Faulkner and the Craft of Fiction

In 1944, William Faulkner wrote to Malcolm Cowley, “I''m telling the same story over and over which is myself and the world. That''s all a writer ever does, he tells his own biography in a thousand different terms.”

With these words, Faulkner suggests that what changes in the course of his prolific novel-writing career is not so much the content but the style, “the thousand different terms” of his...