American Studies ETDs

George Sidney

Publication Date

6-3-1959

Abstract

This study explores a significant aspect of William Faulkner's life and work: his Hollywood career. For Faulkner, Hollywood served as a remunerative avocation. It provided him with a financial security which his literary public at that time did not. The money he earned as a scenarist seems to have enabled him to evade the economic necessity of writing for a commercial market, permitting him to write "for himself." But Faulkner also gave for what he got. He gave his time and creative energy, the results of which--his Hollywood writings-- reveal the mind of the artist at work. Faulkner the novelist became Faulkner the scenarist, using familiar tools to create in an alien medium. And quite possibly, Hollywood influenced Faulkner the novelist. Although Faulkner did not, like Budd Schulberg, Liam O'Flaherty, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Nathaniel West, and Christopher Isherwood, write a novel about Hollywood, it would be presumptuous to assume that he escaped his six-year association with Hollywood unaffected.

Language

English

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

American Studies

Level of Degree

Doctoral

Department Name

American Studies

First Committee Member (Chair)

Ernest Warnock Tedlock Jr.

Second Committee Member

Morris Freedman

Third Committee Member

Cecil Vivian Wicker

Fourth Committee Member

Paul A.F. Walter Jr

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