威廉·福克纳（William Faulkner，1897-1962）美国作家，生于美国密西西比州新奥尔巴尼的一个庄园主家，南北战争后家道中落。
第一次世界大战期间，福克纳在空军服过役。战后入大学，其后从事过各种职业并开始写作。《士兵的报酬》（1926）发表后，福克纳被列入"迷惘的一代"，但很快与他们分道扬镖。《萨拉里斯》（1929）问世之后，福克纳的创作进入高峰斯。他发现"家乡那块邮票般大小的地方倒也值得一写，只怕一辈子也写不完"。怀着这样的信念，他把19篇长篇和70多篇短篇小说纺织在"约克纳帕塌法世系"里，通过南方贵族世家的兴衰，反映了美国独立战争前夕到第二次世界大战之间的社会现实，创伤了20世纪的"人间喜剧"。长篇小说《喧哗与骚动》和《我弥留之际》（1930）、《圣殿》（1931）、《八月之光》（1932）、《押沙龙，押沙龙》（1936）等现代文学的经典之作。
福克纳后期的主要作品有《村子》（1940）、《闯入者》（1948）、《寓言》（1954）、《小镇》（1957）和《大宅》（1959）等。此外还有短篇小说、剧本和诗歌。
福克纳虽是南方重要作家，但他的作品当时并不受重视，直到1946年美国著名的文学批评家马尔科姆·考莱编选了《袖珍本福克纳文集》，又写了一篇有名的序言之后，福克纳才在文坛上引起重视。特别是萨特、马尔洛等人的赏识，使福克纳名声大噪。
在艺术上，福克纳受弗洛伊德影响，大胆地大胆地进行实验，采用意识流手法、对位结构以及象征隐喻等手段表现暴力、凶杀、性变态心理等，他的作品风格千姿百态、扑朔迷离，读者须下大功夫才能感受其特有的审美情趣。
1949年，"因为他对当代美国小说作出了强有力的和艺术上无与伦比的贡献"，福克纳获诺贝尔文学奖。
I feel that this award was not made to me as a man, but to my work -- life's work in the agony and sweat of the human spirit, not for glory and least of all for profit, but to create out of the materials of the human spirit something which did not exist before. So this award is only mine in trust. It will not be difficult to find a dedication1 for the money part of it commensurate with the purpose and significance of its origin. But I would like to do the same with the acclaim2 too, by using this moment as a pinnacle3 from which I might be listened to by the young men and women already dedicated4 to the same anguish5 and travail6, among whom is already that one who will some day stand where I am standing7.
Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.
He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities8 and truths of the heart, the universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed9 -- love and honor and pity and pride and compassion11 and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors12 under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust13, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope and, worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands14.
Until he learns these things, he will write as though he stood among and watched the end of man. I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal15 simply because he will endure: that when the last ding-dong of doom10 has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny16 inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.
The poet’s, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props17, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.
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