Becoming Faulkner: The Art and Life of William Faulkner

(Oxford University Press) This biography explores the relationship between Faulkner’s troubled life and the kinds of trouble Faulkner conveyed in his fiction. Weinstein examines his failed elopement with and later broken marriage to Estelle Oldham, his bouts with depression and alcoholism, and the effects his great-grandfather — a Civil War hero who may have fathered a child with a black servant — had on the writer, who fabricated heroic service in World War I and opposed the civil rights movement. A leading authority on Faulkner, Weinstein has written three other books either centered on Faulkner or featuring him, including Faulkner’s Subject: A Cosmos No One Owns (1992) and What Else But Love? The Ordeal of Race in Faulkner and Morrison (1996). Weinstein is an English professor at Swarthmore College.