Customer Reviews (1)

The Best of Both Worlds
Faulkner's Mississippi

With excerpts from Sanctuary, The Faulkner Reader, As I Lay Dying, The Unvanquished, Light in August, Essays, Go Down, Moses; Absalom, Absalom!; and the exceptional writing style of editor/novelist Willie Morris, this work reveals the textures of Faulkner's Mississippi--cultural, linguistic, and social--making an exceptional commentary on southern life. Morris accomplishes the task of seizing and capturing the imagination of the reader. This image is heightened by the stark, often haunting photographs of Eggleston which combines the reality of Mississippi's landscape with an almost spiritual journey through Faulkner's mystical Yoknapatawpha County.

Morris, who served as writer-in-residence at the University of Mississippe (Ole Miss), has allowed the reader to visualize a southern way of life which is non-existent in many Mississippi communities. From the smell of corn liquor, fried chicken and hush puppies to the sounds of choral music and the clamour of University students and fall football, the reader is gently nudged from one scene to yet another.

Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha which extends from the Tallahatchie River to the north and the Yocona (patawpha) to the south, leaving its eastern and western boundaries to the readers imagination, encompasses the modern day town of Oxford, a center of intellectual achievement and southern hospitality. Named for the famous English University, this town possesses a remarkable and diverse culture. At it's epicenter stands the Lafayette County Courthouse: an imposing, white structure encircled by wizened oaks. From its deeply shaded benches old men relive past ventures or simply watch the city's comings and goings. A mile west of the Courthouse Square one encounters the youthful vigor of the University of Mississippi. This artfully landscaped campus has, during its history, weathered both Civil War and civil strife. All this and much more are revealed by Eggleston's photographic endeavours.

Although a little expensive, this work is a needed addition for any photographer, historian, or southern culture buff who dreams of a beauty and style which is nearly forgotten but which can be re-lived within the page of Faulkner's Mississippi.

by Dr. Carl Edwin Lindgren
COPYRIGHT 1991 Photographic Society of America, Inc.

... Read more

Product Description
At once an engrossing murder mystery and an unflinching potrait of racial injustice in the Reconstruction South, Intruder in the Dust stands out as a true classic of Southern literature. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (44)

Purchase of an old classic
I had been looking for William Faulkner's "Intruder in the Dust", because I wanted to have Charlie Mallison's quote about Pickett's Charge on file.

The copy sent to me was hard cover, 16th printing of the first edition, in excellent shape, and meets my requirements in every way.

I am totally satisfied.

If it's William Faulkner it must be good.
I read this on my own and have read other works by Faulkner, so I'm not just some innocent student.

On the positive:Faulkner does create good imagery such as the two scenes in the graveyard.I also like that he never tries to explain himself, let's the reader figure it out.The symbolism is OK if you're into that sort of thing.

On the negative:He must have written this while out and out drunk and the editor, publisher and the adoring public make great allowance because this is "William Faulkner".The sentences are not just run-on, but change subjects midstream and simply make no sense.The dialogue is the same as the narrative except for the quotes surrounding it and thus since everyone talks the same, there is not much for characterization.The plot is a simple mystery which depends on timing, coincidence, stupidity and is just unbelievable.

If not for the fame of the author, this book would be forgotton.

On the obligations incurred from eating a plate of collard greens...
... the "owner" of which was a man who said "mister" to whites, but did not really mean it. The meal was served to 12 year old Charles Mallison, after he had fallen in an icy pond, and the server, who didn't mean mister, was Lucas Beauchamp. Four years later the "bill" for those collard greens would come due, and it would be Mallison's actions that would save Beauchamp's life. "Intruder in the Dust" is one of Faulkner's later works, written just after World War II. The perennial themes of his works are exhibited: his examination of life in barely fictional Yoknapatawpha County, whose county seat is Jefferson, (Oxford, MS) and the continued fall-out from America's "original sin," slavery. From Faulkner's majestically southern mansion of Rowan Oaks, he wrote in fear of the "white trash" that surrounded him, so often identified as the Snopes family, but in this novel they are transformed into the Gowries, from "Beat Four." Faulkner's stream-of-consciousness style always challenges the reader to stay engaged, or a vital clue to the story will be missed. And like those slower internet connections, he "backs and fills" his pixels, slowly revealing the entire story. This is also an excellent "mystery" novel; the particular situations involving the grave seem "impossible," but Faulkner makes it all so understandable, masterfully so, in the fullness of time. Faulkner is certainly not for the "fun read" crowd, nor, apparently, based on the reviews posted here, for sophomores in "Advanced Placement" English. I shutter at the thought of how many students have become confirmed non-readers of serious books for the rest of their lives as a result of such classes.

I am an immense fan of Faulkner, and still hope to read or re-read all his works. This time it was a re-read, after 35 or so years, and fortunately, even the first time was not a dreaded school assignment. There remain the wonderful, original descriptive passages that contain nuggets like: "...and forlorn across the long peaceful creep of late afternoon, into the mauve windless dome of dusk..." and "...if there were only some way to efface the clumsy room-devouring carcasses which can be done but the memory which cannot." But on the re-read I noticed Faulkner's "feet of clay." In referring to a patched roof, how much meaning is conveyed by "insolent promptitude," or a lathe's "ineluctable shaft," or "incredulous disbelief"?

But the real "feet of clay" are political, and there is a three page defense of the South's "go slow" policy for granting Blacks equal rights. The passage doesn't work in a literary sense, in that it plops, "cut and pasted," interrupting the dramatic tension of an enthralling mystery. Consider: "...only we (meaning white Southerners) must do it, and we alone without help or interference or even (thank you) advice since only we can if Lucas's equality is to be anything more than its own prisoner inside an impregnable barricade of the direct heirs of the victory of 1861-1865..." James Baldwin, in "Nobody Knows My Name," in his chapter entitled "Faulkner and Desegregation," offers the seminal critique of such an attitude: "After more than two hundred years in slavery and ninety years of quasi-freedom, it is hard to think very highly of William Faulkner's advice to `go slow.' `They don't mean go slow,' Thurgood Marshall is reported to have said, `they mean don't go.'"

Upon the re-read I was also struck by how derivative Harper Lee's classic book, "To Kill a Mockingbird" is, down to the two different men, both sitting in the doorway of the jailhouse, to prevent a lynching, as well as even the mockingbird! It is a point another reviewer made, but I had never realized it before, nor seen it in a critique of Lee's work.

Faulkner may be most associated with black-white relations, but he also has something to say about male-female relations. Consider: "...just enough dirt to hide the body temporarily from sight with something of that frantic desperation of the wife flinging her peignoir over the lover's forgotten glove..." or "I am fifty-plus years old,' his uncle said. `I spent the middle fifteen of them fumbling beneath skirts. My experience was that few of them were interested in love or sex either. They wanted to be married.'"

It pains me to knock a star from a Nobel-prize winning "idol," but the "feet of clay" are most certainly there.

Stream-of-Confusion
This novel is, in form, a thriller with a classic thriller plot- the fight to prove the innocence of a man accused of a crime he did not commit. (Alfred Hitchcock used this plot in a number of his films, and "Intruder in the Dust" was itself made into a very good film by Clarence Brown in 1949, only a year after its publication). Faulkner takes this basic plot and uses it to explore the problem of racism in America's Deep South; Harper Lee was later to take a similar plot, and use it for a similar purpose, in "To Kill a Mockingbird".

The book is set in Faulkner's fictional Yoknapatawpha County and its capital, Jefferson, based upon the real Lafayette County and Faulkner's own home town of Oxford. The innocent man wrongly accused is Lucas Beauchamp, an elderly, widowed black farmer. Although Beauchamp is honest and respectable, he is resented by many whites because he refuses to "behave like a nigger", that is to say behave in a servile manner. When a white man named Vinson Gowrie is shot dead, Beauchamp is accused of the crime. Gowrie was from Beat Four, a wild, hilly district of the county, whose white inhabitants are noted for their lawless ways and their ingrained prejudices against blacks. A mob, mostly members of Gowrie's extended family, gathers in Jefferson, threatening to break into the jail and lynch Beauchamp.

The story is told through the eyes of Charles Mallison, the sixteen-year-old nephew of Gavin Stevens, the relatively liberal white lawyer who acts for Beauchamp. Charles, who regards himself as being in Beauchamp's debt ever since, four years earlier, the old man rescued him after he fell in a stream, sets out to prove that Beauchamp did not fire the fatal shot. Together with his black friend Aleck and Miss Habersham, an elderly spinster (did Faulkner derive her name from Dickens' Miss Havisham?) he makes the dangerous body to Beat Four to exhume the body of the murdered man- and makes a surprising discovery.

Racial issues play an important part in Faulkner's work; indeed, it would probably be difficult for any Southern writer to avoid them altogether. His own views on the topic, however, seem to have been rather mixed. On the one hand he was an anti-racist, regarding the intolerant prejudice of many white Southerners as an affront to both decency and rationality. On the other hand, he was himself a proud Southerner, conscious of his family's Confederate heritage; his great-grandfather, Colonel William Falkner (thus spelt), had been a Confederate hero in the Civil War. In this novel Faulkner himself seems to adopt what might be called a neo-Confederate position, believing that, if the South could not be an independent, sovereign state it should at least form a culturally autonomous unit within the USA and have the right to deal with its own problems without interference from the North. He devotes several pages of the novel to his thesis that attempts by outsiders to combat racism in the south had actually been counter-productive and that black Southerners would never achieve equality until white Southerners were allowed to address the issue on their own terms.

The novel was written in the late forties, before the rise of the Civil Rights movement, and I think that Faulkner was wrong about race. The large-scale exodus of rural Southern blacks to Northern industrial cities in the first half of the twentieth century meant that race relations could no longer (if indeed they ever could) be thought of as solely a Southern issue. Since 1948 race relations in America have seen an immense change for the better; as I write this in October 2008 it seems quite likely that next month Barack Obama will not only be elected America's first black President but will also carry several Southern states. This change would not have been possible without the Civil Rights movement and the active involvement of Northerners, both black and white, and of the institutions of the Federal government.

Despite my disagreements with him, I nevertheless found Faulkner's analysis of the South's racial problems a stimulating and thought-provoking one. The characters are, for the most part, memorable and powerfully drawn. I did not, however, altogether enjoy this book, largely because of the eccentricities of the prose style that the author adopts here, a prose style characterised by long, rambling (and often syntactically disorganised) sentences, sometimes extending over several pages. He also has a weakness for obscure vocabulary items.

Faulkner was, presumably, aiming at the sort of stream-of-consciousness style he had used to good effect in other, better, novels, such as "As I Lay Dying". This style can be a valuable tool for showing us the world through the eyes of a fictional character or, in the case of "As I Lay Dying" which uses first-person multiple-narrator technique, through the eyes of a string of different characters. When stream-of-consciousness is used to represent the writer's own authorial voice, it becomes much less effective. "Intruder in the Dust" is a third-person narrative, and, although Charles is the central character, we are not always certain if it is his voice we are hearing, or the author's. The effect is less stream-of-consciousness than stream-of-confusion. As a result of this uncertainty, and of his often impenetrable syntax, the author's train of thought is in places difficult to follow, which means that, despite its interesting themes, "Intruder in the Dust" is not as effective a book as it could have been.

Difficult Read
This story is one of the most difficult stories I have read thus far. I am supposed to summarize the story for an English Majors course; but because the sentences are so long and tangled, I keep losing track of which character is being talked about. I have read and reread the story, but still have difficulty summarizing the story. The excruciatingly long paragraphs are what makes it so difficult to follow. Use caution when reading this story. ... Read more

Product Description
First published in 1931, this classic psychological melodrama has been viewed as more of a social document in his tragic legend of the South than mere story.From Popeye, a moonshining racketeer with no conscience and Temple Drake, beautiful, bored and vulnerable, to Harace Benbow, a lawyer of honor and decency wishing for more in his life, and Gowan Stevens, college student with a weakness for drink, Faulkner writes of changing social values and order.A sinister cast peppered with social outcasts and perverts perform abduction, murder, and mayhem in this harsh and brutal story of sensational and motiveless evil.

Students of Faulkner have found an allegorical interpretation of "Sanctuary" as a comment on the degradation of old South's social order by progressive modernism and materialistic exploitation.Popeye and his co-horts represent this hurling change that is corrupting the historic traditions of the South, symbolized by Horace Stevens, which are no longer able to protect the victimized Negro and poor white trash due to middle-class apathy and inbred violence. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (33)

Second best from Faulkner
Sanctuary is a good starter for introducing people to Faulkner. My all time favorite from Faulkner is Absolom,Absolom but this seems very difficult for people to follow. I grew up in the South, the story in Sanctuary could have truly happened 40 years ago in any community in the South. The title is misleading, none of the characters ever find sanctuary, there is no place within the book that could be called a sanctuary.

Tragic
It's almost hard to describe what this book is about, without giving away spoilers. Sanctuary starts off with a well-to-do man from the city stumbling across a ramshackle farmhouse where moonshine is being made. From there, the story spirals off to include Temple (a rich and popular teenage girl), Mrs. Goodwin (the moonshiner's common law wife), and Popeye (a deranged misfit). Their paths continue to cross as the book goes on; sometimes for good, sometimes for bad.

Faulkner is fast becoming one of my favorite authors. I've been slowly reading through his books after tackling all of Cormac McCarthy's work (the two authors are very similiar, in my opinion). One thing with Faulkner, I've found that it works best just to keep on reading even if encounter something that doesn't make sense. Chances are, it will come clear as the story goes on.

In the South
Much has been said about the writing of Faulkner.Specifically discussing "Sanctuary", one might suggest it to be dirty and perhaps gritty.Faulkner never intended it to be a nice heart-warming story.What the story lacks in niceties is compensated for in realism.Though most can not directly identify with the story, most would agree with the portrayal of southern life.

The story centers around the kidnapping of Temple Drake.Though it is not a kidnapping in the truest definition, Temple does find herself at the mercy of the feeble-minded Popeye.As bothersome as the crimes against Temple may be, readers will question why she chooses not to leave.The fascinating aspect of the story is this aspect of Temple's character sometimes referred to as Stockholm Syndrome.In this syndrome, the hostage develops loyalty to the hostage-take.

Justice is not distributed as some might expect.Even as justice seems apparent, the reader may find himself/herself angry.It would seem easy to just to toss this book aside and hate it.At the same time, there is something compelling about it in the same way people look at the traffic accident at the side of the road.

Horrible
Ok, so everyone has for years told me how great a writer William Faulkner was. So, I read As I Lay Dying- mediocre at best, and no real strengths at characterization are revealed. Instead, a bunch of yokel stereotypes. So, I mark that off as just one of those things. Then I read his Collected Stories. Atrocious! Nothing but stereotypes in every tale. The Southern grotesques are not as noxious as in, say, Flannery O'Connor, but the tales are all wooden, dull, and generally- a mess! So, I read Sanctuary, which comes with the preface that it was Faulkner's `deliberately commercial' novel, and the one that `broke him' to readers. So, I think if the high literature of As I Lay Dying, and his acclaimed short stories, is bad then, perhaps, the real gem lies in his `commercial' novel.

O for three! What this book was was The Texas Chainsaw Massacre before that film- except for the chainsaw, and not being set in Texas. This has got to be one of the worst books ever penned, and all the more egregious because, despite its being `commercial', it's still the province of a high fictionist! The characters are even more stereotyped than in As I Lay Dying, and the plot revolves around the kidnapping of a judge's daughter and a slew of murders. Now, for those of you wondering which Texas Chainsaw Massacre I was referring to, the 1974 Tobe Hooper original, or the 2003 remake with nymphet Jessica Biel, I can state it does not really matter, but let me choose the latter, since that film was merely a reason to show off the nubile Ms. Biel's fabulous form and healthy wet t shirted bosom....The title's meaning is multifarious, and rather obvious, since it's the one thing none of the cretins within the book get. So what? Mickey Spillane crafted much more interesting scenarios two decades later, and Mike Hammer would have jackbooted Popeye inside of a page of meeting him. In the end, no lessons are learned, Temple perdures, and the last page or so of the book ends very poetically. But, it's simply air spray freshener used on a litter box. The odor underneath still permeates.

I will have to read The Sound And The Fury, but I've given up on having any high expectations for it. Perhaps, that's the key, and I will be pleasantly surprised, although I doubt it will change my overall view of Faulkner as one of the most grotesquely overrated writers of all time. He constipates me with his plodding narratives, ridiculously stilted conversations, and outrageously thin plot machinations. I need an enema after all that, but sans that- pass the corn cob!

Mississippi Noir
I have read my fair share of Faulkner although I am hardly a devotee. My main positive reference to him is concerning his role in the screenwriting of one of my favorite films- "To Have or To Have Not" with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. I have also, obliquely, run into his work as it relates to who should and who should not be in the modern American literary canon. Usually the criticism centers on his racism and sexism, and occasionally his alcoholism. Of course, if political correctness were the main criterion for good hard writing then we would mainly not be reading anything more provocative or edifying than the daily newspaper, if that.

So much for that though. Faulkner is hardly known as a master of the noir or 'potboiler' but here the genius of his sparse, functional writing (a trait that he shares with the Hemingway of "The Killers" and the key crime novelists of the 1930's Hammett, think "The Red Harvest", and Chandler, think "The Big Sleep") gives him entree into that literary genre. And he makes the most of it.

The plot revolves around a grotesque cast of characters who are riding out the Jazz Age in the backwaters of Mississippi and its Mecca in Memphis. Take one protected young college student, Temple Drake, looking to get her 'kicks'. Put her with a shabbily gentile frat boy looking for his kicks. Put them on the back roads of Prohibition America and trouble is all you can expect. Add in a bootlegger or two, a stone-crazy killer named Popeye with a little sexual problem and you are on your way.

That way is a little bumpy as Faulkner mixed up the plot, the motives of the characters and an unsure idea of what justice, Southern style, should look like in this situation in the eyes of his main positive character, Horace, the lawyer trying to do the right thing in a dead wrong situation which moreover is stacked against him. As always with Faulkner follow the dialogue, that will get you through even if you have to do some re-reading (as I have had to do). Interestingly, for a writer as steeped in Southern mores, Jim Crow and very vivid descriptions of the ways of the South in the post-Civil War era as Faulkner was there is very little of race in this one. The justice meted out here tells us one thing- it is best to be a judge's daughter or a Daughter of the Confederacy if you want a little of that precious commodity. All others watch out. Kudos to Faulkner, whether he wrote this for the cash or not, for taking on some very taboo subjects back in 1931 Mississippi. Does anyone really want to deny him his place in the American literary canon? Based on this effort I think not. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

why you need these cliffs notes
First off, the editorial reviews are on the wrong book, 2nd these are cliffs notes for the short story "the bear" found in Go Down Moses' by william faulkner.As for the "the bear," in my opinionit is a very difficult piece to read and i would recommend cliffs notes forit.its good to attempt to read through the actual book, but its apain.faulkner trails off on the most myriad of details and takes 2 pages toexplain something that could easily take only half a page.i've never usedcliffs notes before in my life, but i needed them for this book. This isthe opinion of an accelerated junior in high school who just wrote a 13page term paper on this, so you can determine for yourself if this info.was useful.

I thought you were talking about another book!!
I thought this was the book that dealt with a bear and a woman forming a relationship.This novel that I am talking about describes very well what it's like.I was quite disappointed with this novel.

Faulkner's "The Bear" is an excellent choice for insomniacs
"The Bear" by william faulkner was an extreamly slow paced book. Many of the sentances ran on for two pages or so, and became incomprehensable. Faulkner seems to ramble on aimlessly, failing to reachdistinct points. There were some good double meanings in the text, but ifthis is what you like, look at James Joyce. This was a failure.

It was O.K.
It was O.K ... Read more

Product Description
Nobel laureate William Faulkner is one of the most distinctive voices in American literature. Known for his opaque prose style and his evocative depictions of life in the American South, he is recognised as one of the most important authors of the twentieth century. This introductory book provides students and readers of Faulkner with a clear overview of the life and work of one of America's most prolific writers of fiction. His nineteen novels, including The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, Go Down, Moses and Absalom, Absalom! are discussed in detail, as are his major short stories and nonfiction. Focused on the works themselves, but also providing useful information about their critical reception, this introduction is an accessible guide to Faulkner's challenging and complex oeuvre. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Concise, well-written introduction to Faulker and his works
Attractively designed, this concise and well-written introduction to William Faulkner's life and works will be a welcome addition to library collections serving undergraduates writing papers on this noted Southern writer.

Notes that while there is an enormous body of critical literature on Faulkner, much of it "obscures understanding because of the uneven quality (and varying degrees of accuracy) in such a crowded field of study." Further, because most of these books tend to be easily categorized as "biography, textual analysis, influence study, historiography, and so forth," undergraduates have had the difficult and time-consuming task of having to plow through these lengthy, approach-specific studies to try and develop an overview understanding of this complex writer. It is within this context that Theresa M. Towner -- Professor of Literary Studies at the University of Texas at Dallas -- provides this concise guide to Faulkner's life, works, context and critical reception.

The book is easy to use: Chapter one being comprised of a nine-page, narrative biographical sketch; Chapter two offering two-to-four page, work-by-work discussions of Faulkner's books in chronological order; Chapter three being a placement and discussion of his contribution to American Literature in the context of his time and peers; and, Chapter four being an assessment of the critical reception and commentary of his works. The text is followed by notes, a "Guide to Further Reading" and a brief index.

The value of this book lies in how it serves as a clear, well-written introduction to this complex and challenging Southern writer. Highly recommended for public library collections in the South and all college and university collections.

R. Neil Scott
Middle Tennessee State University ... Read more

Product Description
One of Faulkner’s most admired and accessible novels, Light in August reveals the great American author at the height of his powers. Lena Grove’s resolute search for the father of her unborn child begets a rich, poignant, and ultimately hopeful story of perseverance in the face of mortality. It also acquaints us with several of Faulkner’s most unforgettable characters, including the Reverend Gail Hightower, who is plagued by visions of Confederate horsemen, and Joe Christmas, a ragged, itinerant soul obsessed with his mixed-race ancestry.

Powerfully entwining these characters’ stories, Light in August vividly brings to life Faulkner’s imaginary South, one of literature’s great invented landscapes, in all of its impoverished, violent, unerringly fascinating glory.

This edition reproduces the corrected text of Light in August as established in 1985 by Noel Polk.Amazon.com Review
To declare that Light in August is William Faulkner's finestwork would be to invoke debate of irreconcilable conclusion. Yet for manyfollowers of Faulkner, this novel showcases many of his best moments andcharacters. As usual, he mines the rich soil of Mississippi mud to create hissubjects, this time in the form of Reverend Gail Hightower, Lena Grove andJoe Christmas. The issue of black and white and rich and poor is prevalent,though to draw lines that clear would be a disservice to Faulkner's immenselylayered text and the multicolored beauty of his writing. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (21)

Nobody to like in this one.
Since I had never read Faulkner, I thought I'd give him a try.None of the characters in this book had any redeeming value.They were all awful people.I kept reading hoping against hope for some improvement, or at least the violent death of these poor suffering
specimens of humanity.I was disappointed on both counts.

Not as complex as Faulkner's other work, but shows great skill and insight into humanity. Recommended
Lena Grove travels, on foot and with the aid of strangers, through the South in search of the father of her unborn child. Her journey introduces the reader to a variety of characters, including the child's father, a man who falls in love with Lena, and a biracial man named Christmas. Like Lena, all of these characters have stories to tell, and Faulkner interweaves a number of back stories and histories in the body of this book. One of his more accessable texts, Light in August is easy to get in to and builds up gradually to its complexities and confusing narrative traits. The result is a readable text that still manages to capture the character depth and human study that Faulkner does so well. While I prefer his more difficult/complex work, I definitely enjoyed this text and I highly recommend it.

For the first couple chapters, this book doesn't didn't feel like Faulkner. I was surprised by just how approachable and linear the text was. By the last few chapters, Faulkner is intertwining disparate narratives and times and using more streams of consciousnesses. The book definitely becomes more complex as it progresses. This gradual build up in style and complexity allows the reader to adapt to Faulkner's writing style and techniques, making the end of the book more rewarding because the reader has a better grasp of how to understand and interpret it. I highly recommend this text for readers new to Faulkner, and I think high schools would do well to use it in place to As I Lay Dying in schools.

That said, I enjoyed both As I Lay Dying and The Sound and the Fury more than this book. Because both books delve immediately into the complex end of Faulkner's writing style, they reach their full potential from the onset rather than building in to it. Characters have more stories, more thoughts, more key events; information is tightly packed, emotional, and raw, less filtered through the writer's lens. I don't feel like I found as much depth or character interest in Light in August, with the possible exception of Christmas, whose life story receives the most attention and time. I have no doubt that this was a good book: characters are real and descriptions detailed, almost physical; Faulkner attacks his greater issues of humanity, personal history, and fault and action from multiple angles both narrative and character-based. The book is compelling, both depressing and uplifting and certainly enlightening. Nonetheless, I believe that Faulkner sacrificed some depth by limiting the writing style at the beginning of the book.

I do recommend this book, as well as any other book by Faulkner. He is an extraordinary author and conveys fascination with and insights on humanity: what makes a man, what insights him to action, and when, despite all justification, man is still at fault. This book is a good start for those new to Faulkner. While it may be disappointing, in terms of style and depth, to those that have already read him, Light in August nonetheless contains one of Faulkner's most complex and compelling character and is a rewarding read

Amazing audio performance of a great book
None of the reviews of this edition have mentioned Dick Hill's performance. I've listened to many audio versions of fiction, and this is in a class by itself (approached only by Donal Donnely's version of "Portrait of the Artist"). For once the performer has character (and is a character) in himself, and also brings each character alive brilliantly. For some reason, other readers are one or the other: surprisingly many readers are good at character voices but their own "narrator" voices are as dull as your high school principal reading the new lunchroom policy. The well-known Frank Muller does the whole thing quite well but at a kind of TV level of acting. Some readers are just bad all around. Dick Hill's version drew me in right away and made me believe it. It's a work of art in its own right like a great theater performance.

Out of the ordinary and great!
This is the first Faulkner book I have read, and I enjoyed it.The whole book takes place in the course of a week or so, in the town of Jefferson, Mississippi (there are two Jeffersons in MS, one near where the story seems to take place, but I suspect Faulkner's Jefferson is highly fictionalized).The main character is Joe Christmas, who we don't meet until some way into the book.Other main characters include Lena, a pregnant woman looking for the father of her baby; Joe Brown, a co-worker of Christmas' at the mill; Byron, their supervisor; and Hightower, a disgraced minister and friend to Byron.All their lives interwine in a way that moves the story along, and delightfully.I live near where the story took place, and I think Faulkner has captured the flavor of the people and place pretty well.It was very realistic and I can imagine people behaving exactly like the characters in the book.

What is out of the ordinary about this book is how it is told.Much of it is told via flashback, or of two characters discussing events that the reader doesn't directly observe in the reading.Faulkner experiments freely with narrative style, sometimes brilliantly, but sometimes it's confusing.I sometimes had trouble following who was talking, or where they were, etc.I was let down by the ending (the climax of the story is told to us by two people we hadn't met up that point - "Did you hear what happened uptown?").But if you follow Faulkner's lead and enjoy the ride, you are in for a treat.I'm sure this is a book I will get more out of the more I study it.I'm sure I missed a lot.

A great read and I recommend it.

One of the greatest Faulkner Books
Out of all the Faulkner novels I've had the pleasure to read, Light In August has to be the one of my favorites and is easily the simplistic of his novels to read.It's a love story but not in a traditional sense and yet after you read it you'll fall in love with the characters.
... Read more

Product Description
The complete text of Faulkner's third novel, published for the first time in 1973, appeared with his reluctant consent in a much cut version in 1929 as SARTORIS. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (11)

faulkner at his best
This is one of Faulkner's better novels. Faulkner's works are hard to read however this work is easier to read and follow.

Trying, but worth reading
After being delighted by Soldier's Pay, Faulkner's first novel, and thoroughly entertained by Mosquitoes, his second, I moved on to Flags in the Dust with high hopes.Like the other books, it has hypnotizing, lush descriptions of the Deep South and obliquely rendered, fascinating characters. Much of it rings true and makes you really feel as if you are there is this bygone era.But I had problems being very interested in young Bayard, the handsome, hell-raising, irresponsible, moody, manly, drunken, self-destructive main character.The book seems to romanticize and glorify Bayard at the same time it is minutely describing his selfish, hurtful behavior.While Faulkner seems to partly explain Bayard's defects as a result of trauma over his brother John's death during WW1, it seems to me that Bayard would have been much the same regardless.As such, I didn't find him a very interesting character -- he reminded me of scores of other very similarly portrayed handsome, hellbent, brooding, self-absorbed young "heroes" in movies and books.So I took my consolation and pleasure from the much more interesting-to-me supporting characters such as Aunt Jenny and old Bayard and black Simon and young Bayard's wife Narcissa and old doctor Loosh Peabody.

Thoughts upon completing a quarter of "Sartoris"
I love those works of art which bridge two eras; in music the early Schoenberg in "Death and Transfiguration", and all of Mahler; "Sartoris" is a literary example. Here you can see the developing Faulkner stylistically acknowledging some 19th century mentors in the exquisite descriptive chapters which open the book. A beautifully appropriate style in which to convey nostalgia for that period. It is rather heartbreaking that F. stopped writing like this, but I suppose he had to move on... I have not read the uncut version entitled "Flags in the Dust" but have a feeling, based on some reviews here, that the novel might be more enjoyable as "Sartoris"; from what I have read so far, it is not verbose at all, but really a gemlike work indicative of his debt to the great masters Zola, Flaubert, Eliot, Bronte, etc...like some recently recut old movies I've seen recently, sometimes it's just better the first time around.

The only Faulkner I truly enjoyed
I'm going to go out on a limb here, and express my feelings about Flags in the Dust using simple English.I took a course on Faulkner, and this was the novel I absolutely loved reading.I was frustratingly mystified by Sound and the Fury(particularly by all the accolades it has received), disgusted and disturbed by The Light in August, and had at least some admiration for Absalom, Absalom.Several reviewers describe this as "young" Faulkner or "developing" Faulkner - well, for me, this is Faulkner before the copious self-conscious devices - and seems far more genuine than his other novels.There it is - now I can only await the flood of "non-helpful" votes.It was worth it though.

Faulkner's "Flags" Tastes Better Than It Looks
Before I read this book, I kept hearing what a horrible novel it was.However, it isn't horrible; it's just not nearly as fantastic as some of his other works.It's still definitely worth the read, though.

If you can make it through sentences that seem to never end and some repitition, you will find a great story of love, guilt, and Southern life.This book opens with the Sartoris family, and several young men (Bayard Sartoris and others) returning home from World War I, and the impressions war left upon them.Thrown in with a little bit of incest, love notes, and a daredevil, this book provides a good combination of mushiness (sp?), humor, and sorrow.

However, while some have said not to read this book as your first Faulkner, I disagree.And here's why: reading this book after you have read some of his other works really makes you look at this book in a more negative way, since his other works have been so great. Just remember, if this is your first Faulkner read, many of his other works are MUCH BETTER, so if you read this first and don't like it, there are MUCH BETTER ones out there.As far as reading goes, it's a pretty easy read (although you might have to keep track of all the Johns and Bayards), at least in comparison to some of his other books.Also, if you plan on reading other Faulkner books, this one is a MUST, since it introduces you to the Benbrows, Snopes, and the Sartorises-all characters that are found in some of his other novels. ... Read more

Product Description
William Faulkner was the greatest American novelist of the 20th century, yet he lived a life marked by a pervasive sense of failure.Repeatedly, he failed to master the challenges that erupted upon him in charged moments: crises involving love, war, and race, as well as family, Hollywood, and alcohol.In this imaginative biography Philip Weinstein, a leading authority on Faulkner, targets Faulkner's sense of unpreparedness as central to both his life and his work.

Weinstein shows how Faulkner's troubled interactions with time, place, and history-with antebellum practices and southern heritage-form a pattern that played out over the course of his entire life.At the same time, these incidents take on their fullest meanings in his fiction.It was in meditating on his failures, his own unreadiness, Weinstein argues, that Faulkner came up with his singular language, one that captured human consciousness under stress as never before. His fruitless striving catapulted American literature to a new level of sophistication.

Narrating the events that comprised Faulkner's life, biographers have long struggled to depict his personal complexity, the paradoxes that shaped his decisions and dogged his relationships.But without a consideration of the writing as well, the troubles in the life fail to reveal their deeper resonance.By skillfully analyzing the work while tracing the events, Weinstein achieves a full portrait, revealing struggles that animate his life and shadows that complicate his work.Becoming Faulkner thus conjoins Faulkner's life and art in a bold new way, giving readers a full vantage from which to better understand this twentieth-century literary genius. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Understanding Faulkner
A brilliant book that makes Faulkner understandable to a non-academician. I immediately went out and re-read "As I lay Dying" and "Sound and the Fury"-- what a revelation. A must book for anyone who needs or seeks a better understanding of one of America's greatest writers.

Faulkner AS IS and WAS
An erudite and in-depth analysis of the work of the Oxford master. Weinstein eschews biographical minutia for overview and encapsulation. Nuanced and beguiling--obviously the result of years immersion in Faulknerian studies...An insightful exegesis providing as clear a portrait of Faulkner--his thought processes, beliefs, and character--as has been hitherto provided. ... Read more

Product Description
This completes the great trilogy of the Snopes family in Yoknapatawpha and traces the downfall of this indomitable post-bellum family. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (9)

the mansion-william faulkner
the third and last volume of william faulkners triology, of the snopes familey of missisippi. it can be read by itself or in order with the other two.it is very thrilling and of an interesting style of the southern united states.

Greatness
Reading The Mansion reminded me of reading Greek tragedy: I was witnessing the struggle of good and evil played out between godlike characters on a whole other plane of existence, and they all get what they deserve.
Anyway, Mink Snopes's patient toiling in the first section is the best slow burns in American literature.

In Faulkner's Mansion are many rooms
I read the first two books of the Snopes trilogy, The Hamlet and The Town, many years ago, so it is lucky for me that this concluding novel more or less retells the main events of the previous two novels - albeit from different points of view - from the start.So, let me get one thing that irritated and disappointed me, by turns, throughout the novel out of the way: Faulkner is rather sloppy here concerning his interior monologues and, indeed, exterior dialogues.Having a Harvard educated lawyer (viz., Gavin Stevens) saying "ain't"is just as grating as hearing an illiterate tenant farmer (viz., Mink Snopes) thinking in fifty dollar words.One only has to contrast the effect here to the masterfully controlled interior monologue of "the idiot" (q.v. Macbeth-"...a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing") Benji in The Sound and the Fury to see how striking is the difference.

Nevertheless, I think this a very worthwhile book because - as another reviewer has stated - it deals with the human condition, more particularly with the fallen state of man.Also, I had well-nigh forgotten how addictive Faulkner's prose style becomes after one adjusts to it.He seems to have never met an adverbial phrase he didn't like, nor a restating of matters with a slightly different nuance which he couldn't resist putting to paper.But the more one reads, the more acutely one becomes aware of how accurately this mimics life itself, in which we constantly relive the past in our minds and in which we dwell in a constantly changing state of uncertainty regarding the motives of those closest to us and even of ourselves.

I think it more than a bit of an over-simplification to say that this trilogy and that this novel are merely about the rise and fall of the vile, money-grubbing Snopes clan - though, on one level, it's certainly the plot line.But, as ever with Faulkner, the book is about far more than mere plot.There are so many themes here that I can't do justice to them all.I certainly can't do justice to the knight-errant psychology of Gavin Stevens.So, let me just advert to one question he poses: "If mankind matched his dreams too, where would his dreams be?"This question is the most concise explanation of his fear of consummation and all his other actions.He values his dream life. But the main character of the book, as far as overarching import is concerned, in the beginning of the book and the end, is the aforementioned unlettered tenant farmer and twice murderer Mink Snopes, who serves as an avenging angel of Fate, or of our fallen nature, or call it what you will here, to whose death Faulkner devotes the final words of the book:

"...himself among them, equal to any, good as any, brave as any, being inextricable from, anonymous with all of them: the beautiful, the splendid, the proud and the brave, right up to the very top itself among the shining phantoms and dreams which are the milestones of the long human recording - Helen and the bishops, the kings and the unhomed angels, the scornful and graceless seraphim."

I could go on, but this is an Amazon review, not a dissertation.Suffice it to say that in Faulkner's mansion are many themes, all of them deep and well-worth exploring.

Complex, Uneven, but Interesting
I've heard people talk about the best approach to reading Faulkner, and the best book to begin with.I don't think this is a good book to start with - too much of Faulkner's previous work crowds this text for it to make sense to someone without exposure to some of his earlier work.But I think the Snopes trilogy, and especially this book, is some of Faulkner's most important (and most neglected) work.

The Snopes trilogy follows the fortunes of the Snopes family, and especially Flem Snopes, as they invade and virtually conquer Faulkner's fictional Yoknapatawpha County.The trilogy starts with The Hamlet, published in 1940 before Faulkner was a Nobel laureate and a famous author.This book is often considered one of his great works, and I recommend it.The second book in the trilogy, The Town, is a bit less interesting because it focuses so much on Gavin Stevens and his obsession with Eula Varner Snopes and then her daughter Linda.I suppose I got a little tired of the dirty old man staring at the little girl thing.

Anyway, in The Mansion, Flem has risen to the presidency of one of Jefferson's two banks.He lives in the old Sartoris mansion (hence the title) with his daughter (since his wife committed suicide at the end of The Town - sorry to ruin that book for you).As the book progresses, Gavin Stevens moves closer to Linda, though they don't seem to end up together.And Mink Snopes, a cousin of Flem who killed his neighbor Jack Houston in The Hamlet, is getting out of prison (through the intervention of Linda Snopes and Gavin Stevens), and he wants to kill Flem.

Basically, the book jumps back and forth between these two components: the Gavin/Linda exchanges, and the Mink Snopes quest for revenge.Mink is an illiterate sharecropper who seems incapable of sympathy or remorse for his earlier murder or the murder he wants to commit.But in this book you start to feel bad for him.Sitting in a truck, hitching his way across Mississippi to buy a gun, he has to ask the driver to do the math for him to help him figure out how old he is after being in prison for almost forty years.He's too old to be useful to anyone, and so out of touch with the changes in the world around him (cars, for instance, were a novelty when he went into prison) that it seems a miracle that he finds someone to sell him a gun.He has enough principle not to steal from the former-Marine preacher that he runs into, and the preacher gets him his stolen money back and finds him a ride to Memphis.

For me, this book is worth reading for Mink Snopes.He's almost/sort of a sympathetic character here, and the whole trilogy starts to unravel a little when we get inside the head of a Snopes, and we start to feel bad for him.He has a lot of real problems - he's a terrible racist, though near the end of the book he goes to work for an African-American cotton farmer and seems to be social with them.But he rescues this book from being just the fantasy of an aging writer about a voluptuous young woman.

I should also mention that this book really ruins Ratliff as a character.The whole business with the tie really annoyed me, and made this homespun Socrates into a hick.

I think this is a flawed book, but interesting to people who are looking for more from Faulkner.Like another reviewer said, a lot of Yoknapatawpha shows up in here, such as Jason Compson from The Sound and the Fury and Clarence Snopes, who has a small but funny part in Sanctuary.

If you're looking for a good Faulkner book to start with, I think Light in August is good but a little long.Or Sanctuary, because it's so sensational.

the end of a wonderful trilogy
"the mansion" is faulkner's memorable conclusion to the excellent snopes trilogy. Although it can be read on its own, it is best appreciated as the third in a series.

Let me first start by commenting on the trilogy as a whole (you can see my reviews on the first two books). This trilogy provides excellent overall background to all the novels of faulkner. In it he talks about most of the main characters of yoknapatawpha county, mississippi which run through all of his work. "The mansion" in particular ties many of these people and history together. In addition to that, it tells the fascinating story of the snopes family.

In "the mansion" faulkner retells most of what has occurred in the prior two books. This allows the reader to enjoy this novel on its own. For the trilogy reader he makes it interesting by changing the point of view. In "the town" v. k. ratliff tells the story of mink snopes and his murder ofjack houston. In the retelling in "the mansion" the story is told by mink himself; a totally different perspective. Faulkner also, in sections of the book, reverts back to the omniscient narrator in this book whereas in "the town" 3 individuals tell the story from their perspective.point of view is one of the most intriguing aspects of faulkner's style.

In this novel, he concludes the stories of the main snopes' characters and other characters in the trilogy. There is a clear air of fate that doesn't appear in the other novels. The story centers on mink, linda, and flem. Each ones destiny is irreversible. Even gavin stevens is fated to become a co-conspirator in murder.

As before, we never see into the head of the main character, flem snopes. He has clearly become bored with life as he defeated everyone in his way to becoming the most powerful person in jefferson. Why, at the end he takes no steps to save himself from mink is described by ratliff like rules of the game he has been playing. Is he also bored with life?

Faulkner is a masterful writer. This trilogy is not his best work, but it is excellent literature.
... Read more

Product Description
Here, for the first time published in a single volume as Faulkner always hoped they would be, are the three novels that compose the famous Snopes trilogy, a saga that stands as perhaps the greatest feat of Faulkner's imagination. The Hamlet, the first book of the series chronicling the advent and rise of the grasping Snopes family in mythical Yoknapatawpha County, in a work that Cleanth Brooks called "one of the richest novels in the Faulkner canon." It recounts how the wily, cunning Flem Snopes uses an exploiter's mentality to dominate the rural community of Frenchman's Bend--and claim the voluptuous Eula Varner as his bride. The Town, the second novel, records Flem's ruthless struggle to take over the county seat of Jefferson, Mississippi. The book is rich in typically Faulknerian episodes of humor and profundity and explores love, both sacred and profane. Finally, The Mansion tells of Mink Snopes, whose archaic sense of honor brings about the downfall of his cousin Flem. "For all his concern with the South, Faulkner was actually seeking out the nature of man," noted Ralph Ellison. "Thus we must turn to him for that continuity of moral purpose which made for the greatness of our classics." This volume includes a new introduction to the trilogy by acclaimed novelist George Garrett, author of Death of the Fox and The Succession.


"The insidious horror of Snopesism is its lack of any kind of integrity--its pliability, its parasitic vitality as of some low-grade, thoroughly stubborn organism--and its almost selfless ability to keep up pressure as if it were a kind of elemental force. These are Flem's special qualities. The difficulty of fighting Flem and Snopesism in general is that it is like fighting a kind of gangrene or some sort of loathsome mold. The quality of honor--even a mean and rancorous 'honor'--would immediately make it vulnerable.... It is because he lacks honor that Flem is really invulnerable.... It will therefore be only the madman, the outlaw, or the passionate man who can strike him down.... Flem is a kind of monster who has betrayed everyone, first in his lust for pure money-power, and later in what Faulkner regards as a more loathsome lust, a desire for respectability."
--Cleanth Brooks ... Read more

Customer Reviews (13)

Difficult but rewarding!
The Snopes trilogy is perhaps the most accessible Faulkner in full format. The novels are a patchwork of previously written, and published, short stories, but it doesn't (or doesnt as WF would write it) feel that way. It's a portrait of an imaginary yet too real county. The people are real, they appear in our lives every day. The world is full of Snopes, and Ratcliffs and Gavins. What truly amazes me is the fact that he was able to literally translate reality into a book. He plotted incessantly while living his life, he sketched streets and houses, buildings, and animals, as a painter would do. The book is not easy to read, and you have to work on it. If you are truly motivated to go ahead past the first 100 pages or so, you will be hooked for ever. I am reading the trilogy for the second time since Christmas (it's August now) and the second reading was even more rewarding than the first. I also strongly recommend the companion book by Fargnoli and Golay "William Faulkner A to Z". This book does a terrific job in helping you understand and re-think the plots, the relationships of people to places (Frenchman's bend for example appears in many Faulkner books and stories), places to people and the genealogy of the Snopes, Sartoris etc. With the trilogy in your hands and the companion on your coffee table you will learn to love this book!

MISLEADING AND CRAP
I thought this book was going to be about Cokelore and urban legends and stuff. Instead, it's by some Southern author and his town or something. What gives? Oh yeah, and another thing. This is a man who obviously knows about the Internets well enough to make his very own website and yet... jeezola, man, they're called run on sentences and we got taught in grade school not to use them. They're very confusing and stuff.

I kept reading hoping against hope that there would eventually be something in there about how Mr. Ed was a zebra or that Grace Slick of Fleetwood Mac named her child God. But no. It's like this book wasn't even written when Fleetwood Mac was around. Or Mr. Ed even. It's unbelievable what people will allow to be published nowadays.

The Mouth (and Heart) of The South.
Worthwhile reading William Faulkner's tripleheader in sequence (as I did this summer). Start with the short story "Barn Burning" as prologue (even though the events from that story are recounted in "The Hamlet").
The quiet and consuming Flem Snopes is at the center of this enigmatic trilogy. Snopes is a pre-computer Pac Man with his constantly moving yet silent jaws consuming unsuspecting and a few suspecting citizens of "The Hamlet" (Frenchman's Bend) and "The Town" (Jefferson, the fictional moniker of Faulkner's hometown of Oxford, Mississippi). Flem's dream is realized when he assumes the mansion in "The Mansion." Yet Faulkner shows us this vision is a composite of other people's nightmares, causing readers to reflect on the American Dream.
Names give us clues about the character of the characters and the roles they play in the South's continuing decline. There's Old Will Varner, who represents the will destined to be subsumed in Snopes's paper-pushing rapacity. Varner symbolizes rectitude in his role as justice of the peace and store owner, knowing that strict application of law in some cases (as in the matter of Mink Snopes and Zack Houston) invites disaster. Varner knows the chief purpose of the legal system is to provide a framework for peaceful coexistence, not find ultimate justice at the end ultimate regardless of cost as per the ethos of modern trial lawyers (a fact wisely pointed out by ex-Speaker Newt Gingrich, himself a denizen of "The New South").
Yet Varner's usury (see there's a reason why Jewish and Muslim laws prohibit charging interest on loans) undermines his role as peacemaker, discrediting his brand of localized capitalism and opening the door for the removed financier capitalism of son-in-law Flem.
Zack Houston (he's called "Jack" Houston in "The Hamlet" but "Zack" in the two later books) represents big-city arrogance in a small-town guise. Houston's strict interpretation of law (this is why rabbis sweat when having to render a legal decision) causes two lives to be forfeit over the sum of $1.00.
County lawyer Gavin Stevens is a likable chap whose gabbing mouth gets him into different sorts of trouble. Interaction with a murderer at the end of "The Mansion" leaves us wondering whether Stevens hasn't let out enough rope for him to be disbarred with.
Manfred De Spain symbolizes the older European-linked aristocracy that's replaced due to its lethargy and its failure to biologically reproduce (see Werner Sombart's "The Quintessence of Capitalism" about this tendency of aristocrats). "Barn Burning" relates the first clash between the Snopeses and the De Spains and the reason why Flem would make usurping the De Spains his goal. The fact that Manfred doesn't see it coming is testament to what a fever the playboy lifestyle can have on the brain.
Faulkner throws in a meditation on capitalist economics and how it can reduce a man to seeming smallness and insignificance yet its products can be used by man to carry out stunning lethal violence. Mink Snopes bears a resemblance to Lee Harvey Oswald, who would plunge the U.S. into national mourning the year after Faulkner's 1962 death.
"The Watcher" (see "Fantastic Four" comics for this character) and sometimes participant ("The Watcher" does more than just watch after all) is the wise and prophetic V.K. Ratliff. Ratliff brings fresh perspective, representing biblical patriarch Abraham's forgotten descendants - the People of the East. (By the way, "Father Abraham" was a book Faulkner wrote 17,000 words of then abandoned. Scholars report that many of the themes of "Father Abraham" were put into the Snopes trilogy).
The fact that Eula Varner knows Ratliff's ethnicity and full name, revealing them to Stevens, hints at a deep relationship between Eula and Ratliff. Ratliff's work as a traveling sewing machine salesman clues us into his real life's work - trying to stitch together the tattered souls of the old fallen (and still falling) South.
Faulkner gives conservatives food for thought. He shows the economic "conservatism" of Will Varner and Flem Snopes does more to overturn than to conserve. Our author wrote elsewhere that life is about movement and non-movement essentially means death. Thus we're left to wonder - Can there be such a thing as conservatism?
Faulkner's frequent use of Hebrew scriptures in the titles and themes of his books indicate that the answer is likely yes but don't expect it to stand still. Or as Thomas Jefferson (perhaps a clue as to why the fictional Oxford is named after America's third president) wrote "in matters of style swim with the tide but in matters of substance stand like a rock.").
The magnificent prose and poetic heart of Faulkner bring it all before our senses like one of Ratliff's immaculate homemade shirts. His words stand out in American letters like a jagged cypress on a trip down the Mississippi River. Early encounters with these trees growing out of the water jar the brain with "That tree doesn't belong there. They're not supposed to grow like that." But then, a bit closer to journey's end, you reflect and say "No, that's exactly where it belongs."

Finally- what William Faulkner always wanted
William Faulkner always wanted these three books combined into one. It is thick and somewhat heavy but it is worth any inconvenience. The Hamlet. The Town, and The Mansion are great novels-which can be throughly enjoyed by the masses, not just Faulkner fans. I love this wonderful book.

If you get through the first, you'll love the rest
I've recently gone on a real Faulkner bender (11 novels), and this is a great trilogy.In terms of readability, it doesn't really reach it's stride until the second two (The Town & The Mansion).'The Hamlet's difficulties stem from the poor folk southern dialect, which, certainly, is part of Mr. William's charm --Take the time to reread if you must.The problems in 'The Town", and the "The Mansion" stem from Faulkner's structural intent of having each novel stand by itself as a work.This means, (in both novels), that material in the previous works is regurgitated in complete chapters, that, for a reader of the trilogy, adds nothing but ennuis.Don't get me wrong, I love all three of these books ('The Town" being my favorite), but I just wish there was an edition that edited out the redundancies. ... Read more

Product Description
These forty-five stories include not only some of Faulkner's best, but also what proved to be the testing ground for what latter became such major novels as THE UNVANQUISHED, THE HAMLET and GO DOWN MOSES. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

BOOK NOT RECEIVED YET
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GLENDA THOMPSON

nuggets
I am happy to have received this copy of uncollected stories. The book conditon was better than expected and the delivery was fast. I have read most of what Faulkner has written and even though he can be hard to follow, he still is a great author. These stories are good but not his greatest work. I would still recommend this book to readers who want to get a taste of Faulkner's writing skills before beginning to read his novels.

THE EDITION OF THIS BOOK IS EXCELLENT
FAULKNER IS ALWAYS FACINATING.-I LOVE HIM.....I'M READING THE COLLECTED STORIES AND THE RICHNESS OF THE BOOK AWAKE MY INTEREST IN OTHERS BY THE SAME WRITER.-

Uncollected Stories of William FAulkner
I was disappointed in this book, mainly because I have read all of the books whose section were writted in it. I preferred Faulknes's Uncollected Stories.

Essential to the Reader
This book is a superb collection of William Faulkner's greatest works, and you can't beat the price.I would highly recommend this book to all who enjoy a carefully woven story.As Faulkner is one of the greatest writers of modern times, you will definitely appreciate how well he can tell a story, whether it's peculiar or morbid, or anything else.Expand your mind with this collection and improve your own story-telling techniques, as I have. ... Read more

Product Description
Explaining the world of William Faulkner's "Light in August" is the primary goal of this glossary. Like other books in this series, it explains, identifies, and comments on many elements that a reader may find unfamiliar or difficult. These include the basic features of Faulkner's fictional town of Jefferson and Yoknapatawpha County, colloquialisms, dialects, folk customs and sayings, farm implements, biblical verses, and geographic and demographic details.Written especially for puzzled readers, teachers of Faulkner, graduate students, and interpretive scholars, the Reading Faulkner books offer terms and explications that reveal the richly cultural world in Faulkner's major works.Page references throughout are keyed to the definitive editions of Faulkner published by Library of America and to the Vintage editions prepared from the Library of America tapes.Hugh M. Ruppersburg, head of the English department at the University of Georgia, is the author of "Voice and Eye in Faulkner Fiction." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Insight Into a Great Mind
I've heard about William Faulkner all the way through my life, but I'd never actually read anything by him.With eye fatigue from long hours of close work an issue, I determined to LISTEN to some of his work.This CD collection was the source of some major revelations.As painful as it was to hear his accounts of life in the segregated Deep South, I also recalled relatives of mine who remained loyal to their home there while quietly working behind the scenes to bring positive change. In order to change a person or place who you dearly love yet still recognize as deeply flawed, you must accept everything without filtering... and yet still retain a moral compass.Faulkner was a man who clearly loved the culture in which he was raised yet knew that major changes were needed.I was simply dumbfounded by his Nobel speech that is at the beginning of the series as a statement of all that is still wrong with the American national character in the years after World War II.
Faulkner was a deeply flawed man within a culture that was just as deeply flawed, yet his hope for better times and his belief in the basic kernel of goodness within his fellows is highly moving.I'd recommend the collection to anyone who has an interest in understanding the social traditions and problems of the South.I'd compare him favorably with another regional author:John O'Hara, who also wrote unflinchingly yet lovingly about his home in Pennsylvania.

William Faulkner Audio Collection
I bought the above title as a gift for my sister who has macular degeneration.She was very pleased with the collection, and I was pleased with the speed it was sent to her.Thank you.

Great introduction to Faulkner's many voices
I have been unable to take these CDs out of my automobile's CD changer since I bought this set. It has really rekindled my interest in Faulkner. I never cease to be awestruck by this great American writer's ability to capture the distinct voices of people of all classes, races, ages and of both genders. And the three able actors who read these stories--Debra Winger ("A Rose for Emily" and "Barn Burning"), Keith Carradine ("Spotted Horses"), and Arliss Howard ("That Evening Sun" and "Wash") all do an excellent job of rendering these voices with great authenticity and compassion. Besides being examples of Faulkner's best short stories, the stories provide an excllent introduction to several families that are central to his most powerful and memorable novels ("That Evening Sun" introduces us to the Compson children who are the subject and narrators of THE SOUND AND THE FURY; "Barn Burning" and "Spotted Horses" introduces us to the "tribe" of Snopeses who are the focus of Faulkners great trilogy, THE HAMLET, THE TOWN, and THE MANSION; and "Wash" gives us insight into Colonel Sutpen, whose full story is told in ABSALOM, ABSALOM!" The selection of stories also does a good job of representing the range of Faulkner's talent and vision--the folksy humor of country people, the tragic character of the oppressed and marginalized, and the frustration people experience when their traditional values fail to equip them for the intrusion of modernity. It's all here.

The CD set is augmented by several readings by Faulkner himself. (These are old recordings that were originally issued on vinyl and reissued on audiocassette, but it's great to have them on CD at long last.) Faulkner's reading from AS I LAY DYING is fast and breathless and is especially poignant in the Vardaman sections where he endows the youngest Bundren with a seer-like wisdom and nerve-rattling existentialism. The excerpt from perhaps his most difficult novel, A FABLE, and his brilliant Nobel Prize acceptance speech are stunning indictments an man's propensity to wage war coupled with a celebration of the human race's capactiy to endure and prevail in spite of depth of its folly.

My only regret is that I paid full price for these CDs at a bricks and mortar store (who shall remain nameless). Get it from Amazon.com! It's the best price I've seen. And with the money you save, treat yourself to Hans H. Skei's book, READING FAULKNER'S BEST SHORT STORIES, which discusses all of the stories on this CD.

Some Faulkner for Those Rides Through the Countryside
Caedmon has done it again.This is an excellent selection of Faulkner's short stories (A Rose for Emily, Barn Burning, That Evening Sun, Spotted Horses, and Wash--all unabridged) and excerpts from a few of his longer works, all read very well with passion and control by Debra Winger, Keith Carradine and Arliss Howard.But the best part of this collection has to be the opportunity to hear Faulkner himself read from "As I Lay Dying", "A Fable" and "The Old Man", plus his 1949 Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech.Running 5 hours long, on 5 discs, this is a great collection for Faulkner enthusiasts and audio book addicts alike. ... Read more

Product Description
In this newest volume in Oxford's Lives and Legacies series, Carolyn Porter, a leading authority on William Faulkner, offers an insightful account of Faulkner's life and work, with special focus on the breathtaking twelve-year period when he wrote some of the finest novels in American literature.
Porter ranges from Faulkner's childhood in Mississippi to his abortive career as a poet, his sojourn in New Orleans (where he met a sympathetic Sherwood Anderson and wrote his first novel Soldier's Pay), his short but strategically important stay in Paris, his "rescue" by Malcolm Crowley in the late 1940s, and his winning of the Nobel Prize. But the heart of the book illuminates the formal leap in Faulkner's creative vision beginning with The Sound and the Fury in 1929, which sold poorly but signaled the arrival of a major new literary talent. Indeed, from 1929 through 1942, he would produce, against formidable odds--physical, spiritual, and financial--some of the greatest fictional works of the twentieth century, including As I Lay Dying, Sanctuary, Light in August, Absalom, Absalom! and Go Down, Moses. Porter shows how, during this remarkably sustained burst of creativity, Faulkner pursued an often feverish process of increasingly ambitious narrative experimentation, coupled with an equally ambitious thematic expansion, as he moved from a close-up study of the white nuclear family, both lower and upper class, to an epic vision of southern, American, and ultimately Western culture.
Porter illuminates the importance of Faulkner's legacy not only for American literature, but also for world literature, and reveals how Faulkner lives on so powerfully, both in the works of his literary heirs and in the lives of readers today. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Challengng but good starting point for any serious reader of WF
Don't dismiss this book because of its brevity. Porter clearly knows her stuff. Without any apparent biases (Marxist, Freudian, or archetypal) she gives clear, insightful, and helpful readings of all of Faulkner's major novels and is clearly well-read in all of the important Faulkner criticism and scholarship produced over the past half-century. It is refreshing to find an academic who can produce an "introduction" of this breadth and complexity without writing down to those just beginning their foray into her subject. She assumes her readers are interested in getting the most out of their reading of Faulkner and provides sufficient background (biographical as well as critical) to help them do so. I read this book with great interest over the course of a week, underlining many of her points for future reference. She covers all of Faulkner's major works (The Sound and the Fury; As I Lay Dying; Sanctuary, Light in August; Absalom, Absalom!) and makes a good case for including Go Down, Moses and The Hamlet among them. She even argues in favor of taking Faulkner's last novel, The Reivers, (often dismissed as a nostalgic reverie) as a serious contribution to the Yoknapatawpha literature. In addition, she acknowledges the value of a number of non-Yoknapatawpha texts (such as Pylon and The Wild Palms) for understanding Faulkner's experimentation and innovation in the art of narrative (a key theme throughout her book). At the same time, she is not blind to Faulkner's weaknesses (such as his early failings as a poet, his insecurities and need to self-mythologize, his alcoholism, and his eventual decline as an artist after his "major phase" from 1929 to 1942). Her discussions of race and gender issues are frank, helpful, and unfreighted by polemics. Her "Final Note to New Readers: Bibliography" is full of helpful tips on how to read Faulkner. "I tell my students always," she writes, "get used to not knowing exactly what's going on. Understanding will come, but the pleasure of confusion comes first. The language itself should be your first seduction" (p. 187). Porter has not written "Faulkner for Dummies," but has offered a great introduction into the vast and diverse imaginative world of the greatest American writer of the twentieth century.

RAISE A WHISKEY TO PORTER ... FAULKNER, TOO
Todd Sentell is the author of the mother of all golf satires, Toonamint of Champions

Since 12th grade I've been fascinated with William Faulkner ... his work and the way he lived was revealed to me then by my high school English teacher and that fascination is coming up on thirty years.And like all Faulknerians, I devour, as quickly as it comes out, any book on the man.Carolyn Porter's recent work has just been devoured by me in a wonderful June afternoon and she's provided something special ... something no other Faulkner explainer has ever provided ... and it's in her final chapter, titled, A Final Note to New Readers: Bibliography.In this chapter she gives you some tips on the best place to start with Faulkner ... and where to go from there.Sure, this is a book review ... but it's also a thank you note from me to Carolyn Porter.Thanks for a new road map.A road map I'm happy to begin again.



by Todd Sentell, author of the wickedly hilarious social satire, Toonamint of Champions

... Read more

Product Description
Hardcover book. In uniform Random House edition. Red boards with gold writing. 378 pages. This is a major book by one of the U. S.' most important prose/fiction writers. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Tour de Force in American Literature
I read Light in August as a 30-something adult, having skipped it over on my summer reading lists during school.I'm glad I waited.This book is way too powerful and complex for a High School mind.Maybe wait until after college too!I am looking forward to the chance to read it again.

This book is a massive tour de force, inexplicably underappreciated in American literature.In LIA, Faulkner exhibits throughout the book the ability to lead you exactly where he wants you to go.You feel totally enraptured by his storytelling, and eagerly await his guidance at every turn.There were several occasions where I felt so totally struck by his words, or the turn of the plot, or a characterization, that I just plopped the book down and screamed out lout, "Oh, MAN!!"One of my favorites is when the sherrif discovers a body and says "if she had been able to that alive, she wouldn't be dead now."You'll have to read the book to find out what she was "doing."

The book begins with a young woman walking down a dirt road into town.It ends with her riding out of town with a husband.Simple enough, but in between there are 500 pages in which she barely appears!!It's all a whirlwind examination of racism, regret, and the many complexities of the human condition.

Pick it up and you won't put it down!! ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Unforgettable Characters in Obsessive Relationships
County Attorney Gavin Stevens and his relationships with Eula and Linda Snopes provide the centerpiece for this rambling, reconstructed narrative of the rise of the ignoble Snopes clan in the Town of Jefferson, Mississippi.The narration comes through the viewpoints of Stevens, his younger nephew Charles Mallison, and sewing machine salesman and all-round busybody V.K. Ratliffe.Stevens' rivalry with Mayor De Spain dominates the first section of the book, and shows how irrationally an educated man can behave when he is blinded by desire; any reader with an ounce of sensitivity will surely squirm at Faulkner's skill in combining drama and farce here.Later Stevens turns his attention to "saving" Eula's daughter Linda from a life of "Snopesdom" and continues making a fool of himself in the process.All the while, the inscrutable Flem Snopes continues on the acquisitive path he established in the first volume, The Hamlet, now setting his sights firmly on De Spain's bank.Can the sympathetic lawyer save Linda, or even himself?

Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County novels are among the best that American literature has to offer, and the Snopes trilogy is certainly no exception.Jefferson is populated with unforgettable characters, including (besides the above-mentioned) the many additions to the vermin-like Snopes clan - Eck, Montgomery Ward, I.O., and Wallstreet Panic Snopes.Some of these characters will turn up in other Faulkner novels as well, and collectively the books enrich each other, building up a depth of shared experience.Although Faulkner's focus is on men, and his women are often either absent or troublesome, this volume's focus on obsessive relationships makes this a fine selection for women readers as well - much more so than the horse-trading of The Hamlet, for example.And while this isn't the Master's very best work, it still easily rates 5 stars.

The plot thickens
This is the middle book of the Snopes trilogy, and it seems like Faulkner hassignificantly changed his perception of the Snopeses.The Town and the Mansion were written much later than the Hamlet, and it's clear that they're written by a more complex person.It seems that the Jefferson of The Hamlet has an idealized honor that is being stolen away by the invasion of the amoral Snopeses.However, by the Town, the honor held by the locals is shown to be largely in their own opinion.We do see something slipping away, but it's not altogether clear that it's worth preserving.The shift makes for a much more interesting book.

Additionally, there's the maturation of Eula Varner, something beautiful in the South if not altogether pristine, and she is lost in this middle section of the trilogy.Her suicide says something about the South's willfull destruction, the outgrowth of a deal with the devil, but it takes some further mulling to fully absorb her.

There are three first person narrators guiding the reader through the news of The Town.Unfortunately, one of them, Charles Mallison, is an enormous yawn.Faulkner is usually fantastic with the first person children (Sound and the Fury, The Unvanquished), but his heart isn't in this one.Fortunately, the others are much more interesting and make the novel fly.Gavin Stevens is similar to father Compson in Sound and the Fury, and I believe one of the mouthpieces for Faulkner himself.

The Snopes trilogy is interesting in that it shows the maturation of a writer and the deepening complexity of his views.This trilogy didn't end up in the vein in which it was started, and that's a very good thing.Not my favorite Faulkner, but ambitious as hell, and that's the real reason to read him in the first place.When he pulls it off, there's nobody better.If you're already hooked on him, the trilogy is worth doing, unlike Sanctuary and Pylon, which are just downright miserable (regardless of what Sartre had to say about them, the putz).

the snopes' come to town
'the town" is the second book in a trilogy written by faulkner on the snopes family. the 1st and second books were written almost 25 years apart. it is strongly suggested that you read the 1st in the series, "the hamlet", first.

in this book faulkner brings the infamous flem snopes from frenchmen's bend to the city of jefferson and traces his steps up the social ladder from superintendent to president of the local bank. The story is told thru the eyes of three characters ranging in age from a child to an older adult. the story deals with the thwarted lover of eula snopes, gavin stevens whoattempts to free eula's daughter from the shadow of snopes name.

as usual, Faulkner finds ways to make the story telling interesting. He does so by having the tale told by two "observers" and one participant. The youngest, charles mallison, tells what he sees and what he hears occurred before he was born as told top him by his cousin gowan. He is given the task of speaking for the town and his perspective is objective and not tainted by personal feelings. Gavin stevens and v k Ratliff on the other hand speak only from their personal perspective. Faulkner takes the opportunity to use each of their differing points of view to leave open a debate as to what motivates flem. As usual, we never see into flem and can only speculate like stevens and Ratliff on why he does what he does.

What we do see is flem ridding the town of the baser elements of his own family while he attemps to raise his own moral and social standing. He uses and destroys everyone around him to get what he wants. At the end, he is all alone.

An entertaining chronicle of a self-made man
The Town is the second volume of Faulkner's Snopes trilogy, picking up the story from the moment of Flem Snopes's arrival in Jefferson, Mississippi.With the foundation firmly laid in The Hamlet, Faulkner is free to delve deep into the character of Flem, the volatile Snopes-Varner dynamic, and the fascinating interaction between Eula, Gavin Stevens, and Linda Snopes, the pawn in her father's plan to take over Jefferson.Not surprisingly, another host of Snopes parade onto the scene; but it is Flem and his underhanded, diabolical shenanigans that make this novel a joy to read.The ending is both humorous and seriously disturbing, paving the way for the Fall of the House of Snopes in The Mansion.One note: while the book jacket claims The Town may be read on its own, I would highly discourage it; trek through The Hamlet first before launching into it--it is well worth your time.

Sequel is not equal, but still a great piece of literature
Faulkner's literary reputation and legacy was cemented by the time this sequeal to The Hamlet appeared.He had also written all of his important works and was loosing his "touch", writing sequels to his morefamous works and light weight nostalgic pieces (i.e. The Reivers).All inall this is still an important examination of the south, filled with thehumor and horror that was Faulkner's trademark.Anyone interested in hisbody of work will have to read it at least once. ... Read more

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"This is a facsimile of the First Edition." --Stated on the copyright page. ... Read more

Product Description
Hailed by critics and scholars as the most valuable study of Faulkner's fiction, Cleanth Brooks's William Faulkner: The Yoknapatawpha Country explores the Mississippi writer's fictional county and the commanding role it played in so much of his work. Brooks shows that Faulkner's strong attachment to his region, with its rich particularity and deep sense of community, gave him a special vantage point from which to view the modern world.Brooks's consideration of such novels as Light in August, The Unvanquished, As I Lay Dying, and Intruder in the Dust shows the ways in which Faulkner used Yoknapatawpha County to examine the characteristic themes of the twentieth century. Contending that a complete understanding of Faulkner's writing cannot be had without a thorough grasp of fictional detail, Brooks gives careful attention to "what happens: In the Yoknapatawpha novels. He also includes useful genealogies of Faulkner's fictional clans and a character index. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Hobbes Got Most of It Right
Thomas Hobbes, in Leviathan of 1651: "No arts; no letters; no society; and what is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."

Well now, y'all, ain't that a summary of the life of rural Southerners through most of the century after the Civil War? And ain't it exactly what William Faulkner portrayed in this 'tour de force' novella, As I Lay Dying? Except Hobbes made no explicit inclusion of "women", whose lives as depicted by Faulkner were perhaps less brutish than those of their menfolk but equally nasty and poor. Hobbes also missed the mark with "short". Addie Bundren, her husband Anse, the "pussel-gutted" 70-year-old country doctor -- central characters in As I Lay Dying -- all have occasion to lament that they've lived too long, that death comes torturously slowly when one is ripe for it.

The structure of this novella is its most remarkable quality. Addie Bundren lies dying in her mountain shack, while her son Cash meticulously builds a coffin for her outside the window. Her shiftless slovenly husband Anse has promised Addie that he will bury her with "her people" in Jefferson, several days' travel by buggy on dirt roads from the Bundren farm. Nature intervenes against the plan by flooding the land and destroying a key bridge. The story is told in chunks of reverie, inside the minds of Addie's sons and daughter, husband, neighbors, doctor, preacher, and Addie herself, whose 'thoughts' persist after she is dead and decaying in her coffin. The daughter has her own secret trouble, an unwed pregnancy. The sons are each and all "not quite right" in their heads, as there more functional neighbors perceive them. The family and the community seethes with bitter alienation from each other, living as Hobbes said, in continual fear of violence and Judgement, in despair and self-pity. The narrative structure is a marvel of psychological revelation and suspense. Each character exposes his/her existential solitude and anguish in graphic images. No question: As I Lay Dying is a glorious feat of imagination and word-craft.

It's also a profoundly dishonest book. What I can't decide is whether Faulkner's dishonesty was conscious - literary snake-oil, pandering to the market for spiritualist sensationalism on a level with Dan Brown - or unconscious, ingrained, sincere, Faulkner's actual mentality.

What's dishonest about it? Start with the various narrative "voices". Darl, the dark thoughtful probably psychotic son, is impossible to believe. He's too literately literary. His sensual perceptions are stuff from a van Gogh painting; his thoughts are right out of Kierkegaard. The same 'dissonance' crops up in the reveries of every character except the stolid plain-folk Tulls. Even the vocabulary placed in their reveries by their creator/author is false to their culture and education, or lack thereof. The melange of hill-country dialect and almost Shakespearian rhetoric is false to one side or the other. In other words, I don't believe these people could or would have these thoughts; either the characters are only antiphonal mouthpieces for the philosophical muddles of the author or else the author has deceived himself about humanity.

If I understand Faulkner's method at all, he is seeking to portray the sorts of spiritual/mental epiphanies that come to certain people without words, but he of course is using words to do so. The words on the page are not 'really' the words of Darl or his kid brother Vardaman, but rather the unspoken and unspeakable "knowledge" they carry in their blood. "Wise Blood" is Flannery O'Connor's phrase, not Faulkner's, but the concept is fundamental to Faulkner's representation of humanity. Darl has "wise blood." But that's an odious concept! Should I call it mythologizing, evasiveness, or just plain hogwash?It's Faulkner's obdurate mythologizing of the Old South that always spoils my enjoyment of his literary craft. But then, I can put up with 'magic realism' and other gimcrack nonsense from lots of other brilliant poets and novelists, so I suppose it's the pernicious history of Southern racism, reactionary politics, and stubborn contempt for the rest of the nation, all of which Faulkner enshrines in his portrayal of Southern 'virtues', that I can't ignore or appreciate.

Note please that I haven't denied Faulkner's genius as a wordsmith. I've given this book its five stars. But what I've tried to offer here is specifically an interpretation of the book's content, and of the cultural grid within which the content "makes sense." One of the embittered commenters on this review has declared that she "doesn't want an interpretation." But that's precisely what I find worth writing. I'm not an agent for the publisher. I don't choose to write a synopsis, or a paean to the author, or an endorsement. I'm interested in 'content' and context. If you want a differnt kind of review, look elsewhere! ... Read more