5.0
William Faulkner Day by Day
ByPublisher Description
William Faulkner has been the topic of numerous biographies, papers, and international attention. Yet there are no collected resources providing a comprehensive scope of Faulkner’s life and work before now. William Faulkner Day by Day provides unique insight into the daily life of one of America’s favorite writers. Beyond biography, this book is an effort to recover the diurnal Faulkner, to write in the present tense about past events as if they are happening now. More importantly, this book is concerned with more than the writer’s life. Instead, it examines the whole man—the daily, mundane, profound, life changing, and everything in between.
Spanning from the 1825 birth of Faulkner’s great-grandfather to Faulkner’s death 137 years later to the day, author and biographer Carl Rollyson presents for the first time a complete portrait of Faulkner’s life untethered from any one biographical or critical narrative. Presented as a chronology of events without comment, this book is accompanied by an extensive list of principal personages and is supported by extensive archival research and interviews. Populated by the characters of Faulkner’s life—including family and friends both little known and internationally famous—this book is for Faulkner readers of all kinds with a wide variety of interests in the man and his work.
Spanning from the 1825 birth of Faulkner’s great-grandfather to Faulkner’s death 137 years later to the day, author and biographer Carl Rollyson presents for the first time a complete portrait of Faulkner’s life untethered from any one biographical or critical narrative. Presented as a chronology of events without comment, this book is accompanied by an extensive list of principal personages and is supported by extensive archival research and interviews. Populated by the characters of Faulkner’s life—including family and friends both little known and internationally famous—this book is for Faulkner readers of all kinds with a wide variety of interests in the man and his work.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesWilliam Faulkner Day by Day Reviews
5.0
“This was an absolutely wonderfully informative and entertaining presentation of William Faulkner's life. With the "Day by Day" portion of the title I thought that I was purchasing one of those "day to day" flip calendars! That is not what this book is at all! It is an actual narrative biography, composed of daily or weekly snapshots of Mr. Faulkner's life. The illustrations by Evelyn J. Mayton are all phenomenal, especially the cover page. She has a true talent for feeling and drawing the spirit of her subject.
Rollyson immediately comments on the presentation of this novel in the Introduction (emphasis added):
To never deviate from chronology in a biography, I wrote in THE LIFE OF WILLIAM FAULKNER, is to say that a life is just one damn thing after another. Flashbacks, flash forwards, and digressions are necessary in biography as much as they are in Faulkner's fiction, in order to understand the dynamics of characters and events. And yet biographical narratives, because they are designed as stories, inevitably discard many precious details and the feel of what it is like to live day by day. So this book is an effort to recover the diurnal Faulkner, to write in the present tense about past events as if they are happening now.
I love how when these "many precious details" are woven together that it gives the reader a fresh experience of Faulkner's life... all the highs, the lows, the fears, frustrations, and triumphs! Most Faulkner fans know that his beloved youngest brother, Dean Swift Faulkner, died in a tragic airplane crash with three other passengers. That tragedy cuts the heart with a new pain when read in the snapshots of Rollyson's biography:
November 2–3: WF and his brother Dean perform as “The Flying Faulkners” in an air show....
November 9: Dean, William, and Hal Smith fly over Oxford leafletting announcement of "Mammoth Armistice Day Pageant." {CR2}
November 10: Brother Dean is killed in plane crash.
Noveber 11, c. 10:00 a.m.: Goes into Dean's room to see his wife, Louise. He sits by her on the bed and says: "Dean's body is here. But I know you want to remember him the way he was." The casket remains closed and placed in the living room. The afternoon funeral is private. {DSF}
Dean Swift and Louise Faulkner had wed in September of 1934, were married for less than one year, and six months pregnant with their first child when he died on November 10, 1935. Rollyson presents other snapshots that demonstrate how involved Faulkner remained in the lives of his sister-in-law and niece:
March 22[1936]: Louise, Dean's wife, gives birth to a daughter and names her Dean. WF sends a telegram: "YOU TAKE CARE OF THE GIRL TILL I GET THERE TO DO IT FOR YOU."
Late January[1951]: Consults with Phil Stone about reworking his will... Other provisions are for gifts to friends and family members, an insurance policy to fund his niece Dean's education. {SS}
November 9[1958]: Attends the wedding of his niece Dean in Oxford. {B3}
William Faulkner was truly a family man. I really loved reading about his interactions with Victoria and Malcolm, who were his step-children but treated like they were his own. (I am the proud daughter of a wonderful step-father, who I just called "Dad".) Rollyson includes excerpts from letters of advice that Faulkner wrote to Malcolm, and to his nephew Jimmy Falkner. He just seemed to love loving the people around him.
The details of Faulkner's romantic relationships were very interesting. His infatuation with Joan Williams was really intense. Estelle's discovery of the affair was heartbreaking. Rollyson's recount of Faulkner's reaction to Meta Carpenter's April 5, 1937 marriage to Wolfgang Rebner is quite telling. On April 14 there is an "Interoffice memo: 'One week off or illness.'{B2]}". But Faulkner doesn't return to work until April 29, a full two weeks from the 14th. Meta's marriage must have been a huge emotional blow.]
William Faulkner has been my favorite novelist for decades, partly because of his bravery (in his location and time period) in writing black-American characters as capable of intelligence, psychological strength, and hard work as their white counterparts. Rollyson provides so many new-to-me facts about Faulkner's involvement in race matters of the time. For instance,
March 27 [1951]: A letter to the MEMPHIS COMMERCIAL APPEAL opposing the execution of Willie McGee. {ESPL}
February 10 [1955]: Writes to the MEMPHIS COMMERCIAL APPEAL ridiculing a letter attacking "shiftless" Negroes. {ESPL}
March 20 [1955]: Writes to the MEMPHIS COMMERCIAL APPEAL pointing out that Mississippi schools are not "even good enough for white people," but instead of improving schools for everyone the state builds a second, inferior school system. {ESPL}
Spring [1955]: WF decides to help fund the college education of Earnest Mc-Ewen, Jr. an African American. {CR2}
Further details on Faulkner's emotional struggle with race relations in the south can be read in https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53106499.The_Life_of_William_Faulkner_The_Past_Is_Never_Dead__1897_1934 , https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52011654.The_Life_of_William_Faulkner_This_Alarming_Paradox__1935_1962volume_2 , and https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5962081.Faulkner_and_Love_The_Women_Who_Shaped_His_Art__A_Biography .
Note: The passengers who died with Dean Swift Faulkner (age 28) were Red Graham (24), Henry Graham (21), and Bud Warren (21).”
About Carl Rollyson
Carl Rollyson is professor emeritus of journalism at Baruch College, CUNY. He is author of many biographies, including Faulkner On and Off the Page: Essays in Biographical Criticism; The Making of Sylvia Plath; Sylvia Plath Day by Day, Volumes 1 & 2; William Faulkner Day by Day; The Last Days of Sylvia Plath; A Real American Character: The Life of Walter Brennan; Hollywood Enigma: Dana Andrews; and Marilyn Monroe: A Life of the Actress, Revised and Updated. He is also coauthor (with Lisa Paddock) of Susan Sontag: The Making of an Icon, Revised and Updated. His reviews of biographies have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and New Criterion. He also writes a column on biography twice a week for the New York Sun.
Other books by Carl Rollyson
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