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William FaulknerAmerican writer - master of Yoknapatawpha, Nobel laureate in literature 1949.
Date of Birth: 25.09.1897
Country:  USA |
Content:
- Biography of William Faulkner
- Early Writing Career
- Exploring Human Passions
- Unique Writing Style
- Other Notable Works
- Faulkner died in Oxford on July 6, 1962.
Biography of William Faulkner
William Faulkner, an American writer, was born on September 25, 1897 in New Albany, Mississippi. His father owned a small horse stable in Oxford, and Faulkner grew up in an atmosphere of "noble poverty". After completing an incomplete high school education, Faulkner mainly educated himself. He took some special courses at the University of Mississippi, but remained largely self-taught. During World War I, he volunteered for the Royal Canadian Air Force. After the war, he returned to Oxford and continued his studies at the university.
Early Writing Career
Faulkner's first book, "The Marble Faun" (1924), was a collection of mostly weak and secondary poems. For a time, he lived in the bohemian quarter of New Orleans, then moved to New York and later to Europe before returning to Oxford. It was during this time, under the influence of Sherwood Anderson, with whom he became close in New Orleans, that Faulkner began writing prose.
Exploring Human Passions
Some of Faulkner's early novels, such as "Soldier's Pay" (1926) and "Mosquitoes" (1927), were considered immature, while his most widely read book, "Sanctuary" (1931), was written to provoke sensation. However, Faulkner, having found his calling in prose, followed it persistently and relentlessly. He led a quiet life in Oxford, away from literary society, disinterested in journalism and disregarding criticism. From his pen came novels and stories, most of which were woven from the material of ordinary people's lives and united by a common setting. The world of Faulkner's works is the fictional Yoknapatawpha County and its surroundings in Mississippi. The distant metropolises are represented by Memphis and New Orleans, while the county center, Jefferson, bears many similarities to Oxford. The land, bought or unjustly taken from the Native Americans by adventurers in the early 19th century, was exploited by several generations of slave-owning "aristocrats" (the Sartorises, Compsons, and Sutpens) until the Civil War of 1861-1865 undermined their source of power. The impoverished descendants of this pre-war aristocracy, with rare exceptions, degenerated and declined, becoming unbalanced, mentally ill, morally bankrupt individuals who were gradually supplanted and dominated by a predatory and conscienceless tribe known as the "white trash" or the Snopes. In the background were the overlooked, patient black people who often demonstrated more dignity than their white compatriots. Over the land, ravaged, depleted, and poisoned by racial hatred, loomed the storm clouds of mutual distrust, hatred, and guilt. The interweaving of human passions in this difficult and restless social atmosphere is the main theme of Faulkner's works. His portrayal of human existence is at times funny and grotesque, at times deeply tragic, but always striking in its vividness.
Unique Writing Style
Although Faulkner constantly claimed to have little interest in writing technique and preferred to call himself a "literary carpenter," he skillfully wielded his pen and was a highly original experimenter. His novels often take the form of internal monologues of characters, whose consciousness colors, distorts, and entangles the plot according to the narrator's passions and prejudices, which are gradually revealed to the reader. Faulkner's style is extremely original. Stark juxtapositions of opposing epithets create a powerful effect, and many of his novels end with an excited, ambiguous, and indefinite note, the meaning of which can hardly be formulated logically. Nevertheless, Faulkner's exploration of the contradictory, passionate, and often unenlightened human soul seemed to most readers as an enterprise as exciting as it was meaningful. One of Faulkner's highest achievements is considered to be the novel "The Sound and the Fury" (1929). Its background is the degradation of the once wealthy and prestigious Compson family. The leitmotifs of the novel are philosophical pessimism, the destruction of the fabric of life, the disintegration of personality, fear of history and time, and incest as the ultimate manifestation of human inevitability.
Other Notable Works
In the novel "Light in August" (1932), which is less complex in composition, Christian symbolism is subtly, although not clearly, used. The main character, Joe Christmas, a somber and arrogant mulatto, kills his white lover. The townspeople pursue him, kill him, and castrate him. The interweaving of sexual, racial, and religious motives gives the narration a high emotional intensity. The novel "As I Lay Dying" (1930) takes the form of alternating monologues of the characters. "Absalom, Absalom!" (1936), considered one of Faulkner's highest achievements alongside "The Sound and the Fury," tells the story of the rise and fall of the wild and doomed Sutpen family. "Sanctuary," originally conceived as a horror novel, transformed into the story of the torment of the spoiled and frivolous girl Temple Drake after revision. Twenty years later, Faulkner published its sequel, "Requiem for a Nun" (1950). The old and new South are explored in "Sartoris" (1929) and "The Hamlet" (1940) - chronicles of the Sartoris and Snopes families. "A Fable" (1954; Pulitzer Prize 1955) is an allegory where an unknown soldier of World War I, likened to the biblical Christ, protests in the name of the voiceless mass of soldiers against the spiritual blindness of world leaders.
Among Faulkner's other books are the novels "Pylon" (1935), "The Unvanquished" (1938), "The Wild Palms" (1939), "The Town" (1957), "The Mansion" (1959), and "The Reivers" (1962), which was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize. Faulkner also wrote several screenplays and teleplays, both independently and in collaboration. Several of his works have been adapted into film.
