Product Description
A delightful surprise, Faulkner wrote his secondnovel "for the sake of writing because itwas fun."Mosquitoes centers around a colorful assortment of passengers, out on a boating excursion from New Orleans. The rich and the aspiring, social butterflies and dissolute dilettantes are all easy game for Faulkner's barbed wit in this engaging high-spirited novel which offers a fascinating glimpse of Faulkner as a young artist."It approaches in the first half and reaches in the second half a brilliance that you can rightfully expect only in the writings of a few men. It is full of the fine kind of swift and lusty writing that comes from a healthy, fresh pen."--Lillian Hellman, New York Herald Tribune ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Drunken artists on problematic pleasure cruise
While I didn't like this novel quite as much as Soldier's Pay, Faulkner's first novel, it was consistently entertaining with many superbly crafted moments.A middle-aged, dowdy matron of the arts invites a group of intellectuals/artists (e.g., a writer, a poet, a sculptor) and assorted other hangers-on for a disastrous (at least for the matron) cruise on an inland waterway in the Deep South.Also on the cruise are the matron's highly independent, idiosyncratic niece and nephew, other friends of the matron, various crew members, and a young couple who were just passing by when the boat was leaving port.The intellectuals spend most of their time drinking heavily and engaging in hard-to-follow intellectual banter, while lusting over the two alluring, attractive, very different young women on board.When the boat breaks down because the nephew steals an important part of the engine in order to complete an invention on which he's working, the beautiful, boy-like, ultra-quirky niece and a handsome steward leave the boat without telling anyone and get lost in the swampy, mosquito-infested, steaming lowlands, trying to make their way to a town that is much farther away than they think.This was the most serious and by far the most compelling subplot in the novel to me, and it runs quite a few pages.Extremely atmospheric and very humorous, the book provided me with an enchanting reading experience, albeit most of the characters were not very admirable people and one may wonder exactly what the point of the exercise was after completing it.

Is what it is.
Mosquitoes is not what one would expect of Faulkner, which should not diminish one's enjoyment of the story.It is humorous and satirical.Absent Faulkner's typical familial, historical, and cultural baggage, his characters in Mosquitoes still agonize, which makes them interesting.Let Faulkner surprise you.Enjoy the characters he gives us here and their comedic byplay.Absorb what he has to say about art and writing, in particular.You won't get it anywhere else.Try not to compare Mosquitoes to his other work; it is what it is, a slow boat loaded with pleasure.

intellectual mosquitoes get their lives by sucking others id
A deep and continuous source. Reflects the popular misconception of what it means to live the highly creative life of an artist.Title refers to Confucious quote that intellectual mosquitoes get their lives by suckingothers ideas.

play for mosquitoes and everyone in betweena mosquitomy libido

Not Yoknapatawpha, not for me
This was not a bad not a bad book.I had to say that initially.For some other authors, this book could have been their masterpiece.The problem though, is that this is a Faulkner book.Faulkner reinvented the use of the English language in all the Yoknapatawpha books.The problem is that when you compare something as compicated as a Yoknapatawpha novel to anything else, it has to fall short.The plots of other Faulkner books are so dense and full of sybolism.Mosquitoes is not dense.It has a very mundane story about people on a boat.This, like other Faulkner novels revolves around the nature of human beings and their interactions.This novel is a more dialectical one in comparison to some of he other novels of his. We do not have the dark humor here that there is in a novel such as AsI Lay....The epilogue redeems the novel with some of the dense writingthat Faulkner is notorious for.Read this after you read several other Faulkner novels. ... Read more

Product Description
First published in 1929, Faulkner created his "heart's darling," the beautiful and tragic Caddy Compson, whose story Faulkner told through separate monologues by her three brothers--the idiot Benjy, the neurotic suicidal Quentin and the monstrous Jason.


From the Trade Paperback edition. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (68)

Brilliant and Untouchable
While some may think that good work should be "readable and enjoyable,"great work is meant to elevate us. Stun us, amaze us, fill us with wonder.Otherwise, See Spot Run would be a masterpiece.

William Faulkner is a writer the likes of which we may never see again.He is not only brilliant of word but of concept.He creates a picture not only by text, but by context and form.In many ways, his works sculpt.How else would we see things from the vistas of the characters, especially those who can't speak but by setting and demonstration?

One reviewer cursed his conveyance of emotion by "using big words."Writing is the art of language interplay, the use of beautiful and succinct language.Faulkner uses language that most of us have never heard of but when we take the time to look up that language, the effect is stunning and makes the experience all the more worth it.

Signifying Nothing
Macbeth V.v 25-30:
"A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

Stream-of-consciousness technique (no punctuation), southern accents (no spell check), mixed and matched timecrawls (flashbacks without warning), sequencing narrators (voice change with no scene break), first and third person viewpoints (confused yet?), and slapped-your-faceee! symbolism.

For literature, I choose Hemingway (who can be subtle or direct, but is always clear).Good books should be enjoyable and understandable.I understand the story Faulkner was trying to tell about a Jerry-Springeresque southern family, but I didn't like the novel.If you want to enjoy dysfunctional American families with blistering social commentary watch 'South Park'-- much funnier.I'll let one of Faulkner's contemporaries speak:

"Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don't know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use."
--Ernest Hemingway

Unless you are forced into this book for a literature class, don't buy it and don't read it.If you look hard enough, anything can become meaningful, even this tripe.Victor Hugo, Shakespeare, and those ancient Greeks are excellent in that their works have themes and meanings already.You don't have to over-analyze and create meaning where none exists in order to enjoy those works.

Faulkner is babble and murky and opaque with circular symbolism fading into tempestuous violence only an idiot pretending genius or an eleemosynary pretentious genius enjoying idiocy might love and obtuse run-on sentences longer than this one are exactly what you'll find all over this classical work.

The most overrated book ever written
This book is a perfect example of people in ivory towers, and those who are afraid to admit they don't get it, jumping on a 5-star bandwagon. Faulkner titled this book perfectly, calling it The Sound And The Fury, while leaving out the rest of the phrase: signifying nothing. The first chapter is a noble, but failed, attempt at creativity. But almost no one, even the most well-read people, understands that the first chapter is written out of chronological order until they find out someplace else. The chapter's main point was as an excuse to get in Faulkner's description of what instigated the novel, a somewhat kinky description of looking up at the girl Caddy's muddy panties. A fatal flaw in the chapter, which never achieves a rhythm, is that Benjy, whose thoughts comprise the chapter, apparently has a photographic memory and thinks in completely lucid, complete sentences despite being an idiot. Caddy, the main character in a novel of stereotypes and pitiful prose, is actually a despicable trollop. She's characterized as Benjy's friend, but a careful reading shows that she only befriends him when it's convienent for her. Other chapters are even more sick than Benjy's castration, including the one with Caddy's brother lusting after her, or the hackneyed, cliché chapter with the old slave showing how much wiser she is than folk she serves. The Cliffs notes and other reviews perpetuate the idea that the book's theme is the downfall of the old plantation system. This is an invention; not found in the book. S&F, as Faulkner loudly hints in the title, is about nothing other than his infatuation with Caddy. It has no plot. And it is far from a great insight into the way people think. Only perverts think as these characters do. In the end, this novel is just page after page of sheer boredom. It's supposed to be a great book of human tragedy, but to feel tragedy you have to sympathize with the characters ... and all of the white characters in this novel are disgusting. All of its supposed great meaning, and the flip-flop in reviews from castigating to praising the experimental style, weren't dreamed up until 15 years after the first printing flopped, by literary professors who have to keep coming up with new ideas under the "publish or perish" law. It was only revisited because Faulkner did, eventually, write some good books. You want truly great writing? Try Steinbeck, Welty, Hemingway, Harper Lee, Dickens, Twain, Tolkien, Melville, Dostoyevsky, O. Henry, Wells, Verne, Maugham, Crane or even Rowling (Yes, Rowling. Her Potter books are complex, effortlessly intertwine several story lines and sublimely combine strong characterization, suspense and humor).

More a puzzle than a story
Wanting something to read on vacation, I hurriedly grabbed the Vintage paperback edition from a dusty shelf in the back of my home office.The book had belonged to my stepson many years ago. As I thumbed through the pages, it began to fall apart.

I do not recall having to read The Sound and the Fury in college, but I knew it was famous.Other than that, I came to the book with an open mind but expecting excellence.To that end, I was sorely disappointed, despite some fine passages, but even those often contained unclear elements.

From the start the story came across as gibberish.Time jumped around, and characters appeared with little or no introduction.Gradually a sense of story began to sink in, but by then, what might have been significant in the earlier pages was already lost to me.I wondered what connection the title had to the story.I struggled through the entire book, finding later sections to be more coherent, particularly the last, but I was unable to gain a full appreciation of the story.And I wasn't about to reread the book repeatedly to obtain it.

There seems to be no effort at word economy, particularly in dialogue.There are endless rambling paragraphs and only four "chapters" for the 400 pages of text.

Worst of all, there is inadequate exposition throughout the book.There is no introduction telling the reader how the book is constructed, most notably, that it begins with an account by an idiot.The idea of having a family's story related by severalmembers if fine, so is writing in stream of conscious, but adequate exposition is needed to orient the reader.

Frustrated during the reading, I thumbed through it and discovered the appendix which described the Compson family.Most of this material should have been presented early in the book, but even that would not have provided adequate exposition.After reading the book, I learned that the appendix was added some time after the first edition to help the reader.That should be a big hint that the book is lacking in exposition.I believe that good exposition is the responsibility of a writer.

This book is more of a puzzle than a story, and the latter is sacrificed for the former.The author does not lead you through the story; he throws you into it.For those who marvel at the literary value of this book, I say, "The emperor has no clothes."

A great novel (and here is -- as I understand it -- one story behind the novel)
As I understand it, this is the Sherwood Anderson story behind _The Sound and the Fury_.Faulkner -- a young man -- was living in New Orleans, trying to become a great writer.He produced two novels there: _Soldiers' Pay_ and _Mosquitoes_.I went through a serious Faulkner addiction in my 20s, and I tried to read those two, and I could not.Faulkner bumped into Sherwood Anderson in New Orleans and asked him what he could do, that he was trying to write the great American novel, or some such, and Anderson asked: son, where are you from?And Faulkner said: northern Mississippi.And Anderson said: then what are you doing here?Go home and write about what you know.And the next book that Faulkner published was _The Sound and the Fury_.

At least that is the story I heard.

Some details: I believe he did not *work* on _The Sound and the Fury_ -- I believe he first worked on _Sartoris_, but I believe his next published work was indeed this masterpiece.

Another detail: (I hope this did not get damaged in the Katrina flood).If you stand on Jackson Square in New Orleans with the river at your back, then walk up the street at the upper left of the square, into town, and a few doors up -- I don't remember which side of the street -- is where Faulkner lived during this period of his life.There is a marker on the building. ... Read more

Product Description
William Faulkner

18 pages

William Faulkner was born in 1867. He was an author and won the Nobel Peace Prize. In 1957, his wife was the victim of a possible extortion violation. She had received several phone calls requesting $500 for certain information regarding her husband.


... Read more

Product Description
Faulkner's first novel, published in 1926, is oneof the most memorable works to emerge from theFirst World War.The story of a wounded veterans homecoming, it is partly autobiographical, filled with hope, dark laughter, and despair. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Soldier's Pay the Price
This is one of Faulkner's best stories, but perhaps the least read. If you are a Faulkner fan, you have read it. If you are not a reader of Faulkner, this is a good one with which to start. It is the story of a World War I soldier coming home with debilitating terminal injuries which have essentially ended his life as he knows it. He is treated with human kindness by some, but others are horrified and uncomfortable, and even deny his humanity. As Hemingway wrote about "The Lost Generation," Faulkner also brings the human cost of war into stark reality. It seems the most artistic among us are the most prescient.

Faulkner's first published novel
Poetic and with an "ackward lyricism" (Weinstein, BECOMING FAULKNER). The novel more faithful to the naturalist-realist tradition Faulkner inherited--from Anderson, Dreiser, et al.--than other of his less accessible works. A fecundity of poetic description imbues the natural world with more life than some of the characters. "A tree...turning upward its ceaseless white-bellied leaves, was a swirling silver veil stood on end, a fountain arrested forever; carven water."

Overshaddowed, but still extraordinary
Many people who review this book give it a bad rating because they have read Faulkner before and expect his writing to be of a certain style and intellectual caliber.Perhaps this book is not quite up to the level that people are expecting, but when you compare it with much of the other literature available dramatizing this time period (just after World War I) in a fictional manner, this book stands out as being a simply extraordinary peice of literature.While it lacks much of Faulkner's later literary intuitiveness, this book still demonstrates true Faulknerian style with its soap-opera-ish manner of storytelling and robust character development.Even this, one of Faulkner's least talked about and least admired novels, is better than the work of 99.9% of the authors writing today.What people consider "bad" as a Faulkner book is still leaps and bounds ahead of what other writers are able to produce.I found this book to be an excellent stepping-stone into Faulkner's style and literary skill from less "deep" books.I would definitely recommend reading this book first before reading other Faulkner novels.Once you finish this one, THEN try another book directly after this one - his style will be much easier to follow and understand.

Overall, a wonderful book for discussion and reflection!

Proto Faulkner, for [enthusiasts] only
This book is a piece of history, but that's all it is.This was when Faulkner was hanging out in New Orleans with Sherwood Anderson, and Anderson told Faulkner if he wrote a book, he would get his publisher to print it.This and Mosquitoes are the result.They are both terrible, and it takes longer to read them than it took Faulkner to write them.

The interesting thing here is Faulkner's obsession with the war hero and the tragedy of war cliche's.Remember also, that Faulkner was walking around in a pilot's uniform that he made himself after failing to join the air force.This book is very much the same thing, and for that point, it's interesting.It's amazing that such a dolt became one of the true voices of wisdom for the century.The upside of this book is that it lets you know you have plenty of time to develop.If you love the guy, you'll read this anyway, but you can save your time and skip Soldier's Pay and Mosquitoes.Save them for when you've already developed an obsession.

Faulkner half baked
This early novel by William Faulkner is interesting as an example of where his style and focus were as a very young writer, before both had settled into the predicatable Faulkner voice of his later and better known books. Ienjoyed the book more when I first read it, I think, than I do now. But onething has still not changed. I can remember having to read certain passagesover and over and still not being sure what they were about. I still don'tknow. There are those who think this deliberate ambiguity is a plus but Iprefer to be able to follow the plot of a book. I don't even mind workingat it, as one must with a number of writers. But it is frustrating to comeup against an impenetrable hedge of words that crowds out meaning, and thishappens a lot with Faulkner.

I have read almost all of Faulkner's booksand enjoyed many, if not most, of them. Frequently moving and alwaysinteresting, these books deserve a special place on the bookshelf ofAmerican literature. But admit it, often Faulkner - even in his later books- uses words the same way that Jackson Pollock used paint. He sprays,splatters and dribbles them into a squiqqly mess that might, like a goodPollock, be pleasing or meaningful in an 'abstract expressionist' way, butsimply doesn't make sense on a purely cognative and narrative level. Thereis less of that in Soldier's Pay than one gets later, but you can sure seeit coming. ... Read more

Product Description
In a distillation of the extensive research on William Faulkner and his work, Hamblin and Peek's book is an authoritative guide to the author's life, literature, and legacy. Arranged alphabetically, the entries in this reference discuss Faulkner's works and major characters and themes, as well as the literary and cultural contexts in which his texts were conceived, written, and published. There are also entries for relatives, friends, and other persons important to Faulkner's biography; historical events, persons, and places; social and cultural developments; and literary and philosophical terms and movements. Entries are written by expert contributors and most provide bibliographic information for further study. The volume closes with a bibliography and detailed index. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Compelling read
Wonderful and compelling. Full of the magic of his creativity and it goes into depths of his pain. ... Read more

Product Description
Possibly best known for The Sound and the Fury, Faulkner is reviewed in this text as a writer of short stories. Examined are "A Rose for Emily," "Dry September," "That Evening Sun," and "Barn Burning."

This title also features a biography of William Faulkner, a user guide, a detailed thematic analysis of each short story, a list of characters in each story, a complete bibliography of Faulkner’s works, an index of themes and ideas, and editor’s notes and introduction by Harold Bloom.

This series, Bloom’s Major Short Story Writers, is edited by Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of the Humanities, Yale University; Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Professor of English, New York University Graduate School; preeminent literary critic of our time. The world’s most prominent writers of short stories are covered in one series with expert analysis by Bloom and other critics. These titles contain a wealth of information on the writers and short stories that are most commonly read in high schools, colleges, and universities. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

An excellent source for students!
This book, Bloom's Short Story Writers edition on William Faulkner, was exactly what I had been looking for.I needed to write a paper comparing criticisms on one author, and this book was perfect.It contains severaldifferent critical essays centered around three of Faulkner's works, andthe essays provide drastically different types of criticisms.Some arefavorable, some are not, but all of them are well written, and excellentfor anyone looking for a greater insight into the works of WilliamFaulkner. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

The Ghosts of Rowan Oak
Don't bother.
First, don't be fooled by cover--it was NOT written by Falkner, but by a desendant using his name-as "told to".
A disapointment.

William Faulkner Stories for Kids
From the cover: In the 1940s, at his home, Rowan Oak, in Oxford, Mississippi, Faulkner told ghost stories to the children in his family.One of those children, Dean Faulkner Wells, has recounted some of these stories in this book.Though the world knew Faulkner as a Nobel Prize-winning author, the children of Rowan Oak called him "Pappy." and knew him as the teller of tales that were tragic, sorrowful, funny, and sometimes terrifying.Presented here are the haunting and heartbreaking story of Judith, the chilling tale of the Werewolf, and the macabre story of the Hound. ... Read more

Product Description
Ever since the first furore was created on its publication in 1929, "The Sound and the Fury" has been considered one of the key novels of this century. Depicting the gradual disintegration of the Compson family through four fractured narratives, "The Sound and the Fury" explores intense, passionate family relationships where there is no love, only self-centredness. At its heart this is a novel about lovelessness - 'only an idiot has no grief; only a fool would forget it. What else is there in this world sharp enough to stick to your guts?' ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

The Sound and the Fury
All right, I'm not going to lie and say I understood this one.

It's a tough read -- the downfall of a Depression-era family in the American South, as told through three brothers: Benjy, Quentin and Jason. What makes the read tough (and absolutely fascinating) is that Faulkner flips POVs often within the novel, and writes sometimes without any punctuation.

** (SPOILER follows) **

What I find remarkably fascinating about this author's writing is the way he plays with the devices. The novel begins in 1928 in the POV of the mentally handicapped brother Benjy. I was confused and blown away (in a good way!) by the technique within the first quarter of the book. Benjy doesn't view the world or his own memories in a way that is easily translatable in writing. He can't say "I like looking at the pretty jewelry box with all the pretty sparkles. It calms me down." He can only refer to the sparkles without knowing what they are, and we the reader are left to infer what's happening based on the few hints Benjy is able to provide.

Fascinating!! And pretty ballsy, since he opens the book like this.

The writing hops all over, sometimes mid sentence/mid-paragraph, into another memory. Often the memory is instigated by something in the present scene. For example, Benjy likes watching a golf game that's played near his house because the players call out Caddy -- his beloved older sister's name. Hearing the game takes him crackling along childhood, though in his main story, he's a full-grown man.

In contrast to the rough writing within the first quarter of the book, Brother #2's section is written beautifully. Quentin's tale happens in 1910, a couple decades before the first quarter of the book, and it unfolds the day Quentin kills himself. (Though you don't find out he died until the third brother takes over the tale.)

Quentin's passages are philosophical in contrast to Benjy's patchwork sections, but mid-way through, as insanity and suicide take over, punctuation is lost altogether. Paragraphs go on for pages with no break, and stream-of-thought takes over. Confusing? Absolutely! But I just can't get over the technique. Brilliant, I think -- the contrasts.

Section Three is told in the same time frame as the first section, 1928, by Jason, the pragmatic and monstrous brother whose been left to work laboriously supporting his sister Caddy's illegitimate daughter, his mother, Benjy, and a handful of house servants. He is miserly, bitter and prone to malicious tempers. He hates Caddy as well as her daughter but is considered by his mother to be "the only good one of the batch."

Jason should have gone to Harvard, but he gave it up (under duress) so Quentin could go. When Quentin killed himself, the chance was lost. Now Jason works a dead end job, stealing money from Caddy¡¯s daughter into a private savings. Jason's passages are far more clear. (No lost punctuation!) But he's so mean and negative, by the time you finish with him, you're itching for some good news. Again, smart on Faulkner's part. I FEEl the tightness of the man; I experience it.

The final segment is told in third person in 1928 and hops viewpoints between Jason and Dilsey. The writing is beautiful again, the passages easy to follow.

What I think is remarkable about this work, beyond the symphonic quality of the "snapshot" of a fallen Southern family not long after the American Civil War -- is the writing itself. Faulkner circles his prey (the climax). He begins at the outermost point and slowly revolves (making the reader dizzy!) until he reaches the final line. And what irony in that final line. (I won't spoil it by sharing.)

Absolutely worth the read. But don't read it if you're looking for "escapism." This isn't for entertainment; it's art.

It's All Up to You, Fair Reader...
...whether you find value in this notoriously difficult novel, or whether you hurl it into the fireplace in frustration. You needn't feel ashamed of either response... assuming you're free from the bonds of high school English classes. You'll need all your resources of unflagging attention, tenacious memory, and orthographic competence with dialect just to grasp the central events of the story, but even then you may be frustrated by the realization that the story isn't the centerpiece of the book. I could give you ten reasons not to bother for every one assertion that you must sometime in your life read The Sound and the Fury... and read it intently, in a few concentrated reading sessions with absolutely no competing distractions. But as I said, it's up to you.

The title comes from Shakespeare, from Macbeth: Life "is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." Really, the narrative of the novel is told by three idiots, the three Compson brothers, although only the first narrator, Benjy, is a certified 'loony' by the definitions of his community. The second narrator, brother Quentin, is usually identified as 'neurotic' but that diagnosis falls short of recognizing how desperately ill his mind is, right to the point of his suicide. The third brother, Jason, might be regarded as sane in some societies, but he too is deranged and dysfunctional. The father of these three boys is a lifelong case of clinical depression, self-medicated with booze. The mother is a monster of borderline psychotic hypochondria. Sister Caddy is described in the Clif Notes as 'beautifula and tragic, but her basic tragedy is a personality disorder. Her illegitimate daughter, from whom she is separated, may have some sparks of sanity, enough at least to escape, but she's hardly a person you'd seek out for a daughter-in-law. The Compsons are surrounded by -- kept alive by -- the descendants of their ancestors' slaves. Sorting out the generations of the black folk that share life with the Compsons is one of the ways to keep the narrative somewhat chronological; the idiot Benjy is portrayed in the care/custody of three distinct black teenagers, that is, Benjy as a child, Benjy as an adolescent, Benjy as a 33-year-old helpless bellowing hulk. I suppose the true centerpiece of the novel is Faulkner's indictment of the stagnant post-Civil War South for creating the conditions in which a family, and by implication a whole society, could degenerate into such moral and mental idiocy. All the passion and pride of the tale told by the Compson does indeed "signify nothing." They're done. Finished. Defunct, and deservedly so.

All three Compson narrators are represented by stream-of-consciousness fragments of memory, occasionally cogent but often lapsing into babble. Does any person's "consciousness" really resemble what Faulkner sets down in words? I tend to think not; what Faulkner offers is a literary convention. He brings powerful verbal energy to his fragmenting depiction of "consciousness", and that's wherein his greatness as a writer lies.

The fourth 'chapter' of narration is largely third-person, centered around the enduring ancient cook/servant Dilsey, the nurse of all the white Compsons and the mother of most of their un-slaves. Is Dilsey, with her sons, the sole anchor of order and decncy in the Compson world, or the will-less willing co-dependent of such stagnation? Dilsey says she "seen the beginning and the end." I reckon she thought so sincerely, but in retrospect she was wrong, and Faulkner was wrong with her; the worst was not over in 1928, when this book was published, and fortunately the future didn't belong to the Compsons, or the Snopeses, or to any of the baleful stock of Faulkner's vision. Amen and hallelujah.

Faulkner's portrayal of human nature, based on 'blood' (i.e. race) and inheritance of sins unto the seventh generation troubles me a lot. I've already been hammered, in other reviews, for expressing my discomfort with that perception. The Sound and the Fury is hardly free from what I dislike about Faulkner, but it's such a stark, fierce, sustained tragedy that intellectual reservations fall aside and only the shared agony remains. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Welcome addition
This recent entry by Volpe not only complements his Readers' Guide to Faulkner's novels but fills a gaping hole--the paucity of commentary on the short stories.Despite their challenges and popularity, especially among teachers providing students with an introduction to Faulkner, the short stories are rarely afforded the attention and respect they deserve.Volpe's discussions not only illuminate each of the stories but make apparent their connections with the themes, plots, characters, and narrative devices of the novels.Ultimately, we are led to an even greater appreciation of the coherence and unity of Faulkner's achievement.

Volpe's evaluation of a story's success or lack thereof should be taken as no more than a statement to be proven by the reader's own experience.The evaluative commentary becomes problematic in a few instances when it precedes and replaces the substantive information that the reader is seeking. ... Read more

Product Description
The new Vintage edition of the corrected text. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (11)

Faulner's PYLON
PYLON is adrenalin-charged; moving at the speed of the work's live-fast die-young dare devil pilots and their machines. The motion like a whirlwind, however; circular, like the airplanes around and around the pylon (pole marking boundary of a race). Dizzying. The characters talk like they're on acid. The unnamed Reporter of the novel is a complete mystery: How to account for his Christ-like devotion to the pilots? A devotion that far exceeds Good Samaritanism. He gains nothing by association. He is an oddity--like Melville's Bartleby. Maybe he is Christ. Maybe the Holy Ghost. Who knows? It is baffling.

The hand to mouth hero pilot is jipped by the rich airport owner... not news at 11
The Tarnished Angels (Pylon) [ NON-USA FORMAT, PAL, Reg.2 Import - Spain ]Someone has revived this dangerous sport in my home town bay.
And the parachute jumper hit the innocent benefactor reporter for being with the rotten drunken mechanic.
Pylon racing gypsies living in their own distorted ( surreal) version of the depression world makes for a story that you have a hard time putting down: a strange two husband marriage (with 8 year old kid) by almost any standards, it appears to be more biography than than fiction.
Death of a rocket pilot in 1934 gets the "performers" a 2.5 % pay reduction for printing new programs... it is a George Bush sort of
world where the liars are winning.

Faulkner's curiously detached portrait of New Orleans andbarnstormers
Set in New Orleans (referred to as New Valois in the story), "Pylon" is a rare Faulkner work that takes place outside Mississippi. In it, an unnamed, down-on-his-luck reporter follows a small crew of barnstormers in town for an air show and is smitten by the tomboyish mechanic Laverne, who is involved in a menage a trois with the pilot and the parachute jumper. Their outmoded, ramshackle plane is held together by not much more than memory, and the pilot often has to take death-defying risks in order to win competitions for their hand-to-mouth income.

Complicating their hard existence is a fourth crew member, Jiggs, who suffers from unpredictable and terrifyingly deleterious alcohol binges. The reporter's well-meaning sociability starts Jiggs on an especially noteworthy bout of drinking and sets off a serious of events with tragic consequences.

The novel contains some of the most harrowing passages of drunkenness ever composed in English. The reporter acquires a "special" bottle of absinth (which is probably just really some bad moonshine) and ends up locking himself out of his apartment in a nightmarish sequence of blurry events. Then Jiggs starts on his bender and becomes consumed with the acquisition of just one more drink. Faulkner knows drunk: these Dantesque passages are as disturbing as anything offered later by Burroughs or by Philip K. Dick.

Less real and persuasive, however, are Faulkner's portraits of New Orleans and of the barnstormers themselves. Faulkner detested the city and especially the vulgarity of Mardi gras, and his distaste infuses his descriptions with the stance of a critical bystander rather than (as in his other works) the awareness of an understanding resident. Similarly, Faulkner spent the years 1933 and 1934 flying and participating in air shows (they were even billed as "William Faulkner's Air Circus"), and the members of the crew are based on real-life counterparts, but the novel's characters feel researched rather than lived. It's clear he both loves flying and sympathizes with the hard lives of the barnstormers, but the close-woven prose seems almost in conflict with the journalistic stance of the narrative.

Reminiscent at times of "Sanctuary" (particularly of the terrifying sections describing Temple Drake's horrifying captivity among the whiskey-runners at the Goodwin place), "Pylon" contains many memorable passages on drunken, confused, despairing lives--and these passages rescue the novel from its seemingly misplaced realism. "Pylon" is less than the sum of its parts--but some of those parts are still undeniably and uniquely Faulkner.

Unconditional
I have no excuses to give for this book. Don't read it if you don't want to. Don't read it if you want literature. Don't read it if you want prurient prose (despite the other reviewers' references to sex, there is little to find in it). Don't read it if you want Faulkner. Don't read it if you want style, or flow, or popular fiction, or innovation, or a book about racing planes, or New Orleans. Don't read it if you want a good book at all.

But if you do read it, you may find something that anchors you in the heart of the imperfect as no better work can do, a failed book about failure failed, and love it as no better love could.

For completists only
Unless you have to read everything Faulkner wrote, save your time here.It's better than Soldier's Pay, Mosquitoes, and Sanctuary, but that isn't much to aspire to.Here and there an interesting thought comes up, but if you're short on time or energy, spend it working through Absalom, Absalom!That will save your soul.You can listen to Jagger sing Parachute Woman and get the same materialin a better medium.Pylon, however, is a good word. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A good criticism of a great story
Found this in my library while doing research on Faulkner. A very goodlit-crit before all the wierdness came into the field. Puts the novel andFaulkner's writing into perspective. ... Read more

Product Description
A guide to reading "As I Lay Dying" with a critical and appreciative mind encouraging analysis of plot, style, form, and structure. Also includes background on the author's life and times, sample tests, term paper suggestions, and a reading list. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

A confusing story that does not need to be told
This story is both complex and well written through the use of perspective, but its complexities do not make it a good story.Personally, I feel it is a story that does not even need to be told.The charactersare backward and hard to understand.Initially you feel as if all of thefacts and details that are included will lead to an interesting end, but itis not an ending at all just a weird closure.Basically it is a story of abunch of hicks that carry their dead mother around in a coffin and learn oftheir mental incapasity to deal with it.

The book which 'Last Orders' copies from
Graham Swift's Booker prize winning novel is an unashamedly disguised version of Faulkner's brilliant novel. It has some of his finest passages in it including the famous one-line chapter of mothers being a fish

Southern Rednecks
Yoknawpatawpha County must have been a sorry place tolive. God's Country?I hope not.Faulkner has some good books,butthis isn't one of them.Somebody hit these people with the stupid stick.In the sequel, Dewey Dell's works in the local cathouse and wonders why she's got ten kids. Cash has more concrete in his head than on his leg.Vardaman is still dumb as dirt. Addie is still dead and stinking up the county.And teachers make you read this stuff? ... Read more

Product Description
Amid all that has been published about William Faulkner, one subject—the nature of his thought—remains largely unexplored. But, as Daniel Singal's new intellectual biography reveals, we can learn much about Faulkner's art by relating it to the cultural and intellectual discourse of his era, and much about that era by coming to terms with his art.Through detailed analyses of individual texts, from the earliest poetry through Go Down, Moses, Singal traces Faulkner's attempt to liberate himself from the repressive Victorian culture in which he was raised by embracing the Modernist culture of the artistic avant-garde. To accommodate the conflicting demands of these two cultures, Singal shows, Faulkner created a complex and fluid structure of selfhood based on a set of dual identities—one, that of a Modernist author writing on the most daring and subversive issues of his day, and the other, that of a southern country gentleman loyal to the conservative mores of his community. Indeed, it is in the clash between these two selves, Singal argues, that one finds the key to making sense of Faulkner. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Disappointing and meandering
Prof. Singal has an interesting thesis here, one well worth exploring, but his book needs more focus.Singal wanders from psychobiography (including some ill-fitting speculation into Faulkner's neurological problems!) to literary analysis to critiques of other Faulkner critics.Singal ends his study when it reaches the midpoint of Faulkner's career, essentially saying that Faulkner did not write anything interesting after 1942 or so--and while this well may be a valid opinion, asserting it without substantiating it is a cop-out.At times I felt I was reading the work of a talented undergrad rather than that of a tenured professor.

Readers interested in more rigorous studies of Faulkner's life and works should stick with Blotner's *Faulkner: A Biography*, Brooks's *WF: The Yoknapatawpha Country*, and Frederick Karl's relatively recent *WF: American Writer*. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A life masticated upon far too long...
... leaving a dried mass hard to swallow, not to mention digest. However it is possible to savor some flavors from the man's life, and there are moments of insight embedded in all the verbiage.

It was a glorious spring Sunday morning in 1993; I was on the square in Oxford, and a wonderful bookstore was open "for services."A fitting place to buy the book, and later wander with it around Faulkner's estate of Rowan Oaks; I was blessedly alone since it was closed for renovations. Clearly the setting set high hopes for the book, yet still...

Make no mistake; it is all there, starting with the larger than life character of his great-grandfather, the "old colonel," through his own life as a returning WWI "war hero," with embellished tales of service, and trying to gain traction as a writer through most of the `20's, which included joining the "Movable Feast" in Paris. Finally it "clicked" in the year 1929, the "annus mirabilis," and in 30 days as he famously worked on the night shift at the water works, he wrote "As I Lay Dying," the title inspired by a line from the Odyssey. "The Sound and the Fury," and "Light in August" were complete in a short period, and within 20 years he was seated next to Bertrand Russell in Stockholm, receiving the Nobel Prize for literature. He had only 12 more years of life, one highlight of which was a year at the University of Virginia.

His personal life is also there, from the need to embellish war service, to the numerous rejections for women, to the alcoholism and the later philandering, no doubt making up for those earlier rejections. Faulkner once said that he spent a lot of his life "fumbling under women's skirts." But Karl does not convey the passion of any of this; it is dealt with in that dry academic detached style.

More useful is certain descriptions of the mythical Yoknapatawpha county, as rendered on page 182, how pretty it looked from a distance, which hid such graphically conveyed matters at the "...drying spittle of religious controversy..." Later, (p286), Karl summarizes Faulkner's genius: "This transformation of what appeared on the surface a rather low-keyed place into a beehive of rancor, hatred, and violence, intermingled with routine life, was a great act of imagination, and Faulkner's greatest contribution to American fiction."

Karl describes the influences of other writers, such as James Joyce, on him, and in turn how Faulkner influenced a generation of Latin American "magic realism" writers. In "The Unvanquished," a chapter is entitled "The Vendee," and in an interview with Coindreau Faulkner said that from his reading of Balzac's "Les Chouans," he felt "Southerners and people from La Vendee had much in common." Later (p725) Karl quotes Sartre, who said: "for the youth of France, Faulkner is a god."

Five years before this book was published, Joseph Blotner also wrote a "door-stop" biography of Faulkner, yet at"only" 788 pages it was considerably less than this tome.It is a shame, perhaps some in the academic world proclaim these works, but the general reader could use a livelier, briefer biography of perhaps the greatest American writer.
... Read more