William Cuthbert Falkner was born late at night on September 25, 1897, and died early in the morning of July 6, 1962; were we to honor his wishes on the matter of his biography, we would not inquire into it any further than that. He was a quiet and intensely private man who once observed that “it is my ambition to be, as a private individual, abolished and voided from history”; “in the same sentence is my obit and epitaph too, shall be them both: He made the books and he died” (FCF 126). In his fiction, subconsciously and on purpose, Faulkner used the materials of his life in very subtle, often tertiary ways, and more than one biographer has gone terribly astray while trying to use the life to explain his work or the work to explain his life. Another problem in writing Faulkner's biography is raised by the fact that he was first and foremost a fiction writer. When asked a question about his private life, he was just as likely to make something up as he was when he sat at his typewriter at home inventing characters and plots. Early in his career, for example, he wrote to an editor who had asked for biographical information that he was “Born male and single at early age in Mississippi. Quit school after five years in seventh grade. Got job in Grandfather's bank and learned medicinal value of his liquor. Grandfather thought janitor did it. Hard on janitor” (SL 47).