Carl Rollyson – författare

Awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1949, William Faulkner was a southerner who became widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of all time. Despite being such a studied figure, however, to date no biography has captured the complexities at the heart of the man and his work. In The Life of William Faulkner, acclaimed literary biographer Carl Rollyson portrays a new Faulkner—a man of astonishing paradoxes. Based on extensive interviews with family and friends of Faulkner, as well as unparalleled access to primary and secondary source materials, this first of what will be a major two-volume work offers a dramatic narrative that breaks the bounds of the traditional literary biography.This first volume covers Faulkner's formative years. The oldest brother born into a family who had lost their glory, Faulkner at first excelled at school, until his teens when he defied family expectations by pursuing an interest in art and writing that promised no discernable profit for himself or others. World War I and its aftermath galvanized a new generation of writers, none more than Faulkner. Yet while his contemporaries Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald were establishing themselves in Paris and New York, the shy Faulkner kept his distance, not even crossing the length of a café to introduce himself to James Joyce.Drenched in the culture of the Deep South, Faulkner came to write iconic novels of enduring literary significance, but his body of work also included Hollywood screenplays and potboilers for the Saturday Evening Post. Presenting himself as an aloof, self-proclaimed renegade artist, he was at the same time a dedicated family man. He could not create a cosmos of his own without having a sense of counterpull, of being in two places at once, like many of the characters in his novels. In letters to his friends and publishers, Faulkner frequently wrote of "this alarming paradox" that, Rollyson argues, would define his life.Integrating Faulkner's screenplays, fiction, and life, Rollyson argues that the novelist deserves to be reread not just as a literary figure but as a still-relevant force, especially in relation to issues of race, sexuality, and equality. The culmination of years of research in archives that have been largely ignored by previous biographers, The Life of William Faulkner offers a significant challenge and an essential contribution to Faulkner scholarship.

By the end of volume 1 of The Life of William Faulkner (""A filling, satisfying feast for Faulkner aficianados""- Kirkus), the young Faulkner had gone from an unpromising, self-mythologizing bohemian to the author of some of the most innovative and enduring literature of the century, including The Sound and the Fury and Light in August. The second and concluding volume of Carl Rollyson's ambitious biography finds Faulkner lamenting the many threats to his creative existence. Feeling, as an artist, he should be above worldly concerns and even morality, he has instead inherited only debts- a symptom of the South's faded fortunes- and numerous mouths to feed and funerals to fund. And so he turns to the classic temptation for financially struggling writers- Hollywood.Thus begins roughly a decade of shuttling between his home and family in Mississippi- lifeblood of his art- and the backlots of the Golden Age film industry. Through Faulkner's Hollywood years, Rollyson introduces such personalities as Humphrey Bogart and Faulkner's long-time collaborator Howard Hawks, while telling the stories behind films such as The Big Sleep and To Have and Have Not. At the same time, he chronicles with great insight Faulkner's rapidly crumbling though somehow resilient marriage and his numerous extramarital affairs- including his deeply felt, if ultimately doomed, relationship with Meta Carpenter. (In his grief over their breakup, Faulkner- a dipsomaniac capable of ferocious alcoholic binges- received third-degree burns when he passed out on a hotel-room radiator.)Where most biographers and critics dismiss Faulkner's film work as at best a necessary evil, at worst a tragic waste of his peak creative years, Rollyson approaches this period as a valuable window on his artistry. He reveals a fascinating, previously unappreciated cross-pollination between Faulkner's film and literary work, elements from his fiction appearing in his screenplays and his film collaborations influencing his later novels- undamentally changing the character of late-career works such as the Snopes trilogy.Rollyson takes the reader on a fascinating journey through the composition of Absalom, Absalom!, widely considered Faulkner's masterpiece, as well as the film adaptation he authored- unproduced and never published- Revolt in the Earth. He reveals how Faulkner wrestled with the legacy of the South- both its history and its dizzying racial contradictions- and turned it into powerful art in works such as Go Down, Moses and Intruder in the Dust.Volume 2 of this monumental work rests on an unprecedented trove of research, giving us the most penetrating and comprehensive life of Faulkner and providing a fascinating look at the author's trajectory from under-appreciated ""writer's writer"" to world-renowned Nobel laureate and literary icon. In his famous Nobel speech, Faulkner said what inspired him was the human ability to prevail. In the end, this beautifully wrought life shows how Faulkner, the man and the artist, embodies this remarkable capacity to endure and prevail.

An in-depth selection of articles from Critical Survey of Long Fiction, Fourth Edition.Picaresque Novelists is a single-volume monograph that contains selected essays from Critical Survey of Long Fiction, Fourth Edition. Every article in this set was carefully selected by our editors to provide the best information available about the topic covered. The essays in Picaresque Novelists discuss such influential writers as Saul Bellow, Franz Kafka, Jonathan Swift, and Voltaire.

An in-depth selection of articles from Critical Survey of Long Fiction, Fourth Edition. Psychological Novelists is a single-volume monograph that contains selected essays from Critical Survey of Long Fiction, Fourth Edition. Every article in this set was carefully selected by our editors to provide the best information available about the topic covered. The essays in Psychological Novelists discuss such influential writers as Jean Cocteau, Jane Hamilton, August Strindberg, and Franz Kafka.

Religious Novelists is a single-volume monograph that contains selected essays from Critical Survey of Long Fiction, Fourth Edition. Every article in this set was carefully selected by our editors to provide the best information available about the topic covered. The essays in Religious Novelists discuss such influential writers as Fyodor Dostoevski, Graham Greene, Sinclair Lewis, and Salman Rushdie.

The controversial American poet Amy Lowell (1874-1925), a founding member of the Imagist group that included D. H. Lawrence and H. D., excelled as the impresario for the “new poetry” that became news across the U. S. in the years after World War I. Maligned by T. S. Eliot as the “demon saleswoman” of poetry, and ridiculed by Ezra Pound, Lowell has been treated by previous biographers as an obese, sex-starved, inferior poet who smoked cigars and made a spectacle of herself, canvassing the country on lecture tours that drew crowds in the hundreds for her electrifying performances. In fact, Lowell wrote some of the finest love lyrics of the 20th century and led a full and loving life with her constant companion, the retired actress Ada Russell. She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize posthumously in 1926. This provocative new biography, the first in forty years, restores Amy Lowell to her full humanity in an era that, at last, is beginning to appreciate the contributions of gays and lesbians to American’s cultural heritage. Drawing on newly discovered letters and papers, Rollyson’s biography finally gives this vibrant poet her due.

Some critics rank biographers just above serial murderers. The author of this book, a self-described member of the Samuel Johnson school, doesn't share this view. An account of a life, he believes, should adhere to the truth as the biographer sees it, not to the sentiments of others.This memoir of a professional biographer's life tells the inside story of how he became interested in his subjects and reveals the mechanics of the trade: how to assemble proposals for publishers, conduct interviews and archival research, and joust with editors, subjects and their literary estates. Other biographers have described their process but remained discrete, not wishing to offend their sources and supporters. This author has forgone such caution.

Since Sylvia Plath’s death in 1963, she has become the subject of a constant stream of books, biographies, and articles. She has been hailed as a groundbreaking poet for her starkly beautiful poems in Ariel and as a brilliant forerunner of the feminist coming-of-age novel in her semiautobiographical The Bell Jar. Each new biography has offered insight and sources with which to measure Plath’s life and influence. Sylvia Plath Day by Day, a two-volume series, offers a distillation of this data without the inherent bias of a narrative.Volume 1 commences with Plath’s birth in Boston in 1932, records her response to her elementary and high school years, her entry into Smith College, and her breakdown and suicide attempt, and ends on February 14, 1955, the day she wrote to Ruth Cohen, principal of Newnham College, Cambridge, to accept admission as an "affiliated student at Newnham College to read for the English Tripos." Sylvia Plath Day by Day is for readers of all kinds with a wide variety of interests in the woman and her work. The entries are suitable for dipping into and can be read in a minute or an hour. Ranging over several sources, including Plath’s diaries, journals, letters, stories, and other prose and poetry—including new material and archived material rarely seen by readers—a fresh kaleidoscopic view of the writer emerges.

William Faulkner has been the topic of numerous biographies, papers, and international attention. Yet there are no collected resources providing a comprehensive scope of Faulkner’s life and work before now. William Faulkner Day by Day provides unique insight into the daily life of one of America’s favorite writers. Beyond biography, this book is an effort to recover the diurnal Faulkner, to write in the present tense about past events as if they are happening now. More importantly, this book is concerned with more than the writer’s life. Instead, it examines the whole man—the daily, mundane, profound, life changing, and everything in between.Spanning from the 1825 birth of Faulkner’s great-grandfather to Faulkner’s death 137 years later to the day, author and biographer Carl Rollyson presents for the first time a complete portrait of Faulkner’s life untethered from any one biographical or critical narrative. Presented as a chronology of events without comment, this book is accompanied by an extensive list of principal personages and is supported by extensive archival research and interviews. Populated by the characters of Faulkner’s life—including family and friends both little known and internationally famous—this book is for Faulkner readers of all kinds with a wide variety of interests in the man and his work.

Since her death in 1963, Sylvia Plath has become an endless source of fascination for a wide audience, ranging from readers of The Bell Jar, her semiautobiographical novel, to her groundbreaking poetry as exemplified by Ariel. Beyond her writing, however, interest in Plath was also fueled in part by the nature of her death—a suicide while she was estranged from her husband, Ted Hughes, who was himself a noteworthy British poet. As a result, a steady stream of biographies of Plath, projecting an array of points of view about their subject, has appeared over the last fifty-five years.Now biographer Carl Rollyson, the author of two previous biographical studies of Plath, has surveyed the vast amount of material on Plath, including her biographies, her autobiographical writings, and previously unpublished material, and distilled that data into the two volumes of Sylvia Plath Day by Day. As the follow-up to volume 1, volume 2 commences on February 14, 1955, the day Plath wrote to her mother declaring her intention to study in England, a decision that marked a major turning point in her life. With brief signposts provided by the author, this volume follows Plath through the entirety of her marriage to Hughes, the challenges of simultaneously raising a family and nourishing her own creativity, and the major depressive episodes that ultimately led to her suicide in 1963. By providing new angles and perspectives on the life of one of the twentieth century’s most celebrated poets, Sylvia Plath Day by Day offers a comprehensive image of its enigmatic subject.

Since her death, Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) has become an endless source of fascination for a wide audience ranging from readers of The Bell Jar, her semiautobiographical novel, to her groundbreaking poetry as exemplified by Ariel. Beyond her writing, however, interest in Plath has also been fueled in part by the tragic nature of her death. As a result, a steady stream of biographies of Plath have appeared over the last fifty-five years which mainly focus on her death or contain projections of an array of points of view about the writer.Until now, little sustained attention has been paid to the influences on Plath’s life and work. What movies did she watch? Which books did she read? How did media shape her worldview? In this meticulously researched biography, Carl Rollyson explores the intricate web of literature, cinema, spirituality, psychology, and popular culture that profoundly influenced Plath's life and writing. At the heart of this biography is a compelling exploration of William Sheldon’s seminal work, Psychology and the Promethean Will, which Plath devoured in her quest for self-discovery and understanding. Through Plath’s intense study of this work, readers gain unprecedented access to Plath's innermost thoughts, her therapeutic treatments, and the overarching worldview that fueled her creative genius.Through Sheldon as well as Plath’s other influences, Rollyson offers a captivating survey of the symbiotic relationship between an artist and the world around her and offers readers new insights into the enigmatic mind of one of most important writers of the twentieth century.

Dana Andrews (1909–1992) worked with distinguished directors such as John Ford, Lewis Milestone, Otto Preminger, Fritz Lang, William Wyler, William A. Wellman, Mervyn Le Roy, Jean Renoir, and Elia Kazan. He played romantic leads alongside the great beauties of the modern screen, including Joan Crawford, Elizabeth Taylor, Greer Garson, Merle Oberon, Linda Darnell, Susan Hayward, Maureen O'Hara, and most important of all, Gene Tierney, with whom he did five films. Retrospectives of his work often elicit high praise for an underrated actor, a master of the minimalist style. His image personified the "male mask" of the 1940s in classic films such as Laura, Fallen Angel, and Where the Sidewalk Ends, in which he played the "masculine ideal of steely impassivity." No comprehensive discussion of film noir can neglect his performances. He was an "actor's actor."Here at last is the complete story of a great actor, his difficult struggle to overcome alcoholism while enjoying the accolades of his contemporaries, a successful term as president of the Screen Actors Guild, and the love of family and friends that never deserted him. Based on diaries, letters, home movies, and other documents, this biography explores the mystery of a poor boy from Texas who made his Hollywood dream come true even as he sought a life apart from the limelight and the backbiting of contemporaries jockeying for prizes and prestige. Called "one of nature's noblemen" by his fellow actor Norman Lloyd, Dana Andrews emerges from Hollywood Enigma as an admirable American success story, fighting his inner demons and ultimately winning.

Though numerous biographies have been published on William Faulkner, readers are often presented conflicting interpretations of his life and work. Faulkner’s view of himself and his own family was mercurial, and it is widely acknowledged that Faulkner was an unreliable narrator of his own life. As a result, biographies of Faulkner echo and complicate the multitude of ways he portrayed himself, accepting that truth—if it exists—is subjective. Like his work, Faulkner’s own life, then, is not only open to different readings but welcomes them within the landscape of his oeuvre.Faulkner On and Off the Page acknowledges the challenges of "factifying" a life into a textual narrative, while also emphasizing the potential for biography to establish a throughline that traces how literature emerges from life and, in turn, shapes the life narrative Faulkner constructed for himself. Unburdened by the sanctity of the written word, Faulkner embraced mutability and perpetual evolution. This process of reinvention also manifests within the pages of Faulkner's biographies, as each biographer brings a unique context and perspective shaped by generations of Faulkner scholars.Rather than thinking of Faulkner as exclusively the great high modernist who strayed to Hollywood when he needed the money and stayed home when he didn’t, this book portrays an unsettled writer incessantly on the move incorporating what only looked like alien elements into his work, while maintaining a public persona that disparaged anything that did not fit the narrative of the novelist he created in interviews, essays, and speeches. This book attempts to carry on the work of finding the man on the page even as he is shaping a life off of it.

Though numerous biographies have been published on William Faulkner, readers are often presented conflicting interpretations of his life and work. Faulkner’s view of himself and his own family was mercurial, and it is widely acknowledged that Faulkner was an unreliable narrator of his own life. As a result, biographies of Faulkner echo and complicate the multitude of ways he portrayed himself, accepting that truth—if it exists—is subjective. Like his work, Faulkner’s own life, then, is not only open to different readings but welcomes them within the landscape of his oeuvre.Faulkner On and Off the Page acknowledges the challenges of "factifying" a life into a textual narrative, while also emphasizing the potential for biography to establish a throughline that traces how literature emerges from life and, in turn, shapes the life narrative Faulkner constructed for himself. Unburdened by the sanctity of the written word, Faulkner embraced mutability and perpetual evolution. This process of reinvention also manifests within the pages of Faulkner's biographies, as each biographer brings a unique context and perspective shaped by generations of Faulkner scholars.Rather than thinking of Faulkner as exclusively the great high modernist who strayed to Hollywood when he needed the money and stayed home when he didn’t, this book portrays an unsettled writer incessantly on the move incorporating what only looked like alien elements into his work, while maintaining a public persona that disparaged anything that did not fit the narrative of the novelist he created in interviews, essays, and speeches. This book attempts to carry on the work of finding the man on the page even as he is shaping a life off of it.

Walter Brennan (1894–1974) was one of the greatest character actors in Hollywood history. He won three Academy Awards and became a national icon starring as Grandpa in The Real McCoys. He appeared in over two hundred motion pictures and became the subject of a Norman Rockwell painting, which celebrated the actor's unique role as the voice of the American Western. His life journey from Swampscott, Massachusetts, to Hollywood, to a twelve thousand-acre cattle ranch in Joseph, Oregon, is one of the great American stories.In the first biography of this epic figure, Carl Rollyson reveals Brennan's consummate mastery of virtually every kind of role while playing against and often stealing scenes from such stars as Gary Cooper, Humphrey Bogart, and John Wayne. Rollyson fully explores Brennan's work with Hollywood's greatest directors, such as Howard Hawks, John Ford, and Fritz Lang. As a father and grandfather, Brennan instilled generations of his family with an outlook on the American Dream that remains a sustaining feature of their lives today. His conservative politics, which grew out of his New England upbringing and his devout Catholicism, receive meticulous attention and a balanced assessment in A Real American Character.Written with the full cooperation of the Brennan family and drawing on material in archives from every region of the United States, this new biography presents an artist and family man who lived and breathed an American idealism that made him the Real McCoy.