Picked up the pictured volume for a song at a used bookstore. Two of the four novels, Sanctuary and Pylon, perhaps qualify as potboilers. The other two are wonderful books. These Library of America Editions all come with an elaborate "Chronology" of the writer's life, year by year. In the case of Faulkner, the Chronology is 24 pages long, and is full of money worries. For example, the sentences following the announcement of the publication of Pylon, in 1935, read:
- Pressed for money, works intensively at stories meant to sell. Writes his agent in April: "What I really need is $10,000. With that I could pay my debt and insurance for two years and really write."
He spent a fair amount of time in Hollywood working on movie scripts. He'd enter into short term contracts, often quite lucrative—he was earning as much as a grand a week for periods in some of the worst years of the Great Depression. In 1937 he earned about $21,000 from Twentieth Century-Fox. The next year he sold the screen rights to The Unvanquished to MGM for $25,000. According to this document, the average annual income of a lawyer in the year 1936 was about $4300. Seems like maybe his overhead was high, and that he could have arranged things to have fewer complaints about lack of funds. He did support more people than just his immediate family. It's also true that his income from the books on which his reputation as one of America's greatest novelists rests—The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, Light in August, Absalom, Absalom!—was negligible.
As a theme in the Faulkner Chronology, I'd have to say that liquor is ahead of money. Here are some excerpts:
1919 [the year he turned 22]: Continues to work on poetry; drinks with friends in Clarksdale and Charleston, Mississippi, Memphis, and New Orleans. . . . Given nickname "Count No 'Count" by fellow students, who consider him aloof and affected.
1920: Withdraws from University [of Mississippi] in November during crackdown on fraternities.
1921: Returns home [from New York City] in December to become postmaster at university post office.
1922: Writes while on duty at the post office, neglects customers, is reluctant to sort mail, does not always forward it, and keeps patrons' magazines and periodicals in the office until he and his friends have read them.
1923: Becomes scoutmaster.
1924: Removed as scoutmaster for drinking. Complaints of negligence investigated by postal authorities and Faulkner resigns October 31.
1926: Soldiers' Pay published by Boni & Liveright February 25. Mother, shocked by sexual material in the novel, says that the best thing he could do is leave the country; father refuses to read it.
1927: Horace Liveright rejects Flags in the Dust and advises Faulkner not to offer it elsewhere.
1928: Flags in the Dust submitted to more than twelve publishers, all of whom reject it. . . . Rents a small furnished flat and revises and types the manuscript of The Sound and the Fury. Finishes; drinks heavily; found unconscious by friends Eric J. (Jim) Devine and Leon Scales, who take care of him in their apartment.
1929: Starts writing Sanctuary in January and finishes it in May. The Sound and the Fury accepted by new firm of Jonathan Cape and Harrison Smith in February, but Smith says Sanctuary too shocking to publish. Marries Estelle (divorced from Cornell Franklin, April 29), in Presbyterian Church in nearby College Hill, June 20. They honeymoon at Pascagoula, where Faulkner reads proofs of The Sound and the Fury (published October 7). Returns to Oxford and takes job on nightshift at the university power plant. Writes As I Lay Dying while at work, beginning October 29 and finishing December 11. . . . Reviews of the The Sound and the Fury are enthusiastic, sales disappointing.
1931: Daughter, born January 11, named for Faulkner's great-aunt Alabama, dies after nine days; Faulkner is grief-stricken. . . . Attends Southern Writers' Conference at University of Virginia in Charlottesville on his way to New York in October. Drinks heavily. . . . Earns enough money during stay in New York to pay bills at home. Drinks heavily; friends contact Estelle. She arrives early in December and they return to Oxford before the middle of the month.
1935: On December 10, goes to Hollywood for five-week, $1,000-per-week assignment with [Howard] Hawks for Twentieth Century-Fox, taking [manuscript of] Absalom, Absalom! with him. Begins intermittent and sometimes intense fifteen-year relationship with Hawks's 28-year-old secretary and later scriptgirl, Mississippi divorcee Meta Doherty Carpenter.
1936: With successful completion of script (The Road to Glory), begins to drink heavily. Goes home on sick leave January 13. Finishes final draft of Absalom, Absalom!. . . . Sees Meta, who has decided to marry pianist Wolfgang Rebner. Estelle and Faulkner both drink heavily. Absalom, Absalom! published October 26 by Random House.
1937: Unhappiness at work and home exacerbates Faulkner's drinking. . . . Goes to New York in mid-October. . . . Stays at Algonquin Hotel. . . . Drinks heavily, collapses, and burns back severely on Algonquin steam pipe. . . . Reads poetry aloud and does crossword puzzles with stepdaughter Victoria after breakup of her first marriage. ("He kept me alive," she later says.) Intense pain from burn makes sleeping difficult.
1940: Drinking at annual deer hunt in November causes near-fatal hemorrhage.
1942: Unable to sell enough stories to remain solvent, and deeply in debt, seeks Hollywood work through publishers, agents, and friends. Reports for five-month segment of low-paying ($300 a week) long-term Warner Bros. contract in July. Resumes relationship with Meta Carpenter (now divorced from Rebner).
1944: Begins work for Hawks on film version of Ernest Hemingway's To Have and Have Not. Estelle and [his daughter] Jill join him in June. Depression, drinking, and periods of hospitalization follow their departure in September.
1946: Feels trapped and depressed, drinks heavily. . . . The Portable Faulkner published by Viking April 29. Tells class at University of Mississippi in May that the four greatest influences on his work were the Old Testament, Melville, Dostoevski, and Conrad. European reputation, especially in France, grows as works are translated. Random House issues The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying together in Modern Library Edition in October.
1950: Collected Stories of William Faulkner published August 2 by Random House and adopted by Book-of-the-Month Club as alternate fiction selection, receiving generally good reviews. Informed November 10 he will receive 1949 (delayed until 1950) Nobel Prize for Literature. Reluctant to attend [awards ceremony], drinks heavily at annual hunt. . . but finally agrees to go to Stockholm. Afterwards, writes to friend, "I fear that some of my fellow Mississippians will never forgive that 30,000$ that durn foreign country gave me for just sitting on my ass writing stuff that makes my own state ashamed to own me." Taking $5,000 for his own use, establishes "Faulkner Memorial" trust fund with rest of money for scholarships and other educational purposes.
1952: Hospitalized in Memphis in September for convulsive seizure brought on by drinking and back pain, and again in October after fall down stairs. . . . Accepts editor and friend Saxe Commins' invitation to write at his Princeton home. Depression and drinking precipitate collapse and is admitted to private hospital in New York.
1954: Joins Hawks near Cairo in mid-February. Arrives very ill with back pain and drinking and is taken to Anglo-American hospital. A Fable published by Random House, August 2.
1955: Accepts National Book Award for A Fable, January 25. . . . Becomes increasingly involved in civil rights crisis; writes letters to editors advocating school integration; receives abusive letters and phone calls. . . . A Fable wins Pulitzer Prize in May. . . . Speaks against discrimination to integrated audience at Memphis meeting of Southern Historical Association, November 10; receives more threatening letters and phone calls.
1956: Increasingly alarmed by rising tensions over court-ordered integration of University of Alabama, agrees to magazine interview; desperate and drinking, says that if South were pushed too hard there would be civil war. Interviewer quotes him as saying that "if it came to fighting I'd fight for Mississippi against the United States even if it meant . . . shooting Negroes." (Later repudiates interview: "They are statements which no sober man would make, nor it seems to me, any sane man believe.")
1960: Divides time between Oxford and Charlottesville. Hospitalized briefly at Byhalia for collapse brought on by bourbon administered for self-diagnosed pleurisy. . . . Establishes William Faulkner Foundation December 28, providing scholarships for Mississippi blacks and prize for first novels.
1961: Shocked by news of Hemingway's suicide. . . . Hospitalized in Charlottesville, December 18, suffering from acute respiratory infection, back trouble, and drinking. Leaves after several days, but soon has relapse and is treated at Tucker Neurological and Psychiatric Hospital in Richmond until December 29.
1962: Readmitted to Tucker suffering from chest pain, fever, and drinking, January 8. . . . Turns down President John F. Kennedy's invitation to attend White House dinner for American Nobel Prize winners. . . . Pain and drinking increase; taken by Estelle and nephew James Faulkner to Wright's Sanitarium at Byhalia, July 5. Dies of heart attack, 1:30 a.m. on July 6. After service . . . is buried at St. Peter's Cemetery, Oxford, Mississippi.
I think my favorite tidbit concerns the self-diagnosed pleurisy for which he self-prescribed . . . bourbon. Another day in the life of a Nobel laureate.
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