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In the small town of New Albany, Mississippi, William Faulkner was born on September 25, 1897. Faulkner was the oldest of four sons born to Murray Charles Falkner and Maud (Butler) Falkner. Then while he was still a little kid, he moved to Oxford in northern Mississippi. There he lived out much of his life. Around the age of 13, he began to write poetry. He played quarterback at Oxford High School until he had has nose broken. He dropped out of school before receiving his diploma to work in his grandfather's bank. When World War I was brewing Faulkner tried to enlist in the army but was too short. He then tried enlisting in the Royal Canadian Air Force, this time he was accepted. He then received his basic training in Toronto. He served with the RAF in World War I but did not see any action. However he still told people that he had been shot down over France. After the war, Faulkner went to study literature at the University of Mississippi. He continued writing poetry and drew cartoons for the university's humor magazine, The Scream. The magazine's editor said, "I liked the cartoons better than the poetry." In 1920, Faulkner left the university without taking a degree and moved to New York City. There he worked as a clerk in a bookstore. After a while, he returned to Oxford where he became the postmaster at the University of Mississippi. He was later fired for reading on the job. Then he moved on to New Orleans. His friend Sherwood Anderson encouraged him to write fiction rather than poetry. So in 1926, he followed his friends advice and wrote, Soldier's Pay, which was about a young soldier returning from the war physically and psychologically disabled. He followed that with Mosquitoes, a satirical account of the Bohemian life of poets and intellectuals living in New Orleans. In 1929, Faulkner married Estelle Oldham Franklin, his childhood sweetheart. The next year, the young couple purchased a traditional Southern house in Oxford, which he named Rowan Oak. He restored Rowan Oak to its previous glory, which was fairly important to him. From there Faulkner wrote many novels, many of them were set in Yoknapatawpha County which was based on Lafayette County. There were fifteen of his novels set in this county the first being Sartoris, or as it was later called, Flags in the Dust. One of Faulkner's running themes in his books is the abuse of blacks by the Southern whites. Because his novels talk about the problems of the South after the Civil War, there is plenty violent and dirty events. But the novels are written in a way that celebrates the tragedy, energy, and humor of ordinary human life. Then when money was getting low, Faulkner worked in Hollywood off and on for two decades, contributing to screenplays such as Today We Live (1933) and Land of the Pharaos (1955). His own stories were considered too wild to be shown in Hollywood during that time since they spoke of rape, incest, suicide, and other things. On June 17 1962, Faulkner was thrown from a horse. He died of a coronary occlusion three weeks later.
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