WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.919 William Faulkner, say the name, and you're immediately 00:00:03.919 --> 00:00:06.259 dropped into this world of dusty Mississippi 00:00:06.259 --> 00:00:10.039 history, dense, almost suffocating prose, and 00:00:10.039 --> 00:00:13.400 family tragedies so tangled they seem to defy 00:00:13.400 --> 00:00:15.640 time itself. They really do. He's one of the 00:00:15.640 --> 00:00:18.320 20th century's most celebrated, influential, 00:00:18.660 --> 00:00:21.160 and let's be honest, most intensely challenging 00:00:21.160 --> 00:00:23.980 American writers. Absolutely. He is, without 00:00:23.980 --> 00:00:26.780 much exaggeration, the writer who laid the foundation 00:00:26.780 --> 00:00:29.640 for Basically all serious Southern literature 00:00:29.640 --> 00:00:31.620 that came after them. Right. But for a figure 00:00:31.620 --> 00:00:34.740 of such monumental genius, his biography is just 00:00:34.740 --> 00:00:37.820 a cascade of contradictions. It's really kind 00:00:37.820 --> 00:00:39.759 of amazing. I mean, we're talking about a high 00:00:39.759 --> 00:00:41.920 modernist genius who failed to graduate from 00:00:41.920 --> 00:00:44.259 high school. And a literary giant who told these 00:00:44.259 --> 00:00:46.600 incredible tall tales about being a decorated 00:00:46.600 --> 00:00:49.439 war hero, but he never even saw combat. Exactly. 00:00:49.479 --> 00:00:52.280 And this fiercely private artist who then spends 00:00:52.280 --> 00:00:55.520 years, reluctantly, working as a Hollywood screenwriter 00:00:55.520 --> 00:00:58.299 just to keep his family afloat. It's that contradiction 00:00:58.299 --> 00:01:00.320 that's so fascinating. Our source material today 00:01:00.320 --> 00:01:03.100 gives us this dense chronological and thematic 00:01:03.100 --> 00:01:05.939 breakdown of his very complex life and work. 00:01:06.099 --> 00:01:08.280 So our mission in this Deep Dives is to unpack 00:01:08.280 --> 00:01:10.439 these massive contradictions. We want to reveal 00:01:10.439 --> 00:01:14.030 how a man with such profound, you know, personal 00:01:14.030 --> 00:01:16.849 flaws and eccentricities, managed to create this 00:01:16.849 --> 00:01:19.310 universal human landscape. We're tracing his 00:01:19.310 --> 00:01:21.969 journey from rural Oxford, Mississippi, all the 00:01:21.969 --> 00:01:24.150 way to the Nobel Prize stage. And while we do 00:01:24.150 --> 00:01:26.370 that, we're going to try to understand how he 00:01:26.370 --> 00:01:29.750 constructed his greatest, most monumental fictional 00:01:29.750 --> 00:01:33.329 creation, the entirely self -contained world 00:01:33.329 --> 00:01:36.890 he called Yokonapatawpha County. That county, 00:01:37.010 --> 00:01:39.969 Yokonapatawpha, is the single most crucial concept 00:01:39.969 --> 00:01:42.730 to understanding Faulkner. It's an intensely 00:01:42.730 --> 00:01:45.829 detailed, contained world, a fictionalized version 00:01:45.829 --> 00:01:48.489 of his own hometown, Lafayette County, Mississippi. 00:01:48.890 --> 00:01:51.379 He fantasily called it his postage stamp. of 00:01:51.379 --> 00:01:54.319 soil. Exactly. Just 2400 square miles with an 00:01:54.319 --> 00:01:57.280 initial population of, I think, 15 ,611 persons. 00:01:57.579 --> 00:02:00.459 He specified it on a map he drew himself. That's 00:02:00.459 --> 00:02:03.200 incredible detail. It is. And onto that tiny 00:02:03.200 --> 00:02:05.579 piece of earth, he managed to impose the entire 00:02:05.579 --> 00:02:08.520 tragic history of the South, fitting every possible 00:02:08.520 --> 00:02:11.099 dimension of the human condition, racial strife, 00:02:11.099 --> 00:02:13.819 tragedy, comedy, history, violence onto it. So 00:02:13.819 --> 00:02:16.080 let's unpack the man who built that world. OK, 00:02:16.159 --> 00:02:19.819 so we have to begin with the roots. William Faulkner 00:02:19.819 --> 00:02:22.939 was born William Cuthbert Faulkner with a K in 00:02:22.939 --> 00:02:26.240 New Albany in 1897, but he was raised in Oxford, 00:02:26.400 --> 00:02:28.340 Mississippi. And the sources note his family 00:02:28.340 --> 00:02:30.340 was part of the upper middle class, but they 00:02:30.340 --> 00:02:33.460 were, and this is a key phrase, not quite of 00:02:33.460 --> 00:02:36.319 the old feudal cotton aristocracy. So they were 00:02:36.319 --> 00:02:38.740 comfortable, but they didn't have that ancient 00:02:38.740 --> 00:02:41.599 social standing of the decaying families he'd 00:02:41.599 --> 00:02:44.060 later write about, like the Compsons or the Sartoraces. 00:02:44.620 --> 00:02:47.240 That position is so instructive, isn't it? It 00:02:47.240 --> 00:02:49.439 gave him an insider's view of the social hierarchy, 00:02:49.659 --> 00:02:52.000 but he was still slightly detached. He was an 00:02:52.000 --> 00:02:54.979 observer, not a full participant in the Old South's 00:02:54.979 --> 00:02:57.639 self -mythology. And his childhood was just steeped 00:02:57.639 --> 00:02:59.900 in the oral history of his elders. We're talking 00:02:59.900 --> 00:03:02.219 stories that span the Civil War, the brutal legacy 00:03:02.219 --> 00:03:04.900 of slavery, and even the history of the Ku Klux 00:03:04.900 --> 00:03:07.569 Klan. He was inheriting a history that was heavy, 00:03:07.710 --> 00:03:10.569 unresolved, and incredibly dramatic. And the 00:03:10.569 --> 00:03:12.710 greatest influence on this inherited drama was 00:03:12.710 --> 00:03:15.610 definitely his paternal great -grandfather namesake, 00:03:15.669 --> 00:03:19.509 William Clark Faulkner, the colonel. The colonel. 00:03:19.629 --> 00:03:22.550 I mean, this figure is ripped straight from Southern 00:03:22.550 --> 00:03:26.069 mythology. He was a genuine frontier archetype. 00:03:26.090 --> 00:03:28.110 Born into poverty, right. And worked his way 00:03:28.110 --> 00:03:29.770 up. Worked his way up to become a Confederate 00:03:29.770 --> 00:03:33.060 colonel, a strict disciplinarian. His life was 00:03:33.060 --> 00:03:35.360 just marked by extreme violence and ambition. 00:03:35.659 --> 00:03:38.439 The sources detail how he was tried and acquitted 00:03:38.439 --> 00:03:41.180 not once but twice on charges of murder. Twice. 00:03:41.280 --> 00:03:44.199 Twice. Before he was ultimately murdered himself 00:03:44.199 --> 00:03:46.500 by a former business partner in a street gun 00:03:46.500 --> 00:03:48.900 fight. You can't make this up. He built a railroad, 00:03:49.139 --> 00:03:52.159 founded a town. And wrote a hugely popular romantic 00:03:52.159 --> 00:03:55.710 novel, The White Rose of Memphis. The man's life 00:03:55.710 --> 00:03:58.530 story is literally the blueprint for the great 00:03:58.530 --> 00:04:01.210 tragic Southern families Faulkner wrote about. 00:04:01.330 --> 00:04:03.490 Absolutely. The ambition, the rise and the tragic 00:04:03.490 --> 00:04:06.210 sudden fall. It's all there. It's the immediate 00:04:06.210 --> 00:04:08.909 genesis of Colonel John Sartoris in Sartoris 00:04:08.909 --> 00:04:11.889 and Absalom. Absalom. His influence permeates 00:04:11.889 --> 00:04:14.250 the entire narrative of Southern decline and 00:04:14.250 --> 00:04:17.209 inherited guilt that defines Yukhnepetoffa. So 00:04:17.209 --> 00:04:19.129 for Faulkner, history wasn't just some backdrop. 00:04:19.430 --> 00:04:22.529 It was a living, inescapable burden passed down 00:04:22.529 --> 00:04:25.529 through the generations. Exactly. Which is what 00:04:25.529 --> 00:04:28.730 makes his own formal education so ironic. It 00:04:28.730 --> 00:04:31.009 was almost the opposite of his literary output, 00:04:31.290 --> 00:04:34.750 disorganized, and frankly... It's one of the 00:04:34.750 --> 00:04:37.069 great ironies. The man who crafted some of the 00:04:37.069 --> 00:04:39.230 most complex sentences in the English language 00:04:39.230 --> 00:04:41.810 never formally completed high school. He showed 00:04:41.810 --> 00:04:44.149 early promise. He skipped the second grade. But 00:04:44.149 --> 00:04:46.310 by his mid -teens, he just became withdrawn. 00:04:46.410 --> 00:04:48.629 He spent his time wandering or reading on his 00:04:48.629 --> 00:04:51.470 own. And he repeated both the 11th and 12th grades, 00:04:51.589 --> 00:04:54.269 yet still never got a diploma. And when he went 00:04:54.269 --> 00:04:56.490 to college, it wasn't much better. His experience 00:04:56.490 --> 00:04:58.569 at Ole Miss, the University of Mississippi, was, 00:04:58.750 --> 00:05:02.759 well, it was short. He enrolled in 1919 for just 00:05:02.759 --> 00:05:05.740 three semesters. Right. And he could attend under 00:05:05.740 --> 00:05:08.079 a special provision for veterans, which is a 00:05:08.079 --> 00:05:10.339 whole other layer of myth -making we'll get to. 00:05:10.399 --> 00:05:12.980 He was pursuing his dream of being a poet. He 00:05:12.980 --> 00:05:15.079 did get some early poems published on campus, 00:05:15.240 --> 00:05:18.779 but his academic record was disastrous. He skipped 00:05:18.779 --> 00:05:21.560 classes habitually, avoided any courses that 00:05:21.560 --> 00:05:24.220 required serious effort, and notoriously received 00:05:24.220 --> 00:05:27.819 a D grade in English composition. a D in English. 00:05:28.220 --> 00:05:31.079 It's the ultimate badge of honor for a self -taught 00:05:31.079 --> 00:05:34.120 genius who just rejected institutional metrics. 00:05:34.459 --> 00:05:36.519 It really is. And you have to layer on top of 00:05:36.519 --> 00:05:38.459 this the emotional landscape that shaped him, 00:05:38.519 --> 00:05:41.600 specifically the story of his lost love, Estelle 00:05:41.600 --> 00:05:44.420 Oldham. This was hugely formative for his early 00:05:44.420 --> 00:05:47.319 sort of romantic worldview. Definitely. Faulkner 00:05:47.319 --> 00:05:49.579 dated her as a teenager, and she was clearly 00:05:49.579 --> 00:05:52.040 the great love of his youth, the woman he assumed 00:05:52.040 --> 00:05:54.699 he would marry. But Estelle came from a much 00:05:54.699 --> 00:05:57.149 more socially prominent family. And in 1918, 00:05:57.370 --> 00:06:00.610 before Faulkner could even propose, she accepted 00:06:00.610 --> 00:06:02.569 an offer from someone else. Cornell Franklin, 00:06:02.930 --> 00:06:05.949 an only Miss Law grad who was older, much more 00:06:05.949 --> 00:06:07.829 financially secure, and from a well -respected 00:06:07.829 --> 00:06:10.569 family. She married stability and social acceptance, 00:06:10.910 --> 00:06:13.069 leaving Faulkner behind. And that rejection. 00:06:13.660 --> 00:06:16.199 The loss of the idealized Southern belle must 00:06:16.199 --> 00:06:18.779 have fed directly into the tragic romantic themes 00:06:18.779 --> 00:06:21.620 in his work. Oh, absolutely. It fuels that idea 00:06:21.620 --> 00:06:23.899 of unrequited love and the destructive power 00:06:23.899 --> 00:06:26.160 of societal expectations that you see all over 00:06:26.160 --> 00:06:28.300 The Sound and the Fury and Absalom, Absalom. 00:06:28.399 --> 00:06:30.199 Okay, so before we get to the novels themselves, 00:06:30.620 --> 00:06:33.259 we have to talk about the man who first showed 00:06:33.259 --> 00:06:37.209 him the path to genius. Phil Stone. Yes. Faulkner 00:06:37.209 --> 00:06:40.170 is often seen as this lone artistic wolf, but 00:06:40.170 --> 00:06:42.930 he had a crucial mentor there in Oxford. And 00:06:42.930 --> 00:06:45.529 Phil Stone sounds like the perfect antidote to 00:06:45.529 --> 00:06:48.170 Faulkner's chaotic education. He was four years 00:06:48.170 --> 00:06:51.240 older. Yale educated. And he saw Faulkner's raw 00:06:51.240 --> 00:06:54.100 talent almost immediately. Stone was his literary 00:06:54.100 --> 00:06:56.500 bridge. He didn't just encourage Faulkner's poetry. 00:06:56.680 --> 00:06:59.540 He actively mentored him. He gave him the sophisticated 00:06:59.540 --> 00:07:02.060 literary education that the university failed 00:07:02.060 --> 00:07:04.860 to provide. And crucially, he introduced him 00:07:04.860 --> 00:07:07.220 to the revolutionary high modernist writers of 00:07:07.220 --> 00:07:10.410 the day. Especially James Joyce. That exposure 00:07:10.410 --> 00:07:13.509 was the single most important factor in Faulkner's 00:07:13.509 --> 00:07:16.389 stylistic shift away from the Victorian romanticism 00:07:16.389 --> 00:07:18.970 of his early poems toward the fragmentation and 00:07:18.970 --> 00:07:21.069 complexity that would define his greatest work. 00:07:21.250 --> 00:07:23.790 Stone also championed him relentlessly, even 00:07:23.790 --> 00:07:26.449 when he was completely unknown. He did. He made 00:07:26.449 --> 00:07:28.910 repeated, strenuous efforts to get Faulkner's 00:07:28.910 --> 00:07:31.449 early work published, but the industry was just 00:07:31.449 --> 00:07:33.829 not ready for him. The sources confirm he was 00:07:33.829 --> 00:07:36.250 met with uniform rejection. So Faulkner spent 00:07:36.250 --> 00:07:39.300 his early 20s as an aspiring poet who couldn't 00:07:39.300 --> 00:07:42.259 get any traction at all. None. And that experience, 00:07:42.379 --> 00:07:44.959 that complete lack of commercial success for 00:07:44.959 --> 00:07:47.839 his preferred art form, is vital to understanding 00:07:47.839 --> 00:07:50.720 the defiance he adopted later. And speaking of 00:07:50.720 --> 00:07:53.180 defiance and rejection, let's pivot to the most 00:07:53.180 --> 00:07:56.040 famous piece of Faulknerian myth -making, his 00:07:56.040 --> 00:07:58.639 invented military career during World War I. 00:07:58.759 --> 00:08:01.160 This is where he truly begins to write himself 00:08:01.160 --> 00:08:03.779 into existence. This is maybe the most incredible 00:08:03.779 --> 00:08:06.120 contradiction of his youth. He tried to join 00:08:06.120 --> 00:08:08.319 the U .S. Army but was rejected. Why was that? 00:08:08.519 --> 00:08:11.339 The sources cite two possible reasons. His short 00:08:11.339 --> 00:08:14.379 stature, he was only 5 '5", and being chronically 00:08:14.379 --> 00:08:17.019 underweight. So undeterred, he set his sights 00:08:17.019 --> 00:08:19.490 on the British Royal Flying Corps. The glamour 00:08:19.490 --> 00:08:22.110 of an officer's commission. Exactly. But he ended 00:08:22.110 --> 00:08:24.290 up in the Royal Canadian Air Force, the RAFC, 00:08:24.490 --> 00:08:27.709 in 1918, and the process itself was part of the 00:08:27.709 --> 00:08:29.769 performance. He enlisted with a forged letter 00:08:29.769 --> 00:08:31.689 of reference, right? A forged letter pretending 00:08:31.689 --> 00:08:34.210 to be this polished, anglicized young man he 00:08:34.210 --> 00:08:37.629 felt he needed to be. He served a mere 179 days 00:08:37.629 --> 00:08:40.629 and was discharged at the war's end. And the 00:08:40.629 --> 00:08:42.929 critical details are that he never got cockpit 00:08:42.929 --> 00:08:45.789 training, never flew a plane solo, and never 00:08:45.789 --> 00:08:48.610 saw active service. Not a single day overseas. 00:08:48.970 --> 00:08:51.450 Yet when he returned to Oxford in December 1918, 00:08:51.730 --> 00:08:54.429 he had fully invented his past. He told these 00:08:54.429 --> 00:08:57.129 elaborate war stories, spoke with a fake British 00:08:57.129 --> 00:09:00.129 accent. And famously faked a war wound, sometimes 00:09:00.129 --> 00:09:02.750 using a silver plate under his cap to simulate 00:09:02.750 --> 00:09:05.360 a head injury. It was a magnificent piece of 00:09:05.360 --> 00:09:07.659 immersive performance art. It tells you something 00:09:07.659 --> 00:09:10.440 profound about the writer. Faulkner was not satisfied 00:09:10.440 --> 00:09:13.340 with the reality he was given. If reality wouldn't 00:09:13.340 --> 00:09:15.960 provide the heroism he craved, he just constructed 00:09:15.960 --> 00:09:18.620 himself. Exactly. This intense psychological 00:09:18.620 --> 00:09:21.639 need to create a history, to build a compelling 00:09:21.639 --> 00:09:24.039 narrative even for his own life, is fundamentally 00:09:24.039 --> 00:09:26.840 linked to his later literary output. I mean, 00:09:26.860 --> 00:09:29.399 you have to wonder, was his need to fabricate 00:09:29.399 --> 00:09:31.779 his own past what enabled him to create an entire 00:09:31.779 --> 00:09:34.120 fictional county? later on. It's a compelling 00:09:34.120 --> 00:09:36.860 link. And that desire to create his own identity 00:09:36.860 --> 00:09:39.600 even extended to his surname. The change from 00:09:39.600 --> 00:09:42.139 Faulkner to Faulkner. The common anecdote, and 00:09:42.139 --> 00:09:44.539 it's a delightful one, is that a careless typesetter 00:09:44.539 --> 00:09:47.659 made the error on his first book, Soldiers Pay. 00:09:47.899 --> 00:09:50.679 And he allegedly just said, either way suits 00:09:50.679 --> 00:09:53.279 me. Right. With characteristic indifference. 00:09:53.759 --> 00:09:56.480 But the sources also have this crucial piece 00:09:56.480 --> 00:09:59.620 of historical evidence. His 1918 attestation 00:09:59.620 --> 00:10:03.639 papers for the RAFC. already list his name as 00:10:03.639 --> 00:10:06.179 Faulkner. Ah, so the change probably happened 00:10:06.179 --> 00:10:08.960 earlier to aid the deception and give himself 00:10:08.960 --> 00:10:11.500 a more anglicized, military -appropriate identity. 00:10:12.090 --> 00:10:14.450 It seems likely. It might have been less about 00:10:14.450 --> 00:10:16.669 an indifferent artist and more about a calculated 00:10:16.669 --> 00:10:18.970 shift to support the fabricated persona of the 00:10:18.970 --> 00:10:21.269 British officer. He was already rehearsing the 00:10:21.269 --> 00:10:23.450 idea that the name he was given wasn't as important 00:10:23.450 --> 00:10:25.830 as the name he created for himself. So after 00:10:25.830 --> 00:10:29.190 this brief manufactured military career and his 00:10:29.190 --> 00:10:31.570 withdrawal from Ole Miss, he tried a string of 00:10:31.570 --> 00:10:33.750 odd jobs. He did. He worked in a New York City 00:10:33.750 --> 00:10:36.409 bookstore as a house painter, a carpenter. Culminating 00:10:36.409 --> 00:10:38.769 in his famous short -lived stint as the Ole Miss 00:10:38.769 --> 00:10:41.269 postmaster. And this provides one of his most 00:10:41.269 --> 00:10:43.470 satisfying declarations of artistic independence. 00:10:43.870 --> 00:10:46.850 He was appointed postmaster in 1921 and lasted 00:10:46.850 --> 00:10:50.590 just over two years. By 1923, he had clearly 00:10:50.590 --> 00:10:53.409 reached his limit with public service. He resigned 00:10:53.409 --> 00:10:55.809 with a memo that just perfectly crystallized 00:10:55.809 --> 00:10:58.070 his contempt for the demands of the average person. 00:10:58.269 --> 00:11:01.429 He declared, I will be damned if I propose to 00:11:01.429 --> 00:11:03.909 be at the beck and call of every itinerant scoundrel 00:11:03.909 --> 00:11:06.470 who has two cents to invest in a postage stamp. 00:11:06.720 --> 00:11:08.980 It's a magnificent act of defiance, isn't it? 00:11:09.000 --> 00:11:11.720 He was refusing to be subservient to the mundane 00:11:11.720 --> 00:11:15.179 demands of reality. That decision, that visceral 00:11:15.179 --> 00:11:17.639 rejection of serving the public in small ways, 00:11:17.820 --> 00:11:20.720 was the prerequisite for turning inward and focusing 00:11:20.720 --> 00:11:23.440 on the monumental task of creating Yoko no Patafa. 00:11:23.639 --> 00:11:25.799 He closed the door on the real world to build 00:11:25.799 --> 00:11:28.679 a better, if more tragic, fictional one. Exactly. 00:11:28.879 --> 00:11:31.039 So the post office resignation provided the freedom, 00:11:31.139 --> 00:11:34.440 and then 1925 provided the spark. faulkner moves 00:11:34.440 --> 00:11:36.580 to the french quarter in new orleans which was 00:11:36.580 --> 00:11:39.139 an absolute hub of bohemian artists at the time 00:11:39.139 --> 00:11:42.220 this transition was fundamental new orleans gave 00:11:42.220 --> 00:11:45.639 him a literary community and critically his focus 00:11:45.639 --> 00:11:49.179 shifted dramatically from poetry to prose his 00:11:49.179 --> 00:11:51.759 style began its necessary transition from that 00:11:51.759 --> 00:11:55.379 flowery victorian prose toward hard -edged experimental 00:11:55.379 --> 00:11:58.679 modernism and his first published novel soldiers 00:11:58.679 --> 00:12:01.570 pay reflects that shift. Very much so. It was 00:12:01.570 --> 00:12:03.509 heavily influenced by Sherwood Anderson, who 00:12:03.509 --> 00:12:05.769 was instrumental in getting it published. But 00:12:05.769 --> 00:12:08.210 the true invention, the moment he created his 00:12:08.210 --> 00:12:10.669 universe, came with flags in the dust. Written 00:12:10.669 --> 00:12:14.350 in 1927, this was his first novel entirely set 00:12:14.350 --> 00:12:16.440 in the fictional county. This was the moment 00:12:16.440 --> 00:12:18.980 he stopped writing about his fabricated war experiences 00:12:18.980 --> 00:12:22.159 and decided to fully explore the profound, traumatic 00:12:22.159 --> 00:12:24.480 legacy of the Civil War and the American South. 00:12:24.779 --> 00:12:27.440 And the sources say Faulkner was immensely proud 00:12:27.440 --> 00:12:29.779 of this work. He saw it as a huge leap forward. 00:12:30.080 --> 00:12:32.840 Yet, once again, the establishment rejected him. 00:12:33.000 --> 00:12:35.279 Rejected by Boney and Liveright. It left Faulkner 00:12:35.279 --> 00:12:38.039 feeling devastated and misunderstood. He eventually 00:12:38.039 --> 00:12:40.879 and reluctantly let his agent, Ben Wasson, perform 00:12:40.879 --> 00:12:43.220 a heavy edit. Pruning nearly a quarter of the 00:12:43.220 --> 00:12:46.179 text, simplifying structures. Right. And it was 00:12:46.179 --> 00:12:49.879 published as Sartoris in 1929. The original sprawling 00:12:49.879 --> 00:12:52.240 text was considered so integral to his vision 00:12:52.240 --> 00:12:54.879 that the full manuscript, Flags in the Dust, 00:12:55.059 --> 00:12:58.100 was later restored and published. It shows you 00:12:58.100 --> 00:13:00.700 just how much the early editors had missed. And 00:13:00.700 --> 00:13:02.919 the rejection of Flags in the Dust led directly 00:13:02.919 --> 00:13:06.220 to his most experimental masterpiece. The Sound 00:13:06.220 --> 00:13:08.659 and the Fury. Yes, this is the classic tale of 00:13:08.659 --> 00:13:10.419 the artist throwing up their hands and creating 00:13:10.419 --> 00:13:13.639 something purely internal, unconcerned with commercial 00:13:13.639 --> 00:13:17.200 success. The frustration freed him. In the autumn 00:13:17.200 --> 00:13:19.860 of 1928, after the Flags of the Dust fiasco, 00:13:20.019 --> 00:13:22.240 he achieved this complete indifference to his 00:13:22.240 --> 00:13:24.259 publishers. And he famously declared to himself, 00:13:24.720 --> 00:13:26.759 One day I seemed to shut the door between me 00:13:26.759 --> 00:13:28.620 and all publishers' addresses and book lists. 00:13:28.679 --> 00:13:31.419 I said to myself, now I can write. That quote 00:13:31.419 --> 00:13:33.740 is so powerful because it marks the birth of 00:13:33.740 --> 00:13:36.409 his uncompromising aesthetic. He began The Sound 00:13:36.409 --> 00:13:38.610 and the Fury initially as a series of three short 00:13:38.610 --> 00:13:41.330 stories about the decaying Compson family. That 00:13:41.330 --> 00:13:44.070 quickly expanded into a novel structured in four 00:13:44.070 --> 00:13:46.450 distinct sections, each narrated by a different 00:13:46.450 --> 00:13:48.490 character, each using a completely different 00:13:48.490 --> 00:13:51.450 style. And he was so determined to maintain the 00:13:51.450 --> 00:13:54.529 integrity of this vision that he insisted his 00:13:54.529 --> 00:13:58.639 agent perform no editing and... Critically, add 00:13:58.639 --> 00:14:01.159 no punctuation for clarity in that notoriously 00:14:01.159 --> 00:14:04.259 fragmented opening section. None at all. And 00:14:04.259 --> 00:14:06.980 the subsequent saga that really fleshed out Yerkinapatawpha 00:14:06.980 --> 00:14:09.240 was the extended trilogy focused on the rise 00:14:09.240 --> 00:14:12.059 of the Snopes family. The Snopes trilogy. That's 00:14:12.059 --> 00:14:14.200 the hamlet, the town, and the mansion. Right. 00:14:14.320 --> 00:14:16.879 And this is essential for understanding the historical 00:14:16.879 --> 00:14:20.320 movement of the county. If the Compsons and Sartorises 00:14:20.320 --> 00:14:23.600 represent the beautiful, tragic, decaying, old 00:14:23.600 --> 00:14:26.960 aristocracy burdened by history, the Snopes family, 00:14:27.240 --> 00:14:30.080 led by the ruthless Flem Snopes, represents the 00:14:30.080 --> 00:14:33.659 exact opposite. They're the new, rapacious, materialistic, 00:14:33.659 --> 00:14:36.639 working -class modern South. Precisely. Their 00:14:36.639 --> 00:14:39.080 relentless insinuation into the county seat of 00:14:39.080 --> 00:14:41.980 Jefferson symbolizes the transition from a society 00:14:41.980 --> 00:14:44.879 rooted in feudal history to one driven purely 00:14:44.879 --> 00:14:47.279 by avarice and modern capitalism. So Yolk to 00:14:47.279 --> 00:14:49.340 Botafo wasn't just... a place. It was a dynamic 00:14:49.340 --> 00:14:51.720 stage where he could play out the entire transformation 00:14:51.720 --> 00:14:54.440 of the South across generations. With these families 00:14:54.440 --> 00:14:57.120 serving as historical symbols. Exactly. Okay, 00:14:57.200 --> 00:14:59.179 let's talk about the style that makes Faulkner 00:14:59.179 --> 00:15:02.559 so notoriously dense, but artistically undeniable. 00:15:02.919 --> 00:15:05.639 We know the key phrase is stream of consciousness, 00:15:05.820 --> 00:15:08.139 but for those who haven't read him, what does 00:15:08.139 --> 00:15:10.259 that actually look like on the page? Faulkner's 00:15:10.259 --> 00:15:13.080 style is meticulous, intense, and often infused 00:15:13.080 --> 00:15:16.500 with gothic or grotesque elements. But stream 00:15:16.500 --> 00:15:19.720 of consciousness is the defining hallmark. Unlike 00:15:19.720 --> 00:15:21.980 a traditional narrative that tells you what happened, 00:15:22.240 --> 00:15:24.399 Faulkner's stream of consciousness pulls you 00:15:24.399 --> 00:15:27.580 into the raw, unedited, fragmented internal experience 00:15:27.580 --> 00:15:29.960 of the character. Where time and memory are often 00:15:29.960 --> 00:15:32.500 just collapsed. Completely collapsed. Take the 00:15:32.500 --> 00:15:34.879 opening section of The Sound and the Fury, narrated 00:15:34.879 --> 00:15:36.899 by Benji Compson, who is intellectually disabled. 00:15:37.710 --> 00:15:39.970 Because Benji can't perceive time chronologically, 00:15:40.250 --> 00:15:42.950 a reference to a smell, a sound, or an image 00:15:42.950 --> 00:15:45.470 instantly transports the narrative across decades, 00:15:45.750 --> 00:15:50.509 from 1928 to 1910 to 1900, and back again with 00:15:50.509 --> 00:15:53.120 no warning. No quotation marks, nothing. Nothing. 00:15:53.399 --> 00:15:55.940 The narrative functions by associative logic, 00:15:56.159 --> 00:15:59.179 not linear time. He'll write a scene where an 00:15:59.179 --> 00:16:02.120 adult Benji is watching golfers, and the sight 00:16:02.120 --> 00:16:04.340 of their white pants instantly triggers a memory 00:16:04.340 --> 00:16:07.179 of his sister Caddy's muddy drolls from 30 years 00:16:07.179 --> 00:16:10.240 earlier. You, the reader, experience the past 00:16:10.240 --> 00:16:12.539 and present simultaneously, filtered through 00:16:12.539 --> 00:16:14.960 the character's internal agony. That makes the 00:16:14.960 --> 00:16:17.559 technical difficulty really palpable. It requires 00:16:17.559 --> 00:16:20.120 you to constantly reconstruct the timeline yourself. 00:16:20.419 --> 00:16:23.899 It's exhausting. but so rewarding. It is. And 00:16:23.899 --> 00:16:26.019 he took that multi -perspective technique even 00:16:26.019 --> 00:16:29.100 further with As I Lay Dying. The 1930 novel, 00:16:29.220 --> 00:16:30.980 this one is structurally revolutionary. We're 00:16:30.980 --> 00:16:33.759 talking 59 different narrators. But what's critical 00:16:33.759 --> 00:16:36.039 is that these narrators are often unreliable, 00:16:36.080 --> 00:16:38.740 highly biased, and sometimes... They're deceased. 00:16:39.039 --> 00:16:41.779 The narrative is divided into 59 short chapters, 00:16:41.879 --> 00:16:44.440 often just a few sentences long, voiced by 15 00:16:44.440 --> 00:16:46.980 different characters. And he uses this fragmented 00:16:46.980 --> 00:16:49.539 chorus to describe the Bundren family's journey 00:16:49.539 --> 00:16:53.059 to bury their matriarch, Addie. Right. So if 00:16:53.059 --> 00:16:55.019 The Sound and the Fury dealt with the inner mental 00:16:55.019 --> 00:16:57.840 anguish of one family, as I Lay Dying expands 00:16:57.840 --> 00:17:00.960 that to cover an entire community. He essentially 00:17:00.960 --> 00:17:03.879 democratized perspective. By giving a voice, 00:17:04.039 --> 00:17:07.259 even an unreliable one, to every member of the 00:17:07.259 --> 00:17:09.660 family and even the townspeople they meet. Exactly. 00:17:09.779 --> 00:17:12.380 You, the reader, are forced to piece together 00:17:12.380 --> 00:17:15.599 the truth of the narrative from 59 competing 00:17:15.599 --> 00:17:18.440 subjective realities. It's a collective stream 00:17:18.440 --> 00:17:21.180 of consciousness. It forces you to constantly 00:17:21.180 --> 00:17:24.119 question whose truth you're experiencing. This 00:17:24.119 --> 00:17:27.339 intense, dense style. stood in stark contrast 00:17:27.339 --> 00:17:30.019 to his contemporaries, particularly Ernest Hemingway. 00:17:30.119 --> 00:17:32.220 Oh, absolutely. The sources highlight this contract 00:17:32.220 --> 00:17:35.700 perfectly. Hemingway prioritized minimalist understatement, 00:17:35.700 --> 00:17:38.539 short declarative sentences focusing on surface 00:17:38.539 --> 00:17:41.200 action. Faulkner was the opposite, maximalist, 00:17:41.220 --> 00:17:43.640 baroque, dense. And this difference contributed 00:17:43.640 --> 00:17:45.980 to the mixed critical reception of his work, 00:17:46.079 --> 00:17:48.079 which was initially viewed by many critics as 00:17:48.079 --> 00:17:51.579 impenetrably convoluted. They often mistook the 00:17:51.579 --> 00:17:55.200 non -linear structure for mere raw slabs of pseudo 00:17:55.200 --> 00:17:57.500 -realism that had relatively little merit as 00:17:57.500 --> 00:18:00.019 serious writing. They were looking for a clear, 00:18:00.099 --> 00:18:02.500 straightforward plot, and Faulkner gave them 00:18:02.500 --> 00:18:05.519 a narrative that was frequently anti -plot. It 00:18:05.519 --> 00:18:08.220 revolved instead around internal thought, fragmented 00:18:08.220 --> 00:18:11.150 time, and linguistic intensity. He just wasn't 00:18:11.150 --> 00:18:13.029 operating on the established plane of realism 00:18:13.029 --> 00:18:15.490 most critics were accustomed to. It's remarkable 00:18:15.490 --> 00:18:18.269 that a writer so revolutionary had such a classical 00:18:18.269 --> 00:18:21.029 foundation. Who were the old friends, as he called 00:18:21.029 --> 00:18:23.150 them, that he kept returning to? His foundation 00:18:23.150 --> 00:18:26.450 was massive and deeply classical. He cited the 00:18:26.450 --> 00:18:28.390 Old Testament, which gave him much of that biblical 00:18:28.390 --> 00:18:31.589 cadence and intensity. Also, giants like Dickens, 00:18:31.609 --> 00:18:34.630 Conrad, Flaubert, Balzac, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, 00:18:34.730 --> 00:18:37.190 and of course Shakespeare. Let's focus on the 00:18:37.190 --> 00:18:38.910 influence of Balzac for a second. That seems 00:18:38.910 --> 00:18:42.220 crucial. essential because of Balzac's comédie 00:18:42.220 --> 00:18:45.680 humaine, his massive multi -novel cycle depicting 00:18:45.680 --> 00:18:48.930 French society. Faulkner deeply admired how Balzac 00:18:48.930 --> 00:18:51.589 created an intact world where characters and 00:18:51.589 --> 00:18:54.210 families recurred across dozens of books. Giving 00:18:54.210 --> 00:18:57.869 the impression of a single coherent reality existing 00:18:57.869 --> 00:19:00.890 outside any single novel. Exactly. Faulkner took 00:19:00.890 --> 00:19:03.410 that concept and just reduced the scale dramatically 00:19:03.410 --> 00:19:07.049 to his postage stamp of Yocna Potapha, creating 00:19:07.049 --> 00:19:09.849 the same illusion of eternal interconnected history 00:19:09.849 --> 00:19:12.569 within that small county. And the detail that 00:19:12.569 --> 00:19:16.049 he read Cervantes' Don Quixote every single year. 00:19:16.460 --> 00:19:18.940 That strikes me as particularly revealing. Why 00:19:18.940 --> 00:19:21.779 Quixote? Well, Don Quixote is a satire about 00:19:21.779 --> 00:19:25.160 a man who clings to an idealized, chivalric past, 00:19:25.359 --> 00:19:27.900 despite the brutal modernity of his reality. 00:19:28.359 --> 00:19:31.079 And when you think about Faulkner's primary subject 00:19:31.079 --> 00:19:33.279 matter, these aristocratic Southern families 00:19:33.279 --> 00:19:36.039 like the Compsons, clinging to the romantic lost 00:19:36.039 --> 00:19:38.380 cause of the antebellum South, the connection 00:19:38.380 --> 00:19:40.750 is profound. He was constantly writing about 00:19:40.750 --> 00:19:43.329 noble ideals corrupted by modern necessity, a 00:19:43.329 --> 00:19:45.650 theme Quixote embodies perfectly. It's a perfect 00:19:45.650 --> 00:19:48.490 match. And that classical foundation shines through 00:19:48.490 --> 00:19:50.809 in his titles, which he often drew directly from 00:19:50.809 --> 00:19:53.430 literary history, but then subverted or grounded 00:19:53.430 --> 00:19:56.009 in contemporary Southern despair. Like The Sound 00:19:56.009 --> 00:19:58.430 and the Fury. Drawn from Macbeth's soliloquy 00:19:58.430 --> 00:20:02.069 on the futility of life. A tale told by an idiot 00:20:02.069 --> 00:20:06.200 full of sound and fury signifying nothing. Faulkner 00:20:06.200 --> 00:20:08.339 applies this classical tragedy to the Compson 00:20:08.339 --> 00:20:11.180 family, whose decline is narrated by the idiot, 00:20:11.339 --> 00:20:15.200 Benji. And As I Lay Dying also comes from a profoundly 00:20:15.200 --> 00:20:18.819 ancient source. Homer's Odyssey. The phrase is 00:20:18.819 --> 00:20:21.180 part of the speech given by the ghost of Agamemnon 00:20:21.180 --> 00:20:23.859 to Odysseus in the underworld, describing his 00:20:23.859 --> 00:20:26.440 murder by his wife. As I lay dying, the woman 00:20:26.440 --> 00:20:28.960 with the dog's eyes would not close my eyes as 00:20:28.960 --> 00:20:31.779 I descended into Hades. He uses this phrase of 00:20:31.779 --> 00:20:34.210 ancient betrayal and descent. and applies it 00:20:34.210 --> 00:20:36.750 to a journey of poor white southerners carrying 00:20:36.750 --> 00:20:39.049 a decaying corpse across the Mississippi landscape. 00:20:39.289 --> 00:20:41.690 It elevates their desperate, absurd situation 00:20:41.690 --> 00:20:44.529 to the level of classical epic. And the dedication 00:20:44.529 --> 00:20:47.910 of Go Down, Moses, is equally powerful, linking 00:20:47.910 --> 00:20:50.009 the classical to the personal history of his 00:20:50.009 --> 00:20:52.670 family and the South. Go Down, Moses takes its 00:20:52.670 --> 00:20:55.410 title from the African -American spiritual, and 00:20:55.410 --> 00:20:57.829 the book itself is dedicated to Mammy Caroline 00:20:57.829 --> 00:21:00.710 Barr, who was born into slavery and who was a 00:21:00.710 --> 00:21:03.660 huge part of his childhood. It shows the complex, 00:21:03.900 --> 00:21:06.720 interwoven history of his family and the people 00:21:06.720 --> 00:21:09.599 they enslaved, placing that history firmly within 00:21:09.599 --> 00:21:13.279 a spiritual, historical and biblical epic. So 00:21:13.279 --> 00:21:15.220 for the listener attempting to engage with this 00:21:15.220 --> 00:21:17.660 highly rewarding but notoriously dense prose, 00:21:17.880 --> 00:21:20.759 what was Faulkner's famous uncompromising advice? 00:21:21.450 --> 00:21:24.309 When asked in a 1956 interview what approach 00:21:24.309 --> 00:21:26.170 readers should take if they couldn't understand 00:21:26.170 --> 00:21:28.349 his work after two or three reads, his response 00:21:28.349 --> 00:21:30.829 was characteristically blunt and defiant. Read 00:21:30.829 --> 00:21:33.549 it four times. Read it four times. It underscores 00:21:33.549 --> 00:21:35.509 his belief that the work demanded the reader 00:21:35.509 --> 00:21:37.950 meet the text on its own terms, without compromise. 00:21:38.470 --> 00:21:40.750 That defiant commitment to artistic integrity 00:21:40.750 --> 00:21:43.369 faced a brutal reality check, though, in the 00:21:43.369 --> 00:21:45.910 form of financial necessity. It really did. In 00:21:45.910 --> 00:21:48.650 1929, Faulkner finally married Estelle Oldham, 00:21:48.750 --> 00:21:51.490 the great love of his youth, support a blended 00:21:51.490 --> 00:21:53.589 family, which included their daughter Jill, born 00:21:53.589 --> 00:21:57.450 in 1933. And high art, unfortunately, rarely 00:21:57.450 --> 00:22:01.130 pays the bills quickly. This financial need fundamentally 00:22:01.130 --> 00:22:04.170 drove his career in the early 1930s. It did. 00:22:04.269 --> 00:22:06.750 It fueled the production of one of his most sensational 00:22:06.750 --> 00:22:09.910 and crucially commercially successful. early 00:22:09.910 --> 00:22:13.250 works sanctuary published in 1931 and faulkner 00:22:13.250 --> 00:22:15.549 was quite candid that this novel was explicitly 00:22:15.549 --> 00:22:19.470 fueled by a desire to make money it has sensational 00:22:19.470 --> 00:22:22.109 themes of violence and transgression which grabbed 00:22:22.109 --> 00:22:24.009 public attention though critics were initially 00:22:24.009 --> 00:22:26.490 wary and he also started publishing short stories 00:22:26.490 --> 00:22:28.710 in high -paying magazines like the saturday evening 00:22:28.710 --> 00:22:31.769 post right to supplement his income but by 1932 00:22:31.769 --> 00:22:34.410 even these efforts weren't enough the great writer 00:22:34.410 --> 00:22:37.150 hit a wall he desperately needed income he had 00:22:37.150 --> 00:22:39.500 just finished light in august and needed about 00:22:39.500 --> 00:22:42.519 $5 ,000 immediately. So he asked his agent to 00:22:42.519 --> 00:22:45.119 sell the serialization rights for the novel to 00:22:45.119 --> 00:22:48.920 a magazine, a standard practice. But every major 00:22:48.920 --> 00:22:51.539 publication turned him down. With literally no 00:22:51.539 --> 00:22:53.759 income stream, he had no choice but to accept 00:22:53.759 --> 00:22:56.140 the offer of a screenwriting job from MGM Studios 00:22:56.140 --> 00:22:59.140 in Hollywood. It was a forced migration. And 00:22:59.140 --> 00:23:01.380 this is one of the most tragic and fascinating 00:23:01.380 --> 00:23:05.140 paradoxes of his life. The uncompromising architect 00:23:05.140 --> 00:23:08.640 of Yoknapatawpha. The man who refused to be commanded 00:23:08.640 --> 00:23:11.420 by the two -cent postage stamp suddenly selling 00:23:11.420 --> 00:23:13.359 his time to the ultimate commercial machine. 00:23:13.640 --> 00:23:17.220 The dilemma was agonizing. Faulkner deeply resented 00:23:17.220 --> 00:23:20.240 the movie industry. He detested the commercialism, 00:23:20.259 --> 00:23:22.480 the collaborative nature of the work, the entire 00:23:22.480 --> 00:23:24.920 cultural environment. He called Hollywood a cultural 00:23:24.920 --> 00:23:27.140 Babylon. and wrote letters back home that were 00:23:27.140 --> 00:23:29.460 just scathing in tone about his predicament. 00:23:29.640 --> 00:23:32.799 Yet he endured this imprisonment from 1932 through 00:23:32.799 --> 00:23:35.920 1954 because it provided the consistent, substantial 00:23:35.920 --> 00:23:38.720 salary that supported his family back in Oxford. 00:23:38.980 --> 00:23:41.480 A Faustian bargain he continually regretted, 00:23:41.500 --> 00:23:44.019 but accepted. And his initial arrival in Hollywood 00:23:44.019 --> 00:23:46.720 just underscores how disinterested he was in 00:23:46.720 --> 00:23:49.119 the industry he was joining. It led to that classic 00:23:49.119 --> 00:23:51.900 Faulknerian absurdity. Upon his arrival at MGM, 00:23:52.019 --> 00:23:54.200 he declared quite seriously that he wanted to 00:23:54.200 --> 00:23:57.240 work on Mickey Mouse. Apparently unaware that 00:23:57.240 --> 00:23:59.519 Walt Disney Productions produced them, not MGM. 00:23:59.700 --> 00:24:02.559 He was looking for any way out of the narrative 00:24:02.559 --> 00:24:05.460 demands of live action filmmaking. He thought 00:24:05.460 --> 00:24:08.400 cartoons might be simpler or maybe more artistically 00:24:08.400 --> 00:24:11.599 pure. Despite his profound unhappiness, he was 00:24:11.599 --> 00:24:14.599 incredibly productive, working on around 50 films 00:24:14.599 --> 00:24:18.119 over two decades. And he did find one essential 00:24:18.119 --> 00:24:21.339 professional ally, the director Howard Hawks. 00:24:21.680 --> 00:24:24.319 Hawks and Faulkner shared a deep bond, primarily 00:24:24.319 --> 00:24:27.240 centered on interest outside of filmmaking, drinking, 00:24:27.500 --> 00:24:30.119 hunting, and a general disdain for the intellectual 00:24:30.119 --> 00:24:32.440 pretension of Hollywood. And this friendship 00:24:32.440 --> 00:24:34.559 was the engine behind some of his best -known 00:24:34.559 --> 00:24:36.740 screenwriting contributions. Two of which stand 00:24:36.740 --> 00:24:40.319 out as film noir classics. Let's start with To 00:24:40.319 --> 00:24:43.660 Have and Have Not in 1944. An adaptation of Ernest 00:24:43.660 --> 00:24:45.960 Hemingway's novel. And here's a phenomenal piece 00:24:45.960 --> 00:24:48.599 of literary trivia. To Have and Have Not is the 00:24:48.599 --> 00:24:50.819 only film in history with screenwriting contributions 00:24:50.819 --> 00:24:53.519 by two authors who are also Nobel laureates, 00:24:53.599 --> 00:24:55.980 Faulkner and Hemingway. The fact that those two 00:24:55.980 --> 00:24:58.519 literary giants with their famously adversarial 00:24:58.519 --> 00:25:00.700 relationship and diametrically opposed styles 00:25:00.700 --> 00:25:03.460 collaborated on a single commercial script is 00:25:03.460 --> 00:25:06.700 just staggering. It really is. And his other 00:25:06.700 --> 00:25:10.000 major noir contribution, The Big Sleep from 1946, 00:25:10.640 --> 00:25:13.539 was adapted from Raymond Chandler's novel. That 00:25:13.539 --> 00:25:15.160 must have been a stylistic challenge, moving 00:25:15.160 --> 00:25:17.980 from the dense internal monologues of Yolkna 00:25:17.980 --> 00:25:21.299 Patafa to the terse, hard -boiled dialogue of 00:25:21.299 --> 00:25:24.480 Marlowe. A huge shift. But he found a way to 00:25:24.480 --> 00:25:26.440 apply his sense of atmosphere and complexity 00:25:26.440 --> 00:25:29.240 to the genre. He was excellent at structure and 00:25:29.240 --> 00:25:31.119 dialogue, even if he found the whole endeavor 00:25:31.119 --> 00:25:34.200 tedious. He found ways to survive the experience. 00:25:34.779 --> 00:25:37.539 often adopting this vagrant lifestyle in hotels 00:25:37.539 --> 00:25:39.759 like the famous Garden of Allah. Right, and he 00:25:39.759 --> 00:25:42.440 was known to disappear for long stretches, preferring 00:25:42.440 --> 00:25:44.599 to write on his own schedule back in Oxford when 00:25:44.599 --> 00:25:46.599 he could. And we get that great colorful anecdote 00:25:46.599 --> 00:25:49.539 about his bar habits at Musso and Frank Grill. 00:25:49.660 --> 00:25:52.039 It's iconic. He was such a regular fixture at 00:25:52.039 --> 00:25:54.019 the bar that he was known to go behind the counter 00:25:54.019 --> 00:25:56.940 himself to mix his own signature, carefully constructed 00:25:56.940 --> 00:25:59.660 mint juleps. It's a wonderful visual contrast. 00:26:00.039 --> 00:26:02.460 The austere southern gentleman, the architect 00:26:02.460 --> 00:26:05.700 of profound tragedy, casually mixing his own 00:26:05.700 --> 00:26:08.160 perfect drink in the heart of Tinseltown's chaos. 00:26:08.500 --> 00:26:11.119 It shows the private world he maintained even 00:26:11.119 --> 00:26:14.220 in the face of commercial necessity. It was also 00:26:14.220 --> 00:26:16.059 during this period that he had a significant 00:26:16.059 --> 00:26:18.900 extramarital affair with Metta Carpenter, who 00:26:18.900 --> 00:26:21.099 was Howard Hawk's secretary and script girl. 00:26:21.279 --> 00:26:24.579 So the 1940s brought global conflict, and we 00:26:24.579 --> 00:26:26.740 see another example of Faulkner trying to inject 00:26:26.740 --> 00:26:29.259 himself into the military structure he missed 00:26:29.259 --> 00:26:33.200 in WWI. In 1942, during World War II, he once 00:26:33.200 --> 00:26:35.339 again tried to join the U .S. Air Force, but 00:26:35.339 --> 00:26:37.539 was rejected, likely due to his age and health 00:26:37.539 --> 00:26:39.859 issues related to heavy drinking. So he focused 00:26:39.859 --> 00:26:41.960 his energy on local civil defense efforts in 00:26:41.960 --> 00:26:44.680 Mississippi. Right. But creatively, the sources 00:26:44.680 --> 00:26:47.519 note he found the conflict bad for writing, which 00:26:47.519 --> 00:26:50.039 led to a slowdown in his fiction output. And 00:26:50.039 --> 00:26:52.779 yet out of that wartime period came one of his 00:26:52.779 --> 00:26:55.299 most massive, if controversial, undertakings, 00:26:55.299 --> 00:26:58.740 a fable. This novel was a huge project, spanning 00:26:58.740 --> 00:27:01.559 over a decade of conception and writing. What 00:27:01.559 --> 00:27:04.039 was the central premise that made it so divisive 00:27:04.039 --> 00:27:06.079 for the Pulitzer Prize? A fable was published 00:27:06.079 --> 00:27:09.180 in 1954, and it was a highly complex allegory 00:27:09.180 --> 00:27:11.119 that merged the story of the unknown soldier 00:27:11.119 --> 00:27:14.160 in WWI with the passion of Christ. It posits 00:27:14.160 --> 00:27:17.619 that a corporal and his 12 followers mutiny on 00:27:17.619 --> 00:27:20.559 the French front, symbolically mirroring Christ 00:27:20.559 --> 00:27:23.720 and the disciples, forcing a temporary stop to 00:27:23.720 --> 00:27:27.259 the fighting. It was massive in scope, but structurally 00:27:27.259 --> 00:27:30.440 and thematically very challenging. And this challenging, 00:27:30.500 --> 00:27:34.420 ambitious novel won the 1955 Pulitzer Prize for 00:27:34.420 --> 00:27:36.880 Fiction. But the sources make it clear that the 00:27:36.880 --> 00:27:39.220 selection was rife with political drama. High 00:27:39.220 --> 00:27:41.880 drama. The Pulitzer jury. The readers who actually 00:27:41.880 --> 00:27:44.279 assessed the book's merit had initially selected 00:27:44.279 --> 00:27:46.759 a different novel. Milton Lott's The Last Hunt. 00:27:46.940 --> 00:27:50.440 The jury explicitly felt a fable was a lesser 00:27:50.440 --> 00:27:52.519 work compared to Faulkner's earlier classics, 00:27:52.559 --> 00:27:55.180 but the Pulitzer board, which oversees the jury, 00:27:55.359 --> 00:27:57.720 felt differently. The board administrator, Professor 00:27:57.720 --> 00:28:00.279 John Hohenberg, essentially convinced the board 00:28:00.279 --> 00:28:02.900 to overrule the jury's selection. Exactly. They 00:28:02.900 --> 00:28:05.000 were honoring his entire body of work rather 00:28:05.000 --> 00:28:07.559 than the specific quality of a fable. They argued 00:28:07.559 --> 00:28:09.880 that Faulkner was long overdue for the honor. 00:28:10.079 --> 00:28:12.220 So it was a clear political move by the board 00:28:12.220 --> 00:28:15.019 to elevate this American giant, regardless of 00:28:15.019 --> 00:28:17.240 the quality of the nominated work. Precisely. 00:28:17.259 --> 00:28:20.220 And this decision caused considerable disgust 00:28:20.220 --> 00:28:22.779 among the jury members who felt their critical 00:28:22.779 --> 00:28:25.259 independence had been sacrificed to institutional 00:28:25.259 --> 00:28:27.660 recognition. And that institutional recognition 00:28:27.660 --> 00:28:30.500 was perhaps overdue, especially since by the 00:28:30.500 --> 00:28:33.920 mid 1940s, his domestic reputation was actually 00:28:33.920 --> 00:28:36.559 quite shaky. It's astonishing to realize by the 00:28:36.559 --> 00:28:39.039 time Malcolm Calley published The Portable Faulkner 00:28:39.039 --> 00:28:42.059 in 1946, most of Faulkner's major novels had 00:28:42.059 --> 00:28:44.440 actually gone out of print in the U .S. So this 00:28:44.440 --> 00:28:47.069 collection. which provided accessible selections 00:28:47.069 --> 00:28:50.369 and crucial introductory essays, was instrumental 00:28:50.369 --> 00:28:53.170 in reviving his standing at home. It was. It 00:28:53.170 --> 00:28:54.990 really paved the way for the ultimate international 00:28:54.990 --> 00:28:57.309 recognition that followed very quickly after. 00:28:57.529 --> 00:29:00.829 That ultimate recognition arrived in 1950, when 00:29:00.829 --> 00:29:02.950 William Faulkner was formally awarded the 1949 00:29:02.950 --> 00:29:06.569 Nobel Prize in Literature for his powerful and 00:29:06.569 --> 00:29:08.710 artistically unique contribution to the modern 00:29:08.710 --> 00:29:11.480 American novel. He is still the only Mississippi 00:29:11.480 --> 00:29:14.079 born Nobel laureate. And this crowning achievement 00:29:14.079 --> 00:29:16.599 instantly clashed with the core of his personality, 00:29:16.779 --> 00:29:20.140 his deep, intense aversion to fame, glory and 00:29:20.140 --> 00:29:22.240 the public spotlight. The way his own daughter 00:29:22.240 --> 00:29:24.700 found out about the award is probably the best 00:29:24.700 --> 00:29:26.740 illustration of this. It's a perfect anecdote. 00:29:27.240 --> 00:29:30.380 His 17 -year -old daughter, Jill, only discovered 00:29:30.380 --> 00:29:32.599 she was the daughter of a Nobel laureate when 00:29:32.599 --> 00:29:34.519 she was pulled out of class to the principal's 00:29:34.519 --> 00:29:37.279 office to handle the sudden crush of media attention. 00:29:37.619 --> 00:29:40.359 And Faulkner himself avoided the ceremony initially. 00:29:40.619 --> 00:29:42.980 He only relented after friends convinced him 00:29:42.980 --> 00:29:45.400 it was an important duty. But the acceptance 00:29:45.400 --> 00:29:48.599 speech he gave in Stockholm is legendary. It 00:29:48.599 --> 00:29:51.720 defined his entire artistic philosophy. He began 00:29:51.720 --> 00:29:53.960 by clearly distinguishing the award from the 00:29:53.960 --> 00:29:57.069 man. He said the award was given to his work, 00:29:57.170 --> 00:30:00.109 a life's work in the agony and sweat of the human 00:30:00.109 --> 00:30:02.890 spirit. And he defined the writer's job as attempting 00:30:02.890 --> 00:30:05.990 to create out of the materials of the human spirit 00:30:05.990 --> 00:30:09.130 something which did not exist before. He viewed 00:30:09.130 --> 00:30:11.710 the award, especially the prize money, not as 00:30:11.710 --> 00:30:14.450 personal wealth, but as a sacred trust. And he 00:30:14.450 --> 00:30:16.789 took tangible action based on that philosophy. 00:30:16.869 --> 00:30:19.579 He created a fund for emerging writers. He used 00:30:19.579 --> 00:30:22.240 a portion of the Nobel money to establish a fund 00:30:22.240 --> 00:30:25.619 to support and encourage new fiction writers. 00:30:26.059 --> 00:30:28.599 This ultimately evolved into the William Faulkner 00:30:28.599 --> 00:30:32.480 Foundation, and after it dissolved in 1970, its 00:30:32.480 --> 00:30:34.640 mission inspired the creation of the prestigious 00:30:34.640 --> 00:30:37.799 P .N. Faulkner Award for Fiction. Directly linking 00:30:37.799 --> 00:30:40.519 his legacy to nurturing future generations. And 00:30:40.519 --> 00:30:42.880 in his final years, he eventually embraced a 00:30:42.880 --> 00:30:44.819 role that allowed him to teach and maintain some 00:30:44.819 --> 00:30:48.809 privacy. Right. From 1957 to 1958, he served 00:30:48.809 --> 00:30:50.950 as the first writer in residence at the University 00:30:50.950 --> 00:30:53.589 of Virginia. A role that gave him structure without 00:30:53.589 --> 00:30:56.329 demanding too much public interaction. His final 00:30:56.329 --> 00:30:59.109 novel, The Reavers, was published in 1962, just 00:30:59.109 --> 00:31:02.250 before his death. It was nostalgic, almost lighthearted. 00:31:02.430 --> 00:31:04.809 A reminiscence about an elderly grandfather relating 00:31:04.809 --> 00:31:07.289 the humorous tale of stealing a car to drive 00:31:07.289 --> 00:31:09.779 to a Memphis brothel. It was a much lighter, 00:31:09.799 --> 00:31:11.759 more accessible note on which to conclude his 00:31:11.759 --> 00:31:14.859 career. He died later that same year, 1962, at 00:31:14.859 --> 00:31:17.559 age 64. Following a fall from his horse the month 00:31:17.559 --> 00:31:20.079 prior, which led to thrombosis. He passed away 00:31:20.079 --> 00:31:23.000 from a fatal heart attack at a sanatorium. He 00:31:23.000 --> 00:31:25.619 died as privately as he lived, but his work was 00:31:25.619 --> 00:31:28.460 about to explode into global academic prominence. 00:31:28.579 --> 00:31:31.400 Okay, we absolutely must dedicate time to addressing 00:31:31.400 --> 00:31:34.099 Faulkner's position on racial issues, which are 00:31:34.099 --> 00:31:36.759 central both to the history of the South he described 00:31:36.759 --> 00:31:39.579 and to the critical reception of his work. His 00:31:39.579 --> 00:31:42.299 personal views were difficult, often contradictory, 00:31:42.519 --> 00:31:44.980 and really rooted in the complexities of his 00:31:44.980 --> 00:31:48.049 time and place. They were. Publicly, he advocated 00:31:48.049 --> 00:31:50.109 for the ultimate abolition of racial segregation, 00:31:50.450 --> 00:31:52.769 which was progressive for a white Southern figure 00:31:52.769 --> 00:31:55.410 in the mid -century. However, he was highly critical 00:31:55.410 --> 00:31:57.990 of forced or fast -moving desegregation efforts. 00:31:58.349 --> 00:32:00.910 He argued that civil rights activists should 00:32:00.910 --> 00:32:03.890 go slow and adopt more moderate positions to 00:32:03.890 --> 00:32:06.789 avoid a violent backlash. He often felt the South 00:32:06.789 --> 00:32:09.190 needed to solve his own problems internally and 00:32:09.190 --> 00:32:11.509 gradually. That gradualist position, however, 00:32:11.630 --> 00:32:13.630 brought him into fierce conflict with leading 00:32:13.630 --> 00:32:16.609 civil rights thinkers and writers. Indeed, the 00:32:16.609 --> 00:32:19.289 essayist and novelist James Baldwin was one of 00:32:19.289 --> 00:32:22.089 his most articulate critics. Baldwin strongly 00:32:22.089 --> 00:32:24.509 felt that Faulkner, like many educated white 00:32:24.509 --> 00:32:27.410 Southerners, was dangerously naive in believing 00:32:27.410 --> 00:32:31.049 a genuine middle ground could exist between uncompromising 00:32:31.049 --> 00:32:34.309 segregationists and passionate integrationists. 00:32:34.509 --> 00:32:37.730 Baldwin viewed that moderate stance as intellectually 00:32:37.730 --> 00:32:40.799 and morally untenable. arguing that any delay 00:32:40.799 --> 00:32:43.380 in justice was itself a form of complicity with 00:32:43.380 --> 00:32:45.779 oppression. And it's so critical to contrast 00:32:45.779 --> 00:32:48.920 his personal views, which were undeniably prejudiced, 00:32:48.940 --> 00:32:51.319 with the depth and compassion he showed in his 00:32:51.319 --> 00:32:53.680 writing about black characters. The contract 00:32:53.680 --> 00:32:55.960 is powerful, and it speaks to the ability of 00:32:55.960 --> 00:32:58.259 great art to transcend the limitations of the 00:32:58.259 --> 00:33:01.230 artist. The sources note that Faulkner sometimes 00:33:01.230 --> 00:33:04.329 expressed deeply seated racial prejudices. He's 00:33:04.329 --> 00:33:06.309 quoted, for instance, as having once said that 00:33:06.309 --> 00:33:08.789 television is for niggers. These personal comments 00:33:08.789 --> 00:33:11.109 reflect the toxic environment of prejudice prevalent 00:33:11.109 --> 00:33:13.430 in the Deep South, even among its intellectual 00:33:13.430 --> 00:33:15.849 elite. However, many African -American peers 00:33:15.849 --> 00:33:18.049 found his work uniquely capable of capturing 00:33:18.049 --> 00:33:20.589 the complexities of their experience. And that's 00:33:20.589 --> 00:33:24.170 the key synthesis point. Ralph Ellison, the author 00:33:24.170 --> 00:33:27.069 of Invisible Man, provided some of the most powerful 00:33:27.069 --> 00:33:29.710 counter praise. Ellison called Faulkner the greatest 00:33:29.710 --> 00:33:33.029 artist the South has produced. And more significantly, 00:33:33.190 --> 00:33:36.579 he praised Faulkner for doing. So much to explore 00:33:36.579 --> 00:33:39.740 the types of Negro personality in American fiction. 00:33:39.920 --> 00:33:42.539 So Ellison argued that while Faulkner, the man, 00:33:42.619 --> 00:33:44.880 might have been flawed, Faulkner, the artist, 00:33:44.940 --> 00:33:47.339 was able to penetrate the surface and convey 00:33:47.339 --> 00:33:50.160 the humanity, dignity and internal complexity 00:33:50.160 --> 00:33:52.420 of black characters like Dilsey in The Sound 00:33:52.420 --> 00:33:55.579 of the Fury. in a way that few of his white contemporaries 00:33:55.579 --> 00:33:58.759 could match. And Faulkner's literary impact extended 00:33:58.759 --> 00:34:01.599 far beyond the American South. In fact, he was 00:34:01.599 --> 00:34:04.200 a massive cultural phenomenon in Europe long 00:34:04.200 --> 00:34:06.819 before the U .S. fully appreciated him. His popularity 00:34:06.819 --> 00:34:09.380 in France is legendary. During the Nazi occupation 00:34:09.380 --> 00:34:12.760 of WWII, the German occupiers systematically 00:34:12.760 --> 00:34:15.340 banned American literature. So reading writers 00:34:15.340 --> 00:34:17.320 like Hemingway and Faulkner became an active, 00:34:17.400 --> 00:34:20.119 quiet, political act of defiance. He achieved 00:34:20.119 --> 00:34:22.699 almost mythic status. The intellectual elite 00:34:22.699 --> 00:34:24.710 of France France treated him as a god, literally. 00:34:24.949 --> 00:34:27.670 Jean -Paul Sartre, the great existentialist philosopher, 00:34:28.090 --> 00:34:31.449 called Faulkner a god. And his influence wasn't 00:34:31.449 --> 00:34:34.989 merely academic. Albert Camus, another towering 00:34:34.989 --> 00:34:38.250 literary figure, adapted Faulkner's novel Requiem 00:34:38.250 --> 00:34:40.949 for a Nun for the stage. He remains intensely 00:34:40.949 --> 00:34:43.570 popular in France, which really helped solidify 00:34:43.570 --> 00:34:45.900 his reputation globally. And that technique of 00:34:45.900 --> 00:34:48.460 building a dense, contained world also became 00:34:48.460 --> 00:34:50.960 foundational for the massive literary explosion 00:34:50.960 --> 00:34:53.099 that emerged from Latin America, the so -called 00:34:53.099 --> 00:34:56.230 boom. Faulkner's Yucna Patafa was transformative 00:34:56.230 --> 00:34:58.610 for Latin American fiction. Writers struggling 00:34:58.610 --> 00:35:01.809 to capture their own vast, complicated, and often 00:35:01.809 --> 00:35:04.289 violent national histories found the conceptual 00:35:04.289 --> 00:35:07.550 tool they needed in Faulkner's model. The idea 00:35:07.550 --> 00:35:10.289 of the intensely observed, geographically limited, 00:35:10.469 --> 00:35:13.449 yet universally resonant world was adopted widely. 00:35:13.730 --> 00:35:15.769 We see that specifically in the fictional towns 00:35:15.769 --> 00:35:18.269 created by Latin American masters. Precisely. 00:35:18.269 --> 00:35:21.010 The famous Macondo, created by Gabriel Garcia 00:35:21.010 --> 00:35:23.559 Marquez and Juan Carlos Onetti Sanchez, Santa 00:35:23.559 --> 00:35:26.460 Maria, are structurally and conceptually very 00:35:26.460 --> 00:35:28.599 much in the vein of Faulkner's fictional county. 00:35:28.739 --> 00:35:31.239 They realized that by focusing intensely on a 00:35:31.239 --> 00:35:34.719 small, closed world, they could project the complexity 00:35:34.719 --> 00:35:37.500 of an entire continent. And the Nobel laureate 00:35:37.500 --> 00:35:40.519 Mario Vargas Llosa offered powerful testimony 00:35:40.519 --> 00:35:43.460 about Faulkner's specific impact on his own education. 00:35:44.360 --> 00:35:46.340 He claimed that during his student years, he 00:35:46.340 --> 00:35:48.579 learned more about the craft of fiction from 00:35:48.579 --> 00:35:51.360 studying Yoknapatawpha than he did from any of 00:35:51.360 --> 00:35:54.260 his formal university classes. Faulkner provided 00:35:54.260 --> 00:35:56.860 the technical scaffolding for modern, complex 00:35:56.860 --> 00:35:59.860 narrative structure. Back home, his influence 00:35:59.860 --> 00:36:02.099 is felt everywhere in Southern and American literature. 00:36:02.420 --> 00:36:04.840 We have the famous quote from Flannery O 'Connor. 00:36:04.960 --> 00:36:07.519 O 'Connor's quote perfectly encapsulates the 00:36:07.519 --> 00:36:09.960 sheer gravitational weight of Faulkner's achievement. 00:36:10.420 --> 00:36:13.599 She famously stated that The presence alone of 00:36:13.599 --> 00:36:16.079 Faulkner in our midst makes a great difference 00:36:16.079 --> 00:36:18.300 in what the writer can and cannot permit himself 00:36:18.300 --> 00:36:20.760 to do. And she characterized the difference by 00:36:20.760 --> 00:36:22.940 saying that trying to write Southern literature 00:36:22.940 --> 00:36:25.340 without acknowledging him was like a writer's 00:36:25.340 --> 00:36:28.019 mule and wagon stalled on the same track that 00:36:28.019 --> 00:36:30.559 Dixie Limited is roaring down. You simply couldn't 00:36:30.559 --> 00:36:33.019 ignore the massive force he represented. And 00:36:33.019 --> 00:36:35.519 that line of discipleship continues right up 00:36:35.519 --> 00:36:38.530 through contemporary American letters. Cormac 00:36:38.530 --> 00:36:41.630 McCarthy, known for his raw, maximalist, and 00:36:41.630 --> 00:36:44.690 often biblical prose, is consistently described 00:36:44.690 --> 00:36:48.170 as a spiritual disciple of Faulkner. The dense, 00:36:48.250 --> 00:36:51.750 complex syntax, the repetition for dramatic effect, 00:36:51.969 --> 00:36:55.369 the relentless focus on inherited violence, it's 00:36:55.369 --> 00:36:57.670 all there. It all builds directly on Faulkner's 00:36:57.670 --> 00:37:00.190 foundation. Finally, for anyone who wants a physical 00:37:00.190 --> 00:37:03.130 connection to this great writer, his home, Roanoke, 00:37:03.309 --> 00:37:05.250 is maintained by the University of Mississippi. 00:37:05.980 --> 00:37:08.260 and it contains an incredible artifact of his 00:37:08.260 --> 00:37:11.019 intense working process. Roanoke is maintained 00:37:11.019 --> 00:37:14.300 precisely as he left it. And in his small study, 00:37:14.400 --> 00:37:16.519 the plot outline for a fable is still preserved, 00:37:16.679 --> 00:37:19.199 scribbled in great detail directly onto the white 00:37:19.199 --> 00:37:22.179 plaster wall. That's amazing. It is. This fascinating 00:37:22.179 --> 00:37:24.420 artifact demonstrates the meticulous planning, 00:37:24.579 --> 00:37:26.980 the day -by -day structural engineering that 00:37:26.980 --> 00:37:29.360 lay beneath the surface of his supposedly chaotic 00:37:29.360 --> 00:37:32.619 stream -of -consciousness prose. The dense, fragmented 00:37:32.619 --> 00:37:34.900 novels required rigorous, almost architectural 00:37:34.900 --> 00:37:37.739 planning. And that wall is the ultimate testament 00:37:37.739 --> 00:37:40.429 to his craft. So we've concluded our deep dive 00:37:40.429 --> 00:37:43.570 into the life of William Faulkner, a man defined 00:37:43.570 --> 00:37:47.389 by paradox. The self -educated literary genius 00:37:47.389 --> 00:37:50.789 who told tall tales about flying, the reluctant 00:37:50.789 --> 00:37:53.150 Hollywood scribe who wrote profound philosophical 00:37:53.150 --> 00:37:56.090 literature, and a high modernist who dedicated 00:37:56.090 --> 00:37:59.849 his entire output to a single mythical southern 00:37:59.849 --> 00:38:02.380 county. He built Yoknapatawpha County into a 00:38:02.380 --> 00:38:05.340 universal mental landscape, capturing the agony 00:38:05.340 --> 00:38:08.440 and sweat of the human spirit, all while intensely 00:38:08.440 --> 00:38:10.880 disliking the fame and recognition that followed. 00:38:11.019 --> 00:38:12.679 His struggle to balance commercial necessity, 00:38:13.019 --> 00:38:15.360 those years spent enduring the cultural Babylon 00:38:15.360 --> 00:38:18.280 of Hollywood for a paycheck with his uncompromising 00:38:18.280 --> 00:38:21.139 artistic integrity, is really the central sacrifice 00:38:21.139 --> 00:38:23.530 of his monumental achievement. It highlights 00:38:23.530 --> 00:38:25.769 that to truly create something which did not 00:38:25.769 --> 00:38:27.949 exist before, as he defined it, required an almost 00:38:27.949 --> 00:38:30.570 defiant removal from the world's demands and 00:38:30.570 --> 00:38:33.110 a relentless focus on the internal reality of 00:38:33.110 --> 00:38:36.110 his own making. And we are left with that final 00:38:36.110 --> 00:38:39.510 provocative thought looping back to his ultimate 00:38:39.510 --> 00:38:42.190 declaration of independence, his resignation 00:38:42.190 --> 00:38:44.690 letter from the post office, where he refused 00:38:44.690 --> 00:38:47.610 to be at the beck and call of every itinerant 00:38:47.610 --> 00:38:50.570 scoundrel who has two cents to invest in a postage 00:38:50.570 --> 00:38:52.800 stamp. What does this single act of defiance 00:38:52.800 --> 00:38:54.860 tell you about the writer who chose to create 00:38:54.860 --> 00:38:57.639 his own world rather than serve the daily demands 00:38:57.639 --> 00:39:00.480 of reality? Is true artistic freedom ultimately 00:39:00.480 --> 00:39:02.880 about rejecting the necessity of small demands 00:39:02.880 --> 00:39:06.460 to focus entirely on monumental creation? It's 00:39:06.460 --> 00:39:08.239 a profound thought to mull over the next time 00:39:08.239 --> 00:39:10.119 you pick up one of his essential demanding novels.