William Faulkner wrote fiction, of course, and did it quite well. But examples of the novelist embellishing his life story are legion. Like this one.
THE SOUND . . .
By 1918, the United States had finally entered World War I, and lots of young men rushed to join the war effort. One of them was Mississippi-born 21-year-old Billy Falkner. But he was only 5’5” tall, and deemed too small to join the U.S. Army. So he hatched a plan to weasel his way into Great Britain’s Royal Flying Corps, via its Canadian contingent.
Falkner first learned to change his Mississippi drawl into a phony British accent, changed the spelling of his name from Falkner to “Faulkner” in order to sound more Anglo-Saxon, and he headed to Toronto for pilot training. And if Falkner, er, Faulkner’s accounts are to be believed, the RFC accepted him into their ranks in fall 1918 and started training him for combat duty.
. . . AND THE FURY
Alas, Faulkner never saw the inside of a plane…at least as far as combat was concerned. According to Faulkner, “the war quit on us before we could do anything about it.” Armistice was declared on November 11, 1918, and Toronto celebrated. So did Faulkner—he commandeered a biplane, packed the cockpit with bottles of bourbon, and took off over the city.
He attempted a series of trick maneuvers, culminating in a sweeping upside-down loop that was executed perfectly…until he crashed through the ceiling of an airplane hangar and came to rest in the rafters. He emerged with a limp that would plague him for years.
One problem with Faulkner’s account: It may not have ever happened. Historians are pretty certain that Faulkner was never in the RFC, never got near a military biplane, and probably faked that lifelong limp. Faulkner biographer Jay Parini dismissed Faulkner’s account as an improbable, “testosterone-drenched tale.” Still, as Faulkner once wrote, “Most men are a little better than their circumstances give them a chance to be.”
In 1984, a Canadian farmer began renting out ad space on his cows.