Becoming Faulkner: The Art And Life Of William Faulkner

Plot

William Faulkner was the greatest American novelist of the 20th century, yet he lived a life marked by a pervasive sense of failure. Repeatedly, he failed to master the challenges that erupted upon him in charged moments: crises involving love, war, and race, as well as family, Hollywood, and alcohol. In this imaginative biography Philip Weinstein, a leading authority on Faulkner, targets Faulkner's sense of unpreparedness as central to both his life and his work. Weinstein shows how Faulkner's troubled interactions with time, place, and history-with antebellum practices and southern heritage-form a pattern that played out over the course of his entire life. At the same time, these incidents take on their fullest meanings in his fiction. It was in meditating on his failures, his own unreadiness, Weinstein argues, that Faulkner came up with his singular language, one that captured human consciousness under stress as never before. His fruitless striving catapulted American literature to a new level of sophistication. Narrating the events that comprised Faulkner's life, biographers have long struggled to depict his personal complexity, the paradoxes that shaped his decisions and dogged his relationships. But without a consideration of the writing as well, the troubles in the life fail to reveal their deeper resonance. By skillfully analyzing the work while tracing the events, Weinstein achieves a full portrait, revealing struggles that animate his life and shadows that complicate his work. Becoming Faulkner thus conjoins Faulkner's life and art in a bold new way, giving readers a full vantage from which to better understand this twentieth-century literary genius.