William Faulkner: influences, peers and legacy

Every connection with its receipt

Faulkner built Yoknapatawpha out of Oxford, Mississippi gossip, King James cadence, and the broken chronology he learned from European modernism. This mix traces the poets he imitated before he found prose, the scene that pushed him from verse to fiction, the Hollywood years that paid the bills, and the writers from Colombia to Ohio who took his method home.

The Kynda mix for William Faulkner

• Key Influence · Ulysses by James Joyce (1922). Faulkner encountered Joyce's work in the 1920s, partly through Phil Stone's book-buying and his own time in New Orleans and Paris, where he lived near Joyce's haunts in 1925. The interior monologue, the single-day structure, and the shifting narrative consciousness of Ulysses stand directly behind Benjy's and Quentin's sections of The Sound and the Fury, where chronology dissolves into the movement of a mind.
• Influencia Obscura · Poems and Ballads by Algernon Charles Swinburne (1866). Before the novels, Faulkner wanted to be a poet, and Swinburne was the model: his early verse, including the pastiche collection The Marble Faun, is drenched in Swinburnean meter, fauns, and heavy alliterative music. Phil Stone fed him the Victorians and Decadents in Oxford, Mississippi. The sound of that apprenticeship never left the prose, which keeps the rhythmic excess of the poetry he abandoned.
• Local Roots · Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson (1919). Faulkner met Anderson in New Orleans' French Quarter in 1925, lived in his orbit around the Double Dealer circle, and credited him with the advice to write about his own small patch of Mississippi soil. Anderson helped place Soldiers' Pay with his publisher. Winesburg's linked small-town portraits are the direct formal ancestor of Faulkner's recurring Yoknapatawpha townspeople.
• Beyond the Medium · The King James Bible by Translators of the Authorized Version (1611). Faulkner grew up on it in Protestant Mississippi and said he read the Old Testament regularly. Titles come straight out of it: Absalom, Absalom! from Second Samuel, Go Down, Moses from the spiritual drawn from Exodus. More deeply, the cadence of his long coordinated sentences, the curse descending through generations, and the patriarch-founded doomed house are scriptural architecture transposed onto the Mississippi Delta.
• Peer · Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe (1929). Faulkner publicly ranked his contemporaries and put Wolfe first, praising him for attempting the most and failing most gloriously, a judgment that irritated Hemingway. Both were Southerners publishing enormous autobiographical-mythic novels at the end of the 1920s, both pushing American prose toward rhetorical excess rather than away from it. Wolfe's Altamont is a sibling to Jefferson, Mississippi.
• From the Canon · The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner (1929). The breakthrough, and the book Faulkner called his most splendid failure, written after he decided no publisher would take it and he could therefore please himself. Four narrators circle the Compson family's collapse: Benjy without time, Quentin drowning in it, Jason poisoned by it, and a final third-person section centered on Dilsey. Everything later in Yoknapatawpha proceeds from the method invented here.
• Key Collaborator · To Have and Have Not by Howard Hawks (1944). Hawks was Faulkner's protector in Hollywood, hiring him repeatedly from 1932 onward and keeping him solvent through the years when his novels were out of print. Faulkner worked on this adaptation of Hemingway's novel alongside Jules Furthman, a job with a built-in joke given the two writers' rivalry. The Bogart-Bacall banter it produced is the most widely seen writing Faulkner ever touched.
• Legacy · One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez (1967). García Márquez called Faulkner his master and said the Caribbean coast he grew up on resembled Yoknapatawpha more than anywhere in Europe. Macondo is built on the Faulkner model: an invented town with its own genealogy, recurring families, and a founding sin that returns across generations. He made a pilgrimage through Mississippi, and the debt runs through Vargas Llosa and the whole Boom.

What influenced William Faulkner

• William Shakespeare (1564). Faulkner names Shakespeare in his answer about influences. (also via Macbeth) “Flaubert , Balzac —he created an intact world of his own, a bloodstream running through twenty books— Dostoyevsky , Tolstoy , Shakespeare . I read Melville occasionally” (Wikipedia)
• Macbeth by William Shakespeare (1606). Macbeth (William Shakespeare) — culture for William Faulkner (also via The Sound and the Fury) “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."” (Wikipedia)
• James Joyce. Joyce’s writing influenced Faulkner. (also via Ulysses) “Stone mentored the young Faulkner, introducing him to the works of writers like James Joyce , who influenced Faulkner's own writing.” (Wikipedia)
• Ernest Hemingway. The article compares Faulkner’s early work with Hemingway’s. (also via The Sun Also Rises) “These and Faulkner's other early works resembled those of contemporaries such as Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald , at times nearly appropriating phrases.” (Wikipedia)
• Joseph Conrad. Faulkner names Conrad when asked about his influences. (also via Heart of Darkness) “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…” (Wikipedia)
• Miguel de Cervantes (1547). Faulkner names Cervantes when asked about his influences. (also via Don Quixote) “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…” (Wikipedia)
• Ulysses by James Joyce (1922). Ulysses (James Joyce) — titan for William Faulkner “Stone mentored the young Faulkner, introducing him to the works of writers like James Joyce, who influenced Faulkner's own writing.” (en.wikipedia.org)
• Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (1899). Heart of Darkness (Joseph Conrad) — titan for William Faulkner “Since Fitzgerald, dozens of other American writers have acknowledged their debts to Conrad, including William Faulkner, William Burroughs, Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, Joan Didion, and Thomas Pynchon.” (en.wikipedia.org)
• William Clark Falkner. Stories about Faulkner’s great-grandfather influenced him. “He was particularly influenced by stories of his great-grandfather William Clark Falkner , who had become a near legendary figure in North Mississippi.” (Wikipedia)
• Phil Stone. Stone was an early influence on Faulkner’s writing. “When he was 17, Faulkner met Phil Stone , who became an important early influence on his writing.” (Wikipedia)
• F. Scott Fitzgerald. The article compares Faulkner’s early work with Fitzgerald’s. “These and Faulkner's other early works resembled those of contemporaries such as Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald , at times nearly appropriating phrases.” (Wikipedia)
• Old Testament. Faulkner names the Old Testament among books he knew and loved. “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…” (Wikipedia)
• Charles Dickens. Faulkner names Dickens when asked about his influences. “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…” (Wikipedia)
• Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes. Faulkner says he rereads Don Quixote every year. “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…” (Wikipedia)
• Gustave Flaubert. Faulkner names Flaubert in his answer about influences. “Flaubert , Balzac —he created an intact world of his own, a bloodstream running through twenty books— Dostoyevsky , Tolstoy , Shakespeare . I read Melville occasionally” (Wikipedia)
• Honoré de Balzac. Faulkner names Balzac and praises his fictional world. “Flaubert , Balzac —he created an intact world of his own, a bloodstream running through twenty books— Dostoyevsky , Tolstoy , Shakespeare . I read Melville occasionally” (Wikipedia)
• Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Faulkner names Dostoyevsky in his answer about influences. “Flaubert , Balzac —he created an intact world of his own, a bloodstream running through twenty books— Dostoyevsky , Tolstoy , Shakespeare . I read Melville occasionally” (Wikipedia)
• Leo Tolstoy. Faulkner names Tolstoy in his answer about influences. “Flaubert , Balzac —he created an intact world of his own, a bloodstream running through twenty books— Dostoyevsky , Tolstoy , Shakespeare . I read Melville occasionally” (Wikipedia)
• Herman Melville. Faulkner says he occasionally reads Melville. “Dostoyevsky , Tolstoy , Shakespeare . I read Melville occasionally and, of the poets, Marlowe , Campion , Jonson , Herrick , Donne , Keats , and Shelley ."” (Wikipedia)
• Moby-Dick by Herman Melville (1851). Moby-Dick (Herman Melville) — titan for William Faulkner (wikidata.org)
• Poems and Ballads by Algernon Charles Swinburne (1866). Poems and Ballads (Algernon Charles Swinburne) — ghost for William Faulkner (openlibrary.org)
• A Shropshire Lad by A. E. Housman (1896). A Shropshire Lad (A. E. Housman) — ghost for William Faulkner (openlibrary.org)
• Fêtes galantes by Paul Verlaine (1869). Fêtes galantes (Paul Verlaine) — ghost for William Faulkner (openlibrary.org)
• Ode on a Grecian Urn by John Keats (1819). Ode on a Grecian Urn (John Keats) — culture for William Faulkner (openlibrary.org)
• The King James Bible by Translators of the Authorized Version (1611). The King James Bible (Translators of the Authorized Version) — culture for William Faulkner

Peers and kindred spirits

• Howard Hawks. Faulkner worked with Hawks in Hollywood. (also via To Have and Have Not) “In Hollywood he worked with director Howard Hawks , with whom he quickly developed a friendship, as they both enjoyed drinking and hunting.” (Wikipedia)
• University of Virginia. Faulkner held a writer-in-residence post at the university. “My first thought was to the effect that I thought I was just / the writer-in-residence, not the speaker-in-residence;” (Faulkner at Virginia, University of Virginia)
• Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson (1919). Winesburg, Ohio (Sherwood Anderson) — geography for William Faulkner “Through Stone, Faulkner met writers like Sherwood Anderson, Robert Frost, and Ezra Pound.” (en.wikipedia.org)
• A Curtain of Green by Eudora Welty (1941). A Curtain of Green (Eudora Welty) — geography for William Faulkner “In 1943, while working at Warner Brothers, Faulkner wrote a letter of encouragement to a young Mississippi writer, Eudora Welty.” (en.wikipedia.org)
• Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe (1929). Look Homeward, Angel (Thomas Wolfe) — peer for William Faulkner “He was one of the pioneers of autobiographical fiction, and along with William Faulkner, he is considered one of the most important authors of the Southern Renaissance within the American literary canon.” (en.wikipedia.org)
• The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway (1926). The Sun Also Rises (Ernest Hemingway) — peer for William Faulkner “These and Faulkner's other early works resembled those of contemporaries such as Ernest Hemingway and F.” (en.wikipedia.org)
• To Have and Have Not by Howard Hawks (1944). To Have and Have Not (Howard Hawks) — collaborator for William Faulkner “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.” (en.wikipedia.org)
• The Portable Faulkner by Malcolm Cowley (1946). The Portable Faulkner (Malcolm Cowley) — collaborator for William Faulkner “Faulkner's reputation grew following publication of Malcolm Cowley's The Portable Faulkner (1946), and he was awarded the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature for "his powerful and unique contribution to the modern American novel." He is the o…” (en.wikipedia.org)
• No Good from a Corpse by Leigh Brackett (1944). No Good from a Corpse (Leigh Brackett) — collaborator for William Faulkner “Hollywood director Howard Hawks was so impressed by her novel No Good from a Corpse that he had his secretary call in "this guy Brackett" to help William Faulkner write the script for The Big Sleep (1946).” (en.wikipedia.org)
• William Spratling. Spratling and Faulkner contributed to the same publication. “The following year they privately published Sherwood Anderson and Other Famous Creoles , a parody of Miguel Covarrubias 's The Prince of Wales and Other Famous Americans , combining Spratling's caricatures of the French Quarter literary …” (Wikipedia)
• Southern Renaissance. The article places Faulkner’s work within the Southern Renaissance. “Faulkner's works have been placed within the literary traditions of modernism and the Southern Renaissance .” (Wikipedia)
• William Faulkner Foundation. Faulkner’s donation established the fund that became the foundation. “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).” (Wikipedia)
• So Red the Rose by Stark Young (1934). So Red the Rose (Stark Young) — geography for William Faulkner (openlibrary.org)
• The 42nd Parallel by John Dos Passos (1930). The 42nd Parallel (John Dos Passos) — peer for William Faulkner (openlibrary.org)

Who William Faulkner influenced

• Toni Morrison (1931). Morrison's master's thesis studied William Faulkner, showing scholarly engagement with his work. (also via Absalom, Absalom!, Beloved) “Her master's thesis was titled "Virginia Woolf's and William Faulkner's treatment of the alienated".” (en.wikipedia.org)
• Gabriel García Márquez. The article reports Miles’s comparison of García Márquez’s fictional world with Faulkner’s. (also via One Hundred Years of Solitude) “García Márquez, considerado por muchos como el padre del realismo mágico, se sintió estimulado artística y emocionalmente tras leer a Faulkner” (Revista Væranda)
• Cormac McCarthy. The article describes McCarthy as a disciple of Faulkner. (also via Blood Meridian) “In his "The Orchard Keeper" he has his own story to tell; but he tells it with so many of Faulkner's literary devices and mannerisms that he half submerges his own talents beneath a flood of imitation.” (The New York Times)
• Jean-Luc Godard (1930). The Wild Palms (William Faulkner) — culture for Jean-Luc Godard (via The Wild Palms, Breathless) “Quotations from, and references to, literature include William Faulkner, Dylan Thomas, Louis Aragon, Rainer Maria Rilke, Françoise Sagan and Maurice Sachs.” (en.wikipedia.org)
• Beloved by Toni Morrison. Critic compares Morrison's achievement in Beloved to canonical status alongside Faulkner. “to enter, as a living Black woman, the company of dead White males like Faulkner, Melville, Hawthorne and Twain.” (Wikipedia)
• Breathless by Jean-Luc Godard. Breathless references Faulkner's literature. (also via The Wild Palms) “Quotations from, and references to, literature include William Faulkner, Dylan Thomas, Louis Aragon, Rainer Maria Rilke, Françoise Sagan and Maurice Sachs” (Wikipedia)
• James Baldwin (1924). Baldwin's public attack on William Faulkner establishes a direct cultural connection/critique between the two writers. “he attacked William Faulkner for defending the South” (The Key West Citizen (Key West, Fla.))
• Tennessee Williams. Faulkner appears in the list of writers Williams admired and referenced. (also via The Sound and the Fury) “August Strindberg , [ 28 ] William Faulkner , [ 30 ] Thomas Wolfe , [ 31 ] Emily Dickinson” (Wikipedia)
• Juan Carlos Onetti. The article reports Miles’s comparison of Onetti’s fictional world with Faulkner’s. “In the second one, examples of Faulkner's influence in several authors of the so-called Latin American boom are offered, with a special reference of Juan Carlos Onetti's.” (Franciscanum)
• Carlos Fuentes. The article reports that Fuentes cited Faulkner as important to him. “Cuando pienso en la influencia de William Faulkner en Latinoamérica (…) creo que se debe a que conoce a la gente y habla de una derrota.” (Franciscanum)
• Mario Vargas Llosa. Faulkner influenced Vargas Llosa, particularly his early novels. “el renombrado escritor peruano Mario Vargas Llosa, ganador del Premio Nobel de Literatura en 2010, declaró que su primera novela La Ciudad y los Perros se inspiró principalmente en la ambigüedad del método faulkneriano.” (Revista Væranda)
• Agnès Varda. Faulkner is listed among Varda’s literary influences. (also via The Wild Palms) “Many of her influences were artistic or literary, including Surrealism , William Faulkner , Franz Kafka , and Nathalie Sarraute .” (Wikipedia)
• One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez (1967). One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel García Márquez) — legacy for William Faulkner “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 …” (en.wikipedia.org)
• Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy) — legacy for William Faulkner “Cormac McCarthy has been described as a "disciple of Faulkner".” (en.wikipedia.org)
• Flannery O'Connor. O’Connor describes Faulkner’s effect on writers such as herself. “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.” (Wikipedia)
• Claude Simon. Faulkner’s works influenced Simon. “La rencontre avec Proust quand j’avais 20 ans, avec Joyce et Faulkner plus tard, ont été pour moi des rencontres extrêmement importantes. J'ai appris à écrire dans Joyce, dans Faulkner” (France Culture)
• Jorge Luis Borges (1899). The article reports Day’s proposed influence of The Wild Palms on Borges’s writing choices. (via The Wild Palms) “Day also believes that Borges' deep immersion in and study of The Wild Palms may have influenced him to abandon the novel as his own writing form of choice.” (Wikipedia)
• Albert Camus. Camus adapted Faulkner’s work for the stage. (via Requiem for a Nun) “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 .” (Wikipedia)
• David Milch. The Sound and the Fury (William Faulkner) — titan for David Milch (via The Sound and the Fury) “Other unrealized projects of Milch's during the early 2010s included a film adaptation of Quantic Dream's 2010 video game Heavy Rain, a reunion with NYPD Blue collaborator Steven Bochco on an NBC legal drama, and a series of films and te…” (en.wikipedia.org)
• António Lobo Antunes. Faulkner’s works influenced Lobo Antunes.