It is hard to believe that the author of American canons such as As I Lay Dying, The Sound and the Fury, and Absalom, Absalom! was relatively unknown at the time of the books’ publications. However, William Faulkner remained an obscure, if highly productive, writer until he was recognized with the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature. Despite Faulkner’s lack of popularity in mass culture, he made a name for himself among other artists and writers. In the early forties, after he had written his most enduring masterpieces of literature, Howard Hawks persuaded Faulkner to move to Hollywood and write screenplays. Apparently, it was not a difficult sell for, at that point, Faulkner was sorely in need of income. Faulkner and Hawks worked together on The Big Sleep and the film’s adaptation of To Have and Have Not. Hawks is the writer of such silver-screen gems as His Girl Friday, Bringing Up Baby, and Rio Bravo. William Faulkner eventually married his high school girlfriend, Estelle Oldham. However, the couple spent over a decade apart, during Estelle’s short-lived marriage to another man. Throughout his marriage to Estelle, Faulkner pursued numerous affairs with women he met around the world on his travels to Los Angeles and Stockholm, Sweden. Writing during the first half of the 20th century, William Faulkner was born and raised in Oxford, Mississippi. During World War I, Faulkner participated in both the Canadian and British Royal Air Force. For a short while, Faulkner attended the University of Mississippi, stopping after three semesters. Faulkner traveled scarcely throughout his life, making his way to Europe and Asia for a few trips and working briefly at a bookstore in New York and for a newspaper in New Orleans. Other than that, Faulkner remained in Mississippi, the location where he wrote his novels and short stories. William Faulkner’s body of work is considered to exemplify the genre of literature called Southern Gothic. South Gothic literature is an exclusively American genre of literature that falls under the umbrella of the Gothic novel. Southern Gothic writing utilizes supernatural and mystical themes and events to create metaphors and illustrations that reflect real social issues and characters in the South. One example of an ironic tool employed by the Southern gothic author is to defy the stereotypes that were widespread in the antebellum South, such as the content slaves, chivalrous plantation owners, upright Christians, and the diffident Southern belles. Reflecting the modern inclination towards realism, Southern Gothic authors exposed these archetypes of romanticism and heroism as less than idyllic. For example, a demure single female is not admired for her chastity, but is depicted as being spiteful or reclusive. In keeping with this penchant for honest exhibitions and explorations of the South, the Southern Gothic featured images of the grotesque, both in characters’ personalities and situations. Frequently, these grotesque aspects of the Southern Gothic would arouse a sense of disgust or disturbance in the reader. However, because these figures were often hyperbolic the novels succeed in not appearing overly righteous or moralistic. Rather their exaggerated tones function themselves as another plane of metaphor.
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