William Faulkner's Mississippi
"To understand the world, you must first understand a place like Mississippi."
William Faulkner is a giant in American literature, renowned more than just a Mississippi writer, the two-time Nobel Prize-winning novelist and short story writer is acclaimed throughout the world as one of the twentieth century’s greatest writers.
For a man who never graduated from high school, never received a college degree, who lived in a small town in the poorest state in the nation, wrote a series of novels and screenplays is a testament to the power of a true Mississippian to push past all the odds.
Mississippi was central to Faulkner's works. The fictitious Yoknapatawpha county was the scene of many a story, closely resembled the place he lived.
Faulkner was born in east Mississippi town of New Albany and shortly after his birth, the family moved to nearby Ripley. Colonel William Clark Falkner, great-grandfather of authors William Faulkner and John Faulkner, was a prominent resident of Ripley in the mid to late-19th century. W.C. Falkner's exploits in and around Ripley served as the model for Faulkner's character of Colonel John Sartoris.
The family then moved again and settled in Oxford, a town now synonymous with his name, not only because of his infamous stint as the postmaster at Ole Miss, but also because of his legendary home, Rowan Oak.
William Faulkner Reading List
The Sound And The Fury
Light in August
As I Lay Dying
Absalom, Absalom!
Go Down, Moses
Intruder in the Dust
A Fable
The Reivers
Southern Literary Trail
"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."