had a considerable influence on the development of literature, given the dedication of his works to modern culture.
Faulkner’s remarkable research of historical fiction via his analysis of interpersonal conflicts in his society has had a lasting impact on literature. He also uses complex characterization techniques and a distinctive writing style that is specific to his works. In conclusion, Faulkner’s name and accomplishments have been preserved in history because of the popularity of his books that explore the elements of the historical fiction category. Along with other historical personalities like Albert Einstein, William Faulkner is most known for receiving the Nobel Prize. Given how successfully he captured the great moments and the depths of the Southern lifestyle, Faulkner left a significant literary legacy and is still regarded as a classic novelist of the American South.
Works Cited
Bleikasten, André. “William Faulkner: A Life Through Novels.” Indiana University Press, 2017. Web.
Millgate, Michael. “William Faulkner.” Encyclopedia Britannica. 2022. Web.
The New York Times. “Faulkner’s home, family and heritage were the genesis of Yoknapatawpha County.” Nytimes. 2018. Web.
Padgett, John F. “Faulkner’s assembly of memories into history: Narrative networks multiple times.” American Journal of Sociology vol, 124, no. 2, 2018, pp 406-478. Web.