Faulkner— "Private Genius" —Dies

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29869, 9 July 1962, Page 11

Faulkner— "Private Genius" —Dies

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter —Copyright) LONDON, July 8. The “Guardian” in a tribute to the American writer, William Faulkner, who died on Friday, described his novels as being “like the shapes that wind and water sometimes make in rock, each of them unique, highly wrought, and yet something of a natural phenomenon.

The “Guardian.” in a feature. said: "If Hemingway was the public genius in the American writing field Faulkner was the private one: a man who perfectly mirrored the books he wrote " “The Times” said: "One has only to savour the complex, rich and subtle texture of Faulkner's writing to know that, for all the critical diatribes about his violence, his primitivism and his obsession with lust and incest, here is a great literary imagination “What made him great to quote his own Nobel Prize address, was his singleminded concern with ’the old verities and truths of the heart,’ the old universal truths, lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed—love and honour and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice."

Faulkner died at his home in Oxford. Mississippi, where he had a farm He was 64

He was the eldest of four boys He did not complete a forma) course of education but attended a few secondary school classes and enrolled in special courses at the University of Mississippi, which is at Oxford Much of his childhood was spent in reading and writing verse. He joined the Canadian Air Force during World War I and was sent to France He returned to Oxford but left and settled in New Orleans where he was befriended by Sherwood Anderson, the wellknown American novelist and short story writer. It was through Anderson that a poem by Faulkner—the first of his work to be published —appeared in a literary magazine His first two novels—" Soldier’s Pay" and "Mosquitoes" —were written soon afterwards. when Faulkner set out for Europe on a freighter. These were published, but

the later “The Sound and the Fury" was refused by publishers because of its baffling form. It was published in 1929. His earlier books were not successful financially. In "Sancutary” Faulkner has admitted himself that he “invented a most horrific tale" It was published in 1931, and a million copies had been sold by 1950. Faulkner won a Pulitzer Prize in 1954 for "A Fable” His collected stories won the National Book Gold Medal Award in 1950 His major contribution to American literature consisted of a series of 17 novels—generally referred to as a Saga of the South—in which the same characters appear, disappear. and reappear. He had woven a continuous legend around the lives and adventures of these characters who. as one critic put it, "seem emanations from the land ” Many are about "poor whites"