Happy Birthday, William Faulkner

He would be 113 today.

Still on my list of things to see in Mississippi is his hometown in Oxford, which supposedly has a great bookstore.

And still on my list of books to finish is Soldiers' Pay, his first novel, from whence comes this first paragraph:

"Lowe, Julian, number ____, late a Flying Cadet, Umptieth Squadron, Air Service, known as "One Wing" by the other embryonic aces of his flight, regarded the world with a yellow and disgruntled eye. He suffered the same jaundice that many a more booted one than he did, from Flight Commanders through Generals to the ambrosial single-barred (not to mention that inexplicable beast of the field which the French so beautifully call an aspiring aviator); they had stopped the war on him."