48 Fun Facts About William Faulkner

In which Mississippi town was Faulkner born in 1897?

Faulkner was born in New Albany, Mississippi, on September 25, 1897; the family moved to Oxford in 1902, and he lived there most of his life.

Faulkner's fictional Yoknapatawpha County is a stand-in for which real Mississippi county?

Yoknapatawpha is modelled on Lafayette County, Mississippi, whose seat Oxford became the fictional Jefferson; Faulkner called it his 'apocryphal county'.

In what year was Faulkner awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature?

Faulkner received the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature; the award was held over and presented at the December 1950 ceremony alongside Bertrand Russell's 1950 prize.

Which two Faulkner novels won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction?

A Fable won the 1955 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and The Reivers won in 1963, the year after Faulkner's death; The Sound and the Fury never won.

How did William Clark Falkner, Faulkner's great-grandfather and a Confederate colonel, die?

He had been tried and acquitted twice on murder charges himself.

Faulkner never finished high school after repeating which two grades?

Faulkner repeated the eleventh and twelfth grades at Oxford High School and left without a diploma; he had skipped second grade but grew withdrawn and truant as a teenager.

Which older Oxford friend with Yale and Ole Miss degrees mentored the teenage Faulkner?

Phil Stone, an Oxford lawyer four years older with degrees from Ole Miss and Yale, lent Faulkner books, introduced him to modern poetry and sent his early poems to publishers.

Which service did Faulkner join in 1918, using a forged letter of reference?

He trained in Toronto, never flew, and came home telling false war stories with a faked wound.

What grade did Faulkner receive in English at the University of Mississippi?

Faulkner received a D in English at the University of Mississippi, which he attended for three semesters from 1919 under a provision for war veterans before dropping out in 1920.

From which job did Faulkner resign, refusing to be at the beck and call of anyone with two cents?

Faulkner was postmaster of the University of Mississippi post office from 1921 until he resigned in 1924, after a postal inspector documented his neglect of the job and patrons' complaints.

In which city did Faulkner write his first novel, Soldiers' Pay, in 1925?

Faulkner wrote Soldiers' Pay in New Orleans in early 1925, sharing a French Quarter apartment in Pirate's Alley with the artist William Spratling before sailing for Europe that July.

Which established writer helped get Faulkner's first two novels published?

Sherwood Anderson, whom Faulkner met in New Orleans, recommended Soldiers' Pay to his own publisher Boni & Liveright in 1925; the firm also issued Mosquitoes in 1927.

Faulkner's first Yoknapatawpha novel was published in 1929, heavily cut, under what title?

Ben Wasson cut Flags in the Dust substantially and Harcourt, Brace published it as Sartoris in January 1929; the full text appeared under the original title in 1973.

From which Shakespeare play does the title The Sound and the Fury come?

The title comes from Macbeth's soliloquy in Act 5 of Shakespeare's Macbeth: life 'is a tale / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, / Signifying nothing.'

Which family is at the centre of The Sound and the Fury?

The novel follows Quentin, Benjy, Jason and Caddy over mostly a single weekend in 1928.

Whose perspective opens The Sound and the Fury?

Benjy Compson is intellectually disabled, and the section jumps through time without warning.

What was the title of the short story that grew into The Sound and the Fury?

Faulkner began The Sound and the Fury in 1928 as a short story called 'Twilight', about the Compson children sent outside during their grandmother's funeral, before it grew into a novel.

Where was Faulkner working night shifts when he began As I Lay Dying in 1929?

Faulkner wrote As I Lay Dying in about six weeks in late 1929 while working the night shift at the University of Mississippi power house, using an upturned wheelbarrow as a desk.

How many different narrators tell As I Lay Dying?

They speak across 59 chapters, one of them famously just five words long.

In As I Lay Dying, which child famously declares that his mother is a fish?

Vardaman, the youngest Bundren child, delivers the novel's famous one-sentence chapter, 'My mother is a fish,' as the family carts Addie's coffin to Jefferson for burial.

From which epic does the title As I Lay Dying come?

The title comes from Book XI of Homer's Odyssey, where the shade of Agamemnon tells Odysseus in Hades how Clytemnestra would not close his eyes 'as I lay dying'.

Which 1931 Temple Drake novel was Faulkner's commercial breakthrough, one he supposedly called a potboiler?

Sanctuary, the 1931 novel in which Temple Drake is abducted by the bootlegger Popeye, far outsold his earlier books and was filmed as The Story of Temple Drake in 1933.

What did Faulkner name the house he bought in 1930 and lived in until his death?

Faulkner bought the antebellum Oxford house in 1930 and named it Rowan Oak, after the rowan tree of Scottish legend said to ward off evil; he lived there until his death in 1962.

What did Faulkner write directly on the walls of his office at home?

Faulkner pencilled the day-by-day outline of A Fable on the walls of his Rowan Oak office while writing the novel; it remains visible in the house, owned by the University of Mississippi since 1972.

Which studio first hired Faulkner as a Hollywood screenwriter in 1932?

MGM signed Faulkner in May 1932 at $500 a week and brought him to its Culver City lot; he reportedly asked to write Mickey Mouse cartoons, not realising Disney made them.

Which director became Faulkner's friend and frequent Hollywood collaborator?

They bonded over drinking and hunting, and Hawks's brother became Faulkner's agent.

Who shared the screenplay credit with Faulkner on the 1944 film To Have and Have Not?

Jules Furthman, Howard Hawks's regular collaborator, shared the screenplay credit with Faulkner on To Have and Have Not (1944), which reworked Hemingway's 1937 novel into a Bogart-Bacall romance.

Which Raymond Chandler novel did Faulkner help adapt for the screen?

Faulkner shared the screenplay credit for The Big Sleep (1946), Howard Hawks's adaptation of Chandler's 1939 novel, which reunited Bogart and Bacall after To Have and Have Not.

At which Hollywood restaurant was Faulkner said to go behind the bar to mix his own mint juleps?

Musso & Frank Grill on Hollywood Boulevard, a writers' haunt since 1919, preserves the legend that Faulkner stepped behind its bar to mix his own mint juleps during his screenwriting years.

A Fable, published in 1954, merged the Passion of Christ with what?

The Pulitzer jury had chosen another book, but the board overrode them to reward Faulkner.

Whose 1946 anthology, The Portable Faulkner, revived Faulkner's reputation?

Malcolm Cowley edited The Portable Faulkner for Viking in 1946, when nearly all of Faulkner's novels were out of print; the collection reframed Yoknapatawpha as one saga and preceded the 1949 Nobel.

How did Faulkner's 17-year-old daughter learn that he had won the Nobel Prize?

He detested the fame and gave part of the money to a fund for new writers.

Which institution made Faulkner its first Writer-in-Residence in 1957?

The University of Virginia appointed Faulkner its first Writer-in-Residence for spring 1957; he returned to Charlottesville for a second term in 1958 and later bought a house there.

What is the subject of The Reivers, Faulkner's final novel?

It was published a month before his death and filmed with Steve McQueen.

What accident preceded Faulkner's fatal heart attack in July 1962?

The fall led to thrombosis; he died at Wright's Sanatorium in Byhalia aged 64.

What did Faulkner tell readers who could not understand his writing after two or three readings?

In his 1956 Paris Review interview Faulkner answered 'Read it four times' when asked about readers who failed to understand his work after two or three readings.

Which novel did Faulkner say he read every year, as some people read the Bible?

Faulkner told The Paris Review in 1956, 'I read Don Quixote every year, as some do the Bible,' naming Cervantes among old friends alongside Dickens, Conrad, Balzac and Dostoevsky.

Which three novels make up the Snopes trilogy?

The Snopes trilogy is The Hamlet (1940), The Town (1957) and The Mansion (1959), tracing Flem Snopes's rise from Frenchman's Bend to the presidency of a Jefferson bank.

Which Faulkner novel did the 1983 Guinness Book credit with literature's longest sentence, at 1,288 words?

The 1983 Guinness Book of World Records cited a 1,288-word sentence in Chapter 6 of Absalom, Absalom! (1936), beginning 'Just exactly like Father', as literature's longest.

Who is the plantation owner whose rise and fall is told in Faulkner's 1936 novel with a biblical title?

Thomas Sutpen builds the plantation Sutpen's Hundred and sees his dynasty collapse in Absalom, Absalom! (1936), a story Quentin Compson pieces together for his Harvard roommate Shreve.

From which language do the two words that make up the name of Faulkner's fictional county come?

Yoknapatawpha joins two Chickasaw words, the original name of the Yocona River that crosses Lafayette County; Faulkner glossed it as 'water runs slow through flat land'.

Which three later Faulkner novels are NOT set in his fictional county?

Pylon (1935), set in a city modelled on New Orleans, The Wild Palms (1939) and A Fable (1954), set in wartime France, are the only novels after Sartoris placed outside Yoknapatawpha.

Which national magazine published A Rose for Emily in April 1930?

The Forum published A Rose for Emily on 30 April 1930, Faulkner's first short story to appear in a national magazine; it drew little attention at the time.

Light in August opens with the journey of which pregnant young woman from Alabama?

Lena Grove, heavily pregnant, walks from Alabama into Jefferson seeking Lucas Burch, the father of her child; her journey frames the novel's darker story of Joe Christmas.

In a 1956 Life magazine essay, Faulkner urged civil rights activists to do what?

In 'A Letter to the North' (Life, March 1956) Faulkner told the NAACP to 'Go slow now'; James Baldwin's essay 'Faulkner and Desegregation' attacked that plea for a middle ground.

Which novelist called Faulkner 'the greatest artist the South has produced'?

Ralph Ellison, author of Invisible Man (1952), praised Faulkner as 'the greatest artist the South has produced' and credited him with exploring Black humanity beyond the stereotypes other white writers relied on.

Which French writer made a stage adaptation of Faulkner's Requiem for a Nun?

Albert Camus adapted Requiem for a Nun for the Paris stage in 1956 as Requiem pour une nonne; Sartre, another admirer, declared that 'for young people in France, Faulkner is a god'.

The US Postal Service honoured Faulkner with a stamp of what value on August 3, 1987?

The 22-cent William Faulkner stamp, part of the Literary Arts series, was issued on August 3, 1987, in Oxford, Mississippi; 22 cents was the first-class letter rate at the time.