Carl Rollyson, Professor Emeritus at Baruch College, The City University of New York, has published numerous biographies of literary figures such as Sylvia Plath, Susan Sontag, Lillian Hellman, Amy Lowell, Rebecca West, and Norman Mailer. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the New Criterion, and the Washington Post.
Carl Rollyson has done a fine job here, bringing together a vast range of source materials, drawing a sharp and convincing portrait of Faulkner. This reads like a good story, and it is. It's a great story, in fact, and all admirers of Faulkner should be grateful. --Jay Parini, author of One Matchless Time: A Life of William Faulkner It has now been fifteen years since the publication of the last full-length biography of one of the twentieth century's most important writers, so the moment is ripe for a life of Faulkner with something new to offer readers and scholars. Rollyson has delivered a book that taps into new primary and secondary resources, and that draws on his own unique expertise as a professional biographer. This is a valuable new biography, whose sound, thorough research and judicious interpretive insights make for an appealing, balanced book. --Jay Watson, University of Mississippi, author of William Faulkner and the Faces of Modernity This is the most comprehensive, most accurate, and most revealing biography of Faulkner yet written. Thoroughly and painstakingly researched, it draws upon sources and materials not available to previous biographers. It will almost certainly come to be viewed as the definitive biography of the famous author. --Robert W. Hamblin, Founding Director of the Center for Faulkner Studies