Great Authors: William Faulkner

A journalist for Time wrote in 1964 that Faulkner’s “novels are a kind of diary of his own tormented inner struggle, an inadvertent self-portrait of a man making visible his own conflict of loyalties and good will.”

Daniel Singal, in his book, “William Faulkner: The Making of a Modernist,” also saw a man who was torn between different value systems and different selves, “from the battle-scarred First World War aviator to the bona fide southern aristocrat to the bohemian writer and small-town derelict.” Ultimately, Singal writes, only “two Bills” remained: the “old-fashioned country gentleman and contemporary writer.”

One thing that most readers agreed on was Faulkner’s dedication to his work. In a rare interview with The Paris Review, Faulkner said if he were to write his novels a second time he was certain he would do it better. He explained that striving for improvement was crucial. “Once [the writer] did it, once he matched the work to the image, the dream, nothing would remain but to cut his throat, jump off the other side of that pinnacle of perfection into suicide.”

Faulkner repeatedly said his own opinion trumped all critics. As Malcolm Cowley put it, “Others might say that Faulkner was not so much writing stories for the public as telling  them to himself. It is what a lonely child might do, or a great writer.”