William Faulkner

In response to Mr. Faulkner's Nobel Prize acceptance speech, which can be found at at http://www.nobel.se/literature/laureates/1949/faulkner-speech.html:

Perhaps one day, when I am an embittered old woman, I too will make patently false statements like, "There are no longer problems of the spirit." Hopefully, however, I will not be so embittered that I see the present as a bleak and empty era punctuated only by the thought of "When will I be blown up?" It's sad that Faulkner felt as if we writers of the future did not understand that there is truly only one subject to be written about: the complexities of the human heart.

What interests me most about his speech is the closing sentence:
"The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail."

Is Faulkner implying that the poet's voice is the soul of humanity? Then it logically follows that man is made immortal by his very soul; in essence, through his poetry. Poetry is the soul; the soul is poetry. An interesting proposition.

• First National Bank, Oxford, MS, clerk, 1916;
• Winchester Repeating Arms Co., New Haven, CT, ledger clerk, 1918;
• Lord & Taylor, New York, NY, bookstore clerk, 1921;
• University of Mississippi, Oxford, postmaster, 1921-24;
• worked as roof painter, carpenter, and paper hanger, New Orleans, LA, 1925;
• deckhand on Genoa-bound freighter, 1925;
• full-time writer, 1925-62;
• Coal shoveler at Oxford Power Plant, 1929;
• Screenwriter for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1932-33, and for Warner Bros., 1942-45, 1951, 1953, and 1954;
• Chairman of Writer's Group People-to-People Program, 1956-57. Writer in residence, University of Virginia, 1957-62.

• Soldiers' Pay, Boni & Liveright, 1926, published with author's speech of acceptance of Nobel Prize, New American Library of World Literature, 1959.
• Mosquitoes, Boni and Liveright, 1927.
• Sartoris, Harcourt, 1929.
• The Sound and the Fury, J. Cape & H. Smith, 1929, new edition published as The Sound and the Fury: An Authoritative Text, Backgrounds and Contexts, Criticism, Norton (New York City), 1994.
• As I Lay Dying, J. Cape & H. Smith, 1930, new and corrected edition, Random House, 1964.
• Sanctuary, J. Cape & H. Smith, 1931, published as Sanctuary: The Original Text, edited with afterword and notes by Noel Polk, Random House, 1981, published as Sanctuary: The Corrected Text, Random House, 1993.
• Light in August, H. Smith and R. Haas, 1932.
• Pylon, H. Smith and R. Haas, 1935.
• Absalom, Absalom!, Random House, 1936, casebook edition edited by Elisabeth Muhlenfeld published as William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!, Garland Publishing, 1984.
• The Unvanquished, drawings by Edward Shenton, Random House, 1938.
• The Wild Palms, Random House, 1939, published as If I Forgot Thee Jerusalem: The Wild Palms by Vintage New York City), 1995.
• The Hamlet (first book in the "Snopes Trilogy"), Random House, 1940.
• Intruder in the Dust, Random House, 1948.
• Requiem for a Nun, Random House, 1951.
• A Fable, Random House, 1954.
• The Town (second book of the "Snopes Trilogy";), Random House, 1957.
• The Long Hot Summer: A Dramatic Book from the Four-Book Novel; The Hamlet, New American Library, 1958.
• The Mansion (third book in the "Snopes Trilogy"; also see below), Random House, 1959.
• The Reivers, a Reminiscence, Random House, 1962.
• Mayday, University of Notre Dame Press, 1976.
• Father Abraham, Random House, 1984, published as Father Abraham, 1926, Garland Publishing, 1987.
• Elmer, edited by Dianne L. Cox, foreword by James B. Meriwether, Seajay Society, 1984.
• Humo/Smoke, Aims International Books, 1998.