William Faulkner

NAME William Cuthbert Faulkner was born William Cuthbert Falkner. He changed the spelling of his surname when he joined the Royal Canadian Air Force during World War I, adopting the British-style spelling that he maintained throughout his literary career.

WHAT FAMOUS FOR  Faulkner is celebrated as one of the most important American writers of the 20th century. He is best known for his novels and short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, a literary landscape modeled after Lafayette County where he spent most of his life. 

BIRTH William Cuthbert Falkner was born on September 25, 1897, in New Albany, Mississippi, USA.

FAMILY BACKGROUND Faulkner was the eldest of four sons born to Murry Cuthbert Falkner and Maud Butler Falkner. His three younger brothers were Murry Charles "Jack" Falkner, author John Falkner and Dean Swift Falkner.

Faulkner's family legacy significantly influenced his writing. His great-grandfather, Colonel William Clark Falkner, was a colorful figure who fought in the Civil War, built a local railway, and authored a popular romantic novel, The White Rose of Memphis. This ancestral history provided rich material for Faulkner's exploration of Southern history and mythology.

CHILDHOOD Shortly after Faulkner's first birthday, his family moved from New Albany to Ripley, Mississippi, and later settled in Oxford, Mississippi, which would become the model for his fictional Jefferson in Yoknapatawpha County. Growing up in Oxford, Faulkner experienced the characteristic open-air upbringing of a Southern white youth from a middle-class family. He had a pony to ride and was introduced early to guns and hunting, activities that would remain important to him throughout his life.

Faulkner shared a close bond with his African-American nanny, Caroline Barr, who played a significant role in his upbringing.

EDUCATION Faulkner was not particularly drawn to formal education. He left high school before graduating but devoted himself to "undirected reading," initially on his own and later under the guidance of Phil Stone, a family friend who introduced him to contemporary literature. He briefly attended the University of Mississippi for three semesters from 1919 to November 1920, joining the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity but earning a "D" in English. He skipped classes, focusing instead on independent reading, guided by Phil Stone, and published poems in campus publications, marking the beginning of his literary career. (1)

CAREER RECORD Faulkner's literary career began with poetry. His first published poem, "L'Après-midi d'un Faune," appeared in The New Republic on August 6, 1919. 

After working briefly at a New York bookstore and a New Orleans newspaper, he published his first novel, "Soldiers' Pay," in 1926.

His literary breakthrough came with The Sound and the Fury (1929), which introduced his innovative narrative techniques. 

Financial necessity occasionally led Faulkner to Hollywood, where he worked as a screenwriter. He contributed to notable films including Howard Hawks's To Have and Have Not and The Big Sleep, adapted from Raymond Chandler's novel.

Faulkner was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1949, 

 From 1957 to 1958, he served as Writer-in-Residence at the University of Virginia.

APPEARANCE His relatively short stature, just under 5'6", led to his rejection from the U.S. Army. 

He cultivated the image of a Southern gentleman, often appearing thoughtful and serious in formal portraits.

Despite his generally refined appearance, Faulkner was also known to embrace a more rugged look, even appearing unshaven and clad in his hunting attire in formal settings like the Beverly Hills Hotel. 

Faulkner in 1954

FASHION  In his personal life, Faulkner was known for his preference for classic and well-made clothing, often sporting tweeds and flannels tailored in London.  Following his brief involvement with the Canadian RAF, he acquired an officer's dress uniform, suggesting an appreciation for sartorial representation.   Later in his life, during his time as writer-in-residence at the University of Virginia, Faulkner embraced a more pronounced Anglophile style, readily adopting the traditional attire associated with fox hunting, including top hats and the distinctive "hunting pinks". 2  So closely did he identify with this sporting image that his portrait was even painted with him attired in full fox hunting regalia. (2)  

The significance of clothing in Faulkner's life and work has been substantial enough to inspire scholarly analysis, as evidenced by Christopher Rieger's book Faulkner's Fashion.  This analysis reveals that Faulkner paid close attention to garments and fashion, both in his personal life and in the intricate details of his fiction. Clothing in his narratives serves as a powerful tool for character development, often intersecting with and illuminating themes of race, class, and gender.   

CHARACTER Contemporaries described Faulkner as courteous and well-mannered, with a sometimes misunderstood sense of humor. He possessed a remarkable capacity to find significance and value in seemingly ordinary things and people. Faulkner had great respect for fellow writers and believed strongly in the validity of individual perspectives. This sensibility allowed him to create characters of remarkable complexity, finding "nobility in a prostitute and prostitution in nobility". (3)

SPEAKING VOICE Faulkner spoke with a distinctive Southern drawl that embodied his Mississippi roots. The University of Virginia has preserved recordings of Faulkner reading his own works and answering questions, allowing future generations to hear his authentic voice and delivery. Recordings of his Nobel Prize acceptance speech also provide an opportunity to hear his voice and the cadence of his delivery. 

SENSE OF HUMOUR  William Faulkner possessed a distinctive sense of humor, one that was sometimes misinterpreted by others but generally did not trouble him. His press conferences, for instance, were often characterized by a relaxed, humorous, and even whimsical tone

Despite writing about dark and often morbid subjects, Faulkner possessed a significant humorous streak in his works. His humor was frequently hyperbolic, reflecting the general exaggerated quality of much of his writing. Comedy served various functions in his fiction, allowing him to explore the complexities and contradictions of human experience even in the midst of tragedy. Notably, his final novel, The Reivers, is often cited as his most overtly humorous work.

RELATIONSHIPS William Faulkner married Lida Estelle Oldham Franklin on June 20, 1929 at College Hill Presbyterian Church, located near Oxford, Mississippi. Their relationship had a complicated history-Estelle had divorced her husband to marry Faulkner and brought two children from her previous marriage. The couple had two daughters: Alabama, who died nine days after birth, and Jill, born in 1933.

Faulkner's personal life also included extramarital affairs, notably with Meta Carpenter during his time in Hollywood  and with Jean Stein later in his life. He also engaged in a three-year affair with Else Jonsson, the widow of the man often credited with facilitating his Nobel Prize. 

Despite the challenges in their marriage, a lifelong affection reportedly existed between Faulkner and Estelle. 

After his brother Dean's death in 1935, he took responsibility for his niece’s education, showcasing his familial commitment.

His professional relationships included a competitive yet ultimately respectful dynamic with fellow literary giant Ernest Hemingway.

MONEY AND FAME For much of his early career, Faulkner worked in relative obscurity, struggling financially despite his considerable literary output. Financial necessity sometimes forced him to accept screenwriting assignments in Hollywood, work he reportedly disliked but approached with professional competence. His fortunes changed after he won the Nobel Prize in 1949, which brought him international recognition. He became increasingly sought after by journalists as a prominent Southern voice during the civil rights era.

WRITING CAREER William Faulkner, who looked a bit like a character from one of his own novels—impossibly intense, always a little tired, possibly from the weight of all those commas—began his literary life not with a bang, but with a wistful poem titled "L’Après-midi d’un Faune," which he somehow got into The New Republic in 1919. This was, incidentally, a title so French and fawn-filled that it almost guaranteed no one in Oxford, Mississippi, knew what it meant. Undeterred, Faulkner dabbled in more poetry and short stories, some of which were printed in university publications and the literary hotbed that was the New Orleans newspaper scene.

His first novel, Soldiers’ Pay, came out in 1926 and was followed a year later by Mosquitoes, which, despite sounding like a book about pest control, was actually a social satire. Neither made much of a splash, but Faulkner was just getting warmed up.

Then came the golden stretch—roughly two decades of brain-bending brilliance. Between the early 1920s and World War II, Faulkner churned out 13 novels and enough short stories to keep undergrads baffled for generations. Among the standout offerings:

The Sound and the Fury (1929): A tale told through multiple narrators, including one who is cognitively impaired, and full of stream-of-consciousness prose that feels like trying to read Ulysses while on a carousel.

As I Lay Dying (1930): This one has 15 narrators, a dead body being hauled across the countryside, and possibly the best use of a floating coffin in American literature.

Light in August (1932): Deals with identity and race and may leave you slightly dizzy, in a good way.

Absalom, Absalom! (1936): Essentially Southern Gothic on steroids, where the South’s sins are dragged out into the daylight and examined through so many layers of recollection it starts to feel like historical Jenga.

Much of this sprawling, ambitious storytelling took place in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, which was based closely on Faulkner’s own Lafayette County, Mississippi—except with more murder, madness, and monologues.

Faulkner didn’t just write novels that made readers question their grasp of time and causality. He was also an excellent short story writer. His 1931 collection, These 13, included two of his most famous tales: A Rose for Emily (which includes a dead body in a bed, naturally) and Dry September (a harrowing look at Southern justice, or the lack thereof).

He also found time to publish a few volumes of poetry—The Marble Faun (1924) and A Green Bough (1933)—as well as a collection of mystery stories called Knight’s Gambit (1949), which proved that even when he was trying to be entertaining, Faulkner still couldn’t resist a good existential crisis.

In a twist that sounds like the setup for a punchline, Faulkner spent much of the 1930s and ’40s working in Hollywood, mostly to pay the bills. He contributed to roughly 50 screenplays, including some for classics like The Big Sleep and To Have and Have Not, though whether his input involved much more than occasional mumbling in the back of a room is unclear. He didn’t enjoy it, but Hollywood left a subtle fingerprint on his fiction—if nothing else, he learned that dialogue could sometimes be short.

By 1949, the world caught on. Faulkner won the Nobel Prize in Literature, partly, one suspects, because no one could figure out how to ignore him anymore. He later won two Pulitzers—one for A Fable (1955), which is a book people pretend to have read, and another for The Reivers (1963), which was published posthumously and is surprisingly charming.

Faulkner’s legacy is that of a man who took the American South—already a complicated place—and rendered it in prose so dense, knotty, and brilliant that readers have been alternately cursing and admiring him ever since. His Yoknapatawpha saga, sprawling and interconnected, is one of the great imaginative feats of literature.

And if you’ve ever read a sentence of his and thought, “Wait, is this still the same sentence?”—congratulations, you’ve experienced the Faulkner effect.

FOOD AND DRINK Faulkner's Southern heritage influenced his tastes in food and drink. His preferred meal was reportedly salmon croquettes, made according to the recipe on the back of the salmon tin-a simple dish that reflected his unpretentious tastes despite his literary sophistication.

His favorite cocktail was a mint julep, though he preferred his with minimal sugar-only one teaspoon compared to the standard recipe's much larger amount. He also enjoyed hot toddies, especially on cold winter evenings, and had a particular ritual for serving them.

For bourbon, he favored Four Roses Kentucky Straight Bourbon or Jack Daniel's, and owned a favorite metal cup specifically for drinking his mint juleps. (4)

In 1962, William Faulkner was invited to a White House dinner hosted by President John F. Kennedy honoring Nobel Prize winners. It was meant to be a glittering, high-profile celebration of American achievement. Faulkner declined the invitation explaining that 1000 miles was "a long way to go just to eat."

MUSIC AND ARTS  As a teenager, Faulkner was drawn to drawing , and his mother and grandmother, both accomplished painters and photographers, nurtured his appreciation for line and color. 

In his adolescence, Faulkner primarily focused on writing poetry , and his first published book was a collection of his poems. His early poetic influences included the Romantic-era English poets. During his time at the University of Mississippi, some of his poems found their way into campus publications, and later, his work appeared in literary magazines. 

Faulkner also had an interest in visual art, as evidenced by his hand-illustrated play, The Marionettes. 

William Faulkner’s favorite television show was Car 54, Where Are You?—a zany early-1960s police sitcom starring Fred Gwynne and Joe E. Ross. Faulkner didn’t own a television himself (true to his minimalist, somewhat hermit-like lifestyle), so he would reportedly walk over to a friend’s house every Saturday night in Oxford, Mississippi just to watch the show. He never missed it, and he laughed heartily.

LITERATURE Faulkner was an avid reader who, in his youth, read "everything [he] could get [his] hands on without any discretion or judgment". He acknowledged that a writer is influenced by "not only what he's read, but the music he's heard" and all other experiences. 

When asked about his favorite among his own works, Faulkner identified "The Sound and the Fury" as his preferred novel, explaining that he "worked the hardest on it" and "anguished and raged over it more than over any other". (5)

 He held a deep admiration for the work of James Joyce, a fellow modernist writer whose stylistic innovations he acknowledged. Faulkner himself is considered a key figure in the Modernist literary movement, known for his experimental techniques and thematic explorations. 

NATURE The natural landscape of the American South figures prominently in his fiction, with Yoknapatawpha County serving as a microcosm of the region's geography, history, and ecology.

Faulkner himself harbored a deep, almost spiritual connection to the land. He was an avid hunter and outdoorsman , and his love for nature is palpable throughout his literary works. 

PETS William Faulkner was known to have a fondness for animals and kept various pets throughout his life. As a young boy, he owned a pony. Later, he kept dogs, including at one point a pack of foxhounds. He also owned rat terriers. 

His affection for his canine companions is further evidenced by an essay he penned titled "His Name Was Pete," written after his fifteen-month-old Pointer pup was tragically struck and killed by a car. (6)

HOBBIES AND SPORTS Hunting was one of Faulkner's most important diversions, particularly fox hunting, even creating his own makeshift steeplechase when formal hunts were unavailable. 

Image by ChatGBT

Later in life, he found enjoyment in attending track meets and football games , as well as Little League baseball games. 

He also devoted considerable time to restoring Rowan Oak, the pre-Civil War home he purchased in 1930. These activities provided balance to his intense writing schedule and connected him to the physical world that inspired his fiction. (1)

PHILOSOPHY & THEOLOGY Faulkner's philosophical outlook was grounded in belief in God's existence, placing him within the Christian tradition, though his understanding of Christianity functioned primarily within the social sphere rather than focusing on ritual or doctrine. He defined Christianity as "every individual's individual code of behavior by means of which he makes himself a better human being than he wants to be, if he followed his nature only".

In Faulkner's moral universe, sins that draw divine judgment concern primarily how humans treat the land and other people rather than failures of piety or worship. This ethical framework permeates his fiction, where characters are judged not by their adherence to religious dogma but by their actions toward others.

POLITICS Faulkner's political views were complex and sometimes contradictory. He was generally regarded as a liberal opponent of white supremacy who spoke out against racial violence. Following the 1955 lynching of Emmett Till, he wrote, "If we in America have reached that point in our desperate culture when we must murder children, no matter for what reason or what color, we don't deserve to survive, and probably won't".

However, during the early civil rights movement, Faulkner controversially advocated a gradual approach to desegregation. In a 1956 article in Life magazine, he cautioned advocates to "go slow now". That same year, in an infamous interview given while intoxicated, he made troubling statements suggesting he would side with Mississippi against federal integration mandates if forced to choose-statements he later disavowed. (7)

SCANDAL The most significant scandal of Faulkner's public life came from the aforementioned interview in February 1956, when he declared that if forced to choose sides on integration, "I'd fight for Mississippi against the United States even if it meant going out into the street and shooting Negroes". Though he quickly disavowed these remarks, they remain a controversial aspect of his legacy, revealing the complex and sometimes contradictory nature of his views on race and regional identity. (7)

MILITARY RECORD In mid-1918, impelled by dreams of martial glory and heartbreak from a failed romance, Faulkner joined the British Royal Air Force as a cadet pilot in training in Canada. It was at this time that he changed the spelling of his surname from "Falkner" to "Faulkner". The November 1918 armistice came before he could complete his training, and he never saw combat or reached Europe.

Faulkner as a cadet in the Canadian RAF, 1918

HEALTH AND PHYSICAL FITNESS In his later years, William Faulkner experienced health issues, notably suffering from back pain resulting from multiple falls from horses. His death was attributed to a heart attack , which occurred the month after he had fallen from his horse. 

Faulkner was also known to drink heavily and sought treatment for alcoholism. 

HOMES In 1930, Faulkner purchased Rowan Oak, a pre-Civil War house on the outskirts of Oxford, Mississippi, which became his primary residence and is now preserved as a museum. He devoted considerable time to restoring the "handsome but run-down" property, making it both a home and a sanctuary for his writing. Faulkner's decision to remain in Oxford rather than relocate to literary centers like New York or Paris allowed him to write in relative isolation, focusing entirely on his craft. (1)

TRAVEL Though primarily rooted in Oxford, Mississippi, Faulkner's life involved a notable amount of travel, both within the United States and internationally.  He made trips to Europe and Asia,  and spent brief periods in Hollywood working as a screenwriter. In 1925, he lived in New Orleans with fellow writer Sherwood Anderson, an experience that influenced his early novel Mosquitoes. 

DEATH William Faulkner died on July 6, 1962, at the age of 64. His death was caused by a heart attack, which occurred at Wright's Sanatorium in Byhalia, Mississippi. The heart attack followed a serious fall from his horse a few weeks earlier, which had led to complications including thrombosis.

Faulkner was buried in St. Peter’s Cemetery (also known as Oxford Memorial Cemetery) in Oxford, Mississippi. This historic cemetery is the resting place of many notable individuals from Oxford, but Faulkner’s grave is its most visited and honored.

Faulkner’s funeral was a private affair, in keeping with his family's traditions. The family held a small service at Rowan Oak, Faulkner’s longtime home in Oxford, for family and close friends. The Reverend Duncan Gray, Jr., rector of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, presided over the service, reading from the Book of Common Prayer and passages from the Bible, including Job 19:25-27, Psalms 20 and 46, and Romans 8:14.

The casket, initially chosen to be plain and covered with a grey pall as Faulkner had requested, was switched to a polished cypress casket with a green pall at the insistence of a family member. This change, though initially upsetting to the Faulkner men, was ultimately accepted with humor, reflecting the family's close-knit and practical nature.

After the home service, the casket was placed in a black hearse and led in procession through the town of Oxford to St. Peter’s Cemetery. The townspeople, both Black and white, stood in silence along the route to pay their respects as the procession passed by. At the cemetery, mourners who had not attended the private service gathered to offer condolences. The graveside service was brief, with final prayers from Reverend Gray before Faulkner’s casket was lowered into the earth.

Faulkner’s funeral and burial were marked by the respect and admiration of his community and the literary world. His grave continues to be a site of pilgrimage for admirers from around the world. (8)

APPEARANCES IN MEDIA William Faulkner's works have found their way into various forms of media, most notably film. Several of his novels and short stories have been adapted for the screen, although these adaptations have often received mixed reviews from critics. 

Faulkner himself received official screenwriting credits for six theatrical releases, five of which were collaborations with director Howard Hawks. 

His controversial novel Sanctuary was adapted into two separate films. The Reivers, his final novel, was also adapted into a film starring Steve McQueen. 

Tommy Lee Jones's film The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada drew inspiration in part from Faulkner's novel As I Lay Dying. A documentary film titled William Faulkner on His Native Soil was produced in 1952, offering a glimpse into his life and surroundings. 

Faulkner appeared on television only once, in a now-legendary 1952 episode of CBS’s The Author Meets the Critics. The show was designed to be a sort of intellectual cage match between authors and literary commentators, and Faulkner—stoic, mumbling, and visibly uncomfortable—barely spoke. When he did, it was either hard to hear or cryptic. Critics argued about his work in front of him while he sat quietly smoking. It was a little like watching someone attend their own academic inquisition.

The episode has become infamous for revealing how poorly Faulkner fit into media designed for quick takes and bright lights.

ACHIEVEMENTS Faulkner's literary achievements are remarkable by any standard. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1949 "for his powerful and unique contribution to the modern American novel". He won two Pulitzer Prizes: for A Fable (1954) and posthumously for The Reivers (1962). His honors also include two National Book Awards.

Beyond these formal recognitions, Faulkner's creation of the fictional Yoknapatawpha County represents one of literature's most fully realized imaginative worlds. His innovative narrative techniques and profound exploration of Southern history and identity have secured his place as one of the most significant American writers of all time. His influence extends far beyond American literature, with his experimental approach to fiction inspiring writers worldwide.

Sources (1) Britannica (2) No Man Walks Alone (3) Faulkner at Virginia (4) Paper and Salt (5) The Marginalian (6) Invitation magazine (7) The New Republic (8) Caba