Content introduction I chapter william faulkner, the world’s most famous writer and nobel laureate

CONCLUSION


The South is known for its many astounding artists, novelists, and writers; however, William Faulkner is uniquely categorized by many as one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century. Faulkner became known for his diction and literary techniques. William Faulkner chronicled the history of Mississippi: however, his choice of universal themes made him a literary giant around the world. Faulkner achieved many great accomplishments without a high school diploma or college degree. Faulkner had proved to the world that Southern writers were not as substandard as many viewed them to be. They were, in fact, quite phenomenal.

William Faulkner born on September 25, 1897 to Murry Cuthbert Falkner, a railroad employee and Maud Butler, an amateur painter (Minter, 755). Faulkner was born in New Albany, Mississippi ; however, he spent most of his life in Oxford, Mississippi (Polk, 55). In Oxford, Faulkner began listening to many stories told at small family gatherings as well as large reunions. Many stories told by Faulkner’s family originated from adventures of Faulkner’s great-grandfather, Colonel William Clark Falkner . Since Faulkner was disappointed and embarrassed by the meager success of his own father, he drew closer to his grandfather, but it was his great-grandfather who he saw as a model and rival ( Minter, 755).

Faulkner was an excellent student throughout the first several grades; however, he quit school in 1915 without a diploma disappointing his family. Even though Faulkner dropped out of school, he read avidly (Minter, 755).

William Faulkner, the great Southerner, is not only an American, but an interna tional phenomenon. His influence on leading Japanese writers has been as well docu mented as that on the Chinese novelist Mo Yan and the Canadian Aritha Van Herk.' Before he had become the mark by which American writers from Flannery O'Connor and Eudora Welty to Toni Morrison measured themselves, he had already been made an international hero by Jean Paul Sartre, André Malraux, and Albert Camus. He was the dominant figure among the new American novelists of "l'age du roman améri cain," and he has proved a source of inspiration to German writers from Hermann Hesse and Gottfried Benn to Siegfried Lenz, Ingeborg Bachmann, Helmut Heißen büttel, and Peter Handke.? The Italian novelists Cesare Pavese and Elio Vittorini have translated him and in their own work learned from his example. In his Nobel Prize speech, Gabriel García Márquez refers to that of "his master William Faulkner." Like Mário Vargas Llosa and Carlos Fuentes, Jorge Edwards acknowledges a specific rele vance of Faulkner: "The reading of Faulkner showed me, for the first time in my life, that there is a kind of poetry that can go into narrative fiction."


In view of this response from creative writers, it is not surprising to find the entry on Faulkner in the Encyclopedia Britannica opening with the statement: "More books and scholarly articles have been written about Faulkner than about any other Ameri can writer of the 20th century," and this year's centennial of his birthday means a boomtime for the Faulkner industry. However, the activities of Faulkner scholars the world over must not deceive us into believing that Faulkner is on the verge of becom ing a popular author.