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John has had a career like a character in one of his brother's novels. In 1918 he ran away from home, enlisted (under age) in the army. Later he was arrested on his father's orders, had his new uniform taken away. In 1926 he began to study engineering at the University of Mississippi at Oxford. In 1931 he took up flying, got a job plane-dusting boll weevils in the Delta. One night he crashed his plane and his job in Georgia. He came back to manage his brother's plantation near Oxford, where he "raised niggers and mules." John Faulkner admits he is still not much of a farmer, says "it would take a man a lifetime to learn how to plough a straight furrow."
Faulkner went to WPA as a "project engineer" in 1939, finished Men Working while laying sidewalks and digging sewers. He also finished another novel, Dollar Cotton, now with his publishers. The WPA is the best place in the world, he says, to write a book. But, he adds, if he can make $150 a month writing (he is sure he can), he will never do any kind of work again in his life.
Some weeks ago John Faulkner wrote his publishers that he had lost his WPA job, needed some money. "You have nothing to worry about," they replied, "you would have been fired anyway with publication of this book."