William Faulkner

American novelist William Cuthbert Faulkner (September 25, 1897 - July 6, 1962) was well-known for his works of fiction, many of which are set in the imaginary Yoknapatawpha County, which is modelled after Lafayette County, Mississippi, where Faulkner lived for the most of his life. One of the most well-known authors in American literature and a recipient of the Nobel Prize, Faulkner is sometimes hailed as the finest writer of Southern literature.

Faulkner was raised in Oxford, Mississippi, when his family relocated there from his birthplace in New Albany, Mississippi. He enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force at the start of World War I, although he never saw combat. He went back to Oxford and dropped out of the University of Mississippi after three semesters. He moved to New Orleans, where he wrote his first novel Soldiers' Pay (1925). Returning to Oxford, he penned his first novel, Sartoris (1927), which is situated in the made-up Yoknapatawpha County. He released The Sound and the Fury in 1929. As I Lay Dying was written by him the next year. He authored Light in August, Absalom, Absalom! and The Wild Palms later that decade. Additionally, he was a scriptwriter for two films directed by Howard Hawks: To Have and Have Not, which was adapted from a novel by Raymond Chandler, and The Big Sleep, which was based on an Ernest Hemingway novel. The latter is the only movie in which two Nobel laureates have contributed.

After Malcolm Cowley's The Portable Faulkner was published, Faulkner's fame peaked, and he was given the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature for "his powerful and unique contribution to the modern American novel." He is the only Nobel laureate who was born in Mississippi. A Fable (1954) and The Reivers (1962) were two of his works that were awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Following a fall off his horse the previous month, Faulkner suffered a heart attack and passed away on July 6, 1962. He was dubbed "the greatest artist the South has produced" by Ralph Ellison.

Life

Childhood and heritage

Narratives of William Clark Falkner, his namesake and great-grandfather, had an impact on Faulkner. William Cuthbert Falkner, the first of Murry Cuthbert Falkner's (1870-1932) four boys, and Maud Butler's (1871-1960) daughter, was born in New Albany, Mississippi, on September 25, 1897. He was from an upper middle-class background, but his family was "not quite of the old feudal cotton aristocracy". The family relocated to Oxford, Mississippi in 1902 when Maud turned down Murry's proposal to become a rancher in Texas. There, Faulkner's father opened a hardware store and livery stable before taking a job as the business manager at the University of Mississippi. For the remainder of his life, Faulkner resided in Oxford, with brief stays elsewhere.

During his early years, Faulkner was surrounded by stories from his elders about the Civil War, slavery, the Ku Klux Klan, and his own family. The history of his family and the area he lived in had a big impact on young William. His portrayal of Southern characters, his sense of humour, his understanding of the tragic status of "black and white" Americans, and his timeless themes—such as highly intellectual people hiding behind the masks of simpletons and good ol' boys—were all evident in Mississippi. Stories of his great-grandfather William Clark Falkner, who had practically become a legendary character in North Mississippi, had a special effect on him. The elder Falkner was a Confederate colonel who was born into poverty and had severe discipline. After being twice tried and found not guilty of murder accusations, he joined the Mississippi House and started a railway with his co-owner before he was killed. Many details from the life of his great-grandfather were included by Faulkner in his later writings.

At first, Faulkner did well in school and omitted the second grade. But starting in the fourth or fifth grade, Faulkner started to become a lot quieter and more reclusive as a youngster. He occasionally dropped out of school and lost interest in his assignments. Rather, he developed an interest in learning about Mississippi's past. Due to his persistent drop in academic performance, Faulkner ended up repeating the eleventh and twelfth grades and never receiving a high school diploma. Faulkner dated Estelle Oldham (1897-1972), the well-liked daughter of Major Lemuel and Lida Oldham, while he was an undergraduate at Oxford, and he thought he would marry her. But during their romance, Estelle met other males, and in 1918, Cornell Franklin—who was five years older than Faulkner—made a marriage proposal to her before Faulkner did. She agreed.

Trip to the North and early writings

At the age of seventeen, Faulkner got to know Phil Stone, who had a significant early impact on his writing. Stone was from one of the older Oxford families, four years his senior; he had bachelor's degrees from Yale and the University of Mississippi and was an avid reader. After reading some of Faulkner's early poems, Stone was moved by them and was among the first to see his potential and support him. Under Stone's guidance, Faulkner's writing style was affected by the writings of authors such as James Joyce. Faulkner offered Stone some poetry and short stories he had written in his early twenties with the expectation that Stone would publish them. Stone submitted these to publishers, but each one of them turned them down. Faulkner made his first excursion to the North in the spring of 1918, moving to Yale to reside with Stone. Faulkner got to know authors like Sherwood Anderson, Robert Frost, and Ezra Pound because to Stone.

Faulkner tried to enlist in the US Army. Based on sources, he was turned down because he was underweighting and just five feet five inches tall. Some versions claim to demonstrate the falsity of the others. Faulkner had originally intended to enlist in the British Army with the intention of becoming an officer, but he later used a fake letter of recommendation to join the Canadian RAF and left Yale to undergo training in Toronto. Based on available records, Faulkner never served in the British Royal Flying Corps and never saw action during World War I. Faulkner never flew a cockpit or received aviation instruction, despite his letters stating so. When he returned to Oxford in December 1918, Faulkner made up combat stories for his friends and even pretended to have a wound from battle.

Faulkner adopted the surname "Faulkner" instead of "Falkner" in 1918. One story told of a negligent typesetter who made a mistake. Faulkner was asked if he wanted the adjustment when the typo showed up on the first book's title page. It is said that he answered, "Any way works for me." Faulkner started composing poetry nearly solely throughout his adolescence. His first book was not written until 1925. His literary affinities are broad and profound. He once said that the Romantic period in late 18th- and early 19th-century England served as the inspiration for his early writing.

After enrolling in the University of Mississippi in 1919, he studied there for three semesters before leaving in November of 1920. To fulfil his aim of becoming a writer, Faulkner joined the fraternity Sigma Alpha Epsilon. He frequently missed class and got a "D" in English. Still, a few of his poetry appeared in college newspapers. His poem "Portrait" appeared in the literary journal Double Dealer in New Orleans in 1922. Three years later, the journal released his collection of short stories titled "New Orleans". Following his dismissal, he worked at several odd occupations, including postmaster at Ole Miss, carpenter in Oxford, and bookseller in New York City. With these words, he announced his resignation from the post office: "I will be damned if I propose to be at the beck and call of every itinerant scoundrel who has two cents to invest in a postage stamp".

New Orleans and early novels

Faulkner continued to work in the United States, even though most writers from his generation travelled to and resided in Europe. Faulkner lived in New Orleans, Louisiana, for the first half of 1925. The French Quarter was where he lived starting in March, and it was a popular haunt for bohemian writers and artists. Faulkner's attention shifted from poetry to prose while he was living in New Orleans, and his literary style clearly changed from Victorian to modernist. The Times-Picayune carried several of his little literary pieces.

Written in New Orleans, Faulkner's first book, Soldiers' Pay, was inspired by Sherwood Anderson. His early writings, like Soldiers' Pay, were written in a style reminiscent of Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, who were his contemporaries. At times, he even borrowed lines verbatim. Anderson recommended Soldiers' Pay and Mosquitoes to his publisher, which helped in their release.

Currently housing Faulkner home Books and acting as the Pirate's Alley Faulkner Society offices, the little home at 624 Pirate's Alley, located near St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans, is.

Flags in the Dust, Faulkner's debut book set in his made-up Yoknapatawpha County, was written in the summer of 1927. The customs and history of the South, which Faulkner had grown up immersed in, served as a major inspiration for this book. Upon completion, he was immensely proud of the book and thought it was a big improvement over his first two novels. Nevertheless, it was turned down by Boni & Liveright when it was submitted for publication. Although this rejection saddened Faulkner, he finally gave his literary agent, Ben Wasson, permission to edit the work, and Sartoris, the novel, was published in 1929. The work was noteworthy since it was his first book to address the Civil War instead of the current focus on World War I and its aftermath.

The Sound and the Fury

Shortly after turning thirty-one in the autumn of 1928, Faulkner started writing The Sound and the Fury. He began by penning three short stories about a gang of kids named Compson, but he soon had the impression that the characters he had developed would be better suited for a longer work of fiction. This work was written in a far more experimental style by Faulkner, who had become indifferent to his publishers after Flags in the Dust was first rejected, maybe because of his disillusionment. Later, Faulkner remarked of the writing process for this piece, "It seemed like one day I closed the door to all publisher addresses and book lists." I thought to myself, "I can write now." Faulkner insisted that Wasson not modify it or add any punctuation for clarity once it was finished.

1929-1931

Andrew Kuhn was the best man during Faulkner's 1929 marriage to Estelle Oldham. Estelle brought her two kids from her first marriage to Cornell Franklin, and Faulkner wanted to use his writing career to support his new family. Later, in 1933, Faulkner and Estelle welcomed a daughter, Jill. In 1929, while working night shifts at the University of Mississippi Powerhouse, he started writing As I Lay Dying. 1930 saw the publication of the book.

Faulkner started sending his short stories to different national journals in 1930. He earned enough money from several of these publications that he was able to purchase his family a home near Oxford, which he named Rowan Oak. Sanctuary was written by Faulkner driven by a desire to make money. He published short stories in journals like The Saturday Evening Post to augment his measurements as he received little royalties for his works.

Light in August and Hollywood years

By 1932, Faulkner found himself short of funds. He offered $5,000 to Wasson for the serialisation rights of his just finished novel, Light in August, to a magazine, but Wasson declined. Then, in Hollywood, MGM Studios hired Faulkner as a screenwriter. Faulkner had misgivings about going to the movies and wasn't a big moviegoer. He "was in dire need of money and had no idea how to get it," as André Bleikasten remarks. He then travelled to Hollywood." It has been observed that writers such as Faulkner were frequently employed "to enhance the prestige of the...writers who hired them," rather than for their literary abilities. May 1932 saw his arrival in Culver City, California. He underwent a challenging but necessary interaction with California and filmmaking because of the profession to receive "a consistent salary that supported his family back home."

At first, he said he wanted to work on Mickey Mouse cartoons, not understanding that MGM wasn't the production company; Walt Disney Productions was. His first screenplay, which adapted his short tale "Turnabout" for Today We Live, was met with varying reviews. Then, he penned a screenplay for Sartoris that was never developed. Around fifty films were produced by Faulkner between 1932 and 1954. Screenplay adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's to Have and Have Not, written by Faulkner, began in early 1944. Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall starred in their debut movie. Another movie Faulkner worked on, Hawks' The Big Sleep, starred Bogart and Bacall.

Having found so little in Hollywood, Faulkner sent letters that were "scathing in tone, painting a miserable portrait of a literary artist imprisoned in a cultural Babylon." Numerous academics have drawn notice to the problem he faced and the fact that it deeply disturbed him. He was employed by Hollywood filmmaker Howard Hawks, with whom he instantly became friends because they were both avid hunters and drinkers. William Hawks, the brother of Howard Hawks, went on to represent Faulkner in Hollywood. As a screenwriter, Faulkner was able to consistently secure employment from the 1930s through the 1950s. Faulkner took up a "vagrant" lifestyle while he was living in Hollywood, spending short stays at hotels such as the Garden of Allah Hotel and going to the Roosevelt Hotel and Musso & Frank Grill bars, where he was rumoured to have frequently gone behind the bar to mix his own Mint Juleps. He had an adulterous affair with Meta Carpenter, the script girl and secretary for Hawks.

Faulkner attempted to enlist in the US Air Force in 1942 but was turned down due to the outbreak of World War II. Rather, he worked on civil defence locally. Faulkner lost all of his excitement throughout the conflict. The war was "bad for writing," he said. In 1943, Faulkner started working on a new book that combined the Passion of Christ with the Unknown Soldier from World War I, during this period of artistic stagnation. It earned the 1954 Pulitzer Prize after being published as A Fable more than ten years later. A Fable's prize was a contentious political decision. Though A Fable was a lesser work by Faulkner, the Pulitzer board was persuaded by Pulitzer Prize Administrator Professor John Hohenberg that Faulkner was long overdue for the award, and the board overruled the jury's selection, much to the dismay of its members. The jury had chosen Milton Lott's The Last Hunt as the winner.

The majority of Faulkner's books were out of print when The Portable Faulkner was released.

Nobel Prize and later years

It was for "his powerful and artistically unique contribution to the modern American novel" that Faulkner won the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature. It was given to Bertrand Russell at the banquet the following year, together with the 1950 Prize.

During Faulkner's December 1950 visit to Stockholm for the Nobel Prize, he got to know Else Jonsson (1912-1996), the widow of journalist Thorsten Jonsson (1910-1950). In 1946, Jonsson, a correspondent for Dagens Nyheter from 1943 to 1946, conducted an interview with Faulkner and presented his literary works to the Swedish audience. Up to the end of 1953, Faulkner and Else were involved in a romantic relationship. Publisher Tor Bonnier introduced Else as the widow of the man who helped Faulkner win the Nobel Prize at the event where they first met in 1950.

Acceptance of the Nobel Prize by Faulkner Despite being brief, the speech on the immortality of the artists included several parallels to and allusions to other literary works. But Faulkner hated the attention and grandeur that came with being acknowledged. His dislike was so strong that his daughter, 17, didn't find out about the Nobel Prize until she was summoned to the principal's office during the school day. In his opening remarks, he expressed that he felt the prize was given to his work rather than to him as a man. This was a life's work done in the suffering and sweat of the human spirit, not for fame or fortune, but rather to make something new out of the ingredients of the human spirit. Thus, I only claim this honour in confidence. It won't be hard to locate a financial commitment that aligns with the intent and importance of its inception." In order to "establish a fund to support and encourage new fiction writers," he gave a portion of his Nobel Prize winnings. This fund eventually became the William Faulkner Foundation 1960-1970.

The French government awarded Faulkner the Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur medal in 1951.

From February to June of 1957 and again in 1958, Faulkner held the esteemed position of the University of Virginia at Charlottesville's inaugural Writer-in-Residence. The Reivers, Faulkner's twentieth and last book, was started in 1961. In this nostalgic fiction, an old grandfather tells a funny story about how he and two youngsters stole a car and drove it to a bordello in Memphis. He completed the initial draught in the summer of 1961. He hurt himself several times during this period from falls.

After falling from his horse on June 17, 1962, Faulkner sustained a severe injury that resulted in thrombosis. On July 6, 1962, at the age of 64, he suffered a deadly heart attack in Wright's Sanatorium in Byhalia, Mississippi. Faulkner is interred in Oxford's St. Peter's Cemetery beside his family.

Writing

Thirteen novels and numerous short stories were published by Faulkner between the early 1920s and the start of World War II. His fame was built on this body of work, which also brought him the Nobel Prize when he was 52 years old. Among Faulkner's enormous body of work are well-known books like Absalom, Absalom! (1936), Light in August (1932), As I Lay Dying (1930), and The Sound and the Fury (1929). In addition, he wrote a lot of short stories.

Many of Faulkner's most well-known (and regularly anthologized) short pieces, such as "A Rose for Emily," "Red Leaves," "That Evening Sun," and "Dry September," are included in his debut collection of short stories, These 13 (1931). Yoknapatawpha County, which was modelled after and nearly geographically identical to Lafayette County (the county seat of which is his hometown of Oxford, Mississippi), is where he put many of his short tales and novels. Faulkner's "postage stamp" novel, Yoknapatawpha, is widely regarded by critics as one of the most significant fictional works in literary history. His three books, The Hamlet, The Town, and The Mansion (together referred to as the Snopes trilogy), describe Jefferson and its surroundings as an extended family led by Flem Snopes creeps into the minds and lives of the broader public. Some have referred to Yoknapatawpha County as a mental landscape.

The audience gave his short tale "A Rose for Emily" minimal attention despite it being the first to appear in a well-known magazine, the Forum. It gained popularity after changes and reprints, and today is regarded as one of his greatest.

In addition to writing a collection of mystery stories called Knight's Gambit (1949), Faulkner also authored two volumes of poetry, The Marble Faun (1924) and A Green Bough (1933), which were released in limited editions.

Style and technique

"The most tranquil words. The most tranquil words.

Not the case. Fui Sum. not a sum.

I once heard bells somewhere. Massachusetts or Mississippi.

Yes, I was. I'm not. Mississippi or Massachusetts.

In Shreve's trunk is a bottle.

Jason Richmond Compson and his wife, Mrs. Compson, announce three times.

Days. Will you even open the marriage of their daughter Candace, who learns from alcohol that the means does not always equal the end?

Sip. I wasn't.

Let's sell Benjy's pasture so I can keep knocking my bones together and Quentin can go Harvard.

I'm going to die. Was it a year ago, Caddy asked?"

— An example of Faulkner's prose in The Sound and the Fury(1929).

Faulkner was renowned for his experimental writing that paid close attention to rhythm and language. Unlike his contemporaries Ernest Hemingway, who wrote with a minimalist understatement, Faulkner frequently used stream of consciousness in his writing. He also frequently created highly emotional, subtle, cerebral, complex, and occasionally Gothic or grotesque stories featuring a wide range of characters, such as poor white, agrarian, or working-class Southerners, Southern aristocrats, and former slaves or their descendants.

The New York Times said that many reviewers of the time saw Faulkner's writing as "raw slabs of pseudorealism that had relatively little merit as serious writing." Faulkner's current critical response was divided. One person described his style as "impenetrably convoluted".

During a 1956 interview with The Paris Review, Faulkner said:

If the writer is concerned in method, let him learn to operate on people or lay bricks. There is no fast cut or automated method for finishing writing assignments. It would be foolish of the young writer to adopt a theory. People only learn by making mistakes, so learn from your own mistakes. The skilled artist feels that no one is qualified to counsel him. He is incredibly conceited. He wants to beat the elderly writer despite his admiration for him.

"Some people say they can't understand your writing, even after they read it two or three times," Jean Stein says in that same interview. What strategy would you recommend for them?" In reply, Faulkner says, "Read it four times".

"The books I read are the ones I knew and loved when I was a young man and to which I return as you do to old friends: the Old Testament, Dickens, Conrad, Cervantes, Don Quixote—I read that every year, as some do the Bible," Faulkner responds when questioned about his influences. Flaubert, Balzac—they built a coherent universe of their own, a vein that flows across twenty books—Shakespear, Dostoyevsky, and Tolstoy. I occasionally read poetry by Marlowe, Campion, Jonson, Herrick, Donne, Keats, and Shelley in addition to Melville." Similar to James Joyce and T. S. Eliot, Faulkner employs themes and tales from classic literature in a contemporary setting. Joyce based his hero Leopold Bloom's journey in Ulysses on Odysseus's travels. Eliot stated in his essay "Ulysses, Order and Myth" that "Mr. Joyce is following a path which others must follow after him in using the myth, in manipulating a continuous parallel between contemporaneity and antiquity." They will not be copycats, any more than a scientist who applies Einstein's insights to his own, independent, follow-up research. It is merely a means of exerting control over, organising, and imbuing meaning and form into the vast landscape of meaninglessness and chaos that is modern history. Faulkner's titles reveal his references to other writers; for example, Macbeth's soliloquy "It is a tale/ Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, / Signifying nothing" is referenced in the title of The Sound and the Fury. The novel begins with Benjy Compson, an intellectually handicapped man, telling the story. As I lay dying takes its title from a passage in Homer's Odyssey that is said in the past tense by Agamemnon: "As I lay dying, the woman with the dog's eyes would not close my eyes as I descended into Hades." In contrast, the present tense is used to tell the story in Faulkner's book. The book Go Down, Moses is dedicated "To Mammy / Caroline Barr / Mississippi / [1840-1940] Who was born in slavery and who gave to my family a fidelity without stint or calculation of recompense and to my childhood an immeasurable devotion and love." The title of the book is taken from an African American spiritual.

Themes and Analysis

Numerous critics have studied Faulkner's writing from a range of critical vantage points, including his views on slavery in the South and his belief that desegregation should "go slow" to preserve the southern way of life. James Baldwin, a writer, and novelist, was quite critical of his views on integration. According to Ralph Ellison, "No one in American fiction has done so much to explore the types of Negro personality as has Faulkner."

With the publication of The Yoknapatawpha Country by Cleanth Brooks and The Achievement of William Faulkner by Michael Millgate, the New Critics developed an interest in Faulkner's literature. Since then, different perspectives, including feminist and psychoanalytic ones, have been used by critics to examine Faulkner's writing. The literary traditions of modernism and the Southern Renaissance have been applied to Faulkner's works.

According to French philosopher Albert Camus, Faulkner's "interminably unwinding spiral of words and sentences that conducts the speaker to the abyss of sufferings buried in the past" is what allowed him to successfully bring classical tragedy into the 20th century.

Legacy

Influence

Flannery O'Connor once observed that "the mere fact that Faulkner is among us makes a great difference in what the writer can and cannot permit himself to do." Faulkner is a towering figure in Southern literature. Nobody likes to have their waggon and mule stop on the same track where the Dixie Limited is speeding by. While employed at Warner Brothers in 1943, Faulkner encouraged Eudora Welty, a budding Mississippi author, in a letter. As translator and critic Valerie Miles notes, Faulkner had a significant impact on Latin American fiction; "Carlos Fuentes's The Death of Artemio Cruz wouldn't exist if not for As I Lay Dying" and "fantasy worlds created by Gabriel García Márquez (Macondo) and Juan Carlos Onetti (Santa Maria) are "very much in the vein of" Yoknapatawpha." Faulkner was listed by Fuentes himself as one of his favourite authors. Mario Vargas Llosa was greatly influenced by Faulkner, especially in the early books Conversation in the Cathedral, The Time of the Hero, and The Green House. Vargas Llosa asserted that Yoknapatawpha taught him more during his time as a student than he did in the classroom. The Wild Palms by Faulkner was translated into Spanish by Jorge Luis Borges.

Both the Portuguese author António Lobo Antunes and the French novelist Claude Simon might be seen as direct descendants of William Faulkner. It has been said that Cormac McCarthy is a "disciple of Faulkner".

In The Elements of Style, E. B. White cites "If the experiences of Walter Mitty, of Dick Diver, of Rabbit Angstrom have seemed for the moment real to countless readers, if in reading Faulkner we have almost the sense of inhabiting Yoknapatawpha County during the decline of the South, it is because the details used are definite, the terms concrete." Later, Hemingway's style and Faulkner's are compared.

Estelle and their daughter Jill resided at Rowan Oak following his passing until Estelle passed away in 1972. In the same year, the property was sold to the University of Mississippi. Much of the house and furniture from Faulkner's time have been preserved. Wall notes by Faulkner, including a weekly narrative summary he jotted down on the walls of his little study to keep track of the plot turns in his book A Fable, remain conserved. The William Faulkner Foundation was established with a portion of Faulkner's Nobel Prize money. Winners of the Notable First Novel Award included A Separate Peace by John Knowles, V by Thomas Pynchon, The Orchard Keeper by Cormac McCarthy, The Origin of the Brunists by Robert Coover, and A Fan's Notes by Frederick Exley. Established by Mary Lee Settle and other individuals in 1981, the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction replaced the National Book Award.

A few of Faulkner's writings have been made into motion pictures. The reaction to them has been divided, with many critics arguing that Faulkner's writing is "unfilmable". The Reivers, Faulkner's last book, was made into a movie in 1969 with Steve McQueen. Part of the inspiration for Tommy Lee Jones's neo-Western The Three Burials of Melquiades Estada came from Faulkner's As I Lay Dying.

American literature was outlawed by the German occupiers of France during World War II's Nazi occupation. Reading American authors like Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner became a political act, and an underground market for their literature developed. Particularly still in demand is Faulkner in France, where he is ranked as the second most popular writer (behind only Marcel Proust) in a 2009 survey. Albert Camus staged a version of Faulkner's Requiem for a Nun, and modern Jean-Paul Sartre declared that "for young people in France, Faulkner is a god". Patricia (Jean Seberg) quotes The Wild Palms in Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless: "Between grief and nothing, I will take grief."

Additionally, he was honoured with two U.S. National Book Awards: one in 1951 for Collected Stories and another in 1955 for A Fable.

On August 3, 1987, the United States Postal Service released a 22-cent postage stamp in his honour. In his resignation letter from the University of Mississippi in 1923, Faulkner, who had previously held the position of Postmaster, stated that he expected to be impacted by the demands of wealthy individuals as long as he lived under a capitalist system. "But I'll be damned if I suggest that I should be at the disposal of every wandering scoundrel with two cents to spare for a postal stamp. This is my resignation, sir."

A historical plaque commemorating William Faulkner's contribution to the American literary landscape was erected at Rowan Oak in Oxford, Mississippi on October 10, 2019, as part of the Mississippi Writers Trail.

Collections

At the University of Virginia, where Faulkner spent a significant portion of his latter years, the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections collection houses the manuscripts of most of his works, correspondence, personal papers, and more than 300 books from his working collection. Some of the author's personal belongings are also kept in the library, along with the works of important academics and associates of Faulkner, including his biographer Joseph Blotner, bibliographer Linton Massey, and Random House editor Albert Erskine.

The Centre for Faulkner Studies at Southeast Missouri State University is home to a sizable collection of Faulkner artefacts, including first editions, manuscripts, letters, images, artwork, and several items related to Faulkner's Hollywood career. The institution has several of Joseph Blotner's personal files and letters, as well as books and letters that were previously Malcolm Cowley's. Louis Daniel Brodsky, a collector of Faulkner artefacts, generously donated the collection to the university in 1989, enabling it to be realised.

The Harry Ransom Centre, the University of Mississippi, and the New York Public Library all house more important Faulkner papers.

There are other letters by and to Faulkner in the Columbia University Random House records.

The William Faulkner Room of the United States Military Academy's library was dedicated in 1966.