I'd like to add some information about Southern Gothic and modernism, streams that Faulkner belongs to, and also about famous people who influenced his creativity! This chapter will be pulished in a week....
Tuesday, April 3, 2007
Before reading Faulkner's works look through its characteristics and then choose the most interesting one
Works by William Faulkner (1897-1962)
1924
The Marble Faun. Faulkner's first book is a collection of pastoral verse that sells so poorly that most of the five-hundred-copy edition is remaindered to a bookstore for ten cents a copy. Sherwood Anderson, whom Faulkner would meet in New Orleans in 1925, helped convince Faulkner that his talent lay in writing prose.
1926
Soldiers' Pay. Faulkner's first novel, about a disfigured American flyer's painful homecoming to Georgia, is published with the assistance of Sherwood Anderson, who supposedly agreed to recommend it to his publisher under the condition that he would not have to read the book.
1927
Mosquitoes. Faulkner's second novel assembles a mixed group of characters on the yacht of a New Orleans matron for conversations on literature and sex. Daring for its time in its references to masturbation, lesbianism, and syphilis, the book, according to critic Cleanth Brooks, "is Faulkner's least respected novel, and it is easy to see why... there is almost no story here; nothing of real consequence happens to any of its characters." The book retains a biographical relevance in expressing Faulkner's view of the New Orleans literary scene.
1929
Sartoris. Faulkner's third novel, an abridgment of the unpublished The Flags in the Dust, is his first work set in Yoknapatawpha County, the imagined equivalent of the author's native northern Mississippi. It traces Bayard Sartoris's return home from the war, haunted by the death of his twin and his aristocratic Southern family's legacy. The novel introduces themes, settings, and characters that would dominate Faulkner's books from then on. Faulkner also publishes The Sound and the Fury, which presents the disintegration of the Southern patrician Compson family through stream-of-consciousness interior monologues of the three Compson sons--the idiot Benjy, the incestuously haunted Quentin, and the grasping Jason--concerning their relationship with their fallen sister, Caddy. The fourth section is an objective account focusing on the Compson's black cook, Dilsey. It is the first of Faulkner's technically innovative narratives and one of his greatest achievements.
1930
As I Lay Dying. Faulkner's most experimentally daring novel, written over a six-week period when Faulkner was working the night shift at a powerhouse, is a multivocal stream-of-consciousness account of the poor white Bundren family's journey to bury their mother, Addie, in her native town, Jefferson, Mississippi. The book combines horror, comedy, and a profound meditation on the nature of being.
1931
Sanctuary. Failing to reach the public with his previous novels, Faulkner set out to write a potboiler--"the most horrific tale I could imagine"--to make money. Composed in three weeks (but substantially reworked by a shocked Faulkner when he received the galleys), the story of Temple Drake's rape and torture by the sadistic psychopath Popeye becomes Faulkner's only bestseller. Also published in 1931 is the story collection These 13, including some of his greatest stories, such as "Victory," "Red Leaves," and "A Rose for Emily."
1932
Light in August. One of Faulkner's greatest novels concerns the tragic ramifications of the purportedly mixed-blood heritage of the outcast Joe Christmas and the rigidity and alienation of a large cast of memorable characters, including New England liberal Joanna Burden, disgraced minister Gail Hightower, and seduced-and-abandoned country girl Lena Grove.
1933
A Green Bough. The writer, who would regard himself as a "failed poet," publishes his second and last poetry collection.
1934
Doctor Martino, and Other Stories. Faulkner's story collection includes "Fox Hunt," "Smoke," "Mountain Victory," and "Honor."
1935
Pylon. Between the masterful Light in August (1934) and Absalom, Absalom! (1936), Faulkner publishes what is generally regarded as a minor work about aviators during a Mardi Gras celebration.
1936
Absalom, Absalom! Regarded by many as the writer's masterpiece, this complex, multivocal novel depicts the fall of the house of Mississippi's Thomas Sutpen and reflects American and Southern history before, during, and after the Civil War.
1938
The Unvanquished. Faulkner groups previously published short stories into a narrative chronicling the Sartoris family of Mississippi during the Civil War and Reconstruction.
1939
The Wild Palms. Two stories centered on the precariousness of love juxtapose a New Orleans doctor's tragic affair with a married woman and a convict's relationship with a pregnant hill woman during a flood.
1940
The Hamlet. The first of a trilogy that includes The Town (1957) and The Mansion (1960), the novel covers the rise to power of the grasping, corrupt Flem Snopes and his kin in Faulkner's imagined county in Mississippi.
1942
Go Down, Moses and Other Stories. Faulkner's short story collection deals with the McCaslin clan and includes one of his most admired works, "The Bear." Reviewers alternately recognize evidence of Faulkner's maturity and greatness as a writer and express their irritation at the "hopelessly tangled skeins" of his sentences, creating opaqueness rather than lucidity.
1946
The Portable Faulkner. This selection and arrangement of Faulkner's work, edited by Malcolm Cowley, is widely credited with reviving interest in the writer, most of whose books were out of print by 1946.
1948
Intruder in the Dust. In a working out of Faulkner's response to the South's "Negro Problem" (as it was called at the time), Lucas Beaucamp, a black Mississippi farmer, is charged with the murder of a white man. He is eventually cleared by black and white teenagers and a spinster from an old Southern family.
1949
Knight's Gambit. A story collection featuring country attorney Gavin Stephens in Faulkner's version of the detective genre. According to critic Malcolm Cowley, the work is "the slightest... and the pleasantest of all the books that Faulkner has published."
1950
Collected Stories. These forty-two stories represent what, according to Faulkner, constitutes his achievement as a short story writer. The stories are arranged with care into six thematic units that provide a key to the author's intentions. The collection is universally praised and receives the National Book Award.
1951
Requiem for a Nun. This sequel to Sanctuary is yet another of Faulkner's experiments with novelistic form. Three prose sections providing historical background are interspersed with three others constituting a three-act play. The story concerns the fate of Nancy Mannigoe, a black nurse accused of murdering a white child.
1954
A Fable. Faulkner's novel is a long parable about the passion of Christ, set during World War I. Faulkner had labored for years over the novel and considered it his masterwork. Although it wins the Pulitzer Prize, later critics would deem it one of his weakest books.
1955
Big Woods. Faulkner's collection brings together his previously printed hunting stories--"The Bear," "The Old People," and "A Bear Hunt"--with a new story, "Ride at Morning," as well as the author's explanatory comments.
1957
The Town. The second installment of Faulkner's Snopes trilogy appears seventeen years after the first volume, The Hamlet (1940). The novel focuses on an outsider, the lawyer Gavin Stevens, and his naive longing for two of the Snopes women. Narration by another outsider, the itinerant sewing machine salesman V. K. Ratliff, integrates The Town with its predecessor in the trilogy. The set would be completed with the 1960 publication of The Mansion.
1958
New Orleans Sketches. This book collects Faulkner's experimental prose pieces written in 1925, marking his transition from poetry to fiction.
1959
The Mansion. Faulkner concludes his trilogy on the Snopes family, begun with The Hamlet (1940) and continued in The Town (1957). The novel shows a prosperous Flem Snopes and the vengeance of his cousin Mink, which ends Flem's career.
1962
The Reivers: A Reminiscence. Published one month before his death, Faulkner's final novel is a nostalgic last look at Yoknapatawpha County in a comic tale set in 1905. It wins Faulkner a second Pulitzer Prize.
1965
Essays, Speeches, and Public Letters. This collection includes Faulkner's review of Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, lectures, introductions, essays on various writers including Sherwood Anderson and Albert Camus, impressions of Japan and New England, and comments about social issues such as race relations.
1924
The Marble Faun. Faulkner's first book is a collection of pastoral verse that sells so poorly that most of the five-hundred-copy edition is remaindered to a bookstore for ten cents a copy. Sherwood Anderson, whom Faulkner would meet in New Orleans in 1925, helped convince Faulkner that his talent lay in writing prose.
1926
Soldiers' Pay. Faulkner's first novel, about a disfigured American flyer's painful homecoming to Georgia, is published with the assistance of Sherwood Anderson, who supposedly agreed to recommend it to his publisher under the condition that he would not have to read the book.
1927
Mosquitoes. Faulkner's second novel assembles a mixed group of characters on the yacht of a New Orleans matron for conversations on literature and sex. Daring for its time in its references to masturbation, lesbianism, and syphilis, the book, according to critic Cleanth Brooks, "is Faulkner's least respected novel, and it is easy to see why... there is almost no story here; nothing of real consequence happens to any of its characters." The book retains a biographical relevance in expressing Faulkner's view of the New Orleans literary scene.
1929
Sartoris. Faulkner's third novel, an abridgment of the unpublished The Flags in the Dust, is his first work set in Yoknapatawpha County, the imagined equivalent of the author's native northern Mississippi. It traces Bayard Sartoris's return home from the war, haunted by the death of his twin and his aristocratic Southern family's legacy. The novel introduces themes, settings, and characters that would dominate Faulkner's books from then on. Faulkner also publishes The Sound and the Fury, which presents the disintegration of the Southern patrician Compson family through stream-of-consciousness interior monologues of the three Compson sons--the idiot Benjy, the incestuously haunted Quentin, and the grasping Jason--concerning their relationship with their fallen sister, Caddy. The fourth section is an objective account focusing on the Compson's black cook, Dilsey. It is the first of Faulkner's technically innovative narratives and one of his greatest achievements.
1930
As I Lay Dying. Faulkner's most experimentally daring novel, written over a six-week period when Faulkner was working the night shift at a powerhouse, is a multivocal stream-of-consciousness account of the poor white Bundren family's journey to bury their mother, Addie, in her native town, Jefferson, Mississippi. The book combines horror, comedy, and a profound meditation on the nature of being.
1931
Sanctuary. Failing to reach the public with his previous novels, Faulkner set out to write a potboiler--"the most horrific tale I could imagine"--to make money. Composed in three weeks (but substantially reworked by a shocked Faulkner when he received the galleys), the story of Temple Drake's rape and torture by the sadistic psychopath Popeye becomes Faulkner's only bestseller. Also published in 1931 is the story collection These 13, including some of his greatest stories, such as "Victory," "Red Leaves," and "A Rose for Emily."
1932
Light in August. One of Faulkner's greatest novels concerns the tragic ramifications of the purportedly mixed-blood heritage of the outcast Joe Christmas and the rigidity and alienation of a large cast of memorable characters, including New England liberal Joanna Burden, disgraced minister Gail Hightower, and seduced-and-abandoned country girl Lena Grove.
1933
A Green Bough. The writer, who would regard himself as a "failed poet," publishes his second and last poetry collection.
1934
Doctor Martino, and Other Stories. Faulkner's story collection includes "Fox Hunt," "Smoke," "Mountain Victory," and "Honor."
1935
Pylon. Between the masterful Light in August (1934) and Absalom, Absalom! (1936), Faulkner publishes what is generally regarded as a minor work about aviators during a Mardi Gras celebration.
1936
Absalom, Absalom! Regarded by many as the writer's masterpiece, this complex, multivocal novel depicts the fall of the house of Mississippi's Thomas Sutpen and reflects American and Southern history before, during, and after the Civil War.
1938
The Unvanquished. Faulkner groups previously published short stories into a narrative chronicling the Sartoris family of Mississippi during the Civil War and Reconstruction.
1939
The Wild Palms. Two stories centered on the precariousness of love juxtapose a New Orleans doctor's tragic affair with a married woman and a convict's relationship with a pregnant hill woman during a flood.
1940
The Hamlet. The first of a trilogy that includes The Town (1957) and The Mansion (1960), the novel covers the rise to power of the grasping, corrupt Flem Snopes and his kin in Faulkner's imagined county in Mississippi.
1942
Go Down, Moses and Other Stories. Faulkner's short story collection deals with the McCaslin clan and includes one of his most admired works, "The Bear." Reviewers alternately recognize evidence of Faulkner's maturity and greatness as a writer and express their irritation at the "hopelessly tangled skeins" of his sentences, creating opaqueness rather than lucidity.
1946
The Portable Faulkner. This selection and arrangement of Faulkner's work, edited by Malcolm Cowley, is widely credited with reviving interest in the writer, most of whose books were out of print by 1946.
1948
Intruder in the Dust. In a working out of Faulkner's response to the South's "Negro Problem" (as it was called at the time), Lucas Beaucamp, a black Mississippi farmer, is charged with the murder of a white man. He is eventually cleared by black and white teenagers and a spinster from an old Southern family.
1949
Knight's Gambit. A story collection featuring country attorney Gavin Stephens in Faulkner's version of the detective genre. According to critic Malcolm Cowley, the work is "the slightest... and the pleasantest of all the books that Faulkner has published."
1950
Collected Stories. These forty-two stories represent what, according to Faulkner, constitutes his achievement as a short story writer. The stories are arranged with care into six thematic units that provide a key to the author's intentions. The collection is universally praised and receives the National Book Award.
1951
Requiem for a Nun. This sequel to Sanctuary is yet another of Faulkner's experiments with novelistic form. Three prose sections providing historical background are interspersed with three others constituting a three-act play. The story concerns the fate of Nancy Mannigoe, a black nurse accused of murdering a white child.
1954
A Fable. Faulkner's novel is a long parable about the passion of Christ, set during World War I. Faulkner had labored for years over the novel and considered it his masterwork. Although it wins the Pulitzer Prize, later critics would deem it one of his weakest books.
1955
Big Woods. Faulkner's collection brings together his previously printed hunting stories--"The Bear," "The Old People," and "A Bear Hunt"--with a new story, "Ride at Morning," as well as the author's explanatory comments.
1957
The Town. The second installment of Faulkner's Snopes trilogy appears seventeen years after the first volume, The Hamlet (1940). The novel focuses on an outsider, the lawyer Gavin Stevens, and his naive longing for two of the Snopes women. Narration by another outsider, the itinerant sewing machine salesman V. K. Ratliff, integrates The Town with its predecessor in the trilogy. The set would be completed with the 1960 publication of The Mansion.
1958
New Orleans Sketches. This book collects Faulkner's experimental prose pieces written in 1925, marking his transition from poetry to fiction.
1959
The Mansion. Faulkner concludes his trilogy on the Snopes family, begun with The Hamlet (1940) and continued in The Town (1957). The novel shows a prosperous Flem Snopes and the vengeance of his cousin Mink, which ends Flem's career.
1962
The Reivers: A Reminiscence. Published one month before his death, Faulkner's final novel is a nostalgic last look at Yoknapatawpha County in a comic tale set in 1905. It wins Faulkner a second Pulitzer Prize.
1965
Essays, Speeches, and Public Letters. This collection includes Faulkner's review of Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, lectures, introductions, essays on various writers including Sherwood Anderson and Albert Camus, impressions of Japan and New England, and comments about social issues such as race relations.
Would you like to know more about Faulkner?
There are some frequently asked question about William Faulkner: his biography and literary works. Here you see the list of them and answers!
William Faulkner: Primary Sources
Now, when I have already gathered some information about William Faulkner, I think it's a high time to read some his works. I'm sure that William Faulkner impressed everyone, he was really a very talented American writer who managed to become a Nobel Prizer . But you'll be more impressed while acquainting with his novels and short stories!!!
http://www.mcsr.olemiss.edu/~egjbp/faulkner/lib_ps.html
http://www.mcsr.olemiss.edu/~egjbp/faulkner/lib_ps.html
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
William Faulkner's Essays, Speaches, and Public Letters
I decline to accept the end of man. . . . I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.
Faulkner
William Faulkner was not particularly well-suited to public speaking. His short stature, his shy demeanor, quiet voice and deep Southern dialect all were factors which made it difficult at times for listeners to understand, or even to hear, what he was saying. Nevertheless, he sometimes struck gold, as his 1950 Nobel Prise demonstrates. A reluctant prize recipient, who tried to find good cause not to go to Sweden to accept the award, and a terrified speaker, his speech was initially unintelligible to those in attendance. It was only the next day, when the words of his speech were printed in the newspaper, that commentators would recognize the quality of his speech.
Faulkner did not write very many nonfiction essays, and those few that he did write often bore strong stylistic similarities to his fiction. In fact, he mingled fact and fiction in his most famous essay, “Mississippi.”
Many of Faulkner’s essays and other public nonfiction works were collected in Essays, Speeches, and Public Letters (New York: Random House, 1965), edited by James B. Meriwether. A revised edition of this book with additional material was published in 2004.
William Faulkner was not particularly well-suited to public speaking. His short stature, his shy demeanor, quiet voice and deep Southern dialect all were factors which made it difficult at times for listeners to understand, or even to hear, what he was saying. Nevertheless, he sometimes struck gold, as his 1950 Nobel Prise demonstrates. A reluctant prize recipient, who tried to find good cause not to go to Sweden to accept the award, and a terrified speaker, his speech was initially unintelligible to those in attendance. It was only the next day, when the words of his speech were printed in the newspaper, that commentators would recognize the quality of his speech.
Faulkner did not write very many nonfiction essays, and those few that he did write often bore strong stylistic similarities to his fiction. In fact, he mingled fact and fiction in his most famous essay, “Mississippi.”
Many of Faulkner’s essays and other public nonfiction works were collected in Essays, Speeches, and Public Letters (New York: Random House, 1965), edited by James B. Meriwether. A revised edition of this book with additional material was published in 2004.
Faulkner's Nobel Prise Speech
I feel that this award was not made to me as a man, but to my work — a life’s work in the agony and sweat of the human spirit, not for glory and least of all for profit, but to create out of the materials of the human spirit something which did not exist before. So this award is only mine in trust. It will not be difficult to find a dedication for the money part of it commensurate with the purpose and significance of its origin. But I would like to do the same with the acclaim too, by using this moment as a pinnacle from which I might be listened to by the young men and women already dedicated to the same anguish and travail, among whom is already that one who will some day stand here where I am standing.
Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.
He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed — love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope and, worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands.
Until he relearns these things, he will write as though he stood among and watched the end of man. I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet’s, the writer’s, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.
Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.
He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed — love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope and, worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands.
Until he relearns these things, he will write as though he stood among and watched the end of man. I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet’s, the writer’s, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.
A break-up Letter to Gatsby
My dear, Gatsby!
I haven't ever thought that I would write such a letter for you...But I have to do it now! Please, forget me before!
I must admit that things between us had a great and beautiful start.I still remember all the good things that surrounded us: the way you used to touch me, the tender words we dedicated to each other, the way you used to look at me (always with a mix of love and desire), the warmth of your body. Yet, a few months later, it seems that none of the promises that we planted in those fields we created has flourished.Unfortunately, it just didn t happen nothing remains of what looked like a growing love, besides some memories, everything else lost its enchantment fast, and just a bitter taste was left of what tasted like such a sweet candy.It was a shame, it still is a shame, because no one expects a relationship to fail. May be a distance was one of the reasons for it!I want you to know that I don 't feel good about myself or happy with what I just said. To be honest, I 'd much rather be writing about you and how wonderful and fulfilling things have been between us ever since the day we met. But, much to my dislike, there are times in life when you have to be honest, thus avoiding a small misunderstanding that could grow it something more harmful for those involved.You know, despite this decision to break up with you, I' m keeping my fingers crossed that we may touch our lives with more joy, keeping in our hearts and souls the affection and respect we 've always felt for each other. I understand, how bad you are now.
May be it was very cruel, may be you'll hate me, but I had to say it to you! I'm sure, it'll be better for us. We haven't any futute, and you understand it even better than I!
I haven't ever thought that I would write such a letter for you...But I have to do it now! Please, forget me before!
I must admit that things between us had a great and beautiful start.I still remember all the good things that surrounded us: the way you used to touch me, the tender words we dedicated to each other, the way you used to look at me (always with a mix of love and desire), the warmth of your body. Yet, a few months later, it seems that none of the promises that we planted in those fields we created has flourished.Unfortunately, it just didn t happen nothing remains of what looked like a growing love, besides some memories, everything else lost its enchantment fast, and just a bitter taste was left of what tasted like such a sweet candy.It was a shame, it still is a shame, because no one expects a relationship to fail. May be a distance was one of the reasons for it!I want you to know that I don 't feel good about myself or happy with what I just said. To be honest, I 'd much rather be writing about you and how wonderful and fulfilling things have been between us ever since the day we met. But, much to my dislike, there are times in life when you have to be honest, thus avoiding a small misunderstanding that could grow it something more harmful for those involved.You know, despite this decision to break up with you, I' m keeping my fingers crossed that we may touch our lives with more joy, keeping in our hearts and souls the affection and respect we 've always felt for each other. I understand, how bad you are now.
May be it was very cruel, may be you'll hate me, but I had to say it to you! I'm sure, it'll be better for us. We haven't any futute, and you understand it even better than I!
Good bye, my Gatsby! I really loved you!
Your Daisy!
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
I'd like to gather information about the great American writer William Faulkner. He impressed me greatly! I haven't ever heard such a deep and really spiritual speech. He really had a purpose for writting and understand his importance for readers. Moreover, his thoughts and opinions are very close to my mind!
"The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life. Since man is mortal, the only immortality possible for him is to leave something behind him that is immortal since it will always move. This is the artist’s way of scribbling “Kilroy was here” on the wall of the final and irrevocable oblivion through which he must someday pass."
W.Faulkner
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)