Crédito: Biography
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00:00A two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, William Faulkner is considered one of the 20th century's
00:12greatest writers.
00:13He was born on September 25, 1897.
00:17William Faulkner was the poet novelist of Mississippi.
00:20He grew up in Oxford, Mississippi, and he never left.
00:24He went to the University of Mississippi, and this is where he lived his life.
00:29Every single one of his major novels is set in Lafayette County, Mississippi, which he
00:34called Yacht-N-Batafa in his novels.
00:37Faulkner is known for reflecting the history and culture of the South in his work.
00:41His first novel, The Sound and the Fury, was published in 1929.
00:46Sound and the Fury is considered Faulkner's masterpiece because it's the first book in
00:49which he really got inside point of view and got inside voice, and those became, I think,
00:54the defining factors of his writing.
00:58No one had ever seen such a complicated novel before.
01:01Imagine opening with a long, long sequence by someone whose mind is deranged, and so
01:07the reader doesn't know where he or she is for 10, 20, 30 pages.
01:12This was brave.
01:13It was even crazy.
01:15But eventually, pretty quickly, very smart readers understood that William Faulkner was
01:21an innovator.
01:23During the 1930s, Faulkner wrote As I Lay Dying, Light in August, and Absalom, Absalom,
01:29three powerhouse works that cemented his reputation as a technically complex and imaginative author.
01:35Faulkner wrote several of his masterpieces within the period of a decade.
01:40Looking at those works written in such a concentrated period of time, it's difficult to dismiss
01:47him.
01:48He upped himself virtually every time.
01:51They just keep coming, and I think that's what now scholars look back on and see complex
01:58masterpieces within about 12 years, and that's pretty amazing.
02:03Faulkner amassed critical success as a novelist, culminating in the Nobel Prize for Literature
02:08in 1949.
02:09I think the Nobel Committee probably selected Faulkner not merely for his great innovations,
02:15but also because much of what Faulkner wrote about and a lot of his sense of himself as
02:20a writer was as someone who documented the ability of people to endure, and that was
02:27the theme of the speech that he delivered in Stockholm when he accepted the prize.
02:31It was his work as a screenwriter, penning such movies as Road to Glory, Slave Ship,
02:36and The Big Sleep, that earned him financial freedom.
02:40Faulkner wrote screenplays for one reason, money.
02:44He was broke all the time, and he liked to live in a big mansion.
02:48He had a lovely house called Roanoke, and to support his lifestyle, he wanted to live
02:53like a southern aristocrat.
02:55He drank a lot of whiskey, good whiskey, so he went to Hollywood to make money.
03:01In 1954, Faulkner wrote the novel A Fable, which won him a Pulitzer Prize and the National
03:07Book Award.
03:08In his own lifetime, Faulkner was praised by all sorts of committees.
03:13He won Pulitzer Prizes.
03:15He won the Nobel Prize.
03:17He was given awards by the French government.
03:20He was widely recognized in his own time.
03:23Faulkner died of a heart attack on July 6, 1962, at the age of 64.
03:28He posthumously earned a second Pulitzer Prize in 1963 for his final novel, The Reavers.
03:35Faulkner criticism now outpaces Shakespeare criticism.
03:39Now that we move into the 21st century, scholars find him so rich.
03:43Every text opens itself up to multiple readings with its complexity.
03:47I think he'll be remembered as one of the greats.