American Author Proposal

I first found William Faulkner through a quote he made about Mark Twain, calling him the, “father of American literature.” I found that William Faulkner, although not as famous as Mark Twain, was one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century. I am really interested in his experimental style of writing, especially because his style of writing was so groundbreaking at the time. For example, in his novel As I Lay Dying, he wrote a chapter that contained only five words, which are “My mother is a fish.”

William Faulkner meets the criteria for the American Author project because his writings have influenced and inspired many other literature writers. He was born on September 25, 1897 in the state of Mississippi. His work was published regularly from the mid 1920s to the late 1940s, and received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1949 before he died on July 6, 1962. He wrote novels, film screenplays, short stories, and poetry. He was an alcoholic, but as William Faulkner himself, members of his family, and other various witnesses stated, he did not drink while writing, nor did he believe that alcohol helped to fuel the creative process. It seems to me that he had somewhat of a duality to him. He also had an affair for several years with a young writer named Joan Williams, who became the subject of his novel, The Wintering.

Besides his literary work that attracts me, his life seemed like an eventful one, yet filled with struggle. Inspiration for many of his stories came from his family history, so I imagine that reading biographies about him might be just as entertaining as his stories.

I was thinking of reading two of his novels, As I Lay Dying and Absalom, Absalom!, and instead of reading a third novel I would read a compilation of his short stories and or poetry. If I need to read a third novel, I think I will read The Sound and the Fury. If there is any specific order that one should read those books in, I will probably change my order to follow that. I will most likely be able draw a thesis from similarities and plot connections between his books and short stories. I am not sure of anything remotely specific yet, but I believe that with such a collection of writing I won’t have trouble coming up with a thesis.