William+Faulkner

William Faulkner 1897-1962, who came from an old southern family, grew up in Oxford, Mississippi. He joined the Canadian, and later the British, Royal Air Force during the First World War, studied for a while at the University of Mississippi, and temporarily worked for a New York bookstore and a New Orleans newspaper. In an attempt to create a saga of his own, Faulkner has invented a host of characters typical of the historical growth and subsequent decadence of the South. The human drama in Faulkner's novels is then built on the model of the actual, historical drama extending over almost a century and a half Each story and each novel contributes to the construction of a whole, which is the imaginary Yoknapatawpha County and its inhabitants. Their theme is the decay of the old South, as represented by the families, and the emergence of ruthless and brash newcomers, Theme and technique - the distortion of time through the use of the inner monologue are fused particularly successfully in //The Sound and the Fury// 1929, the downfall of the family seen through the minds of several characters. The novel //Sanctuary// 1931 is about the degeneration of Temple Drake, a young girl from a distinguished southern family. Its sequel, //Requiem For A Nun// 1951, written partly as a drama, centered on the courtroom trial of a Negro woman who had once been a party to Temple Drake's debauchery.and the emergence of ruthless and brash newcomers, Theme and technique - the distortion of time through the use of the inner monologue are fused particularly successfully in //The Sound and the Fury// 1929, the downfall of the family seen through the minds of several characters. The novel //Sanctuary// 1931 is about the degeneration of Temple Drake, a young girl from a distinguished southern family. Its sequel, //Requiem For A Nun// 1951, written partly as a drama, centered on the courtroom trial of a Negro woman who had once been a party to Temple Drake's debauchery. In //Light in August// 1932, prejudice is shown to be most destructive when it is internalized, as in Joe Christmas, who believes, though there is no proof of it, that one of his parents was a Negro. The theme of racial prejudice is brought up again in //Absalom, Absalom!// 1936, in which a young man is rejected by his father and brother because of his mixed blood. Faulkner's most outspoken moral evaluation of the relationship and the problems between Negroes and whites is to be found in //Intruder In the Dust// 1948. In 1929 Faulkner married Estelle Oldham Franklin, his childhood sweetheart, who had divorced his first husband, a lawyer. Next year he purchased the traditional Southern pillared house in Oxford, which he named Rowan Oak. Architecture was important for the author - he obsessively restored his own house, named his books after buildings the mansion, and depicted them carefully: "It was a big, squarish frame house that had once been white, decorated with cupolas and spires and scrolled balconies in the heavily light some style of the seventies, set on what had once been our most select street. Faulkner's second period of success started in 1946 with the publication of THE PORTABLE FAULKNER, which rescued him from near-oblivion. However Faulkner's physique and mental functioning was weakened by hard drinking. When I have one martini I feel bigger wiser taller he confessed. When I have a second I feel superlative. After that there's no holding me.