The Life of William Faulkner

January 13, 2020
Rollyson’s disappointing exploration of William Faulkner’s early life follows the author from his childhood in Oxford, Miss., to his first years in Hollywood. Rollyson (The Last Days of Sylvia Plath), a Baruch College professor emeritus, ushers readers through Faulkner’s stint in the RAF in WWI and later sojourns in New York City and New Orleans. The book then chronicles Faulkner’s unrelenting difficulties with money and drink; his tangled relationship with his wife, Estelle; and the publication of his first noteworthy novels, including The Sound and the Fury in 1929 and As I Lay Dying in 1930. Rollyson also reveals how Faulkner’s Hollywood screenwriting career, after a disastrous start in the early 1930s, was redeemed by a productive partnership with director Howard Hawks. Unfortunately, Rollyson provides little historical context and assumes a greater knowledge of Faulkner’s life and work than many readers will possess. Most egregiously, he avoids rigorously examining the troublesome issue of race as reflected in the writer’s work and life. He does suggest, tantalizingly, that Faulkner’s Hollywood stint affected his novel writing, but readers will have to wait for the forthcoming second volume to explore that further. Devoted Faulkner admirers may find some new insights, but those interested in an entrée to Faulkner’s world should look elsewhere.

February 28, 2020

In a 1956 Paris Review interview, American novelist William Faulkner maintained, "The artist is of no importance. Only what he creates is important." Some 30 years earlier, in a letter to his mother, he wrote, "What really happens, you know, never makes a good story. You have to get an impulse from somewhere and then embroider it." Despite Faulkner's objections to biography, he has not lacked for them, including Joseph Blotner's two-volume detailed chronicle, Frederick Karl's psychological study, and Joel Williamson's portrait of the novelist's life and times. Rollyson (Baruch Coll.; The Last Days of Sylvia Plath), however, is the first to examine all 105 boxes of material that Faulkner authority Carvel Collins collected for his unwritten account of the author. Tracing Faulkner's career through roughly the middle of the journey of his life, Rollyson reveals the impulses of Faulkner's fiction and shows how the author converted his experiences and those of his family and friends into poetry, short stories, and novels. The book also discusses Faulkner's work for the film industry and its influence on his prose. VERDICT Rollyson's astute analysis makes not only for a good story but also a welcome addition to Faulkner studies.--Joseph Rosenblum, Univ. of North Carolina, Greensboro

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 1, 2020
A deeply detailed account of the 1949 Nobel laureate's early life and work. In this first of two projected volumes, Rollyson (Emeritus, Journalism and Creative Writing/Baruch Coll., CUNY; Understanding Susan Sontag, 2016, etc.) returns with a thick volume that accomplishes several objectives. It rehearses the details of Faulkner's family history in Mississippi; examines many intriguing aspects of his early life (romances, drinking, difficulties making enough money, determination to write, public and private manner, friendships and professional associations); and assesses in great detail the major works he published during this time, The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, and Sanctuary among them. The author also deals frankly with some questions of Faulkner's character, including his fabrications about his flying experiences (he underwent pilot training for World War I but did not go because the war ended before he could) and his evolving attitudes about race. Near the end of this volume, Rollyson examines Faulkner's early experiences as a screenwriter in Hollywood, including analyses of the treatments and scripts he worked on--and how these would affect his subsequent fiction. Throughout, the author, an expert biographer, delivers arresting details and telling images from his subject's life: Faulkner got a D in English at the University of Mississippi; he liked Charlie Chaplin movies and somewhat resembled the cinema star; As I Lay Dying appeared less than a year after he commenced writing it. Faulkner idolized Sherwood Anderson; though they became friends, their friendship eventually fractured. In Hollywood, Faulkner drank with Howard Hawks, and his literary friendships included Lillian Hellman (the subject of a previous Rollyson biography), Dashiell Hammett, and Nathanael West. The author's underlying research is prodigious, and he does not hesitate to correct earlier biographers. General readers will find some of the book a bit daunting--especially the lengthy exegeses of literary works--but this is a top-notch biography nonetheless. A filling, satisfying feast for Faulkner aficionados.

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Starred review from May 11, 2020
The concluding volume of this two-part biography of Faulkner shows Rollyson, a Baruch College professor emeritus, as both a careful observer of Faulkner the man, and an adept and perceptive reader of his work. Rollyson devotes much attention to the lingering influence of Faulkner’s lucrative but creatively frustrating work as a screenwriter, in a period that saw him largely turn his back on Hollywood and refocus on novel-writing in Oxford, Miss., receiving a Nobel Prize for his fiction in 1949. While Faulkner viewed his Hollywood sojourn as a mere “interruption of his novelist’s mission,” Rollyson argues that it made Faulkner produce “a different sort of fiction,” both in using cinematic techniques and in actively trying to move past the film industry’s “conventional plotlines and pieties” in works such as The Wild Palms and Absalom, Absalom. Rollyson also delves insightfully into Faulkner’s passionate extramarital affair with Meta Carpenter, a fellow Mississippian he met in Hollywood; his prodigious bouts of drinking; and his enigmatic personality, which used a courtly and reserved manner to mask his troubled inner self. Rollyson’s painstakingly researched and beautifully written biography should be a touchstone for Faulkner scholarship for years to come.