Soldiers' Pay
, after being directly influenced by
Sherwood Anderson to attempt fiction writing. Anderson also assisted in the publication of
Soldier's Pay
and of
Mosquitoes
, Faulkner's second novel, by recommending them both to his own publisher. The
miniature house at 624 Pirate's Alley, just around the corner from St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans is
now the premises of Faulkner House Books, where it also serves as the headquarters of the Pirate's Alley
Faulkner Society.
During the summer of 1927, Faulkner wrote his first novel set in his fictional Yoknapatawpha
County, entitled
Flags in the Dust
. This novel drew heavily on the traditions and history of the South, in
which Faulkner had been engrossed in his youth. He was very proud of his novel upon its completion
and he believed it to be a significant improvement from his previous two novels. However, when
submitted for publication, it was rejected by the publishers Boni & Liveright. This came as a huge shock
to Faulkner, but he eventually allowed his literary agent, Ben Wasson, to significantly edit the text and
the novel was finally published in 1928 as
Sartoris
.
In the fall of 1928, when Faulkner was thirty years old, he began working on
The Sound and the
Fury
. He started by writing three short stories about a group of children with the last name Compson,
but Faulkner soon began to feel that the characters he had created would be better suited for a full-
length novel. Perhaps as a result of his disappointment in the initial rejection of
Flags in the Dust
,
Faulkner had now become indifferent to his publishers and wrote this novel in a much more
experimental style. In describing his writing process for this work, Faulkner would later say, "One day I
seemed to shut the door between me and all publisher’s addresses and book lists. I said to myself, Now I
can write." After its completion, Faulkner this time insisted that Ben
Wasson not do any editing or add any punctuation for clarity.
In 1929 Faulkner married Estelle Oldham. His best man was Andrew
Kuhn. Estelle brought with her two children from her previous marriage to
Cornell Franklin and Faulkner intended to support his new family as a
writer. Beginning in 1930, Faulkner sent out some of his short stories to
various national magazines. Several of his stories were published and this
brought him enough income to buy a house in Oxford for his family to live
in, which he named "Rowan Oak."
By 1932, however, Faulkner was in a much less secure financial
position. He had asked his agent, Ben Wasson to sell the serialization rights
for his newly completed novel,
Light in August
, to a magazine for $5,000,
but no magazine accepted the offer. Then, MGM Studios offered Faulkner
work as a screenwriter in Hollywood. While Faulkner was not a fan of film,
he needed the money, and so he accepted the job offer and arrived in Culver City California in May
1932. There he worked with director Howard Hawks, with whom he got along well, as they both enjoyed
drinking and hunting. Howard Hawks' brother William Hawks became Faulkner's Hollywood agent.
Faulkner would continue to find work as a screenwriter for years to come throughout the 1930s and
1940s.
Faulkner served as Writer-in-Residence at the University of Virginia at Charlottesville from
February to June 1957 and again in 1958. He suffered serious injuries in a horse-riding accident in 1959,
and died from a myocardial infarction, aged 64, on July 6, 1962, at Wright's Sanitorium in Byhalia,
Mississippi. He is buried along with his family in St. Peter's Cemetery in Oxford, along with a family
friend with the mysterious initials E.T.
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