During World War I, Faulkner served in the Air Force. After the war, he entered the university, then engaged in various occupations and began to write. After the publication of The Remuneration of Soldiers (1926), Faulkner was listed as a "lost generation", but soon parted ways with them. After the publication of Salaris (1929), Faulkner's creation reached its peak. He found that "a place the size of a hometown stamp is worth writing, but I'm afraid it will never be finished." With this belief, he weaved 19 novels and more than 70 short stories in The York Napa Collapse Family, which reflected the social reality from the eve of the American War of Independence to the Second World War through the rise and fall of aristocratic families in the south, and traumatized the "human comedy" in the 20th century. The Sound and Fury and As I Lay Dying (1930), The Temple (193 1), Light in August (1932), Absalom, Absalom (/.
Faulkner's major works in his later period include Village (1940), Intruder (1948), Fable (1954), Small Town (1957) and Mansion (660). There are also short stories, plays and poems.
Although Faulkner was an important writer in the southern United States, his works were not taken seriously at that time. It was not until malcolm cowley, a famous American literary critic, edited the pocket edition of Faulkner's anthology and wrote a famous preface at 1946 that Faulkner attracted attention in the literary world. Especially the appreciation of Sartre, Marlowe and others made Faulkner famous.
Influenced by Freud, Faulkner boldly experimented with violence, murder and sexual perversion by means of stream of consciousness, counterpoint structure and symbolic metaphor. His works are varied and confusing, and readers have to make great efforts to feel their unique aesthetic taste.
00 1949 Faulkner won the Nobel Prize in Literature "because he has made a powerful and unparalleled contribution to contemporary American novels".