Joseph Blotner

Biography

Joseph Blotner (1923-2012) wrote, edited, and contributed to a dozen books on William Faulkner, as well as a study of J. D. Salinger and another on the American political novel. As an associate professor in the department of English at the University of Virginia, Blotner helped bring William Faulkner to the university as a writer-in-residence in 1957.

See Work

ESSAYS / Spring 2001

Mr. Faulkner: Writer-In-Residence

By Joseph Blotner

It was just as well, for Fred Gwynn and me and our hopes for the University of Virginia’s Writer-in-Residence Program in 1955, that our memories of Charlottesville did not stretch back more than a few years. Others recalled a signal event...

CRITICISM / Autumn 2002

Once More: the Actual and the Apocryphal

By Joseph Blotner

Some of William Faulkner’s remarks about his work are now almost as famous as some phrases in the work itself. He quoted Sherwood Anderson’s advice to him in New Orleans that he should go home and write about what he knew, that patch of...