William Faulkner Essay, Research Paper

Faulkner, William ( 1897-1962 ) , American novelist, known for his heroic poem portraiture, in some 20 novels, of the tragic struggle between the old and the new South. Faulkner & # 8217 ; s complex secret plans and narrative manner alienated many readers of his early plants, but he was recognized subsequently as one of the greatest American authors.

Born in New Albany, Mississippi, Faulkner was raised in nearby Oxford as the oldest of four boies of an oldline southern household. In 1915 he dropped out of high school, which he detested, to work in his gramps & # 8217 ; s bank. In World War I ( 1914-1918 ) he joined the Royal Canadian Air Force but ne’er saw conflict action. Back place in Oxford, he was admitted to the University of Mississippi as a veteran, but he shortly quit school to compose, back uping himself with uneven occupations.

Faulkner & # 8217 ; s first book, The Marble Faun, a aggregation of pastoral verse forms, was in private printed in 1924. The undermentioned twelvemonth he moved to New Orleans, worked as a journalist, and met the American short-story author Sherwood Anderson, who helped him happen a publishing house for his first novel, Soldier & # 8217 ; s Pay ( 1926 ) , and besides convinced him to compose about the people and topographic points he knew best. After a brief circuit of Europe, Faulkner returned place and began his series of Baroque, dwelling novels set in the fabulous Yoknapatawpha County ( based on Lafayette County, Mississippi ) , peopling it with his ain ascendants, Native Americans, inkinesss, shady back countries anchorites, and boorish hapless Whites. In the first of these novels, Sartoris ( 1929 ) , he patterned the character Colonel Sartoris after his ain great-grandfather, William Cuthbert Falkner, a soldier, politician, railway builder, and writer. ( Faulkner restored the & # 8220 ; u & # 8221 ; that had been removed from the household name. )

The twelvemonth 1929 was important to Faulkner. That twelvemonth Sartoris was followed by The Sound and the Fury, an history of the tragic ruin of the Compson household. The fresh uses four different narrative voices to patch together the narrative and therefore challenges the reader by showing a disconnected secret plan told from multiple points of position. The construction of The Sound and the Fury presaged the narrative inventions Faulkner would research throughout his calling. Besides in 1929 Faulkner married his childhood sweetie, Estelle Oldham, and made his place in the little town of Oxford, Mississippi. Most of the books he wrote over the remainder of his life received favourable reappraisals, but merely one, Sanctuary ( 1931 ) , sold good. Despite its sensationalism and ferociousness, it

s implicit in concerns were with corruptness and disenchantment. The book’s success led to moneymaking work as a scriptwriter for Hollywood, which, for a short clip, freed Faulkner to compose his novels as his imaginativeness dictated. Faulkner’s two most successful screenplays were written for films that were directed by Howard Hawks: To Have and Have Not ( 1945, adapted from the novel by the American author Ernest Hemingway ) and The Big Sleep ( 1946, adapted from the novel by the American author Raymond Chandler ) .

Faulkner & # 8217 ; s works demanded much of his readers. To make a temper, he might allow one of his composite, convoluted sentences run on for more than a page. He juggled clip, spliced narrations, experimented with multiple storytellers, and interrupted simple narratives with rambling, stream-of-consciousness monologues. Consequently, his readership dwindled. In 1946 the critic Malcolm Cowley, concerned that Faulkner was insufficiently known and appreciated, set together The Portable Faulkner, set uping infusions from Faulkner & # 8217 ; s novels into a chronological sequence that gave the full Yoknapatawpha saga a new lucidity, therefore doing Faulkner & # 8217 ; s mastermind accessible to a new coevals of readers.

Faulkner & # 8217 ; s plants, long out of print, began to be reissued. No longer was he regarded as a regional wonder, but as a literary giant whose finest composing held intending far beyond the torments and struggles of his ain troubled South. His achievement was internationally recognized in 1949, when he was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature. His major plants include As I Lay Diing ( 1930 ) , the narrative of a household & # 8217 ; s journey to bury a female parent ; Light in August ( 1932 ) ; Absalom, Absalom! ( 1936 ) , approximately Thomas Sutpen & # 8217 ; s try to establish a Southern dynasty ; The Unvanquished ( 1938 ) ; The Hamlet ( 1940 ) , the first novel in a trilogy about the rise of the Snopes household ; Go Down Moses ( 1942 ) , a aggregation of Yoknapatawpha County narratives of which & # 8220 ; The Bear & # 8221 ; is the best known ; Intruder in the Dust ( 1948 ) ; A Fable ( 1954 ) ; The Town ( 1957 ) and The Mansion ( 1959 ) , which completed the Snopes trilogy ; and The Reivers ( 1962 ) . Faulkner particularly was interested in multigenerational household histories, and many characters appear in more than one book ; this gives the Yoknapatawpha County saga a sense of continuity that makes the country and its dwellers seem existent. Faulkner continued to write-both novels and short stories-until his decease.

Bibliography

& # 8220 ; Faulkner, William, & # 8221 ; Microsoft? Encarta? Encyclopedia 99. ? 1993-1998 Microsoft Corporation.