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William Faulkner Day by Day
William Faulkner has been the topic of numerous biographies, papers, and international attention. Yet there are no collected resources providing a comprehensive scope of Faulkner’s life and work before now. William Faulkner Day by Day provides unique insight into the daily life of one of America’s favorite writers. Beyond biography, this book is an effort to recover the diurnal Faulkner, to write in the present tense about past events as if they are happening now. More importantly, this book is concerned with more than the writer’s life. Instead, it examines the whole man—the daily, mundane, profound, life changing, and everything in between.
Spanning from the 1825 birth of Faulkner’s great-grandfather to Faulkner’s death 137 years later to the day, author and biographer Carl Rollyson presents for the first time a complete portrait of Faulkner’s life untethered from any one biographical or critical narrative. Presented as a chronology of events without comment, this book is accompanied by an extensive list of principal personages and is supported by extensive archival research and interviews. Populated by the characters of Faulkner’s life—including family and friends both little known and internationally famous—this book is for Faulkner readers of all kinds with a wide variety of interests in the man and his work.
Spanning from the 1825 birth of Faulkner’s great-grandfather to Faulkner’s death 137 years later to the day, author and biographer Carl Rollyson presents for the first time a complete portrait of Faulkner’s life untethered from any one biographical or critical narrative. Presented as a chronology of events without comment, this book is accompanied by an extensive list of principal personages and is supported by extensive archival research and interviews. Populated by the characters of Faulkner’s life—including family and friends both little known and internationally famous—this book is for Faulkner readers of all kinds with a wide variety of interests in the man and his work.
344 pages, Kindle Edition
Published October 12, 2022
4 people want to read
About the author
Carl Rollyson
132 books142 followersCarl Rollyson, Professor of Journalism at Baruch College, The City University of New York, has published more than forty books ranging in subject matter from biographies of Marilyn Monroe, Lillian Hellman, Martha Gellhorn, Norman Mailer, Rebecca West, Susan Sontag, and Jill Craigie to studies of American culture, genealogy, children’s biography, film, and literary criticism. He has authored more than 500 articles on American and European literature and history. His work has been reviewed in newspapers such as The New York Times and the London Sunday Telegraph and in journals such as American Literature and the Dictionary of Literary Biography. For four years (2003-2007) he wrote a weekly column, "On Biography," for The New York Sun and was President of the Rebecca West Society (2003-2007). His play, THAT WOMAN: REBECCA WEST REMEMBERS, has been produced at Theatresource in New York City. Rollyson is currently researching a biography of Amy Lowell (awarded a "We the People" NEH grant). "Hollywood Enigma: Dana Andrews, a biography of Dana Andrews is forthcoming in September from University Press of Mississippi. His biography, "American Isis: The Life and Death of Sylvia Plath" will be published in February 2013, the fiftieth anniversary of her death. His reviews of biography appear regularly in The Wall Street Journal, The Minneapolis Star Tribune, The Raleigh News & Observer, The Kansas City Star, and The New Criterion. He is currently advisory editor for the Hollywood Legends series published by the University Press of Mississippi. He welcomes queries from those interested in contributing to the series. Read his column, "Biographology," that appears every two weeks at bibliobuffet.com
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
November 30, 2022
This was an absolutely wonderfully informative and entertaining presentation of William Faulkner's life. With the "Day by Day" portion of the title I thought that I was purchasing one of those "day to day" flip calendars! That is not what this book is at all! It is an actual narrative biography, composed of daily or weekly snapshots of Mr. Faulkner's life. The illustrations by Evelyn J. Mayton are all phenomenal, especially the cover page. She has a true talent for feeling and drawing the spirit of her subject.
Rollyson immediately comments on the presentation of this novel in the Introduction (emphasis added):
To never deviate from chronology in a biography, I wrote in THE LIFE OF WILLIAM FAULKNER, is to say that a life is just one damn thing after another. Flashbacks, flash forwards, and digressions are necessary in biography as much as they are in Faulkner's fiction, in order to understand the dynamics of characters and events. And yet biographical narratives, because they are designed as stories, inevitably discard many precious details and the feel of what it is like to live day by day. So this book is an effort to recover the diurnal Faulkner, to write in the present tense about past events as if they are happening now.
I love how when these "many precious details" are woven together that it gives the reader a fresh experience of Faulkner's life... all the highs, the lows, the fears, frustrations, and triumphs! Most Faulkner fans know that his beloved youngest brother, Dean Swift Faulkner, died in a tragic airplane crash with three other passengers. That tragedy cuts the heart with a new pain when read in the snapshots of Rollyson's biography:
November 2–3: WF and his brother Dean perform as “The Flying Faulkners” in an air show....
November 9: Dean, William, and Hal Smith fly over Oxford leafletting announcement of "Mammoth Armistice Day Pageant." {CR2}
November 10: Brother Dean is killed in plane crash.
Noveber 11, c. 10:00 a.m.: Goes into Dean's room to see his wife, Louise. He sits by her on the bed and says: "Dean's body is here. But I know you want to remember him the way he was." The casket remains closed and placed in the living room. The afternoon funeral is private. {DSF}
Dean Swift and Louise Faulkner had wed in September of 1934, were married for less than one year, and six months pregnant with their first child when he died on November 10, 1935. Rollyson presents other snapshots that demonstrate how involved Faulkner remained in the lives of his sister-in-law and niece:
March 22[1936]: Louise, Dean's wife, gives birth to a daughter and names her Dean. WF sends a telegram: "YOU TAKE CARE OF THE GIRL TILL I GET THERE TO DO IT FOR YOU."
Late January[1951]: Consults with Phil Stone about reworking his will... Other provisions are for gifts to friends and family members, an insurance policy to fund his niece Dean's education. {SS}
November 9[1958]: Attends the wedding of his niece Dean in Oxford. {B3}
William Faulkner was truly a family man. I really loved reading about his interactions with Victoria and Malcolm, who were his step-children but treated like they were his own. (I am the proud daughter of a wonderful step-father, who I just called "Dad".) Rollyson includes excerpts from letters of advice that Faulkner wrote to Malcolm, and to his nephew Jimmy Falkner. He just seemed to love loving the people around him.
The details of Faulkner's romantic relationships were very interesting. His infatuation with Joan Williams was really intense. Estelle's discovery of the affair was heartbreaking. Rollyson's recount of Faulkner's reaction to Meta Carpenter's April 5, 1937 marriage to Wolfgang Rebner is quite telling. On April 14 there is an "Interoffice memo: 'One week off or illness.'{B2]}". But Faulkner doesn't return to work until April 29, a full two weeks from the 14th. Meta's marriage must have been a huge emotional blow.]
William Faulkner has been my favorite novelist for decades, partly because of his bravery (in his location and time period) in writing black-American characters as capable of intelligence, psychological strength, and hard work as their white counterparts. Rollyson provides so many new-to-me facts about Faulkner's involvement in race matters of the time. For instance,
March 27 [1951]: A letter to the MEMPHIS COMMERCIAL APPEAL opposing the execution of Willie McGee. {ESPL}
February 10 [1955]: Writes to the MEMPHIS COMMERCIAL APPEAL ridiculing a letter attacking "shiftless" Negroes. {ESPL}
March 20 [1955]: Writes to the MEMPHIS COMMERCIAL APPEAL pointing out that Mississippi schools are not "even good enough for white people," but instead of improving schools for everyone the state builds a second, inferior school system. {ESPL}
Spring [1955]: WF decides to help fund the college education of Earnest Mc-Ewen, Jr. an African American. {CR2}
Further details on Faulkner's emotional struggle with race relations in the south can be read in The Life of William Faulkner: The Past Is Never Dead, 1897-1934, The Life of William Faulkner: This Alarming Paradox, 1935-1962volume 2, and Faulkner and Love: The Women Who Shaped His Art, A Biography.
Note: The passengers who died with Dean Swift Faulkner (age 28) were Red Graham (24), Henry Graham (21), and Bud Warren (21).
Rollyson immediately comments on the presentation of this novel in the Introduction (emphasis added):
To never deviate from chronology in a biography, I wrote in THE LIFE OF WILLIAM FAULKNER, is to say that a life is just one damn thing after another. Flashbacks, flash forwards, and digressions are necessary in biography as much as they are in Faulkner's fiction, in order to understand the dynamics of characters and events. And yet biographical narratives, because they are designed as stories, inevitably discard many precious details and the feel of what it is like to live day by day. So this book is an effort to recover the diurnal Faulkner, to write in the present tense about past events as if they are happening now.
I love how when these "many precious details" are woven together that it gives the reader a fresh experience of Faulkner's life... all the highs, the lows, the fears, frustrations, and triumphs! Most Faulkner fans know that his beloved youngest brother, Dean Swift Faulkner, died in a tragic airplane crash with three other passengers. That tragedy cuts the heart with a new pain when read in the snapshots of Rollyson's biography:
November 2–3: WF and his brother Dean perform as “The Flying Faulkners” in an air show....
November 9: Dean, William, and Hal Smith fly over Oxford leafletting announcement of "Mammoth Armistice Day Pageant." {CR2}
November 10: Brother Dean is killed in plane crash.
Noveber 11, c. 10:00 a.m.: Goes into Dean's room to see his wife, Louise. He sits by her on the bed and says: "Dean's body is here. But I know you want to remember him the way he was." The casket remains closed and placed in the living room. The afternoon funeral is private. {DSF}
Dean Swift and Louise Faulkner had wed in September of 1934, were married for less than one year, and six months pregnant with their first child when he died on November 10, 1935. Rollyson presents other snapshots that demonstrate how involved Faulkner remained in the lives of his sister-in-law and niece:
March 22[1936]: Louise, Dean's wife, gives birth to a daughter and names her Dean. WF sends a telegram: "YOU TAKE CARE OF THE GIRL TILL I GET THERE TO DO IT FOR YOU."
Late January[1951]: Consults with Phil Stone about reworking his will... Other provisions are for gifts to friends and family members, an insurance policy to fund his niece Dean's education. {SS}
November 9[1958]: Attends the wedding of his niece Dean in Oxford. {B3}
William Faulkner was truly a family man. I really loved reading about his interactions with Victoria and Malcolm, who were his step-children but treated like they were his own. (I am the proud daughter of a wonderful step-father, who I just called "Dad".) Rollyson includes excerpts from letters of advice that Faulkner wrote to Malcolm, and to his nephew Jimmy Falkner. He just seemed to love loving the people around him.
The details of Faulkner's romantic relationships were very interesting. His infatuation with Joan Williams was really intense. Estelle's discovery of the affair was heartbreaking. Rollyson's recount of Faulkner's reaction to Meta Carpenter's April 5, 1937 marriage to Wolfgang Rebner is quite telling. On April 14 there is an "Interoffice memo: 'One week off or illness.'{B2]}". But Faulkner doesn't return to work until April 29, a full two weeks from the 14th. Meta's marriage must have been a huge emotional blow.]
William Faulkner has been my favorite novelist for decades, partly because of his bravery (in his location and time period) in writing black-American characters as capable of intelligence, psychological strength, and hard work as their white counterparts. Rollyson provides so many new-to-me facts about Faulkner's involvement in race matters of the time. For instance,
March 27 [1951]: A letter to the MEMPHIS COMMERCIAL APPEAL opposing the execution of Willie McGee. {ESPL}
February 10 [1955]: Writes to the MEMPHIS COMMERCIAL APPEAL ridiculing a letter attacking "shiftless" Negroes. {ESPL}
March 20 [1955]: Writes to the MEMPHIS COMMERCIAL APPEAL pointing out that Mississippi schools are not "even good enough for white people," but instead of improving schools for everyone the state builds a second, inferior school system. {ESPL}
Spring [1955]: WF decides to help fund the college education of Earnest Mc-Ewen, Jr. an African American. {CR2}
Further details on Faulkner's emotional struggle with race relations in the south can be read in The Life of William Faulkner: The Past Is Never Dead, 1897-1934, The Life of William Faulkner: This Alarming Paradox, 1935-1962volume 2, and Faulkner and Love: The Women Who Shaped His Art, A Biography.
Note: The passengers who died with Dean Swift Faulkner (age 28) were Red Graham (24), Henry Graham (21), and Bud Warren (21).
February 5, 2026
Excellent resource.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews