“The orchestra had ceased and were now climbing onto their chairs, with their instruments. The floral offerings flew; the coffin teetered. "Catch it!" a voice shouted. They sprang forward, but the coffin crashed heavily to the floor, coming open. The corpse tumbled slowly and sedately out and came to rest with its face in the center of a wreath. "Play something!" the proprietor bawled, waving his arms; "play! Play!”

American writer

William Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer, known for his novels and short stories. He lived most of his life in Mississippi and wrote much of his work around the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, a version of Lafayette County. He won the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature. His fiction is closely associated with the American South, and he is widely regarded as a major figure in 20th-century literature.