Happy Birthday William Faulkner, novelist, poet and screenwriter, born 25 September 1897 in New Albany, Mississippi. Nobel Laureate and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, Faulkner is one of the giants of American literature, hugely influential and, according to some, almost pinned down the elusive Great American Novel. His narrative style, was invasively complex involving stream-of-consciousness, nonlinear timelines and multiple perspectives, and he dug deep into the psyche and soul of the American South, all while mostly sitting quietly at home alone in Oxford, MS (very cat). His preferred setting was the imaginary place he called Yoknapatawpha County, which, it has been pointed out,  sounds like the noise a cat makes coughing up a furball.   

Bringing me, rather neatly I feel, to my main point. Faulkner may well have been one of the shifters of the American cultural scene,  but he was also a top cat man. He worked surrounded by a clowder* of cats, as he found their presence soothing and conducive to creativity. Which they obviously were. His favourite was a Siamese called Sweet Thing.  

* A clowder is a group of three or more cats; that’s why the Clowder Press is called  the Clowder Press.

 

For more about cats and literary giants, see Literary Cats, part of the Clowder Press series Creative Cats.