
|
Nobel Laureate
In 1944, Faulkner began a correspondence
with Malcolm Cowley, who at the time was editing The Portable
Hemingway for Viking Press. Cowley had in mind a similar collection
for Faulkner, whose novels by this time were effectively out of
print. Though Faulkners reputation remained high in Europe,
especially in France, where Jean-Paul Sartre allegedly said, For
the young people in France, Faulkner is a god, in America
the public had largely ceased to read his work. Cowleys collection
begins with an introductory biographical and critical essay, in
which Faulkner had to correct for the first time some of the misconceptions
of his war record. The collection itself consists of stories and
novel passages that relate, in roughly chronological order, the
saga of Yoknapatawpha County. For the book, Faulkner
contributed a new Appendix to The Sound and the Fury,
in which he examined both the distant past and the near future of
the Compson family as told in the novel. Published in April 1946,
The Portable Faulkner would mark the beginning of
the resurgence in popular and critical interest in Faulkners
work. In December, the Modern Library would publish a one-volume
edition of The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying,
preceded by Faulkners Compson Appendix. Over the
coming years, the Modern Library would continue to re-issue Faulkners
novels, a practice that continues to this day.
In March 1947, while continuing
to work on his Christ fable, he wrote letters to the Oxford newspaper
to support the preservation of the old courthouse on the town square,
which some townspeople had proposed demolishing to build a larger
one. In April, he agreed to meet in question-and-answer sessions
with English classes at the University of Mississippi, but he invited
controversy when his candid statement about Hemingway he
has no courage, has never climbed out on a limb ... has never used
a word where the reader might check his usage by a dictionary
was included in a press release about the sessions. When
Hemingway read the remarks, he was hurt, moved even to write a letter
answering the charge that he lacked courage, but when
it grew too long, he asked a friend, Brigadier General C.T. Lanham
to write and tell Faulkner only what he knew about Hemingways
heroism as a war correspondent. Almost immediately, Faulkner replied,
apologizing for the misunderstanding and pain caused by his remarks,
explaining that it was a garbled, incomplete version of what he
had said, but he defended his comment by saying that it referred
only to Hemingways craftsmanship as a writer and told how
he was judging the quality of writing on its degree of failures,
that Hemingway was next to last because he didnt have the
courage to risk bad taste, over-writing, dullness, etc.
He wrote Hemingway also, including a copy of the letter to Lanham,
again apologizing and saying, I hope it wont matter a damn
to you. But if or whe[ne]ver it does, please accept another squirm
from yours truly. |

Photo by Phill Mullen
The only known photograph
of William Faulkner (right) with his eldest brother, John, was taken
in 1949. Like his brother, John Faulkner was also a writer,
though their writing styles differed considerably. |
In January 1948, Faulkner put aside
A Fable to write a novel he considered a detective story.
The central character is Lucas Beauchamp, who had appeared as a
key descendant of old Lucius Quintus Carothers McCaslin in Go
Down, Moses, upon whose name his own was based. In the novel
Beauchamp is accused of murdering a white man and must rely upon
the wits of a teenage boy, Chick Mallison, to clear his name before
the lynch mob arrives to do its job. In July, MGM purchased the
film rights to the novel, and in October, Intruder in the
Dust was published. In the spring of 1949, director Clarence
Brown and a film crew descended upon Oxford, Mississippi, to film
the novel on location, and while the townspeople eagerly welcomed
the filmmakers, even playing a number of extra and minor roles in
the film, Faulkner was very reluctant to participate, though he
may have helped to rework the final scene. In October 1949, the
world premiere of Browns Intruder in the Dust took
place at the Lyric Theatre in Oxford. Faulkner attended at the insistence
of his Aunt Alabama McLean.
In November, Faulkner published
Knights Gambit, a collection of detective stories
including Tomorrow, Smoke, and the title
novella. That same month, in Stockholm, fifteen of the eighteen
members of the Swedish Academy voted to award the Nobel Prize for
literature to Faulkner, but since a unanimous vote was required,
the awarding of the prize was delayed by a year. |

© The Cofield Collection
The world premiere of
the film version of Intruder in the Dust occurred at the Lyric
Theatre in Oxford in 1949. |
In the summer of 1949, Faulkner
had met Joan Williams, a young student and author of a prize-winning
story. In 1950, he began a collaboration with her on Requiem
for a Nun, a part-prose, part-play sequel to Sanctuary
in which nursemaid Nancy Mannigoe is sentenced to hang for the murder
of Temple Drakes infant daughter. Temple, now married to Gowan
Stevens, tries to convince her husbands uncle, lawyer Gavin
Stevens, to save Nancy from execution. In narrative prose sections
preceding each of the plays three acts, Faulkner details some
of the early history of Jefferson, Yoknapatawpha County, and the
state of Mississippi. His collaboration with Williams would eventually
grow into a love affair.
In June 1950, Faulkner was awarded
the Howells Medal for distinguished work in American fiction. In
August, he published Collected Stories, the third
and last collection of stories published by Faulkner. It includes
forty-two of the forty-six stories published in magazines since
1930, excluding those which he had published or incorporated into
The Unvanquished, The Hamlet, Go Down, Moses, and Knights
Gambit. Two months later, Faulkner received word that the Swedish
Academy had voted to award him and Bertrand Russell as corecipients
of the Nobel Prize for literature, Russell for 1950 and Faulkner
for the previous year. At first he refused to go to Stockholm to
receive the award, but pressured by the U.S. State Department, the
Swedish Ambassador to the United States, and finally by his own
family, he agreed to go.
On December 10, he delivered his
acceptance speech to the academy in a voice so low and rapid that
few could make out what he was saying, but when his words were published
in the newspaper the following day, it was recognized for its brilliance;
in later years, Faulkners speech would be lauded as the best
speech ever given at a Nobel ceremony. In it, Faulkner alluded to
the impending Cold War and the constant fear, a general and
universal physical fear, whose consequence was to make the
young man or woman writing today [forget] 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. The artist, Faulkner said, must re-learn 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. He concludes
on an optimistic note: 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. The poets, the writers
duty is to write about these things.... The poets
voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the
props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail. |

Courtesy Faulkner family
On December
10, 1950, Faulkner was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature for
the year 1949. Pictured with Faulkner are Dr. Gustaf Hellström
and Envoy Ståhle |
At Howard Hawks request, Faulkner
returned to Hollywood one last time in February 1951 to rework a
script titled The Left Hand of God for 20th Century-Fox.
The following month, he was awarded the National Book Award for
Collected Stories, and in May, shortly after having delivered
the commencement address at his daughters high school graduation
ceremony, French President Vincent Auriol bestowed the award of
Legion of Honor upon Faulkner. As he completed the writing and revision
of Requiem for a Nun, he received several offers to stage
the play, both in the United States and in France, but problems
of financing prevented any full productions. The book was published
in September 1951.
In April 1952, Faulkner attended
the ninetieth anniversary of the Battle of Shiloh with fellow Mississippian
Shelby Foote, whom Faulkner
had met in 1941 when Foote had accompanied Faulkners agent,
Ben Wasson, on a visit to Rowan Oak. In May he accepted an invitation
to attend the Festival Oeuvres du XXe Siècle
in France; while abroad, he also visited England and Norway. Back
at home in June, he resumed his relationship with Joan Williams
and continued working on A Fable with more and more difficulty.
When the intricate plot became too complex for him to keep track
of, he wrote outlines of key events in the storys seven days
on the walls of his office at Rowan Oak. Suffering from acute back
pain, Faulkner was hospitalized twice, in September and October.
In November, Faulkner agreed to participate in a short documentary
film financed by the Ford Foundation. Essentially re-enacting his
own life, Faulkner is depicted at his farm, talking with townspeople
on the streets of Oxford, and being cajoled into an interview by
Oxford Eagle editor Phil Mullen at Rowan Oak, during which
Faulkner says (on camera), Okay, but no pictures. The
film was broadcast on CBS-TVs program Omnibus. |

Photo by Phill Mullen
Faulkner
in the library of Rowan Oak during the filming of the CBS documentary,
1952. (Click for larger view)
|
While in New York in January 1953,
he adapted his story The Brooch for television while
also working on A Fable and suffering bouts of back pain
and alcoholism that required hospitalization. In March he was again
hospitalized. The following month, Estelle suffered a hemorrhage
and heart attack, so Faulkner returned to Oxford. He returned to
New York in May, where he met Dylan Thomas and e.e. cummings. In
June, he delivered an address to Jills graduating class at
Pine Manor Junior College. Following another hospitalization in
September, Faulkner was horrified to find his sacrosanct privacy
invaded by the publication of a two-part biographical article by
Robert Coughlan in September and Octobers issues of Life
magazine.
In November, Albert Camus
agent wrote Faulkner requesting permission to adapt Requiem for
a Nun for the stage, to which Faulkner agreed. At the end of
the month, he traveled to Egypt to assist Howard Hawks in the filming
of Land of the Pharaohs, their last collaboration. For the
next several months, he traveled throughout Europe. He met Jean
Stein in St. Moritz, Switzerland, on December 25, and after visits
to England and Paris joined Hawks, Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall
in Rome on January 19. In March, he received a letter from Jill,
who wrote that she had met Paul D. Summers, a lieutenant at West
Point, whom she would like to marry, and asked Faulkner to come
home. He returned to Oxford at the end of April 1954, after a six-month
absence. That same month saw the publication of Mississippi,
a mostly nonfiction article mingling history, his childhood, and
his own work against the backdrop of his native state, in Holiday
magazine; and The Faulkner Reader, an anthology which
includes the complete text of The Sound and the Fury, three
additional long stories (or novellas) The
Bear from Go Down, Moses, Old Man from
The Wild Palms, and Spotted Horses from The
Hamlet as well as several other stories and novel excerpts.
The three novellas would in 1958 be published together under the
title Three Famous Short Novels. In August, after more than
ten years of work, Faulkner finally published A Fable,
dedicating it to Jill and Estelle. Later that month, Jill and Paul
Summers were married in Oxford. |

© The Cofield Collection
To keep
track of the complex plot in A Fable, Faulkner wrote outlines
of the novels seven days on the wall in his office at Rowan
Oak. |
Statesman to the World
At the end of June 1954, Faulkner
had accepted an invitation from the U.S. State Department to attend
an international writers conference in São Paulo in August.
Now an internationally known public figure, Faulkner no longer refused
to appear in public in his own nation, and he usually accepted the
increasing requests by the State Department to attend cultural events
abroad. In addition, he also began to take a public stand as a moderate,
if not liberal, southerner in the growing debate over school integration.
Though A Fable is generally
considered one of Faulkners weaker novels, in January 1955,
it earned the National Book Award for Fiction and in May
a Pulitzer Prize in fiction. In August, Faulkner began a three-month,
seven-nation goodwill tour at the request of the State Department,
traveling first to Japan, where at Nagano he participated in a seminar
whose proceedings, along with two speeches he had delivered, were
published as Faulkner at Nagano. He left Japan for Manila
and then Italy, where from Rome he wrote a dispatch condemning the
murder of Emmett Till, a black teenager from Chicago who had been
killed in Mississippi. From Italy he went to Munich, where Requiem
for a Nun was playing, and then to Paris for two weeks. In October,
he left for London and then for Reykjavik, Iceland, where once again
he attended a program of conferences and interviews. Finally he
returned to the United States in October, during which month Random
House published Big Woods: The Hunting Stories, a
collection of four previously published stories about hunting with
five interchapters at the beginning and end of the book
and between chapters to set or change the mood. He dedicated the
book to his editor at Random House, Saxe Commins.
In November, Faulkner condemned
segregation in an address before the Southern Historical Association
in the Peabody Hotel in Memphis, where because of segregation much
effort was needed for blacks to be admitted. The speech was published
in the Memphis Commercial Appeal under the headline A
mixed audience hears Faulkner condemn the shame of segregation.
Though Faulkner opposed segregation, however, he opposed federal
involvement in the issue, which resulted in his being understood
by neither southern conservatives nor northern liberals. Faulkners
increasingly vocal stand on the issues of race drew fire from his
fellow southerners, including anonymous threats and rejection by
his own brother, John. Misunderstanding
over Faulkners views increased when in a February 1956 interview
with a London Sunday Times correspondent he was quoted as
saying that he would fight for Mississippi against the United
States, even if it meant going out into the street and shooting
Negroes. Faulkner tried to correct the absurd statement in
letters to three national magazines that had repeated the initial
assertion, but the statements harm could not easily be undone.
Two weeks after Life published Faulkners A Letter
to the North, in which he pleaded for moderation, warning
that one should not expect too much of the South, he had to be hospitalized
for nine days after vomiting blood and collapsing into unconsciousness.
While he was in the hospital, Faulkners first grandchild,
Paul, was born in Charlottesville, Virginia. Soon after, Faulkner
would agree to become writer-in-residence at the University
of Virginia in Charlottesville for a period of eight to ten
weeks every year. |
|
In April 1956, black civil rights
legend W.E.B. Du Bois challenged Faulkner to a debate on integration
on the steps of the courthouse in Sumner, Mississippi, where the
accused in the Emmett Till murder trial had been acquitted by an
all-white jury. Faulkner declined in a telegram, stating I
do not believe there is a debatable point between us. We both agree
in advance that the position you will take is right morally, legally,
and ethically. If it is not evident to you that the position I take
in asking for moderation and patience is right practically then
we will both waste our breath in debate.
In September, Camus adaptation
of Requiem for a Nun premiered at the Théâtre
des Mathurins. That same month, Faulkner became involved in the
Eisenhower administrations People-to-People Program,
the aim of which was to promote American culture behind the Iron
Curtain. At the end of September a steering committee consisting
of Faulkner, John Steinbeck, and Donald Hall drew up several resolutions,
including one supporting the liberation of Ezra Pound, but Faulkner
would withdraw from the committee three months later.
From February to June 1957, Faulkner
was writer-in-residence at the University of Virginia and agreed
to a number of question-and-answer sessions with the students, faculty,
and faculty spouses. Highlights of the taped sessions would be published
in 1959 by Professors Joseph Blotner and Frederick Gwynn under the
title Faulkner in the University. In March, while visiting
Greece during a leave of absence from Virginia, he received the
Silver Medal of the Athens Academy as one chosen by the Greek
Academy to represent the principle that man shall be free.
Back in Charlottesville, in April he signed a contract with producer
Jerry Wald for an option on The Hamlet. The film, made by
Martin Ritt and starring Orson Welles, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward
(their first on-screen pairing), would be released in 1958 under
the title The Long Hot Summer. |

© William Faulkner Collections / UVA
Faulkner on the University
of Virginia campus. (Click for larger view)
|
In May 1957 Faulkner published The
Town, the second volume of the Snopes trilogy.
Picking up where The Hamlet left off, it depicts Flem Snopes
ruthless struggle to take over the town of Jefferson. Now dividing
his time between Oxford and Charlottesville, from February to May
1958 he fulfilled his second term as writer-in-residence at Virginia.
Also while living in Virginia, he began to relish fox-hunting, and
he was invited to join the Farmington Hunt Club, an achievement
he displayed proudly by posing for photographs and portraits in
his pink membership coat. In December, Jills second son, William,
was born, and the following month saw the premiere of Requiem
for a Nun on stage at the John Golden Theater in New York, making
the United States the thirteenth nation in which the play had been
produced.
In March 1959, Faulkner broke his
collarbone in a fall from a horse at Farmington, a kind of accident
that would continue to plague Faulkner for the remaining years of
his life. In June, he transferred his manuscripts and typescripts
from the Princeton University Library to the Alderman Library at
the University of Virginia. That month, the New York Times
reported he had bought a house in Charlottesville, though he would
continue to live part of the year in Oxford. In November, The
Mansion, the third and final volume of the Snopes
trilogy, was published.
Throughout 1960, Faulkner continued
to divide his time between Oxford and Charlottesville. On October
16, Faulkners mother, Maud Butler Falkner, died at the age
of 88. A talented painter who had completed nearly 600 paintings
after 1941, she had remained close to her eldest son throughout
her life. |

© The Cofield Collection
William Faulkner
in 1961, wearing his Farmington Hunt Club riding habit. This and other
photographs from the Cofield Collection are part of the Visual
Collections and Southern Media Archive at the University of Mississippi
Libraries. |
In January 1961, Faulkner willed
all his manuscripts to the William Faulkner Foundation at the University
of Virginia. In February, he accepted an invitation from General
William Westmoreland to visit the military academy at West Point.
In April, Faulkner went on a final trip abroad for the State Department,
this time to Venezuela, where he was the guest of President Rómulo
Betancourt. He spent the summer in Oxford, where in August he completed
the manuscript for his nineteenth and final novel. Titled The
Reivers, an archaic Scottish spelling of an old term for
thieves, the novel is a light-hearted romp set at the
turn of the century in which Boon Hogganbeck takes eleven-year-old
Lucius Loosh Priest and a stowaway, Ned McCaslin, the
Priest familys black coachman, on a joyride to a Memphis brothel
in Looshs grandfathers Winton Flyer automobile while
Boss Priest is away at a funeral. Amid the picaresque
novels ludicrous and uproarious antics, which include Neds
trading Boss Priests automobile for a racehorse named Lightning,
are the serious issues of a childs initiation into moral adulthood
and his realization of evil and injustice. Beginning the novel,
subtitled A Reminiscence, with the phrase Grandfather
said, Faulkner dedicated the novel to Victoria, Mark,
Paul, William, Burks, his grandchildren by his two step-children
and biological daughter. The novel, published in June 1962, would
posthumously earn for Faulkner his second Pulitzer Prize for fiction.
In January of that year, Faulkner
suffered another fall from a horse, forcing yet another hospital
stay. In April, he again visited West Point with his wife, daughter,
and son-in-law, and the following month in New York, fellow Mississippi
writer Eudora Welty presented
Faulkner with the Gold Medal for Fiction awarded by the American
Academy of Arts and Letters.
On June 17, Faulkner was again injured
by a fall from a horse. In constant pain now, he signaled something
was wrong when he asked on July 5 to be taken to Wrights Sanatarium
in Byhalia. Though he had been a patient there many times, he had
always been taken there before against his will. His nephew, Jimmy,
and Estelle accompanied him on the 65-mile trip to Byhalia, where
he was admitted at 6 p.m. Less than eight hours later, at about
1:30 a.m. on July 6, 1962 the Old Colonels birthday
his heart stopped, and though the doctor on duty applied
external heart massage for forty-five minutes, he could not resuscitate
him. William Faulkner was dead of a heart attack at the age of 64.
He was buried on July 7 at St. Peters
Cemetery in Oxford. As calls of condolence came upon the family
from around the world and the press including novelist William
Styron, who covered the funeral for Life magazine
clamored for answers to their questions from family members, a family
representative relayed to them a message from the family: Until
hes buried he belongs to the family. After that, he belongs
to the world.
|

© The Cofield Collection
Faulkners
last studio portraits were made by Jack Cofield, J.R. Cofields
son, on March 20, 1962.

© The Cofield Collection
Faulkner
was buried in St. Peters Cemetery in Oxford on July 7, 1962.
(Click for larger view)
|
For more information
on Faulkner, including commentaries on individual works, family genealogies,
a character and place name glossary, bibliographies of criticism,
a map and description of Faulkner sites in Oxford, and other information
resources, visit William
Faulkner on the Web, which is maintained by the author
of this article. |
|
|
Publications by Faulkner |
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