William Faulkner: The Quintessential Southern Writer On September 25, 1897 in New Albany, Mississippi, a son was born to Murry Cuthbert and Maud Butler Falkner. This baby, born into a proud, genteel Southern family, would become a mischievous boy, an indifferent student, and drop out of school; yet “his mother’s faith in him was absolutely unshakable. When so many others easily and confidently pronounced her son a failure, she insisted that he was a genius and that the world would come to recognize that fact” (Zane). And she was right. Her son would become one of the most exalted American writers of the 20th century, winning the Nobel Prize for Literature and two Pulitzers during his lifetime. Her son was William Faulkner.As a child, Faulkner was well aware of his family background, especially the notoriety of his great-grandfather who had moved to the Mississippi Delta from Tennessee in 1841 (Zane). William Clark Faulkner was a Civil War Colonel, a lawyer, a planter, a politician, a railroad entrepreneur, and a best-selling novelist best known for The White Rose of Memphis. He died in the streets of Ripley, Mississippi, where a former business partner he had forced out of his railroad gunned him down (Padgett). While Faulkner had never met his great-grandfather, he was a powerful influence. When his third grade teacher asked what he wanted to be when he grew up, the young William replied “I want to be a writer like my great-granddaddy”(Padgett). After dropping out of school, Faulkner worked as a clerk in his grandfather’s bank and in his spare time wrote short stories and poetry and contributed drawings to the University of King 2Mississippi’s yearbook (Locher). His talent was recognized early on by his good friend Phil Stone, Faulkner’s first literary mentor. Stone encouraged and instructed him in his interests and was a constant source of current books and magazines (Faulkner 699). Af...
