September 25

September 25 is the birthdate of William Faulkner, author of novels and short stories, many of which are set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County in his native Mississippi. From the early 1920s he wrote 13 novels, including The Sound and the Fury (1929), As I Lay Dying (1930) and Light in August (1932). He also wrote screenplays, including those for “To Have and Have Not” (1944) and “The Big Sleep” (1946). He was awarded the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature for unique contributions to the modern novel, in which he made frequent use of "stream of consciousness" and highly complex, often grotesque plot lines. Faulker’s Absalom, Absalom! (pictured, 1936) contains the "longest sentence in literature," at 1,288 words, beginning with the words “He sounds just like father” (Chapter 6).