William Faulkner A Literary Life David Rampton PPL-UK_WF-Rampton_FM.qxd 1/19/2008 3:38 PM Page i Literary Lives Founding Editor: Richard Dutton, Professor of English, Lancaster University This series offers stimulating accounts of the literary careers of the most admired and influential English-language authors. Volumes follow the outline of the writers’ working lives, not in the spirit of traditional biography, but aiming to trace the professional, publishing and social contexts which shaped their writing. Published titles include: Clinton Machann Kerry McSweeney MATTHEW ARNOLD GEORGE ELIOT Jan Fergus Tony Sharpe JANE AUSTEN T. S. ELIOT John Beer David Rampton WILLIAM BLAKE WILLIAM FAULKNER Tom Winnifrith and Edward Chitham Harold Pagliaro CHARLOTTE AND EMILY BRONTË HENRY FIELDING Sarah Wood Andrew Hook ROBERT BROWNING F. SCOTT FITZGERALD Janice Farrar Thaddeus Mary Lago FRANCES BURNEY E. M. FORSTER Caroline Franklin Shirley Foster BYRON ELIZABETH GASKELL Sarah Gamble Neil Sinyard ANGELA CARTER GRAHAM GREENE Nancy A. Walker James Gibson KATE CHOPIN THOMAS HARDY Roger Sales Linda Wagner-Martin JOHN CLARE ERNEST HEMINGWAY Cedric Watts Cristina Malcolmson JOSEPH CONRAD GEORGE HERBERT Grahame Smith Gerald Roberts CHARLES DICKENS GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS George Parfitt Neil Roberts JOHN DONNE TED HUGHES Paul Hammond Kenneth Graham JOHN DRYDEN HENRY JAMES PPL-UK_WF-Rampton_FM.qxd 1/19/2008 3:38 PM Page ii W. David Kaye Michael O’Neill BEN JONSON PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Phillip Mallett Gary Waller RUDYARD KIPLING EDMUND SPENSER John Worthen Tony Sharpe D. H. LAWRENCE WALLACE STEVENS William Gray Lisa Hopkins ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON BRAM STOKER Angela Smith Joseph McMinn KATHERINE MANSFIELD JONATHAN SWIFT Lisa Hopkins William Christie CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE Cedric C. Brown Leonée Ormond JOHN MILTON ALFRED TENNYSON Peter Davison Peter Shillingsburg GEORGE ORWELL WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY Linda Wagner-Martin David Wykes SYLVIA PLATH EVELYN WAUGH Felicity Rosslyn Caroline Franklin ALEXANDER POPE MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT Ira B. Nadel John Mepham EZRA POUND VIRGINIA WOOLF Richard Dutton John Williams WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE WILLIAM WORDSWORTH John Williams Alasdair D. F. Macrae MARY SHELLEY W. B. YEATS Literary Lives Series Standing Order ISBN 0-333-71486-5 hardcover Series Standing Order ISBN 0-333-80334-5 paperback (outside North America only) You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a stand- ing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and one of the ISBNs quoted above. Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England PPL-UK_WF-Rampton_FM.qxd 1/19/2008 3:38 PM Page iii William Faulkner A Literary Life David Rampton PPL-UK_WF-Rampton_FM.qxd 1/19/2008 3:38 PM Page iv © David Rampton 2008 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2008 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN-13: 978-1-4039-4680-5 hardback ISBN-10: 1-4039-4680-9 hardback This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Rampton, David, 1950– William Faulkner: a literary life / David Rampton. p. cm. — (Literary lives) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1-4039-4680-9 (alk. paper) 1. Faulkner, William, 1897–1962. 2. Authors, American—20th century— Biography. I. Title. PS3511.A86Z946935 2008 813’.52—dc22 [B] 2008000155 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne PPL-UK_WF-Rampton_FM.qxd 1/19/2008 3:38 PM Page v For Elizabeth This page intentionally left blank PPL-UK_WF-Rampton_FM.qxd 1/19/2008 3:38 PM Page vii Contents Preface and Acknowledgements viii 1 Introduction 1 2 Early Faulkner 14 3 Major Achievement I 36 4 Major Achievement II 58 5 Two Views of History 85 6 More Experiments with the Novel 104 7 The Snopes Trilogy 129 8 Late Faulkner 150 Notes 177 Further Reading 188 Index 194 vii PPL-UK_WF-Rampton_FM.qxd 1/19/2008 3:38 PM Page viii Preface and Acknowledgements With so many excellent biographies of Faulkner available, the emphasis in this literary life had to be on the adjective rather than the noun. That choice resolved one problem only to create another, namely how to justify adding to what has already been said in all the books and arti- cles devoted to Faulkner’s fiction. One of the critics in Frederic Crews’s parody of academic criticism, The Pooh Perplex, remarks that ‘our ideal in English studies is to amass as much commentary as possible upon the literary work, so as to let the world know how deeply we respect it.’ By this criterion, Faulkner is probably the most deeply respected American writer who ever lived. If those who read him, for the intense pleasure of the experience or with a combined sense of intrigue and bafflement, find something of interest here, I shall feel at least partly vindicated. The references in my notes acknowledge only a small fraction of my indebtedness to Faulkner scholars and critics. They are an extraordinarily large and diverse group with a formidable amount of expertise in a range of areas, and I have greatly benefitted from their engagement with his fiction. My colleagues in the Department of English at the University of Ottawa deserve special mention as well for being so supportive and for setting such high standards with their own work. I also want to extend my most heartfelt gratitude to the departmental support staff there for making my administrative tasks so pleasant dur- ing the period I was working on this book. At Palgrave Macmillan, Richard Dutton helped from the outset by outlining the directions the project might take and was always encouraging. Thanks are also due to Palgrave’s readers for their helpful suggestions, to Paula Kennedy for her enthusiastic support and her seemingly limitless patience, to Christabel Scaife for her resourcefulness and encouragement, and to the staff of Macmillan India Ltd for copy-editing and guiding the typescript through the final stages. Finally I would like to thank my family for their forbearance during all those nights when ‘sharing the computer’ meant watching me work on it. This book is dedicated to my wife Elizabeth, to whom my gratitude for so many things is not the less heartfelt for being so inadequately expressed. viii PPL-UK_WF-Rampton_FM.qxd 1/19/2008 3:38 PM Page ix Preface and Acknowledgements ix Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material: William Faulkner, for the following excerpts: From Soldiers’ Pay: reprinted with the permission of Liveright Publishing Corporation and Chatto & Windus/The Random House Group, Ltd.; from Mosquitoes: reprinted with the permission of Liveright Publishing Corporation and Chatto & Windus/The Random House Group, Ltd.; from Flags in the Dust: reprinted with the permission of Random House, Inc. and Chatto & Windus/The Random House Group, Ltd.; from The Sound and the Fury: reprinted with the permission of Random House, Inc. and Curtis Brown, Ltd.; from As I Lay Dying: reprinted with the permission of Random House, Inc.; from Sanctuary: reprinted with the permission of Random House, Inc. and Chatto & Windus/The Random House Group, Ltd.; from Light in August: reprinted with the permission of Random House, Inc. and Curtis Brown, Ltd.; from Pylon: reprinted with the permission of Random House, Inc.; from Absalom, Absalom!: reprinted with the permission of Random House, Inc. and Curtis Brown, Ltd.; from The Unvanquished: reprinted with the permission of Random House, Inc.; from The Wild Palms [If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem]: reprinted with the permission of Random House, Inc.; from The Hamlet: reprinted with the permission of Random House, Inc.; from Go Down, Moses: reprinted with the permission of Random House, Inc.; from Intruder in the Dust: reprinted with the permission of Random House, Inc.; from Requiem for a Nun: reprinted with the permission of Random House, Inc. and Chatto & Windus/The Random House Group, Ltd.; from A Fable: reprinted with the permission of Random House, Inc. and Chatto & Windus/The Random House Group, Ltd.; from The Town: reprinted with the permission of Random House, Inc. and W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.; from The Mansion: reprinted with the permission of Random House, Inc. and Chatto & Windus/The Random House Group, Ltd.; and from The Reivers: reprinted with the permission of Random House, Inc. and Chatto & Windus/The Random House Group, Ltd.