Gay Faulkner: Uncovering a Homosexual Presence in Yoknapatawpha and Beyond

by Phillip Gordon

The life and works of William Faulkner have generated numerous biographical studies exploring how Faulkner understood southern history, race, his relationship to art, and his place in the canons of American and world literature. However, some details on Faulkner's life collected by his early biographers never made it into published form or, when they did, appeared in marginalized stories and cryptic references. The biographical record of William Faulkner's life has yet to come to terms with the life-long friendships he maintained with gay men, the extent to which he immersed himself into gay communities in Greenwich Village and New Orleans, and how profoundly this part of his life influenced his "apocryphal" creation of Yoknapatawpha County.

Gay Faulkner: Uncovering a Homosexual Presence in Yoknapatawpha and Beyond explores the intimate friendships Faulkner maintained with gay men, among them Ben Wasson, William Spratling, and Hubert Creekmore, and places his fiction into established canons of LGBTQ literature, including World War I literature and representations of homosexuality from the Cold War. The book offers a full consideration of his relationship to gay history and identity in the twentieth century, giving rise to a new understanding of this most important of American authors.

Genres: Nonfiction

298 pages, Hardcover

Published December 30, 2019

Reviews

[Morris Ardoin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this book fascinating on a few levels. First, as a lay person aware of Faulkner from my first exposure to literature in high school and then as an undergraduate exploring a few majors, including architecture and English Lit., before landing on journalism. Second, as a southerner who has always found wonderment and pride in reading the work of writers from the Deep South, and Third, as a gay person, always eager to learn about famous members of the "tribe." I'm not an academic, and so, while Gordon's book surely will join the lit reviews of future scholars as they add to the body of knowledge, as it rightly should, I did not feel left out. On the contrary, I felt his book allowed a peek inside a conversation among peers to which I'd not have access otherwise. On all those levels, GAY FAULKNER delivers. And that's quite remarkable.