William Faulkner: His Life and Work

Faulkner's life is a massive subject that oddly seems to become more, rather than less elusive with time. He was at least half a 19th century sensibility, and samplings from recent biographies show him disappearing in the fog of current political corectness. The major, "official" biography in 2 volumes by Joseph Blotner is of course indispensible for names, dates, places, and other essential data. Nor can one fault Blotner for his respect for the writer; too many literary biographies seem to run on virtual hostility, anymore. But something nonetheless is missing from Blotner and all of the others, and this book by David Mintner supplies it. Minter presents an unforgettable portrait of a tragic, suffering Faulkner that is both scarily true and absolutely renching. Chiefly, the elements of the pain are a terrible addiction to alcohol and an unhappy marriage. Indeed Faulkner's alcoholism was legendary during his own life, but was seen by detractors as a sort of joke, by defenders (in a much more boozed age than the present) as no big deal. Be forewarned: you may never want to read another book about an alcoholic writer or artist, or any kind of alcoholic, afterwards. It is done, too, with both an uncanny intimacy and a saving sympathy. Yet all this might merely add up to the stuff of soap operas, but for Mintner's like insistence on emphasizing the writer's enobling mission and belief in the greatness of his own work. Out of the South's defeat and out of his own Celtic bloodline Faulkner inherited a romance for lost causes; doing the impossible and failing was his great and oft-expressed polestar. With attention both to the impossibly sublime and the quite real pathology, Mintner presents a portrait of Faulkner that not only makes sense in human terms, but also gives an aura of universality to the story of this major American artist. As difficult as this encounter with truth is, then, it is necessary and convincing. You will finally understand the sort of man who could have created the fragility of a Quentin Compson, the monstrosity of a Colonel Supten, and a whole universe of others, all out of himself. Even the alcoholism becomes explicable, with a kind of awful clarity, when you come to dimly see what a rare sort of human being is here under review: a sort of empath, who either by birth or by will felt the accumulated pain of his region's entire history and people before he could project it. In this sense the alcohol was a sort of folk home remedy which provided support to the impossible undertaking.