Before Faulkner became the great Southern novelist, he hired on as the postmaster at the University of Mississippi. By all accounts he was an indifferent postmaster, opening the P.O. when he felt like it and never letting the U.S. mail interfere with his hunting and golf. Students complained that the P.O. motto under Faulkner’s regime should be “Never put the mail up on time.”
After two years Faulkner and the Postal Service had had enough of each other. In a fit of wounded dignity, Faulkner resigned. He said that as long as he lived in a capitalist society, he expected to have his life “influenced by the demands of moneyed people.”
“But,” he sniffed, “I will be damned if I propose to be at the beck and call of every itinerant scoundrel who has two cents to invest in a postage stamp.”
