William Faulkner (Magill’s Literary Annual 1990)
At a glance:
- Author: Frederick R. Karl
- First Published: 1989
- Type of Work: Biography
- Time of Work: 1825-1962
- Setting: Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, New York, and California, as well as such countries as France, Italy, England, Sweden, and Japan
- Principal Characters: William Faulkner, Estelle Faulkner (nee Oldham), Phil Stone, Sherwood Anderson
- Genres: Nonfiction, Biography
- Subjects: Culture, South or Southerners, Authors or writers, Marriage, Novelists, Drunk driving or drivers, Impostors or imposture
- Locales: California, France, New York, Mississippi, England, Louisiana, Tennessee, Italy, Japan, Sweden
When Joseph Blotner’s monumentally important, two-volume Faulkner: A Biography was published in 1974 (reissued as one volume in 1984), the gratitude Faulkner scholars rightfully felt was offset for many by the work’s hagiographic overtones and—to some—the glaring omissions of uncomplimentary facts about Faulkner and his wife, Estelle (nee Oldham). A close friend of the family who presumably wanted to avoid hurting the writer’s widow and surviving family, Blotner apparently side-stepped several issues, the most notable being Faulkner’s numerous extramarital affairs,...
[The entire page is 2249 words long]
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