1897–1962

William Faulkner

Chronicler of Yoknapatawpha, which is to say of the American South as a doomed manuscript: race, land, names, and time that will not stay in order.

Bent the novel into a choir of damaged speakers and made the past a pressure in the present tense.

Primary works

Novel · 1936

Absalom, Absalom!

William Faulkner

Quentin Compson and Shreve reconstruct Thomas Sutpen’s design: a plantation, a house, a dynasty built on a repudiated son. The story is told in overlapping voices until design and incest and racial terror are one wreck.

Southern modernist epic