American writer, prose writer

short biography

(Eng. William Cuthbert Faulkner, 1897 - 1962) - American writer, prose writer, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature (1949).

Born September 25, 1897 in New Albany (Mississippi) in the family of the manager of the University of Murray Charles Faulkner and Maude (Butler) Faulkner. His great-grandfather, William Faulkner (1826-1889), served in the Army of the South during the War of the North and the South and was the author of the then-famous novel The White Rose of Memphis. When Faulkner was still a child, the family moved to the city of Oxford, in the north of the state, where the writer lived all his life. William was self-taught: he graduated from junior high school, then educated himself and occasionally attended courses at the University of Mississippi.

In 1918, Estelle Oldham, with whom Faulkner had been in love since childhood, married another. William decided to go to the front as a volunteer, but he was not taken, including because of his height (166 cm). He then volunteered for the Royal Canadian Air Force and entered the British Army Flying School in Toronto, but before he could complete the course, First World War ended.

Faulkner returned to Oxford and again began to attend classes at the University of Mississippi, however, soon quit. The year before, in 1919, he had made his literary debut with the publication of his poem "Après-midi d'un faune" in The New Republic. Then in 1924 his first book was published - a collection of poems "The Marble Faun" ("The Marble Faun").

In 1925, Faulkner met writer Sherwood Anderson in New Orleans. He recommended that Faulkner pay more attention to prose than poetry, and advised him to write about what Faulkner knows best - about the American South, about one tiny plot of this land "the size of a postage stamp."

Soon a new district appeared in the state of Mississippi - Yoknapatofa, fictional by Faulkner, where the action of most of his works will take place. Together they make up the Yoknopathof saga - the history of the American South from the arrival of the first white settlers to the lands of the Indians until the middle of the twentieth century. A special place in it is occupied by the Civil War of 1861-1865, in which the southerners were defeated. The heroes of the saga were representatives of several families - Sartoris, de Spains, Compsons, Snopes, as well as other residents of Yoknapatofa. Passing from work to work, they become old acquaintances, real people about whose life you learn something new every time. The first novel in the saga was Sartoris, which portrayed the decline of the Mississippian slave aristocracy following the social upheavals of the Civil War (an abridged version of the novel was published in 1929; it was not published in its entirety until 1973 under the title Flags in the Dust).

Faulkner's first major recognition came with the publication of The Sound and the Fury (1929). In the same year he married Estelle Oldham, after her divorce from her first husband. They had two daughters: Alabama, who died in 1931, and Jill. However, Faulkner's works were mostly critical rather than reader success, being considered unusual and complex.

To support his family, Faulkner began writing scripts for Hollywood, signing a contract with MGM in April 1932. The contract provided for a fee of $500 per week. For this money, Faulkner pledged to "write original stories and dialogue, make adaptations, refine scripts, etc., and perform all other functions normally performed by writers." The writer considered this work as an income in order to be able to engage in serious literature (“I make up my salary for literary day labor in the cinema”). Once, summoned to the studio and crossing the border of the state of California, he said to his companion: “Here you should put up a pillar with the inscription:“ Abandon hope, everyone who enters here, ”or whatever it is with Dante. Nevertheless, despite some obstinacy and frequent absences home, he treated his work conscientiously. For example, Faulkner impressed screenwriter Joel Sayre Joel Sayre with his ability to work. In Hollywood, it was considered a very good result if the screenwriter wrote five pages a day, and Faulkner sometimes wrote 35 pages.

The writer was associated with Hollywood for fifteen years - from 1932 to 1946, making several films with director Howard Hawks. In the same years, he created novels: Light in August (1932), Absalom, Absalom! (1936), The Undefeated (1938), Wild Palms (1939), The Village (1940) and others, as well as the novel in short stories Get Down, Moses (1942), which included his most famous story, The Bear ".

Only the award of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1949 (for "significant and artistically unique contribution to the development of modern American novel”) brought Faulkner, whose work has long been loved in Europe, recognition at home. In 2009, the Oxford American collegial journal of the American South called "Absalom, Absalom!" the best southern novel of all time.

Novels

  • Soldier's award / Soldiers Pay (1926)
  • Mosquitoes / mosquitoes (1927)
  • Sartoris / Sartoris (Flags in the Dust) (1929)
  • Noise and Fury / The Sound and the Fury (1929)
  • When I was dying As I Lay Dying (1930)
  • Sanctuary / Sanctuary (1931)
  • Light in August / Light in August (1932)
  • Pylon / Pylon (1935)
  • Absalom, Absalom! / Absalom, Absalom! (1936)
  • Undefeated / The Unvanquished (1938)
  • wild palms / The Wild Palms (If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem) (1939)
  • Village / The Hamlet (1940)
  • Come down, Moses / Go Down, Moses (1942)
  • Ash Defiler / Intruder in the Dust (1948)
  • Requiem for a Nun / Requiem for a Nun (1951)
  • Parable / A Fable(1954, Pulitzer Prize)
  • City / The Town (1957)
  • Mansion / The Mansion (1959)
  • Kidnappers / The Reivers(1962, Pulitzer Prize)

Storybooks

  • Thirteen / These Thirteen (1931)
  • Doctor Martino and Other Stories (1934)
  • Favorites / The Portable Faulkner (1946)
  • King's Gambit / Knight's Gambit (1949)
  • Collected Stories of William Faulkner (1950)
  • Big Woods: The Hunting Stories (1955)
  • New Orleans Sketches (1958)

Translations into Russian

  • Collected works in 6 volumes. M., Fiction, 1985 - 1987
  • Seven stories. M., ed. foreign lit., 1958
  • Pyro. Stories. Moscow, Pravda, 1959
  • Full circle turn. Stories. Moscow, Pravda, 1963.
  • Village. M., Fiction, 1964
  • City. M., Fiction, 1965
  • Mansion. M., Fiction, 1965
  • Sartoris. Bear. Ash Defiler. M., Progress, 1973, 1974
  • Light in August. Mansion. M., Fiction, 1975
  • Collection of stories. M., Nauka, 1977

William Faulkner(1897-1962), modernist writer of the same generation as E. Hemingway, who worked in the same genres (short and full-length prose); like Hemingway, winner of the Pulitzer and Nobel (1949) prizes, who died almost simultaneously with Hemingway, otherwise was almost his complete opposite. If Hemingway's work is based on the facts of his biography and is inseparable from his time (20-50s of the XX century), then W. Faulkner's prose is outside the specific events of his life and outside of time, even if the author accurately indicates the date of this or that event.

W. Faulkner grew up in Oxford, Mississippi, in a house full of close and distant relatives and family legends about glorious ancestors, among which the great-great-grandfather of the writer William Clark Faulkner stood out. The glorious great-great-grandfather was a lawyer, a colonel in the Confederate army in civil war, author of the popular romantic novel"White Rose of Memphis" (1881), had a solid income and sharp feeling honor. The Faulkner family, prominent and wealthy, who owned the railroad, experienced a financial decline by the beginning of the 20th century. W. Faulkner's father had to earn money: he kept stables, a store, then became the treasurer of the University of Mississippi.

Faulkner graduated from high school in 1915; in 1918 he volunteered for the Royal Canadian Air Force and served for several months in Toronto. In 1919, as a young veteran, he was admitted to the University of Mississippi, where he studied French language and literature, but left this occupation after a year and a half. He worked as a bookstore clerk in New York, as a carpenter, house painter and then as a university postmaster in his native Oxford. In 1924 he left for New Orleans, where he met S. Anderson, which determined his writing destiny.

From his school years, he tried without much success to compose poetry and short prose, who had several magazine publications and a poetic collection "The Marble Faun", Faulkner found in the person of S. Anderson a patron, inspirer and teacher. In 1925 he traveled through Europe, visited Italy, Switzerland, France and England and returned to New Orleans, and soon left for his Oxford to live there for the rest of his days. Thus, Faulkner's tribute to the cosmopolitan spirit of his generation was minimal; what fueled Hemingway, Henry Miller and others all their lives - travel, experiences, acquaintance with the world - Faulkner fit in one year. Only in the early 1950s, having become a Nobel laureate, did he leave Oxford for a while for short lecture trips to Europe and once to Japan.

The tribute given by Faulkner to the prose theme of the "lost" was also minimal and amounted to a collection of short stories and two novels (Soldier's Award, 1926; Mosquitoes, 1927). Already in the late 20s, he found his original theme- the history and modernity of the American South - and published two works ("The Noise and Fury", 1929; "Sartoris", 1929), which were then included in the so-called "Yoknapatofskaya saga".

Faulkner's Yoknapatotha is over seventy short stories, mostly combined into cycles ("Come down, Moses!", "The Undefeated", etc.), and seventeen novels: "Light in August" (1932), "Absalom, Absalom! " (1936), "Requiem for a Nun" (1951), the trilogy "Village" (1940), "City" (1957), "Mansion" (1960) and others, the action of which takes place in the fictional district of Yoknapatofa in the South of the United States, and the characters move from work to work.

Yoknapatofa, inhabited by aristocrats (Sartoris, Compsons, Sutpen, De Spain), the descendants of their black slaves and "white bastards", is an exact model of the southern province, behind which a certain global mythological model of life in general looms. The scale and significance of what is happening is emphasized by the author's explicit or implicit reference to the Bible, to ancient mythological ideas and rituals of Native Americans.

The very structure of the mythopoetic thinking of the departing America is embodied in the peculiar principle of organization artistic world"Yoknapatof saga", where the past is intertwined with the present, because time here does not move in a progressive sequence, but cyclically, and the fate of people is built into its eternal circulation.

The exact reproduction by the writer of the mythological concept of time and human life, the very style of myth-making thinking is the result of his intuitive approach to the fundamental principles of being, which, in turn, is associated with Faulkner's rootedness in the life of the patriarchal agrarian American South, which carefully preserves its traditions. This rootedness largely explains the fact that the work of W. Faulkner, closed in space, but infinitely expanded in time, based not on individual concrete historical, but on eternal human experience, broke out of the rather narrow aesthetic framework of the literature of the post-war generation.

Read also other articles in the section "Literature of the 20th century. Traditions and experiment":

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The world of man after the First World War. Modernism

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Man and society in the second half of the century

American novelist and short story writer William Cuthbert Faulkner was born in New Albany, Mississippi. He was the eldest of four sons of Charles Faulkner, manager of Murray University, and Maud (Butler) Faulkner. His great-grandfather, William Clark Faulkner, served in the army of the south during the war between the North and the South and was the author of the then-famous novel The White Rose of Memphis. When William was still a child, the family moved to the city of Oxford, in the north of the state, where the writer lived all his life. Before school, William, a shy, withdrawn boy, was taught to read by his mother, and at the age of 13 he was already writing poems dedicated to Estelle Oldham, the girl he was in love with. Faulkner did not finish school and for some time worked in a bank with his grandfather.

William could not marry Estelle because of dim financial prospects, and when the girl married another in April 1918, "life for him," as his brother John put it, "is over." Faulkner wanted to volunteer for the army, but he was turned down because of his small stature. Visiting a friend at Yale University, he decides to enlist in the Canadian Air Force and enters a military school in Toronto in July. When the First World War ended a few months later, William returned to Oxford and began attending classes at the University of Mississippi. His literary debut was in 1919, when L'Apres midi dun faun was published in the New Republic in 1919.

In 1920, Faulkner left the university without a degree, and at the invitation of the novelist and theater critic Stark Young moved to New York, where he worked as a salesman in the Elizabeth Proll bookstore. After a while, the future writer returns to Oxford again and gets a job as a postmaster at the university until he is fired for reading at work. Arriving in New Orleans in 1925, William met the writer Sherwood Anderson, who, becoming interested in Faulkner's work, advised him to pay more attention to prose than poetry. The failure of The Marble Faun proved Anderson right, and Faulkner wrote the novel Soldiers' Pay, which Anderson gave to his publisher.

While the manuscript of the novel was in the publishing house, William Faulkner traveled around Europe for several months. The "Soldier's Award" was followed by the novel "Mosquitoes" ("Mosquitoes", 1927) - satirical image New Orleans bohemia. Although neither the first nor the second novel attracted the attention of readers, Faulkner does not despair and writes "Sartoris" ("Sartoris", 1929), the first of fifteen novels, which takes place in the fictional district of Yoknapatofa, a kind of microcosm of the American South, inhabited by several generations of colorful characters. The original version of this novel, which was shortened by the publisher, appeared in 1973 under the title "Flags in the Dust" ("Flags in the Dust").

Although "Sartoris" was noted by critics, Faulkner received wide recognition only after the publication of the novel "The Sound and the Fury" ("The Sound and the Fury", 1929), where for the first time the principle of "double vision" is implemented - the main creative principle of Faulkner's prose. , with the help of which the same events and characters are revealed from different points of view. Critics unanimously proclaimed the novel a "great book", where tragic theme"reminds me of Euripides." The novel did not make a big impression on a simple reader: Faulkner's innovative narrative technique was difficult to understand.

All this time, William Faulkner continued to meet with Estelle Oldham, and after her divorce in 1927, they got married. They had two daughters, Alabama, who died in 1931, and Jill.

Faulkner wrote his next novel, As I Lay Dying (1930), in six weeks while working the night shift at a power plant. Comprising fifty-nine interior monologues, this book follows the journey of a poor Southern Bundren family carrying the body of Mrs. Bundren to Jefferson Cemetery.

Although the American writer Konrad Aiken called this novel "aerobatics", "On a Deathbed" sold as poorly as the writer's previous books. Faced with the need to support a family, Faulkner decides to write, in his own words, "the worst story you can imagine" - and three weeks later there is "Sanctuary" ("Sanctuary", 1931), the story of a young woman who was raped by a gangster, after which, ironically, she took refuge in a brothel in Memphis. The novel became a bestseller; despite its sensational character, it impressed many critics, including André Malraux, who declared that The Sanctuary is " Greek tragedy with a detective story.

The novel's success only temporarily solved the writer's financial problems, as demand for books plummeted during the Great Depression; in addition, Faulkner's novels did not give the reader the opportunity to escape from life's troubles. In search of more profitable work, the writer in 1932 - the same year that Light in August was released - made the first trip to Hollywood, counting on the film adaptation of one of his stories. Over the years, Faulkner wrote screenplays for popular films such as The Road to Glory (1936), Gunga Din (1939), To Have and Not to Have (That Have and Have Not, 1945) and The Big Sleep (1946).

At the same time, Faulkner creates such works as "Pylon" ("Pylon", 1934), "Absalom, Absalom!" (“Absalom, Absalom!”, 1936), “Wild Palms” (“The Wild Palms”, 1939), “The Village” (“The Hamlet”, 1940), as well as “Come Down, Moses” and other stories ”(“ Go Down Moses, and Other Stories, 1942), which included the story "The Bear" ("The Bear"), one of the best in world literature. Many of Faulkner's books have been translated into French and evoked enthusiastic responses from a number of European writers and critics. Faulkner is God! Jean Paul Sartre wrote to American critic Malcolm Cowley. At the same time, as Cowley later noted, “Faulkner was little read in his homeland and clearly underestimated.”

With the goal of introducing William Faulkner to the widest possible readership, Cowley published The Portable Faulkner in 1946; the collection was a great success and caused a noticeable revival of interest in the writer's works. In his preface to this collection, Cowley explored the Yoknapatofa saga from the perspective of American myth, calling Faulkner's novels "an unattainable artistic feat."

In 1950, William Faulkner was awarded the 1949 Nobel Prize "for his significant and artistically unique contribution to the development of the modern American novel." The award elicited controversy. “They call him a reactionary,” Swedish Academy member Gustaf Hellström said in a speech, referring to Faulkner's over-indulgence in topics of hatred and violence in the American South. “But even if it is, his hatred is balanced by guilt. For such a writer, with his sense of justice and humanity, hatred is impossible. That is why his Yoknapatofa is universal.”

In his brief speech, Faulkner focused on the problem of human survival and the responsibility of the writer. “Before the threat of nuclear annihilation,” he said, “the young man or young woman writing today forgot about heart problems, about restless souls ... And yet I believe that a person will not only endure, but win. Man is immortal... because he has a soul, because he is capable of compassion, sacrifice and perseverance.”

Faulkner received the Nobel Prize at a time of creative crisis. After another trip to Hollywood, he returned to Oxford and completed Requiem for a Nun (1951), and then tried to write his magnum opus, A Fable (1954), a novel about the first world war main character who, corporal, has much in common with Christ. However, the novel was not accepted by critics.

Although Faulkner's health was seriously weakened by regular and heavy drinking, he accepted the invitation of the State Department to represent the United States of America at the International Writers' Conference in Brazil in 1954. The following year, William Faulkner travels around the world as an official representative of the American government.

With the novels The Town (1957) and The Mansion (1959), the writer drew a line under the history of the Snopes family, which he began in 1940 in The Village. From 1957 and almost until his death, the writer leads seminars at the University of Virginia; position writer in residence(i.e. a writer receiving a scholarship from the university) further enhanced his reputation and material security. Recognized as the most popular American writer in Venezuela, Faulkner in 1961 takes part in the celebration of the 150th anniversary of this country.

The following year, Faulkner began writing his last book, The Reivers (1962).

On June 17, 1962, he fell off his horse, and a few weeks later, on July 6, he arrived at a sanatorium in Baihelia, Mississippi, and died of a thrombosis.

Faulkner's literary fame continues to grow steadily after his death. According to Michael Millgate, "critics, analyzing the bizarre compositional and figurative models of his books, come to the conclusion that the thoughtfulness of style is organically connected with the material of novels, with their moral and emotional motives."

“Working alone in the vast cultural wilderness of the Mississippi,” wrote the American novelist and critic John Aldridge, “Faulkner managed to create an oasis for his mind and a garden for his creativity, a garden that the writer cultivated with such love that even today he continues to feed the imagination of educated people throughout the civilized world."

Biography

William Faulkner was born in New Albany, Mississippi (USA) on September 25, 1897. In the family of a university worker. The family played an important role for William, he was the eldest son, and later he had to become the head of the family. Faulkner's talent for literary skill manifested itself early, as a child he began to write poetry. A more serious manifestation of creativity will begin after studying at the Royal Canadian Air Force.

After 1918, he studied at the University of Mississippi, worked as a laborer, published a volume of poetry. The most noticeable mark on his work was left by the acquaintance of the seventeen-year-old Faulkner with Philip Stone.

In 1925, he leaves for New Orleans, where he meets Sherwood Anderson, who, after viewing William's works, advises him to take prose seriously. In 1925 - 1927 his novels "Soldiers' Pay", "Mosquitoes" were published. In the summer of 1927, Faulkner began writing his famous novel from a series of books about the fictitious country "Yoknapatawpha County". In 1928, William changed his surname from the original Falkner. And the next year, 1929, William Faulkner marries Estelle Oldham and becomes stepfather to her two children from her first marriage. The family lives on the money they earn from literary activity Faulkner. Since 1930, the author has been sending his stories to various national publications and buying a house in Oxford.

But closer to 1932, the financial condition is deteriorating, and William decides to sell the copyright to the novel Light in August. But the publication did not accept the offer.

Then Faulkner accepted the proposition of MGM Studios and worked as a screenwriter in Hollywood from 1932 until the 1940s. From February to June 1957, William worked as a writer-in-residence at the University of Virginia. While riding in 1959 he was seriously injured.

William Cuthbert Faulkner - famous American writer whose works have long become classics of world art. In 1949 he received the Nobel Prize in Literature. In 1955 and 1963 he won the Pulitzer Prize.
The future writer was born in the Mississippi city of New Albany. As a child, he moved with his family to Oxford, where he lived for the rest of his life, creating a lot of magnificent works. Faulkner's first poem (The Afternoon of a Faun) was published in 1919 in The New Republic. For a long time he was engaged in poetry, but after meeting the writer Sherwood Anderson in 1925, on his advice, he began to pay more attention to prose. He wrote about what he knows best: the American South. To do this, he came up with his own district in Mississippi, which was called Yoknapatofa and subsequently placed here most of the stories and adventures of the characters in his books.
William Faulkner's books are like one very long novel, a literary series that spans several centuries. The history of the South of America from W. Faulkner begins with the arrival of white settlers in these places, inhabited. The Yoknapatof saga ends in the middle of the 20th century. Similar are not only the lands of a fictional district in Mississippi, but also several families that pass from one book to another. The Sartoris, de Spains, Compsons, Snopes and many others are familiar and beloved to those who are familiar with the work of this extraordinary writer.
On June 17, 1962, William fell off his horse and was taken to the hospital. The writer, prose writer, literary modernist, who is still considered unsurpassed, died in the American city of Baihelia on July 6, 1962. Faulkner's last work was The Kidnappers.

Buy Faulkner's books in the online store with delivery.

List of books:

red leaves

Absalom, Absalom!

small village

wild palms

To the stars

When I was dying

Undefeated

Fire and hearth

Ash Defiler

Full circle turn

Requiem for a Nun

Sartoris

Light in August

Sanctuary

Soldier's award

Knight's move

Noise and fury

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