American · 1923–2012
Joseph Blotner (1923–2012) was an American literary scholar and biographer best known for Faulkner: A Biography (1974), the definitive two-volume life of William Faulkner, later condensed into a one-volume edition. A World War II bomber pilot before turning to academia, Blotner taught English at the University of Virginia and the University of Michigan, where he had access to Faulkner's papers and the cooperation of the writer's family and friends. His biography, running over two thousand pages, remains the primary scholarly account of Faulkner's life, drawing on interviews, letters, and archival material unavailable to earlier critics. Blotner also edited Faulkner's letters, uncollected stories, and his library catalog, and co-edited Faulkner in the University, a record of Faulkner's question-and-answer sessions at UVA. His work established the factual record on which nearly all later Faulkner scholarship depends.