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by Richard Howorth
Square Books in Oxford, MS

William Cuthbert Faulkner's forebears first came into Northeast Mississippi circa 1840 -- roughly the same time the town of Oxford and, later, the University of Mississippi were founded. The Faulkner family history is typical of the struggle of the American pioneer: fraught with sickness, violence, despair, fortune, and war. This history presented a variety of colorful incidents and people who appeared in somewhat altered forms in Faulkner's literature.

Faulkner's birth in New Albany on September 25, 1897, came at the beginning of a new era for Mississippi: Between 1897 and 1903 (when Faulkner moved to Oxford just three days shy of his fifth birthday), Oxford's first telephones were installed. The first water tower also went up at that time, providing Oxford residents sewage and plumbing, and, five years later, Oxford turned on to electricity.

Faulkner grew up in Oxford "a shy and troubled boy who would become a shy and troubled man," according to biographer David Minter. He worked in his father's livery stable, dropped out of high school, met his sweetheart, Estelle Oldham (who he would later wed), enrolled as a student at the University of Mississippi -- and throughout, his views were dramatically and continually shaped by family and local life.

In spite of his disdain for formal schooling, literary people had a very early influence on Faulkner; Oxford had a rough literati, much as it does today. Its denizens included Phil Stone, the Yale-educated lawyer who encouraged Faulkner to read Keats and Swinburne -- and who read Faulkner's own first poems, saying later that "anyone could have seen he had real talent." Through just such acquaintances, Faulkner gained access to the libraries of Augustus Baldwin Longstreet, Oxford's first writer (his Georgia Scenes was published in 1835), and Stark Young, author of the 1934 bestseller So Red the Rose. Young introduced Faulkner to Elizabeth Prall, who managed the Doubleday Bookstore in New York and, in 1921, offered Faulkner a job there, giving him his first big ride out of town.

Faulkner's life was characterized by ambivalent desires for fame and privacy. In his youth he cultivated a bohemian look, "put on airs," according to some townspeople, and became known as "Count No Count." His mother brought him up to be a proud person, which he rightfully was, but he was also withdrawn. Perhaps, as Faulkner scholar Dianne Roberts told me, he invited ambivalence and ambiguity because "as a writer you get a lot of energy from conflict -- conflict is where writing comes form."

His writing career was defined in large part by the explosive and prolific genius of his early years, when he wrote his greatest books: The Sound and the Fury, Absalom, Absalom!, As I Lay Dying, and Sanctuary. He received very little critical attention for these works and, through the duration of the Depression, almost no monetary compensation.

By the early 1940s -- midway through his career -- all but one of Faulkner's books were out of print. Malcolm Cowley proposed in 1945 to Faulkner that they do The Portable Faulkner, saying he wanted in the book "nothing that doesn't deal with Mississippi." This title launched Faulkner's career anew, and his reading audience and acclaim have grown ever since.

In later years, as many critics (and Faulkner himself) admitted, his career was marked by a diminishment of his genius. This was, however, counterbalanced by a more finely developed craftsmanship, as demonstrated in Go Down Moses, the Snopes trilogy, and The Reivers. This period was also punctuated by growing acclaim: He received the Nobel Prize, the Pulitzer Prize (twice), and the National Book Award (twice).

Faulkner died after an illness July 6, 1962, in Wright's Sanatorium in Byhalia, Mississippi.

Richard Howorth is co-owner of Square Books in Oxford, Miss., and has served as president of the American Booksellers Association. Square Books carries 140 titles of Faulkner criticism and biography.

You'll find even more info on Faulkner at the Square Books website.
Go to:
http://www.squarebooks.com/faulkner/critical.html for a critical bibliography
http://www.squarebooks.com/faulkner/works.html for a list of Faulkner's works

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