Table Of ContentWilliam Faulkner
A Literary Life
David Rampton
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Literary Lives
Founding Editor: Richard Dutton, Professor of English, Lancaster University
This series offers stimulating accounts of the literary careers of the most admired
and influential English-language authors. Volumes follow the outline of the
writers’ working lives, not in the spirit of traditional biography, but aiming to
trace the professional, publishing and social contexts which shaped their writing.
Published titles include:
Clinton Machann Kerry McSweeney
MATTHEW ARNOLD GEORGE ELIOT
Jan Fergus Tony Sharpe
JANE AUSTEN T. S. ELIOT
John Beer David Rampton
WILLIAM BLAKE WILLIAM FAULKNER
Tom Winnifrith and Edward Chitham Harold Pagliaro
CHARLOTTE AND EMILY BRONTË HENRY FIELDING
Sarah Wood Andrew Hook
ROBERT BROWNING F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
Janice Farrar Thaddeus Mary Lago
FRANCES BURNEY E. M. FORSTER
Caroline Franklin Shirley Foster
BYRON ELIZABETH GASKELL
Sarah Gamble Neil Sinyard
ANGELA CARTER GRAHAM GREENE
Nancy A. Walker James Gibson
KATE CHOPIN THOMAS HARDY
Roger Sales Linda Wagner-Martin
JOHN CLARE ERNEST HEMINGWAY
Cedric Watts Cristina Malcolmson
JOSEPH CONRAD GEORGE HERBERT
Grahame Smith Gerald Roberts
CHARLES DICKENS GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS
George Parfitt Neil Roberts
JOHN DONNE TED HUGHES
Paul Hammond Kenneth Graham
JOHN DRYDEN HENRY JAMES
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W. David Kaye Michael O’Neill
BEN JONSON PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Phillip Mallett Gary Waller
RUDYARD KIPLING EDMUND SPENSER
John Worthen Tony Sharpe
D. H. LAWRENCE WALLACE STEVENS
William Gray Lisa Hopkins
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON BRAM STOKER
Angela Smith Joseph McMinn
KATHERINE MANSFIELD JONATHAN SWIFT
Lisa Hopkins William Christie
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
Cedric C. Brown Leonée Ormond
JOHN MILTON ALFRED TENNYSON
Peter Davison Peter Shillingsburg
GEORGE ORWELL WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
Linda Wagner-Martin David Wykes
SYLVIA PLATH EVELYN WAUGH
Felicity Rosslyn Caroline Franklin
ALEXANDER POPE MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT
Ira B. Nadel John Mepham
EZRA POUND VIRGINIA WOOLF
Richard Dutton John Williams
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
John Williams Alasdair D. F. Macrae
MARY SHELLEY W. B. YEATS
Literary Lives
Series Standing Order ISBN 0-333-71486-5 hardcover
Series Standing Order ISBN 0-333-80334-5 paperback
(outside North America only)
You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a stand-
ing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the
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Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills,
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William Faulkner
A Literary Life
David Rampton
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© David Rampton 2008
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this
publication may be made without written permission.
No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted
save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence
permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90
Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP.
Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication
may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this
work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published 2008 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010
Companies and representatives throughout the world
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave
Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd.
Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom
and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European
Union and other countries.
ISBN-13: 978-1-4039-4680-5 hardback
ISBN-10: 1-4039-4680-9 hardback
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully
managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing
processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the
country of origin.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Rampton, David, 1950–
William Faulkner: a literary life / David Rampton.
p. cm. — (Literary lives)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1-4039-4680-9 (alk. paper)
1. Faulkner, William, 1897–1962. 2. Authors, American—20th century—
Biography. I. Title.
PS3511.A86Z946935 2008
813’.52—dc22
[B] 2008000155
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne
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For Elizabeth
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Contents
Preface and Acknowledgements viii
1 Introduction 1
2 Early Faulkner 14
3 Major Achievement I 36
4 Major Achievement II 58
5 Two Views of History 85
6 More Experiments with the Novel 104
7 The Snopes Trilogy 129
8 Late Faulkner 150
Notes 177
Further Reading 188
Index 194
vii
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Preface and Acknowledgements
With so many excellent biographies of Faulkner available, the emphasis
in this literary life had to be on the adjective rather than the noun. That
choice resolved one problem only to create another, namely how to
justify adding to what has already been said in all the books and arti-
cles devoted to Faulkner’s fiction. One of the critics in Frederic Crews’s
parody of academic criticism, The Pooh Perplex, remarks that ‘our ideal
in English studies is to amass as much commentary as possible upon the
literary work, so as to let the world know how deeply we respect it.’ By
this criterion, Faulkner is probably the most deeply respected American
writer who ever lived. If those who read him, for the intense pleasure of
the experience or with a combined sense of intrigue and bafflement,
find something of interest here, I shall feel at least partly vindicated.
The references in my notes acknowledge only a small fraction of my
indebtedness to Faulkner scholars and critics. They are an extraordinarily
large and diverse group with a formidable amount of expertise in a
range of areas, and I have greatly benefitted from their engagement
with his fiction. My colleagues in the Department of English at the
University of Ottawa deserve special mention as well for being so
supportive and for setting such high standards with their own work.
I also want to extend my most heartfelt gratitude to the departmental
support staff there for making my administrative tasks so pleasant dur-
ing the period I was working on this book. At Palgrave Macmillan,
Richard Dutton helped from the outset by outlining the directions the
project might take and was always encouraging. Thanks are also due to
Palgrave’s readers for their helpful suggestions, to Paula Kennedy for her
enthusiastic support and her seemingly limitless patience, to Christabel
Scaife for her resourcefulness and encouragement, and to the staff of
Macmillan India Ltd for copy-editing and guiding the typescript through
the final stages.
Finally I would like to thank my family for their forbearance during all
those nights when ‘sharing the computer’ meant watching me work on
it. This book is dedicated to my wife Elizabeth, to whom my gratitude
for so many things is not the less heartfelt for being so inadequately
expressed.
viii
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Preface and Acknowledgements ix
Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following for permission to
reprint previously published material:
William Faulkner, for the following excerpts:
From Soldiers’ Pay: reprinted with the permission of Liveright Publishing
Corporation and Chatto & Windus/The Random House Group, Ltd.;
from Mosquitoes: reprinted with the permission of Liveright Publishing
Corporation and Chatto & Windus/The Random House Group, Ltd.;
from Flags in the Dust: reprinted with the permission of Random House,
Inc. and Chatto & Windus/The Random House Group, Ltd.; from The
Sound and the Fury: reprinted with the permission of Random House,
Inc. and Curtis Brown, Ltd.; from As I Lay Dying: reprinted with the
permission of Random House, Inc.; from Sanctuary: reprinted with the
permission of Random House, Inc. and Chatto & Windus/The Random
House Group, Ltd.; from Light in August: reprinted with the permission
of Random House, Inc. and Curtis Brown, Ltd.; from Pylon: reprinted
with the permission of Random House, Inc.; from Absalom, Absalom!:
reprinted with the permission of Random House, Inc. and Curtis
Brown, Ltd.; from The Unvanquished: reprinted with the permission of
Random House, Inc.; from The Wild Palms [If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem]:
reprinted with the permission of Random House, Inc.; from The
Hamlet: reprinted with the permission of Random House, Inc.; from
Go Down, Moses: reprinted with the permission of Random House, Inc.;
from Intruder in the Dust: reprinted with the permission of Random
House, Inc.; from Requiem for a Nun: reprinted with the permission of
Random House, Inc. and Chatto & Windus/The Random House Group,
Ltd.; from A Fable: reprinted with the permission of Random House, Inc.
and Chatto & Windus/The Random House Group, Ltd.; from The Town:
reprinted with the permission of Random House, Inc. and W.W. Norton
& Company, Inc.; from The Mansion: reprinted with the permission of
Random House, Inc. and Chatto & Windus/The Random House Group,
Ltd.; and from The Reivers: reprinted with the permission of Random
House, Inc. and Chatto & Windus/The Random House Group, Ltd.
