William Faulkner was born in New Albany, Mississippi. He was born in 1897. In 1949, he received a Nobel Price for literature. He is still seen as one of the most influential writers of American Southern literature along with Mark Twain, Tennessee Williams, and some other authors. The most famous of his novels are 'As I Lay Dying', 'The Sound And The Fury' and 'Absalom, Absalom!'

 

What struck us as most remarkable was that Faulkner never graduated from high school, nor did he receive a college degree. He lived in the poorest state of the nation and even during the Great Depression he wrote a series of novels all set in the American South. His apocryphal Yoknapatawpha County, the setting for most of his fiction, is based largely on Lafayette County, Mississippi, where he lived. He was rejected by the US Air Force because of his height, he then was accepted by RAF instead.

 

William Faulkner possessed a unique story-telling ability which stood out in the works we read, as did the recurring themes e.g. stream of consciousness, mother nature, death, pointless acts of heroism, issues of social class, et cetera.

 

When Faulkner just started out, a few Modernist writers were experimenting with narrative techniques such as stream of consciousness. Faulkner made a big contribution to this genre.