William Faulkner

"Faulkner" redirects here. For other uses, see Faulkner (disambiguation) and William Faulkner (disambiguation).

William Faulkner
Faulkner in 1954
Born	William Cuthbert Falkner (1897-09-25)September 25, 1897 New Albany, Mississippi, U.S.
Died	July 6, 1962(1962-07-06) (aged 64) Byhalia, Mississippi, U.S.
Education	University of Mississippi (no degree)
Notable works	The Sound and the Fury (1929) As I Lay Dying (1930) Light in August (1932) Absalom, Absalom! (1936)
Notable awards	Nobel Prize in Literature (1949) National Book Award (1951, 1955) Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1955, 1963)
Spouse	Estelle Oldham ​ (m. 1929)​
Signature

William Cuthbert Faulkner (/ˈfɔːknər/; September 25, 1897 – July 6, 1962) was an American writer. He is best known for his novels and short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, a stand-in for Lafayette County where he spent most of his life. A Nobel laureate, Faulkner is one of the most celebrated writers of American literature and often is considered the greatest writer of Southern literature.

Faulkner was born in New Albany, Mississippi, and raised in Oxford, Mississippi. During World War I, he joined the Royal Canadian Air Force, but did not serve in combat. Returning to Oxford, he attended the University of Mississippi for three semesters before dropping out. He moved to New Orleans, where he wrote his first novel Soldiers' Pay (1925). He went back to Oxford and wrote Sartoris (1927), his first work set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County. In 1929, he published The Sound and the Fury. The following year, he wrote As I Lay Dying. Later that decade, he wrote Light in August, Absalom, Absalom! and The Wild Palms. He also worked as a screenwriter, contributing to Howard Hawks's To Have and Have Not and The Big Sleep, adapted from Raymond Chandler's novel. The former film, adapted from Ernest Hemingway's novel, is the only film with contributions by two Nobel laureates.

Faulkner's reputation grew following publication of Malcolm Cowley's The Portable Faulkner, and he was awarded the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature for "his powerful and unique contribution to the modern American novel." He is the only Mississippi-born Nobel laureate. Two of his works, A Fable (1954) and The Reivers (1962), won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Faulkner died from a heart attack on July 6, 1962, following a fall from his horse the month before. Ralph Ellison called him "the greatest artist the South has produced".

Life

Childhood and heritage

Faulkner was influenced by stories of William Clark Falkner, his paternal great-grandfather and namesake.

Faulkner was born on September 25, 1897, in New Albany, Mississippi, the first of four sons of Murry Cuthbert Falkner and Maud Butler. His family was upper middle-class, but "not quite of the old feudal cotton aristocracy". After Maud rejected Murry's plan to become a rancher in Texas, the family moved to Oxford, Mississippi in 1902, where Faulkner's father established a livery stable and hardware store before becoming the University of Mississippi's business manager. Except for short periods elsewhere, Faulkner lived in Oxford for the rest of his life.

Faulkner spent his boyhood listening to stories told to him by his elders — stories that spanned the Civil War, slavery, the Ku Klux Klan, and the Faulkner family. Young William was greatly influenced by the history of his family and the region in which he lived. Mississippi marked his sense of humor, his sense of the tragic position of "black and white" Americans, his characterization of Southern characters, and his timeless themes, including fiercely intelligent people who are dwelling behind the façades of good ol' boys and simpletons. He was particularly influenced by stories of his great-grandfather William Clark Falkner, who had become a near legendary figure in North Mississippi. Born into poverty, the elder Falkner was a strict disciplinarian and was a Confederate colonel. Tried and acquitted twice on charges of murder, he became a member of the Mississippi House and became a part-owner of a railroad before being murdered by his co-owner. Faulkner incorporated many aspects of his great-grandfather's biography into his later works.

Faulkner initially excelled in school and skipped the second grade. However, beginning somewhere in the fourth and fifth grades, he became a quieter and more withdrawn child. He occasionally played truant and became indifferent about schoolwork. Instead, he took an interest in studying the history of Mississippi. The decline of his performance in school continued, and Faulkner wound up repeating the eleventh and twelfth grades, never graduating from high school. As a teenager in Oxford, Faulkner dated Estelle Oldham (1897–1972), the popular daughter of Major Lemuel and Lida Oldham, and he also believed he would marry her. However, Estelle dated other boys during their romance, and, in 1918, Cornell Franklin (five years Faulkner's senior) proposed marriage to her before Faulkner did. She accepted.

Trip to the North and early writings

Faulkner as a cadet in the Canadian RAF, 1918

When he was 17, Faulkner met Phil Stone, who became an important early influence on his writing. Stone was four years his senior and came from one of Oxford's older families; he was passionate about literature and had bachelor's degrees from Yale and the University of Mississippi. Stone read and was impressed by some of Faulkner's early poetry, becoming one of the first to recognize and encourage Faulkner's talent. Stone mentored the young Faulkner, introducing him to the works of writers like James Joyce, who influenced Faulkner's own writing. In his early 20s, Faulkner gave poems and short stories he had written to Stone in hopes of their being published. Stone sent these to publishers, but they were uniformly rejected. In spring 1918, Faulkner traveled to live with Stone at Yale, his first trip to the North. Through Stone, Faulkner met writers like Sherwood Anderson, Robert Frost, and Ezra Pound.

Faulkner attempted to join the US Army. There are accounts of this that indicate he was rejected for being under weight and his short stature of 5'5". Other accounts purport to prove that the aforementioned accounts are false.Although he initially planned to join the British Army in hopes of being commissioned as an officer, Faulkner then joined the Canadian RAF with a forged letter of reference and left Yale to receive training in Toronto. Records indicate that Faulkner was never actually a member of the British Royal Flying Corps and never saw active service during the First World War. Despite claiming so in his letters, Faulkner did not receive cockpit training or ever fly. Returning to Oxford in December 1918, Faulkner told acquaintances false war-stories and even faked a war wound.

In 1918, Faulkner's surname changed from "Falkner" to "Faulkner". According to one story, a careless typesetter made an error. When the misprint appeared on the title page of his first book, Faulkner was asked whether he wanted the change. He supposedly replied, "Either way suits me." In adolescence, Faulkner began writing poetry almost exclusively. He did not write his first novel until 1925. His literary influences are deep and wide. He once stated that he modeled his early writing on the Romantic era in late 18th- and early 19th-century England.

He attended the University of Mississippi, enrolling in 1919, studying for three semesters before dropping out in November 1920. Faulkner joined the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity, and pursued his dream to become a writer. He skipped classes often and received a "D" grade in English. However, some of his poems were published in campus publications. In 1922, his poem "Portrait" was published in the New Orleans literary magazine Double Dealer. The magazine published his "New Orleans" short story collection three years later. After dropping out, he took a series of odd jobs: at a New York City bookstore, as a carpenter in Oxford, and as the Ole Miss postmaster. He resigned from the post office with the declaration: "I will be damned if I propose to be at the beck and call of every itinerant scoundrel who has two cents to invest in a postage stamp."

New Orleans and early novels

Publicity photographs of Faulkner, summer 1924

During part of his time in New Orleans, Faulkner lived in a house in the French Quarter (pictured center yellow).

While most writers of Faulkner's generation traveled to and lived in Europe, Faulkner remained writing in the United States. Faulkner spent the first half of 1925 in New Orleans, Louisiana, where many bohemian artists and writers lived, specifically in the French Quarter where Faulkner lived beginning in March. During his time in New Orleans, Faulkner's focus drifted from poetry to prose and his literary style made a marked transition from Victorian to modernist. The Times-Picayune published several of his short works of prose.

After being directly influenced by Sherwood Anderson, Faulkner wrote his first novel, Soldiers' Pay, in New Orleans. Soldiers' Pay and his other early works were written in a style similar to contemporaries Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, at times nearly exactly appropriating phrases. Anderson assisted in the publication of Soldiers' Pay and Mosquitoes by recommending them to his publisher.

The miniature house at 624 Pirate's Alley, just around the corner from St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans, is now the site of Faulkner House Books, where it also serves as the headquarters of the Pirate's Alley Faulkner Society.

During the summer of 1927, Faulkner wrote his first novel set in his fictional Yoknapatawpha County, titled Flags in the Dust. This novel drew heavily from the traditions and history of the South, in which Faulkner had been engrossed in his youth. He was extremely proud of the novel upon its completion and he believed it a significant step up from his previous two novels—however, when submitted for publication to Boni & Liveright, it was rejected. Faulkner was devastated by this rejection but he eventually allowed his literary agent, Ben Wasson, to edit the text, and the novel was published in 1929 as Sartoris. The work was notable in that it was his first novel that dealt with the Civil War rather than the contemporary emphasis on World War I and its legacy.

The Sound and the Fury

The Sound and the Fury (1929)

In autumn 1928, just after his 31st birthday, Faulkner began working on The Sound and the Fury. He started by writing three short stories about a group of children with the last name Compson, but soon began to feel that the characters he had created might be better suited for a full-length novel. Perhaps as a result of disappointment in the initial rejection of Flags in the Dust, Faulkner had now become indifferent to his publishers and wrote this novel in a much more experimental style. In describing the writing process for this work, Faulkner later said, "One day I seemed to shut the door between me and all publisher's addresses and book lists. I said to myself, 'Now I can write.'" After its completion, Faulkner insisted that Wasson not do any editing or add any punctuation for clarity.

1929–1931

In 1929, Faulkner married Estelle Oldham, with Andrew Kuhn serving as best man at the wedding. Estelle brought with her two children from her previous marriage to Cornell Franklin and Faulkner hoped to support his new family as a writer. Faulkner and Estelle later had a daughter, Jill, in 1933. He began writing As I Lay Dying in 1929 while working night shifts at the University of Mississippi Power House. The novel was published in 1930.

Beginning in 1930, Faulkner sent some of his short stories to various national magazines. Several of these were published and brought him enough income to buy a house in Oxford for his family, which he named Rowan Oak. Fueled by a desire to make money, Faulkner wrote Sanctuary. With limited royalties from his work, he published short stories in magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post to supplement his income.

Light in August and Hollywood years

Light in August (1932)

By 1932, Faulkner was in need of money. He asked Wasson to sell the serialization rights for his newly completed novel, Light in August, to a magazine for $5,000, but none accepted the offer. Then MGM Studios offered Faulkner work as a screenwriter in Hollywood. Faulkner was not an avid movie goer and had reservations about working in the movie industry. As André Bleikasten comments, he "was in dire need of money and had no idea how to get it…So he went to Hollywood." It has been noted that authors like Faulkner were not always hired for their writing prowess but "to enhance the prestige of the …writers who hired them." He arrived in Culver City, California, in May 1932. The job began a sporadic relationship with moviemaking and with California, which was difficult but he endured in order to earn "a consistent salary that supported his family back home."

Initially, he declared a desire to work on Mickey Mouse cartoons, not realizing that they were produced by Walt Disney Productions and not MGM. His first screenplay was for Today We Live, an adaptation of his short story "Turnabout", which received a mixed response. He then wrote a screen adaptation of Sartoris that was never produced. From 1932 to 1954, Faulkner worked on around 50 films. In early 1944, Faulkner wrote a screenplay adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's novel To Have and Have Not. The film was the first starring Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart. Bogart and Bacall would star in Hawks's The Big Sleep, another film Faulkner worked on.

Faulkner was highly critical of what he found in Hollywood, and he wrote letters that were "scathing in tone, painting a miserable portrait of a literary artist imprisoned in a cultural Babylon." Many scholars have brought attention to the dilemma he experienced and that the predicament had caused him serious unhappiness. In Hollywood he worked with director Howard Hawks, with whom he quickly developed a friendship, as they both enjoyed drinking and hunting. Howard Hawks' brother, William Hawks, became Faulkner's Hollywood agent. Faulkner continued to find reliable work as a screenwriter from the 1930s to the 1950s. While staying in Hollywood, Faulkner adopted a "vagrant" lifestyle, living in brief stints in hotels like the Garden of Allah Hotel and frequenting the bar at the Roosevelt Hotel and the Musso & Frank Grill where he was said to have regularly gone behind the bar to mix his own Mint Juleps. He had an extramarital affair with Hawks' secretary and script girl, Meta Carpenter.

With the onset of World War II, in 1942, Faulkner tried to join the United States Air Force but was rejected. He instead worked on local civil defense. The war drained Faulkner of his enthusiasm. He described the war as "bad for writing". Amid this creative slowdown, in 1943, Faulkner began work on a new novel that merged World War I's Unknown Soldier with the Passion of Christ. Published over a decade later as A Fable, it won the 1954 Pulitzer Prize. The award for A Fable was a controversial political choice. The jury had selected Milton Lott's The Last Hunt for the prize, but Pulitzer Prize Administrator Professor John Hohenberg convinced the Pulitzer board that Faulkner was long overdue for the award, despite A Fable being a lesser work of his, and the board overrode the jury's selection, much to the disgust of its members.

By the time of The Portable Faulkner's publication, most of his novels had been out of print.

Nobel Prize and later years

Faulkner in 1954

Faulkner was awarded the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature for "his powerful and artistically unique contribution to the modern American novel". It was awarded at the following year's banquet along with the 1950 Prize to Bertrand Russell.

When Faulkner visited Stockholm in December 1950 to receive the Nobel Prize, he met Else Jonsson (1912–1996), who was the widow of journalist Thorsten Jonsson (1910–1950). Jonsson, a reporter for Dagens Nyheter from 1943 to 1946, had interviewed Faulkner in 1946 and introduced his works to Swedish readers. Faulkner and Else had an affair that lasted until the end of 1953. At the banquet where they met in 1950, publisher Tor Bonnier introduced Else as the widow of the man responsible for Faulkner winning the Nobel Prize.

Faulkner's Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech on the immortality of the artists, although brief, contained a number of allusions and references to other literary works. However, Faulkner detested the fame and glory that resulted from his recognition. His aversion was so great that his 17-year-old daughter learned of the Nobel Prize only when she was called to the principal's office during the school day. He began by saying: "I feel that this award was not made to me as a man, but to my work – a life's work in the agony and sweat of the human spirit, not for glory and least of all for profit, but to create out of the materials of the human spirit something which did not exist before. So this award is only mine in trust. It will not be difficult to find a dedication for the money part of it commensurate with the purpose and significance of its origin." He donated part of his Nobel money "to establish a fund to support and encourage new fiction writers", eventually resulting in the William Faulkner Foundation (1960–1970).

In 1951, Faulkner received the Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur medal from the government of France.

Faulkner served as the first Writer-in-Residence at the University of Virginia at Charlottesville from February to June 1957 and again in 1958.

In 1961, Faulkner began writing his nineteenth and final novel, The Reivers. The novel is a nostalgic reminiscence, in which an elderly grandfather relates a humorous episode in which he and two boys stole a car to drive to a Memphis bordello. In summer 1961, he finished the first draft. During this time, he injured himself in a series of falls.

On June 17, 1962, Faulkner suffered a serious injury in a fall from his horse, which led to thrombosis. He suffered a fatal heart attack on July 6, 1962, at the age of 64, at Wright's Sanatorium in Byhalia, Mississippi. Faulkner is buried with his family in St. Peter's Cemetery in Oxford.

Writing

One of Faulkner's typewriters

From the early 1920s to the outbreak of World War II, Faulkner published 13 novels and many short stories. This body of work formed the basis of his reputation and earned him the Nobel Prize at age 52. Faulkner's prodigious output include celebrated novels such as The Sound and the Fury (1929), As I Lay Dying (1930), Light in August (1932), and Absalom, Absalom! (1936). He was also a prolific writer of short stories.

Faulkner's first short story collection, These 13 (1931), includes many of his most acclaimed (and most frequently anthologized) stories, including "A Rose for Emily", "Red Leaves", "That Evening Sun", and "Dry September". He set many of his short stories and novels in Yoknapatawpha County—which was based on and nearly geographically identical to Lafayette County (of which his hometown of Oxford, Mississippi, is the county seat). Yoknapatawpha was Faulkner's "postage stamp", and the bulk of work that it represents is widely considered by critics to amount to one of the most monumental fictional creations in the history of literature. Three of his novels, The Hamlet, The Town and The Mansion, known collectively as the Snopes trilogy, document the town of Jefferson and its environs, as an extended family headed by Flem Snopes insinuates itself into the lives and psyches of the general populace. Yoknapatawpha County has been described as a mental landscape.

His short story "A Rose for Emily" was his first story published in a major magazine, the Forum, but received little attention from the public. After revisions and reissues, it gained popularity and is now considered one of his best.

Faulkner wrote two volumes of poetry which were published in small printings, The Marble Faun (1924), and A Green Bough (1933), and a collection of mystery stories, Knight's Gambit (1949).

Style and technique

The peacefullest words. Peacefullest words. Non fui. Sum. Fui. Non sum. Somewhere I heard bells once. Mississippi or Massachusetts. I was. I am not. Massachusetts or Mississippi. Shreve has a bottle in his trunk. Aren't you even going to open it Mr and Mrs Jason Richmond Compson announce the Three times. Days. Aren't you even going to open it marriage of their daughter Candace that liquor teaches you to confuse the means with the end I am. Drink. I was not. Let us sell Benjy's pasture so that Quentin may go to Harvard and I may knock my bones together and together. I will be dead in. Was it one year Caddy said.

— An example of Faulkner's prose in The Sound and the Fury (1929)

Carl Rollyson has argued that, "as an artist," Faulkner believed "he should be above worldly concerns and even morality." Faulkner was known for his experimental style with meticulous attention to diction and cadence. In contrast to the minimalist understatement of his contemporary Ernest Hemingway, Faulkner made frequent use of stream of consciousness in his writing, and wrote often highly emotional, subtle, cerebral, complex, and sometimes Gothic or grotesque stories of a wide variety of characters including former slaves or descendants of slaves, poor white, agrarian, or working-class Southerners, and Southern aristocrats.

Faulkner's contemporary critical reception was mixed, with The New York Times noting that many critics regarded his work as "raw slabs of pseudorealism that had relatively little merit as serious writing". His style has been described as "impenetrably convoluted".

In an interview with The Paris Review in 1956, Faulkner remarked:

Let the writer take up surgery or bricklaying if he is interested in technique. There is no mechanical way to get the writing done, no shortcut. The young writer would be a fool to follow a theory. Teach yourself by your own mistakes; people learn only by error. The good artist believes that nobody is good enough to give him advice. He has supreme vanity. No matter how much he admires the old writer, he wants to beat him.

In that same interview, Jean Stein says "Some people say they can't understand your writing, even after they read it two or three times. What approach would you suggest for them?" Faulkner replies: "Read it four times."

When asked about his influences, Faulkner says "the books I read are the ones I knew and loved when I was a young man and to which I return as you do to old friends: the Old Testament, Dickens, Conrad, Cervantes, Don Quixote—I read that every year, as some do the Bible. Flaubert, Balzac—he created an intact world of his own, a bloodstream running through twenty books—Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Shakespeare. I read Melville occasionally and, of the poets, Marlowe, Campion, Jonson, Herrick, Donne, Keats, and Shelley."

Like his contemporaries James Joyce and T. S. Eliot, Faulkner uses stories and themes from classic literature in a modern context. Joyce, in Ulysses, modeled the journey of his hero Leopold Bloom on the adventures of Odysseus. Eliot, in his essay "Ulysses, Order and Myth", wrote that "In using the myth, in manipulating a continuous parallel between contemporaneity and antiquity, Mr. Joyce is pursuing a method which others must pursue after him. They will not be imitators, any more than the scientist who uses the discoveries of an Einstein in pursuing his own, independent, further investigations. It is simply a way of controlling, of ordering, of giving a shape and a significance to the immense panorama of futility and anarchy which is contemporary history." Faulkner's allusions to earlier authors are evidenced by his titles; the title of The Sound and the Fury comes from Macbeth's soliloquy: "it is a tale/ Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,/ Signifying nothing." The opening of the novel is told from the perspective of the intellectually disabled Benjy Compson. The title of As I Lay Dying comes from Homer's Odyssey, where it is spoken by Agamemnon in the past tense: "As I lay dying, the woman with the dog's eyes would not close my eyes as I descended into Hades." Faulkner's novel, in contrast, is narrated in the present tense. The title of Go Down, Moses is from an African American spiritual, and the book is dedicated "To Mammy / Caroline Barr / Mississippi / [1840–1940] Who was born in slavery and who gave to my family a fidelity without stint or calculation of recompense and to my childhood an immeasurable devotion and love."

Themes and analysis

Faulkner was against forced desegregation and argued that civil rights activists should "go slow" and be more moderate in their positions. The essayist and novelist James Baldwin was highly critical of his views around integration. Ralph Ellison said that "No one in American fiction has done so much to explore the types of Negro personality as has Faulkner."

The New Critics became interested in Faulkner's work, with Cleanth Brooks writing The Yoknapatawpha Country and Michael Millgate writing The Achievement of William Faulkner. Since then, critics have looked at Faulkner's work using other approaches, such as feminist and psychoanalytic methods. Faulkner's works have been placed within the literary traditions of modernism and the Southern Renaissance.

French philosopher Albert Camus wrote that Faulkner successfully imported classical tragedy into the 20th century through his "interminably unwinding spiral of words and sentences that conducts the speaker to the abyss of sufferings buried in the past".

Legacy

Faulkner's home Rowan Oak is maintained by the University of Mississippi.

A Parisian street named for Faulkner

Influence

Faulkner is widely considered a towering figure in Southern literature; Flannery O'Connor wrote that "the presence alone of Faulkner in our midst makes a great difference in what the writer can and cannot permit himself to do. Nobody wants his mule and wagon stalled on the same track the Dixie Limited is roaring down". In 1943, while working at Warner Brothers, Faulkner wrote a letter of encouragement to a young Mississippi writer, Eudora Welty. According to critic and translator Valerie Miles, Faulkner's influence on Latin American fiction is considerable, with fictional worlds created by Gabriel García Márquez (Macondo) and Juan Carlos Onetti (Santa Maria) being "very much in the vein of" Yoknapatawpha, and that "Carlos Fuentes's The Death of Artemio Cruz wouldn't exist if not for As I Lay Dying". Fuentes himself cited Faulkner as one of the writers most important to him. Faulkner had great influence on Mario Vargas Llosa, particularly on his early novels The Time of the Hero, The Green House and Conversation in The Cathedral. Vargas Llosa has claimed that during his student years he learned more from Yoknapatawpha than from classes. Jorge Luis Borges translated Faulkner's The Wild Palms into Spanish.

The works of William Faulkner are a clear influence on the French novelist Claude Simon, and the Portuguese novelist António Lobo Antunes. Cormac McCarthy has been described as a "disciple of Faulkner".

In The Elements of Style, E. B. White cites Faulkner: "If the experiences of Walter Mitty, of Dick Diver, of Rabbit Angstrom have seemed for the moment real to countless readers, if in reading Faulkner we have almost the sense of inhabiting Yoknapatawpha County during the decline of the South, it is because the details used are definite, the terms concrete." Later, Faulkner's style is contrasted with that of Hemingway.

After his death, Estelle and their daughter, Jill, lived at Rowan Oak until Estelle's death in 1972. The property was sold to the University of Mississippi that same year. The house and furnishings are maintained much as they were in Faulkner's day. Faulkner's scribblings are preserved on the wall, including the day-by-day outline covering a week he wrote on the walls of his small study to help him keep track of the plot twists in his novel A Fable. Some of Faulkner's Nobel Prize winnings went to establish the William Faulkner Foundation. It gave an Award for Notable First Novel; winners included John Knowles's A Separate Peace, Thomas Pynchon's V., Cormac McCarthy's The Orchard Keeper, Robert Coover's The Origin of the Brunists and Frederick Exley's A Fan's Notes. Starting in 1981, this became the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, founded by, among others, Mary Lee Settle as an alternative to the National Book Award.

Some of Faulkner's works have been adapted into films. They have received a polarized response, with many critics contending that Faulkner's works are "unfilmable". Faulkner's final work, The Reivers, was adapted into a 1969 film starring Steve McQueen. Tommy Lee Jones's neo-Western film The Three Burials of Melquiades Estada was partly based on Faulkner's As I Lay Dying.

During the Nazi Occupation of France in World War II, the German occupiers banned American literature. A black-market of American books emerged, and reading works by Hemingway and Faulkner became an act of defiance. Faulkner remains especially popular in France, where a 2009 poll found him the second most popular writer (after only Marcel Proust). Contemporary Jean-Paul Sartre stated that "for young people in France, Faulkner is a god", and Albert Camus made a stage adaptation of Faulkner's Requiem for a Nun. In Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless, Patricia (Jean Seberg) quotes The Wild Palms: "Between grief and nothing, I will take grief."

He also won the U.S. National Book Award twice, for Collected Stories in 1951 and A Fable in 1955.

The United States Postal Service issued a 22-cent postage stamp in his honor on August 3, 1987. Faulkner had once served as Postmaster at the University of Mississippi, and in his letter of resignation in 1923 wrote:

As long as I live under the capitalistic system, I expect to have my life influenced by the demands of moneyed people. But I will be damned if I propose to be at the beck and call of every itinerant scoundrel who has two cents to invest in a postage stamp. This, sir, is my resignation.

On October 10, 2019, a Mississippi Writers Trail historical marker was installed at Rowan Oak in Oxford, Mississippi honoring the contributions of William Faulkner to the American literary landscape.

Collections

The manuscripts of most of Faulkner's works, correspondence, personal papers, and over 300 books from his working library reside at the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia, where he spent much of his time in his final years. The library also houses some of the writer's personal effects and the papers of major Faulkner associates and scholars, such as his biographer Joseph Blotner, bibliographer Linton Massey, and Random House editor Albert Erskine.

Southeast Missouri State University, where the Center for Faulkner Studies is located, also owns a generous collection of Faulkner materials, including first editions, manuscripts, letters, photographs, artwork, and many materials pertaining to Faulkner's time in Hollywood. The university possesses many personal files and letters kept by Joseph Blotner, along with books and letters that once belonged to Malcolm Cowley. The university achieved the collection due to a generous donation by Louis Daniel Brodsky, a collector of Faulkner materials, in 1989.

Further significant Faulkner materials reside at the University of Mississippi, the Harry Ransom Center, and the New York Public Library.

The Random House records at Columbia University also include letters by and to Faulkner.

In 1966, the United States Military Academy dedicated a William Faulkner Room in its library.

Selected list of works

Main article: William Faulkner bibliography

• The Sound and the Fury (1929)
• As I Lay Dying (1930)
• Sanctuary (1931)
• Light in August (1932)
• Absalom, Absalom! (1936)
• The Wild Palms (1939)
• Go Down, Moses (1942)
• Intruder in the Dust (1948)
• A Fable (1954)
• The Reivers (1962)

Filmography

• Flesh (1932)
• Today We Live (1933)
• The Story of Temple Drake (1933)
• Submarine Patrol (1938)
• Air Force (1943)
• To Have and Have Not (1944)
• The Big Sleep (1946)
• Land of the Pharaohs (1955)

Notes and references

Citations and references

"Oppression and Its Effects on the Individual and Society in Faulkner's 'A Rose for Emily'", El-Ruha 5th International Conference on Social Sciences Proceedings Book, Eds. Fethi Demir&Mehmet Recep Taş. ISBN 978-605-80857-7-0. Oct 15, 2019. Tunisia. Pg. 31-38. www.elruha.org.

Works cited

• Bartunek, C. J. (Summer 2017). "The Wasteland Revisited: William Faulkner's First Year in Hollywood". South Atlantic Review. 82 (2): 97–116. JSTOR 90013647. Archived from the original on June 25, 2021. Retrieved June 19, 2021.
• Camus, Albert (1970). Thody, Philip (ed.). Lyrical and Critical Essays. Translated by Kennedy, Ellen Conroy. Vintange. ISBN 0394708520.
• Capps, Jack L. (Spring 1966). "West Point's William Faulkner Room". The Georgia Review. 20 (1): 3–8. JSTOR 41396230. Archived from the original on June 25, 2021. Retrieved June 19, 2021.
• William Faulkner: Novels 1930–1935 (Joseph Blotner and Noel Polk, ed.) (Library of America, 1985) ISBN 978-0-940450-26-4
• William Faulkner: Novels 1936–1940 (Joseph Blotner and Noel Polk, eds.) (Library of America, 1990) ISBN 978-0-940450-55-4
• William Faulkner: Novels 1942–1954 (Joseph Blotner and Noel Polk, eds.) (Library of America, 1994) ISBN 978-0-940450-85-1
• William Faulkner: Novels 1957–1962 (Noel Polk, ed., with notes by Joseph Blotner) (Library of America, 1999) ISBN 978-1-883011-69-7
• William Faulkner: Novels 1926–1929 (Joseph Blotner and Noel Polk, eds.) (Library of America, 2006) ISBN 978-1-931082-89-1
• The Portable Faulkner, ed. Malcolm Cowley (Viking Press, 1946). ISBN 978-0-14-243728-5
• Blotner, Joseph (1974). Faulkner: A Biography (2 vols). Random House.
• Blotner, Joseph. Faulkner: A Biography. New York: Random House, 1984.
• Fowler, Doreen, Abadie, Ann. Faulkner and Popular Culture: Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha. Univ. Press of Mississippi, 1990 ISBN 0-87805-434-0, ISBN 978-0-87805-434-3
• Jaillant, Lise. "'I'm Afraid I've Got Involved With a Nut': New Faulkner Letters." Southern Literary Journal 47.1 (2014): 98–114. Archived May 29, 2021, at the Wayback Machine
• Kerr, Elizabeth Margaret, and Kerr, Michael M. William Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha: A Kind of Keystone in the Universe. Fordham Univ Press, 1985 ISBN 0-8232-1135-5, ISBN 978-0-8232-1135-7
• Koch, Benjamin (Winter 2007). "The French Quarter Apprentice: William Faulkner's Modernist Evolution". Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association. 48 (1): 55–68. JSTOR 4234243. Archived from the original on June 25, 2021. Retrieved June 18, 2021.
• Liénard-Yeterian, Marie. 'Faulkner et le cinéma', Paris: Michel Houdiard Editeur, 2010.ISBN 978-2-35692-037-9
• Minter, David L. (1980). William Faulkner, his life and work. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 9780801823473.
• McKay, David (Fall 2009). "Faulkner's First War: Conflict, Mimesis, and the Resonance of Defeat". South Central Review. 26 (3). The Johns Hopkins University Press: 119–130. doi:10.1353/scr.0.0062. JSTOR 40645990. S2CID 144583260. Archived from the original on June 25, 2021. Retrieved June 18, 2021.
• Phillips, Gene D. (1980). Hemingway and Film. New York, NY: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co. ISBN 978-0804426954.
• Sensibar, Judith L. The Origins of Faulkner's Art. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1984. ISBN 0-292-79020-1
• Sensibar, Judith L. Faulkner and Love: The Women Who Shaped His Art, A Biography. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008. ISBN 978-0-300-16568-5
• Sensibar, Judith L. Vision in Spring. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1984. ISBN 0-292-78712-X.
• O'Connor, William Van (1959). William Faulkner. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
• Parini, Jay (2004). One Matchless Time: A Life of William Faulkner. New York: HarperCollins. pp. 22–29. ISBN 0-06-621072-0.
• Pikoulis, John (1982). The Art of William Faulkner. Totowa, New Jersey: Barnes & Noble Books. ISBN 9780333300947.
• Rosella Mamoli Zorzi (2000). William Faulkner in Venice : proceedings of the International Conference Language, Stylistics, Translations. Venice: Marsilio. p. 347. ISBN 9788831776264. OCLC 634327206. Archived from the original on September 8, 2019. Retrieved August 20, 2020.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
• Rife, David (March 1983). "Rex Stout and William Faulkner's Nobel Prize Speech". Journal of Modern Literature. 10 (1). Indiana University Press: 151–152. JSTOR 3831202. Archived from the original on June 25, 2021. Retrieved June 18, 2021.
• Zeitlin, Michael (Spring 2016). "Faulkner and the Royal Air Force Canada, 1918". The Faulkner Journal. 30 (1). Johns Hopkins University: 15–38. doi:10.1353/fau.2016.0009. JSTOR 44578811. S2CID 165335050. Archived from the original on June 24, 2021. Retrieved June 17, 2021.
• Bleikasten, André (2017). William Faulkner: A Life through Novels. Bloomington: Indiana University. p. 218. ISBN 9780253023322. Archived from the original on May 29, 2021. Retrieved February 13, 2020.

Further reading

• Meriwether, James B., ed. (1980). Lion in the Garden: Interviews with William Faulkner, 1926–1962. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 978-0803230682.

External links

• William Faulkner Papers at the University of Virginia
• William Faulkner Collection at the Harry Ransom Center
• Works by William Faulkner in eBook form at Standard Ebooks
• Works by William Faulkner at Faded Page (Canada)
• Works by or about William Faulkner at the Internet Archive
• Works by William Faulkner at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
• William Faulkner at IMDb
• Digital Yoknapatawpha
• Faulkner at Virginia: An Audio Archive
• William Faulkner Family Collection (MUM00125)

National Book Award for Fiction
Awarded for	Outstanding literary work by U.S. citizens.
Location	New York City
First awarded	1935
Website	National Book Foundation

The National Book Award for Fiction is one of five annual National Book Awards, which recognize outstanding literary work by United States citizens. Since 1987, the awards have been administered and presented by the National Book Foundation, but they are awards "by writers to writers." The panelists are five "writers who are known to be doing great work in their genre or field."

General fiction was one of four categories when the awards were re-established in 1950. For several years beginning 1980, prior to the Foundation, there were multiple fiction categories: hardcover, paperback, first novel or first work of fiction; from 1981 to 1983 hardcover and paperback children's fiction; and only in 1980 five awards to mystery fiction, science fiction, and western fiction. When the Foundation celebrated the 60th postwar awards in 2009, all but three of the 77 previous winners in fiction categories were in print. The 77 included all eight 1980 winners but excluded the 1981 to 1983 children's fiction winners.

The award recognizes one book written by a U.S. citizen and published in the U.S. from December 1 to November 30. The National Book Foundation accepts nominations from publishers until June 15, requires mailing nominated books to the panelists by August 1, and announces five finalists in October. The winner is announced on the day of the final ceremony in November. The award is $10,000 and a bronze sculpture; other finalists get $1,000, a medal, and a citation written by the panel.

Authors who have won the award more than once include William Faulkner, John Updike, William Gaddis, Jesmyn Ward, and Philip Roth, each having won on two occasions along with numerous other nominations. Saul Bellow won the award in three decades (1954, 1965, 1971) and is the only author to have won the National Book Award for Fiction three times.

National Book Awards for Fiction

From 1935 to 1941, there were six annual awards for general fiction and the "Bookseller Discovery" or "Most Original Book" was sometimes a novel. From 1980 to 1985, there were six annual awards to first novels or first works of fiction. In 1980 there were five awards to mystery, western, or science fiction. There have been many awards to fiction in the Children's or Young People's categories.

Honorees, general fiction

This list covers only the post-war awards (pre-war awards follow) to general fiction for adult readers: one annual winner from 1950 except two undifferentiated winners 1973 to 1975, dual hardcover and paperback winners 1980 to 1983.

For each award, the winner is listed first followed by the finalists. Unless otherwise noted, the year represents the year the award was given for books published in the prior year. Thus, the award year 1950 is for books published in 1949.

1950s

National Book Award for Fiction winners and finalists, 1950-1959

Year	Author	Title	Result	Ref.
1950	Nelson Algren	The Man with the Golden Arm	Winner
	No runners up were recognized. There were five honorable mentions in the non-fiction category only.
1951	William Faulkner	Collected Stories of William Faulkner	Winner
	No runners up were recognized.
1952	James Jones	From Here to Eternity	Winner
	James Agee	The Morning Watch	Finalist
	Truman Capote	The Grass Harp	Finalist
	William Faulkner	Requiem for a Nun	Finalist
	Caroline Gordon	The Strange Children	Finalist
	Thomas Mann	The Holy Sinner	Finalist
	John P. Marquand	Melville Goodwin USA	Finalist
	J. D. Salinger	The Catcher in the Rye	Finalist
	William Styron	Lie Down in Darkness	Finalist
	Jessamyn West	The Witch Diggers	Finalist
	Herman Wouk	The Caine Mutiny	Finalist
1953	Ralph Ellison	Invisible Man	Winner
	Isabel Bolton	Many Mansions	Finalist
	H. L. Davis	Winds of Morning	Finalist
	Thomas Gallagher	The Gathering Darkness	Finalist
	Ernest Hemingway	The Old Man and the Sea	Finalist
	Carl Jonas	Jefferson Selleck	Finalist
	Peter Martin	The Landsman	Finalist
	May Sarton	A Shower of Summer Days	Finalist
	Jean Stafford	The Catherine Wheel	Finalist
	John Steinbeck	East of Eden	Finalist
	William Carlos Williams	The Build-Up	Finalist
1954	Saul Bellow	The Adventures of Augie March	Winner
	No runners up were recognized.
1955	William Faulkner	A Fable	Winner
	Harriette Arnow	The Dollmaker	Finalist
	Hamilton Basso	The View from Pompey's Head	Finalist
	Davis Grubb	The Night of the Hunter	Finalist
	Randall Jarrell	Pictures from an Institution	Finalist
	Milton Lott	The Last Hunt	Finalist
	Frederick Manfred	Lord Grizzly	Finalist
	William March	The Bad Seed	Finalist
	Wright Morris	The Huge Season	Finalist
	Frank Rooney	The Courts of Memory	Finalist
	John Steinbeck	Sweet Thursday	Finalist
1956	John O'Hara	Ten North Frederick	Winner
	Paul Bowles	The Spider's House	Finalist
	Shirley Ann Grau	The Black Prince, and Other Stories	Finalist
	MacKinlay Kantor	Andersonville	Finalist
	Flannery O'Connor	A Good Man is Hard to Find	Finalist
	May Sarton	Faithful Are the Wounds	Finalist
	Robert Penn Warren	Band of Angels	Finalist
	Eudora Welty	The Bride of the Innisfallen	Finalist
	Herman Wouk	Marjorie Morningstar	Finalist
1957	Wright Morris	The Field of Vision	Winner
	Nelson Algren	A Walk on the Wild Side	Finalist
	James Baldwin	Giovanni's Room	Finalist
	Saul Bellow	Seize the Day	Finalist
	B. J. Chute	Greenwillow	Finalist
	A. B. Guthrie	These Thousand Hills	Finalist
	John Hersey	A Single Pebble	Finalist
	John Hunt	Generations of Men	Finalist
	Edwin O'Connor	The Last Hurrah	Finalist
	J. F. Powers	The Presence of Grace	Finalist
	Elizabeth Spencer	The Voice at the Back Door	Finalist
	James Thurber	Further Fables for Our Time	Finalist
1958	John Cheever	The Wapshot Chronicle	Winner
	James Agee	A Death in the Family	Finalist
	James Gould Cozzens	By Love Possessed	Finalist
	Mark Harris	Something About a Soldier	Finalist
	Andrew Nelson Lytle	The Velvet Horn	Finalist
	Bernard Malamud	The Assistant	Finalist
	Wright Morris	Love Among the Cannibals	Finalist
	Vladimir Nabokov	Pnin	Finalist
	Ayn Rand	Atlas Shrugged	Finalist
	Nancy Wilson Ross	The Return of Lady Brace	Finalist
	May Sarton	The Birth of a Grandfather	Finalist
1959	Bernard Malamud	The Magic Barrel	Winner
	J. P. Donleavy	The Ginger Man	Finalist
	William Humphrey	Home from the Hill	Finalist
	Vladimir Nabokov	Lolita	Finalist
	John O'Hara	From the Terrace	Finalist
	J. R. Salamanca	The Lost Country	Finalist
	Anya Seton	The Winthrop Woman	Finalist
	Robert Traver	Anatomy of a Murder	Finalist

1960s

National Book Award for Fiction winners and finalists, 1960-1969

Year	Author	Title	Result	Ref.
1960	Philip Roth	Goodbye, Columbus	Winner
	Louis Auchincloss	Pursuit of the Prodigal	Finalist
	Hamilton Basso	The Light Infantry Ball	Finalist
	Saul Bellow	Henderson the Rain King	Finalist
	Evan S. Connell, Jr.	Mrs. Bridge	Finalist
	William Faulkner	The Mansion	Finalist
	Mark Harris	Wake Up, Stupid	Finalist
	John Hersey	The War Lover	Finalist
	H. L. Humes	Men Die	Finalist
	Shirley Jackson	The Haunting of Hill House	Finalist
	Elizabeth Janeway	The Third Choice	Finalist
	James Jones	The Pistol	Finalist
	Warren Miller	The Cool World	Finalist
	James Purdy	Malcolm	Finalist
	Leo Rosten	The Return of H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N	Finalist
	John Updike	The Poorhouse Fair	Finalist
	Robert Penn Warren	The Cave	Finalist
	Morris West	The Devil's Advocate	Finalist
1961	Conrad Richter	The Waters of Kronos	Winner
	Louis Auchincloss	The House of Five Talents	Finalist
	Kay Boyle	Generation Without Farewell	Finalist
	John Hersey	The Child Buyer	Finalist
	John Knowles	A Separate Peace	Finalist
	Harper Lee	To Kill a Mockingbird	Finalist
	Wright Morris	Ceremony in Lone Tree	Finalist
	Flannery O'Connor	The Violent Bear It Away	Finalist
	Elizabeth Spencer	The Light in the Piazza and Other Italian Tales	Finalist
	Francis Steegmuller	The Christening Party	Finalist
	John Updike	Rabbit, Run	Finalist
	Mildred Walker	The Body of a Young Man	Finalist
1962	Walker Percy	The Moviegoer	Winner
	Hortense Calisher	False Entry	Finalist
	George P. Elliott	Among the Dangs	Finalist
	Joseph Heller	Catch-22	Finalist
	Bernard Malamud	A New Life	Finalist
	William Maxwell	The Chateau	Finalist
	J. D. Salinger	Franny and Zooey	Finalist
	Isaac Bashevis Singer	The Spinoza of Market Street and Other Stories	Finalist
	Edward Lewis Wallant	The Pawnbroker	Finalist
	Joan Williams	The Morning and the Evening	Finalist
	Richard Yates	Revolutionary Road	Finalist
1963	J. F. Powers	Morte d'Urban	Winner
	Vladimir Nabokov	Pale Fire	Finalist
	Katherine Anne Porter	Ship of Fools	Finalist
	Dawn Powell	The Golden Spur	Finalist
	Clancy Sigal	Going Away	Finalist
	John Updike	Pigeon Feathers and Other Stories	Finalist
1964	John Updike	The Centaur	Winner
	Bernard Malamud	Idiots First	Finalist
	Mary McCarthy	The Group	Finalist
	Thomas Pynchon	V.	Finalist
	Harvey Swados	The Will	Finalist
1965	Saul Bellow	Herzog	Winner
	Louis Auchincloss	The Rector of Justin	Finalist
	John Hawkes	Second Skin	Finalist
	Richard E. Kim	The Martyred	Finalist
	Wallace Markfield	To an Early Grave	Finalist
	Vladimir Nabokov	The Defense	Finalist
	Isaac Bashevis Singer	Short Friday	Finalist
1966	Katherine Anne Porter	The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter	Winner
	Jesse Hill Ford	The Liberation of Lord Byron Jones	Finalist
	Peter Matthiessen	At Play in the Fields of the Lord	Finalist
	James Merrill	The (Diblos) Notebook	Finalist
	Flannery O'Connor	Everything That Rises Must Converge	Finalist
	Harry Mark Petrakis	Pericles on 31st Street	Finalist
1967	Bernard Malamud	The Fixer	Winner
	Louis Auchincloss	The Embezzler	Finalist
	Edwin O'Connor	All in the Family	Finalist
	Walker Percy	The Last Gentleman	Finalist
	Harry Mark Petrakis	A Dream of Kings	Finalist
	Wilfrid Sheed	Office Politics	Finalist
1968	Thornton Wilder	The Eighth Day	Winner
	Norman Mailer	Why Are We in Vietnam?	Finalist
	Joyce Carol Oates	A Garden of Earthly Delights	Finalist
	Chaim Potok	The Chosen	Finalist
	William Styron	The Confessions of Nat Turner	Finalist
1969	Jerzy Kosiński	Steps	Winner
	John Barth	Lost in the Funhouse	Finalist
	Frederick Exley	A Fan's Notes	Finalist
	Joyce Carol Oates	Expensive People	Finalist
	Thomas Rogers	The Pursuit of Happiness	Finalist

1970s

National Book Award for Fiction winners and finalists, 1970-1979

Year	Author	Title	Result	Ref.
1970	Joyce Carol Oates	them	Winner
	Leonard Gardner	Fat City	Finalist
	Leonard Michaels	Going Places	Finalist
	Jean Stafford	The Collected Stories of Jean Stafford	Finalist
	Kurt Vonnegut	Slaughterhouse-Five	Finalist
1971	Saul Bellow	Mr. Sammler's Planet	Winner
	James Dickey	Deliverance	Finalist
	Shirley Hazzard	The Bay of Noon	Finalist
	John Updike	Bech: A Book	Finalist
	Eudora Welty	Losing Battles	Finalist
1972	Flannery O'Connor	The Complete Stories	Winner
	Frederick Buechner	Lion Country	Finalist
	E. L. Doctorow	The Book of Daniel	Finalist
	Stanley Elkin	The Dick Gibson Show	Finalist
	Tom McHale	Farragan's Retreat	Finalist
	Joyce Carol Oates	Wonderland	Finalist
	Cynthia Ozick	The Pagan Rabbi and Other Stories	Finalist
	Walker Percy	Love in the Ruins	Finalist
	Earl Thompson	A Garden of Sand	Finalist
	John Updike	Rabbit Redux	Finalist
1973	John Barth	Chimera	Winner
	John Williams	Augustus
	Brock Brower	The Late Great Creature	Finalist
	Alan H. Friedman	Hermaphrodeity	Finalist
	Barry Hannah	Geronimo Rex	Finalist
	George V. Higgins	The Friends of Eddie Coyle	Finalist
	R. M. Koster	The Prince	Finalist
	Vladimir Nabokov	Transparent Things	Finalist
	Ishmael Reed	Mumbo Jumbo	Finalist
	Thomas Rogers	The Confessions of a Child of the Century	Finalist
	Isaac Bashevis Singer	Enemies, A Love Story	Finalist
	Eudora Welty	The Optimist's Daughter	Finalist
1974	Thomas Pynchon	Gravity's Rainbow	Winner
	Isaac Bashevis Singer	A Crown of Feathers and Other Stories
	Doris Betts	Beasts of the Southern Wild and Other Stories	Finalist
	John Cheever	The World of Apples	Finalist
	Ellen Douglas	Apostles of Light	Finalist
	Stanley Elkin	Searches and Seizures	Finalist
	John Gardner	Nickel Mountain	Finalist
	John Leonard	Black Conceit	Finalist
	Thomas McGuane	Ninety-Two in the Shade	Finalist
	Wilfrid Sheed	People Will Always Be Kind	Finalist
	Gore Vidal	Burr	Finalist
	Joy Williams	State of Grace	Finalist
1975	Robert Stone	Dog Soldiers	Winner
	Thomas Williams	The Hair of Harold Roux
	Donald Barthelme	Guilty Pleasures	Finalist
	Gail Godwin	The Odd Woman	Finalist
	Joseph Heller	Something Happened	Finalist
	Toni Morrison	Sula	Finalist
	Vladimir Nabokov	Look at the Harlequins!	Finalist
	Grace Paley	Enormous Changes at the Last Minute	Finalist
	Philip Roth	My Life As a Man	Finalist
	Mark Smith	The Death of the Detective	Finalist
1976	William Gaddis	J R	Winner
	Saul Bellow	Humboldt's Gift	Finalist
	Hortense Calisher	The Collected Stories of Hortense Calisher	Finalist
	Johanna Kaplan	Other People's Lives	Finalist
	Vladimir Nabokov	Tyrants Destroyed and Other Stories	Finalist
	Larry Woiwode	Beyond the Bedroom Wall	Finalist
1977	Wallace Stegner	The Spectator Bird	Winner
	Raymond Carver	Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?	Finalist
	MacDonald Harris	The Balloonist	Finalist
	Ursula K. Le Guin	Orsinian Tales	Finalist
	Cynthia Propper Seton	A Fine Romance	Finalist
1978	Mary Lee Settle	Blood Tie	Winner
	Robert Coover	The Public Burning	Finalist
	Peter De Vries	Madder Music	Finalist
	James Alan McPherson	Elbow Room	Finalist
	John Sayles	Union Dues	Finalist
1979	Tim O'Brien	Going After Cacciato	Winner
	John Cheever	The Stories of John Cheever	Finalist
	John Irving	The World According to Garp	Finalist
	Diane Johnson	Lying Low	Finalist
	David Plante	The Family	Finalist

1980s

For 1980 to 1983 this list covers the paired "Fiction (hardcover)" and "Fiction (paperback)" awards in that order. Hard and paper editions were distinguished only in these four years; none of the paperback winners were original; in their first editions all had been losing finalists in 1979 or 1981.

From 1980 to 1985 there was also one award for first novel or first work of fiction and in 1980 there were five more awards for mystery, western, and science fiction. None of those are covered here.

1980-1983

National Book Award for Fiction winners and finalists, 1980-1983

Year	Category	Author	Title	Result	Ref.
1980	Hardcover	William Styron	Sophie's Choice	Winner
		James Baldwin	Just Above My Head	Finalist
		Norman Mailer	The Executioner's Song	Finalist
		Philip Roth	The Ghost Writer	Finalist
		Scott Spencer	Endless Love	Finalist
	Paperback	John Irving	The World According to Garp	Winner
		Paul Bowles	Collected Stories	Finalist
		Gail Godwin	Violet Clay	Finalist
		John Updike	Too Far to Go	Finalist
		Marguerite Young	Miss MacIntosh, My Darling, Volumes 1 and 2	Finalist
1981	Hardcover	Wright Morris	Plains Song: For Female Voices	Winner
		Shirley Hazzard	The Transit of Venus	Finalist
		William Maxwell	So Long, See You Tomorrow	Finalist
		Walker Percy	The Second Coming	Finalist
		Eudora Welty	The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty	Finalist
	Paperback	John Cheever	The Stories of John Cheever	Winner
		Thomas Flanagan	The Year of the French	Finalist
		Norman Mailer	The Executioner's Song	Finalist
		Scott Spencer	Endless Love	Finalist
		Herman Wouk	War and Remembrance	Finalist
1982	Hardcover	John Updike	Rabbit is Rich	Winner
		Mark Helprin	Ellis Island and Other Stories	Finalist
		John Irving	The Hotel New Hampshire	Finalist
		Robert Stone	A Flag for Sunrise	Finalist
		William Wharton	Dad	Finalist
	Paperback	William Maxwell	So Long, See You Tomorrow	Winner
		E. L. Doctorow	Loon Lake	Finalist
		Shirley Hazzard	The Transit of Venus	Finalist
		Walker Percy	The Second Coming	Finalist
		Anne Tyler	Morgan's Passing	Finalist
1983	Hardcover	Alice Walker	The Color Purple	Winner
		Gail Godwin	A Mother and Two Daughters	Finalist
		Bobbie Ann Mason	Shiloh and Other Stories	Finalist
		Paul Theroux	The Mosquito Coast	Finalist
		Anne Tyler	Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant	Finalist
	Paperback	Eudora Welty	The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty	Winner
		David Bradley	The Chaneysville Incident	Finalist
		Mary Gordon	The Company of Women	Finalist
		Marilynne Robinson	Housekeeping	Finalist
		Robert Stone	A Flag for Sunrise	Finalist

1983 entries were published during 1982; winners in 27 categories were announced April 13 and privately celebrated April 28, 1983.

1984 entries for the "revamped" awards in three categories were published November 1983 to October 1984; eleven finalists were announced October 17. Winners were announced and celebrated November 15, 1984.

1984-1989

National Book Award for Fiction winners and finalists, 1984-1989

Year	Author	Title	Result	Ref.
1984	Ellen Gilchrist	Victory Over Japan: A Book of Stories	Winner
	Alison Lurie	Foreign Affairs	Finalist
	Philip Roth	The Anatomy Lesson	Finalist
1985	Don DeLillo	White Noise	Winner
	Ursula K. Le Guin	Always Coming Home	Finalist
	Hugh Nissenson	The Tree of Life	Finalist
1986	E. L. Doctorow	World's Fair	Winner
	Norman Rush	Whites	Finalist
	Peter Taylor	A Summons to Memphis	Finalist
1987	Larry Heinemann	Paco's Story	Winner
	Alice McDermott	That Night	Finalist
	Toni Morrison	Beloved	Finalist
	Howard Norman	The Northern Lights	Finalist
	Philip Roth	The Counterlife	Finalist
1988	Pete Dexter	Paris Trout	Winner
	Don DeLillo	Libra	Finalist
	Mary McGarry Morris	Vanished	Finalist
	J. F. Powers	Wheat That Springeth Green	Finalist
	Anne Tyler	Breathing Lessons	Finalist
1989	John Casey	Spartina	Winner
	E. L. Doctorow	Billy Bathgate	Finalist
	Katherine Dunn	Geek Love	Finalist
	Oscar Hijuelos	The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love	Finalist
	Amy Tan	The Joy Luck Club	Finalist

1990s

National Book Award for Fiction winners and finalists, 1990-1999

Year	Author	Title	Result	Ref.
1990	Charles Johnson	Middle Passage	Winner
	Felipe Alfau	Chromos	Finalist
	Elena Castedo	Paradise	Finalist
	Jessica Hagedorn	Dogeaters	Finalist
	Joyce Carol Oates	Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart	Finalist
1991	Norman Rush	Mating	Winner
	Louis Begley	Wartime Lies	Finalist
	Stephen Dixon	Frog	Finalist
	Stanley Elkin	The MacGuffin	Finalist
	Sandra Scofield	Beyond Deserving	Finalist
1992	Cormac McCarthy	All the Pretty Horses	Winner
	Dorothy Allison	Bastard Out of Carolina	Finalist
	Cristina García	Dreaming in Cuban	Finalist
	Edward P. Jones	Lost in the City	Finalist
	Robert Stone	Outerbridge Reach	Finalist
1993	E. Annie Proulx	The Shipping News	Winner
	Amy Bloom	Come to Me: Stories	Finalist
	Thom Jones	The Pugilist at Rest	Finalist
	Richard Powers	Operation Wandering Soul	Finalist
	Bob Shacochis	Swimming in the Volcano	Finalist
1994	William Gaddis	A Frolic of His Own	Winner
	Ellen Currie	Moses Supposes	Finalist
	Richard Dooling	White Man's Grave	Finalist
	Howard Norman	The Bird Artist	Finalist
	Grace Paley	The Collected Stories	Finalist
1995	Philip Roth	Sabbath's Theater	Winner
	Madison Smartt Bell	All Souls' Rising	Finalist
	Edwidge Danticat	Krik? Krak!	Finalist
	Stephen Dixon	Interstate	Finalist
	Rosario Ferré	The House on the Lagoon	Finalist
1996	Andrea Barrett	Ship Fever and Other Stories	Winner
	Ron Hansen	Atticus	Finalist
	Elizabeth McCracken	The Giant's House	Finalist
	Steven Millhauser	Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer	Finalist
	Janet Peery	The River Beyond the World	Finalist
1997	Charles Frazier	Cold Mountain	Winner
	Don DeLillo	Underworld	Finalist
	Diane Johnson	Le Divorce	Finalist
	Ward Just	Echo House	Finalist
	Cynthia Ozick	The Puttermesser Papers	Finalist
1998	Alice McDermott	Charming Billy	Winner
	Allegra Goodman	Kaaterskill Falls	Finalist
	Gayl Jones	The Healing	Finalist
	Robert Stone	Damascus Gate	Finalist
	Tom Wolfe	A Man in Full	Finalist
1999	Ha Jin	Waiting	Winner
	Andre Dubus III	House of Sand and Fog	Finalist
	Kent Haruf	Plainsong	Finalist
	Patricia Henley	Hummingbird House	Finalist
	Jean Thompson	Who Do You Love	Finalist

2000s

National Book Award for Fiction winners and finalists, 2000-2009

Year	Author	Title	Result	Ref.
2000	Susan Sontag	In America	Winner
	Charles Baxter	The Feast of Love	Finalist
	Alan Lightman	The Diagnosis	Finalist
	Joyce Carol Oates	Blonde	Finalist
	Francine Prose	Blue Angel	Finalist
2001	Jonathan Franzen	The Corrections	Winner
	Dan Chaon	Among the Missing	Finalist
	Jennifer Egan	Look at Me	Finalist
	Louise Erdrich	The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse	Finalist
	Susan Straight	Highwire Moon	Finalist
2002	Julia Glass	Three Junes	Winner
	Mark Costello	Big If	Finalist
	Adam Haslett	You Are Not a Stranger Here	Finalist
	Martha McPhee	Gorgeous Lies	Finalist
	Brad Watson	The Heaven of Mercury	Finalist
2003	Shirley Hazzard	The Great Fire	Winner
	T. C. Boyle	Drop City	Finalist
	Edward P. Jones	The Known World	Finalist
	Scott Spencer	A Ship Made of Paper	Finalist
	Marianne Wiggins	Evidence of Things Unseen	Finalist
2004	Lily Tuck	The News from Paraguay	Winner
	Sarah Shun-lien Bynum	Madeleine is Sleeping	Finalist
	Christine Schutt	Florida	Finalist
	Joan Silber	Ideas of Heaven: A Ring of Stories	Finalist
	Kate Walbert	Our Kind	Finalist
2005	William T. Vollmann	Europe Central	Winner
	E.L. Doctorow	The March	Finalist
	Mary Gaitskill	Veronica	Finalist
	Christopher Sorrentino	Trance	Finalist
	Rene Steinke	Holy Skirts	Finalist
2006	Richard Powers	The Echo Maker	Winner
	Mark Z. Danielewski	Only Revolutions	Finalist
	Ken Kalfus	A Disorder Peculiar to the Country	Finalist
	Dana Spiotta	Eat the Document	Finalist
	Jess Walter	The Zero	Finalist
2007	Denis Johnson	Tree of Smoke	Winner
	Mischa Berlinski	Fieldwork	Finalist
	Lydia Davis	Varieties of Disturbance	Finalist
	Joshua Ferris	Then We Came to the End	Finalist
	Jim Shepard	Like You'd Understand, Anyway	Finalist
2008	Peter Matthiessen	Shadow Country	Winner
	Aleksandar Hemon	The Lazarus Project	Finalist
	Rachel Kushner	Telex from Cuba	Finalist
	Marilynne Robinson	Home	Finalist
	Salvatore Scibona	The End	Finalist
2009	Colum McCann	Let the Great World Spin	Winner
	Bonnie Jo Campbell	American Salvage	Finalist
	Daniyal Mueenuddin	In Other Rooms, Other Wonders	Finalist
	Jayne Anne Phillips	Lark and Termite	Finalist
	Marcel Theroux	Far North	Finalist

2020s

National Book Award for Fiction winners and finalists, 2020–present

Year	Author	Title	Result	Ref.
2020	Charles Yu	Interior Chinatown	Winner
	Rumaan Alam	Leave the World Behind	Finalist
	Lydia Millet	A Children's Bible	Finalist
	Deesha Philyaw	The Secret Lives of Church Ladies	Finalist
	Douglas Stuart	Shuggie Bain	Finalist
2021	Jason Mott	Hell of a Book	Winner
	Anthony Doerr	Cloud Cuckoo Land	Finalist
	Lauren Groff	Matrix	Finalist
	Laird Hunt	Zorrie	Finalist
	Robert Jones Jr.	The Prophets	Finalist
2022	Tess Gunty	The Rabbit Hutch	Winner
	Gayl Jones	The Birdcatcher	Finalist
	Jamil Jan Kochai	The Haunting of Hajji Hotak and Other Stories	Finalist
	Sarah Thankam Mathews	All This Could Be Different	Finalist
	Alejandro Varela	The Town of Babylon	Finalist
2023	Justin Torres	Blackouts	Winner
	Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah	Chain-Gang All-Stars	Finalist
	Aaliyah Bilal	Temple Folk	Finalist
	Paul Harding	This Other Eden	Finalist
	Hanna Pylväinen	The End of Drum-Time	Finalist
2024	Pemi Aguda	Ghostroots	Finalist
	Kaveh Akbar	Martyr!	Finalist
	Percival Everett	James	Finalist
	Miranda July	All Fours	Finalist
	Hisham Matar	My Friends	Finalist

Early awards for fiction

The National Book Awards for 1935 to 1940 annually recognized the "Most Distinguished Novel" (1935–1936) or "Favorite Fiction" (1937–1940). Furthermore, works of fiction were eligible for the "Bookseller Discovery" and "Most Original Book" awards; fiction winners are listed here.

There was only one National Book Award for 1941, the Bookseller Discovery, which recognized the novel Hold Autumn In Your Hand by George Perry; then none until the 1950 revival in three categories including Fiction.

Most Distinguished Novel (1935–1936)

1935: Rachel Field, Time Out of Mind

1936: Margaret Mitchell, Gone With the Wind

Favorite Fiction (1937–1940)

1937: A. J. Cronin, The Citadel

• Conrad Richter, The Sea of Grass
• Kenneth Roberts, Northwest Passage
• Leonard Q. Ross (Leo Rosten), The Education of H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N (short stories)

1938: Daphne Du Maurier, Rebecca

1939: John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

• Sholom Asch, The Nazarene

1940: Richard Llewellyn, How Green Was My Valley

Bookseller Discovery (1936–1941)

1936: Norah Lofts, I Met a Gypsy (short stories)

1937: Lawrence Watkin, On Borrowed Time (novel)

• see 1937 Fiction

1938: see nonfiction

1939: Elgin Groseclose, Ararat (novel)

• Chard Powers Smith, Artillery of Time, I

1940: see nonfiction

1941: George Sessions Perry, Hold Autumn in Your Hand (novel)

Most Original Book (1935–1939)

1935: Charles G. Finney, The Circus of Dr. Lao (novel)

1936: see nonfiction

1937: see nonfiction

• see 1937 Fiction

1938: see nonfiction

1939: Dalton Trumbo, Johnny Got His Gun (novel)

• Geoffrey Household, Rogue Male

Repeat winners

See Winners of multiple U.S. National Book Awards

External links

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