William Faulkner joins the Royal Air Force on this day, but will
never see combat because World War I will end before he
completes his training. Faulkner joined the RAF after his high
school sweetheart, Estelle, married another man. He quit his
hometown, Oxford, Mississippi, visited friends in the North, and
headed to Canada, where he joined the Royal Air Force. After the
war, he returned to Mississippi, where he wrote poetry. A
neighbor funded the publication of his first book of poems, The
Marble Faun (1924). His first novel, Soldiers' Pay, was
published two years later. Faulkner got a second chance at his
high school sweetheart when Estelle, now the mother of two,
divorced her first husband. She married Faulkner in 1929, and
the couple bought and restored a ruined mansion near Oxford
while Faulkner finished The Sound and the Fury, published in
October 1929. The following year, he published As I Lay Dying,
with Light in August (1932) and Absalom, Absalom (1936)
following. Faulkner's novels challenged conven