William Faulkner: His Life and Work

by David Minter

Overview

A widely acclaimed biography presents a Faulkner who is powerful, vulnerable, real—every bit as fascinating as the characters he created.

In this highly acclaimed biography, David Minter draws upon a wealth of material, including the novelist's essays, interviews, published and unpublished letters, as well as his poems, stories, and novels, to illuminate the close relationship between the flawed life and the artistic achievement of one of twentieth-century America's most complex literary figures. In the process, he reveals a Faulkner who is powerful, vulnerable, real—every bit as fascinating as the characters he created. Anyone who has ever tarried in Yoknapatawpha County will find this a sensitive and readable account of the novelist's struggles in art and life. In his new preface, Minter locates his biography in relation to the changes in the literary critical landscape during the 1980s and discusses its departures from New Critical tenets about the relationship between authors' lives and their works.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780801857478
Publisher:	Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication date:	10/16/1997
Edition description:	second edition
Pages:	344
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.77(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

David Minter is Libbie Shern Moody Professor of English at Rice University. He is the author of The Interpreted Design as a Structural Principle in American Prose and A Cultural History of the American Novel: Henry James to William Faulkner.

What People are Saying About This

Johathan Yardley

Any future Faulkner biographer... will find it difficult to surpass what Minter has accomplished.

From the Publisher

An excellent book . . . It sets forth, often very sensitively, the elements of Faulkner's personality that make the fictional universe of Yoknapatawpha County assume the forms it takes in the major novels.
—Louis D. Rubin, Jr.

Louis D. Rubin

An excellent book... It sets forth, often very sensitively, the elements of Faulkner's personality that make the fictional universe of Yoknapatawpha County assume the forms it takes in the major novels.

— Louis D. Rubin, Jr.

Editorial Reviews

One emerges from reading it with fresh understanding of Faulkner both as man and writer, with feelings of sympathy and, even more, admiration.
—Times Higher Education Supplement

Any future Faulkner biographer—and there will be others, rest assured of that—will find it difficult to surpass what Minter has accomplished.
—Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post

One emerges from reading [Minter's book] with a fresh understanding of Faulkner both as man and writer, with feelings of sympathy and, even more, admiration.
—Richard Gray, Times Higher Education Supplement

The great virtue of David Minter's book is that he knows that the question of who a man was is less interesting than that of whom he wished to become . . . It is in the poems and the novels that we can trace the self to which Faulkner aspired.
—Lachlan Mackinnon, Times Literary Supplement

From the Publisher

One emerges from reading it with fresh understanding of Faulkner both as man and writer, with feelings of sympathy and, even more, admiration.

Times Higher Education Supplement

The great virtue of David Minter's book is that he knows that the question of who a man was is less interesting than that of whom he wished to become . . . It is in the poems and the novels that we can trace the self to which Faulkner aspired.

Times Literary Supplement - Lachlan Mackinnon

One emerges from reading [Minter's book] with a fresh understanding of Faulkner both as man and writer, with feelings of sympathy and, even more, admiration.

Times Higher Education Supplement - Richard Gray

Any future Faulkner biographer—and there will be others, rest assured of that—will find it difficult to surpass what Minter has accomplished.

Washington Post - Jonathan Yardley

The great virtue of David Minter's book is that he knows that the question of who a man was is less interesting than that of whom he wished to become... It is in the poems and the novels that we can trace the self to which Faulkner aspired.

— Lachlan Mackinnon

Times Literary Supplement

Any future Faulkner biographer—and there will be others, rest assured of that—will find it difficult to surpass what Minter has accomplished.

— Jonathan Yardley

Washington Post