William Faulkner

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biography, David Minter draws upon a wealth of material, including the novelist's essays, interviews, published and unpublished letters, as well as his poems, stories, and novels, to illuminate the close relationship between the flawed life and the artistic achievement of one of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.

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

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.