B006JHRY9S EBOK

BECOMING FAULKNER

The Art and Life of William Faulkner

PHILIP WEINSTEIN

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Copyright © 2010 by Philip Weinstein

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Weinstein, Philip M.

Becoming Faulkner : the art and life of William Faulkner / Philip Weinstein.

p. cm

ISBN 978-0-19-534153-9

1. Faulkner, William, 1897-1962. 2. Novelists, American—20th

century—Biography. 1. Title.

PS3511.A86Z98548  2009

813’.52—dc22    2009013181

[B]

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Printed in the United States of America

on acid-free paper

All of one’s book are indebted to others beyond the power to acknowledge, but this one benefits from an indebtedness both more obvious and more profound.

Some seven years ago I received a telephone call from Alice Tasman, of the Jean V. Naggar Literary Agency in New York. As an undergraduate (years earlier), she had studied Faulkner with my brother Arnold, at Brown University. An agent now, she wanted to coax into being a biographical study of Faulkner that would do justice to the impact his work had had on her. I responded that I was at that time immersed in writing a larger study of modernism
(Unknowing: The Work of Modernist Fiction),
and that I was—however invested professionally in Faulkner’s work—no biographer. During the next four years, three events occurred that changed my mind. I finished writing
Unknowing,
and I read in draft form Jay Parini’s
One Matchless Time: A Life of William Faulkner
(2004) and André Bleikasten’s
William Faulkner: Une vie en romans
(2007). The more I reflected on these formidable biographies, the more I warmed to the idea of connecting otherwise the life and the work, the work and the life. I called Alice, and she responded enthusiastically: the project was underway. I expanded the argument, Alice took it to a range of presses, and Oxford signed on. Suddenly, all I had to do was find the time—and figure out how—to bring to birth an idea that had begun as a gleam in the eye, but whose becoming was now a promised and contracted reality.

As often in my academic career, my home institution, Swarthmore College, provided me with the time: a full-year sabbatical leave (thanks to a Lang Fellowship) in 2007–2008. The wind in my sails, I began to conceptualize the book in a more sustained fashion. That is when—intent on (re)establishing for myself the story of Faulkner’s life—I began to incur
indebtedness on a broader scale. I reread Joseph Blotner’s authorized biography, and I marveled (as I had not before) at the scope and scrupulousness of his work: the countless interviews conducted, the thousands of pages of unpublished and published work scrutinized, the contextual frames considered, in order to put Faulkner’s life into perspective. In his wake, a host of critical biographers—David Minter, Judith Wittenberg, Judith Sensibar, Frederic Karl, Richard Gray, Joel Williamson, James Watson, and among others, produced (prior to Parini and Bleikasten) compelling work seeking to interrelate Faulkner’s life and his creative output. Although I was undertaking a different kind of book, I benefited massively from their biographical labors. (My debt to Blotner is beyond accounting: he looms behind a third of my pages.) Finally, having come to grips as I could with previous biographies, I encountered (a few weeks before turning in my final manuscript) Sensibar’s just-published
Faulkner and Love: The Women Who Shaped His Art
(2009). Since she reads his life in terms that differ from my own, I have sought, in half a dozen notes, to engage her argument.

In between taking Alice Tasman’s phone call in 2002 and pondering Judith Sensibar’s argument in 2009, I have incurred a host of other debts. David Riggs (himself a biographer) generously read the biographical précis. Academic friends and colleagues—Robert Bell and Robert Roza—read each chapter, critically and sympathetically. John Matthews engaged the argument—as he has engaged all my work on Faulkner for the past twenty-five years—with an eye at once demanding and supportive. Jay Parini—familiar with both the territory I was pursuing and the challenges I would encounter—graciously perused the entire manuscript, and André Bleikasten attended to its argument as he could, while struggling with health issues. My twin brother Arnold gave me his unstinting attention, as he considered my take on materials he and I have been discussing together—and writing on—for decades.

Oxford University Press has supported this book in a number of ways. Shannon McLachlan who first saw and said yes to the project, Brendan O’Neill who labored to help me secure the photos in the book, Martha Ramsay who kept me on the right side of gender usage and even enjoined—at full page length!—several of my claims, Jessica Ryan who has given me the good of her response to my revisions: these Oxford professionals have made this a better book. Locating and getting permission to use the photos I wanted turned out to be a task of greater magnitude than anticipated. Fellow Faulknerian Robert Hamblin (head of the Center for Faulkner Studies at Southeast Missouri State University) both bailed me out and
helped—along with Donald Kartiganer—to keep up my morale. Thanks also to Pamela Williamson, Curator of the Department of Archives and Special Collections of the University of Mississippi Libraries—home of the Coldfield Collection of Faulkner photos.

I close by dedicating this book to three people: Alice Tasman, whose belief in it galvanized me; my wife Penny, whose belief in me underwrites everything I have written; and André Bleikasten, peerless Faulknerian,
in memoriam.

Abbreviations

PROLOGUE
“Cant Matter”

CHAPTER ONE
Crisis and Childhood

CHAPTER TWO
Untimely

CHAPTER THREE
Dark Twins

CHAPTER FOUR
In Search of Sanctuary

CHAPTER FIVE
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow

EPILOGUE
“Must Matter”

Notes

Index