Every Day by the Sun

William Faulkner and niece Dean Faulkner
on her wedding day
Rowan Oak, Oxford, Mississippi

If you would like to know a bit about the life of author William Faulkner, the memoir Every Day by the Sun: A Memoir of the Faulkners of Mississippi by his niece Dean Faulkner Wells is an excellent place to start.

Dean Faulkner was the daughter of Dean Swift Faulkner, William's youngest brother. He was killed when his bi-plane crashed during an airshow in 1935. His daughter was born four months after his death.

William took in Dean's widow and helped to raise his niece. Here are her recollections of "Pappy" and the entire Faulkner clan of Oxford, Mississippi.

We know that she loved Pappy for his many kindnesses and generosity. She also looks squarely at his famous alcoholic binges - although she writes that she never saw him drunk - and his eccentric behavior as well as the family's. 

This is an affectionate memoir - funny, sad, and entertaining all at the same time. Since I didn't know much about William Faulkner's life, some of the stories here may be well-known but they were new to me.

I especially liked the other authors who drop by in the book: William Styron, Shelby Foote, Sinclair Lewis, and Walker Percy to name a few. I read that Faulkner did not want to go to Sweden to collect his Nobel Prize. That he never answered the phone in his house. That he added the U to the original spelling of the family name of Falkner. That he was a bit of a ladies man. And, that he loved mystery stories. 

Dean Faulkner's evocation of Southern small town life is told in an non-sentimental way. After all, she was there when Federal troops came to Ole Miss to protect James Meredith when he enrolled and integrated the university. 

William Faulkner died in 1962. His niece Dean married Larry Wells and lived in Oxford until her death in 2011. She and her husband ran the Yoknapatawpha Press for thirty-two years. 

There is just enough information in the book to give the reader a general idea of Faulkner's life as seen by someone who loved and admired him. Unless you are a Faulkner scholar, it is enough.

Mind Your Manners... Faulkner style

Dining room at William Faulkner's home Rowan Oak
Oxford, Mississippi
(Photo from the Historic American Buildings Survey
Library of Congress)

[William Faulkner] was a stickler for good manners and taught my cousins Jill and Vicki and me how to behave at table: We were not to sit down until Aunt Estelle was seated. The grownups were given a choice before the first course was served: to smoke at table or drink wine with the meal. He would not allow anyone to do both. Smoking dulled the palate. The wine could not be appreciated. He would circle the table, wine bottle in hand, and each adult had to make a choice. He designated smokers by turning their empty wine glasses upside down so there could be no recanting the decision. We were to serve ourselves from dishes presented by the houseboy left to right. We were not to begin to eat until Aunt Estelle took the first bite (just in case the food was poisoned, he said). We were not allowed to leave the table until permission to be excused had been asked of, and granted by, our host.

From Every Day by the Sun: A Memoir of the Faulkners of Mississippi by Dean Faulkner Wells, niece of author William Faulkner

Pappy Faulkner

Rowan Oak
Oxford, Mississippi

I have read about thirty pages of Every Day by the Sun: A Memoir of the Faulkners of Mississippi by Dean Faulkner Wells. She is the niece of William Faulkner, the only daughter of William's youngest brother Dean, a pilot, who was killed when his bi-plane crashed during an airshow in 1935. His daughter would not be born until four months after his death.

The title comes from a remark made by a family member speaking of her father: Dean never needed a watch. He lived every day of his life by the sun.

Until Dean was about seven, when her mother Louise remarried, she lived with and was raised by her paternal grandmother, Maud, in Oxford, Mississippi. She also spent time at her maternal grandparent's farm - some of her favorite memories are of the peace and quiet of the country. And of course she was often at Rowan Oak with William and his wife Estelle.

She called William Faulkner "Pappy" and writes that he was devastated by his brother's death. William had bought the plane for his brother that dove nose down into the earth that day. 

This is the story of growing up with and around the Faulkner clan. She writes about the family early on in the book to get it all out in the open:

Over the generations my family can claim nearly every psychological aberration: narcissism and nymphomania, alcoholism and anorexia, agoraphobia, manic depression, paranoid schizophrenia. There have been thieves, adulterers, sociopaths, killers, racists, liars, and folks suffering from panic attacks and real bad tempers, though to the best of my knowledge we've never had a barn burner or a preacher.

Dean Faulkner Wells died just last year. She and her husband, Larry Wells, ran the Yoknapatawpha Press in Oxford for thirty-two years. This should prove to be an up close and personal look into the goings on at Rowan Oak.