By the end of volume 1 of The Life of William Faulkner ("A filling, satisfying feast for Faulkner aficianados"― Kirkus), the young Faulkner had gone from an unpromising, self-mythologizing bohemian to the author of some of the most innovative and enduring literature of the century, including The Sound and the Fury and Light in August. The second and concluding volume of Carl Rollyson’s ambitious biography finds Faulkner lamenting the many threats to his creative existence. Feeling, as an artist, he should be above worldly concerns and even morality, he has instead inherited only debts―a symptom of the South’s faded fortunes―and numerous mouths to feed and funerals to fund. And so he turns to the classic temptation for financially struggling writers―Hollywood.