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This memoir by Murry C. Falkner not only offers new insight into the complex personality of his brother William (who spelled the name Faulkner) but also gives an authentic view of what life was like for a small-town Southern family in the first half of the twentieth century. Murry Falkner writes nostalgically of growing up with his brothers William, John, and Dean in the small town of Oxford, Mississippi. He recounts the antics of the Falkner boys, which were often apt to end in mild disaster and bring a stern but compassionate scolding from their beloved Mammie Callie. He recaptures the excitement at the coming of the first motion pictures and the first automobile to Oxford, and the thrill of their first trip to Memphis in their grandfather’s Buick. From boyhood the Falkner brothers were fascinated with flying. As boys they were on hand for the first balloon-launching in Oxford and spent many happy hours building an ill-fated one-wing “airplane.” Later, as adults, all four became pilots, and the youngest, Dean, died in a tragic crash. When William Faulkner of Oxford, a book of personal reminiscences about the writer, appeared in 1965, one critic wrote: “The best of the reminiscences is that of his brother Murry: dipping back into their childhood and leaping quickly forward into their boyhood and youth, it tells nostalgically of their family life, their close affections, and the spirited and fun-loving quality of their play. It suggests, indirectly, why Faulkner was often drawn in his writing to the boy as protagonist, to the innocence and affection of childhood. Now, in The Falkners of Mississippi, Murry Falkner has elaborated on his earlier reminiscences and has carried the story of the family beyond the Oxford years. “Discerning students of William Faulkner,” says Lewis P. Simpson in his foreword, “will find this memoir quite fundamental to their inquiries into Falkner’s great artistic construct, the literary world of Yoknapatawpha County; for Murry Falkner has created out of his search into the past a world that instructs our understanding of Yoknapatawpha.”
Murry C. Falkner fought in two world wars, flew in the pioneer days of aviation, and served as a special agent for the FBI for many years until his retirement in 1965. He has been published in American Heritage and the Southern Review. Mr. Falkner lives in Mobile.
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