A Summer of Faulkner: As I Lay Dying/The Sound and the Fury/Light in August (Oprah's Book Club)

Book Description

The 2005 Summer Selection is available in an exclusive three volume boxed edition that includes a special reader’s guide with an introduction by Oprah Winfrey.

Titles include:
As I Lay Dying
This novel is the harrowing account of the Bundren family’s odyssey across the Mississippi countryside to bury Addie, their wife and mother. Told in turns by each of the family members–including Addie herself–the novel ranges in mood from dark comedy to the deepest pathos. Originally published in 1930.

The Sound and the Fury
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.

Light in August
Light in August, a novel about hopeful perseverance in the face of mortality, features some of Faulkner’s most memorable characters: guileless, dauntless Lena Grove, in search of the father of her unborn child; Reverend Gail Hightower, who is plagued by visions of Confederate horsemen; and Joe Christmas, a desperate, mysterious drifter consumed by his mixed ancestry. Originally published in 1932.

Take a seat in Oprah’s Classroom and sign up for Faulkner 101 on www.oprah.com/bookclub.

Customer Reviews:

Great American literature.......2007-06-28

The Oprah's Book Club is a great, inexpensive way to own these literary pearls. If you do not know what you are getting into I suggest you read first Light in August, then As I Lay Dying and finally, after bracing, The Sound and the Fury. I found the second a tad too dry and dark, but that's Faulkner. The last one is a book you will eventually reread. The first reading could be helped by the many high quality institutional web sites where this masterpiece is dissected and even rearranged for ease of approach. I am witholding a star simply because I have formed the opinion that Faulkner is, to put in mildly, racially biased or at least wrote for the racially biased. I would love to hear what Oprah thinks about this aspect of Faulkner's but I do not have the time. Enjoy.

Challenging and thought-provoking.......2007-01-05

These novels are not to be read for sheer pleasure, but rather for the challenge and the depth. They are not easy to read, though *Light in August* is the easiest of the three. The prose is so difficult at times that I needed to reread again and again. I had to stop and take numerous breaks because my brain got twisted around.

I strongly suggest getting research materials from a university librray if at all possible to help navigate the stories. In the end, the depth of these novels is profound and extremely rewarding. It was only after I finished them (and read a lot of extra research articles) that I truly appreciated them. These novels are definitely amazing and a great account of southern life in the early part of the 20th century (and after the civil war), and I admire Faulkner more than I ever thought I could.

If you thought James Joyce was complex, try Faulkner!

O Oprah.......2006-08-27

AS I LAY DYING by William Faulkner

I respect what he did, but I read about 15% of this one before I got bored. I don't agree with Oprah that he's difficult. I knew exactly where he was coming from and where he wanted to go. Many relevant themes and he was a damn fine wordsmith. But it's old news to this jaded old redneck. I don't know why. I realize I just dismissed an author who deserved his Pulitzers and his Nobel Prize, in a single short paragraph, but please hold back on the hate mail.

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THE SOUND AND THE FURY by William Faulkner

Ditto. You hate me, don't you?

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LIGHT IN AUTUMN by William Faulkner

Ditto. Hoo boy, now you want me dead.

Quite a challenge for the average reader.......2006-07-25

Quite a challenge for the average reader.

I want to say something like, "you owe it to yourself to read these books."... and perhaps you do. I, however, don't get it. I read the insert by Opera, and all the scholars, I read As I Lay Dying, like I was supposed to, and I simply don't get the allure of Faulkner.

So reader beware. It is a challenge to read Faulkner, not because his ideas are so very profound, but because his writing style leaves me unable to care for any of his characters in any meaningful way. The dialogue is far too folksy, and though I fully realize what he is doing (presenting to us the depth of the human experience by showing us the trials and tribulations of poor folk who are just trying to make a living) I found I had no time to plod through anything more than the first 100 pages.

I realize mine is just one opinion, but think before you buy. In the reader's guide that accompanies the books, Opera suggests that you are not really a reader unless you have read Faulkner. Please take that with a grain of salt and give yourself a break... Faulkner just might not be for you.

Not for me........2006-02-22

I tried, really I did, to read these books. They were very difficult to understand. I even did an online discussion with "experts" to try to figure out what was going on, but it just didn't happen. I read "As I Lay Dying" entirely & the story behind the story told by the "experts" was okay, but did not make the read worth the time. The 2nd book, I couldn't get past the first few chapters & by the third book, I had given up. Definitely not my style.

Average customer rating:

Eleven Days In August
Wonderful writing, sad and fatalistic story
Fine characterization
Major but Flawed
The book for the first time Faulkner reader to start with.

Light in August (The Corrected Text)
William Faulkner
Manufacturer: Vintage International/Random House
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0679732268
Release Date: 1991-01-30

Book Description

Joe Christmas does not know whether he is black or white. Faulkner makes of Joe's tragedy a powerful indictment of racism; at the same time Joe's life is a study of the divided self and becomes a symbol of 20th century man.

Customer Reviews:

Eleven Days In August.......2007-08-12

This book has been touted as being Faulkner's most accessible. Although a bit easier to follow having less stream of consciousness it still requires some patience and appreciation for nuance. Further, if you take the story at face value you will be missing out on 90% of what it has to offer. The themes run deep and the characters symbolic. I'd recommend reading exerpts from One Matchless Time by Jay Parini who provides some good insights into Faulkner's life and his writings. I'd also read the review written by A.Mason (below). This was one of the more violent and sexual books that I have read of Faulkner. Although I was surprised, I was in awe of his tact and style in portraying these events in a subtly gruesome way that takes the reader off gaurd. The climactic scene of Joe Christmas's undoing was Faulkner at his best. I'd recommend this book to anyone who loves good writing and is fascinated with the tragedy of the post-Civil War southerner.

Wonderful writing, sad and fatalistic story.......2007-02-08

This book was my introduction to Faulkner, based on a suggestion by my well-read aunt.

It is certainly possible to recognize the skill of a writer without necessarily finding the story he tells endearing. That was the case here. Faulkner's prose is often like poetry and his use of the language is unquestionably masterful. He shows his talent not so much in the words he uses - the vocabulary is actually quite plain - but rather in the way he combines those words. Simple adjectives are used to create compelling scenes and even more compelling characters.

Faulkner strikes me as the consummate observer. He doesn't moralize, he doesn't become overwrought, he doesn't offer judgement. He simply observes the way things are, not the way we want them to be, and there is a sense that we are being propelled towards not tragegy but simply reality in his writing.

Light in August is ostensibly about Joe Christmas, a headstrong and mysterious drifter in the 1920s deep South, but surprisingly we aren't introduced to him until several chapters into the book. The book chronicles the intersecting people and events that surround Joe Christmas in Faulkner's fictional town of Jefferson, Mississippi. However, the author introduces us to so many other non-incidental characters that it is often hard to separate the leading from the supporting cast.

If I had to describe the characters in this book in a single word it would be "trapped." There is an overwhelming sense of stuck-ness we get in observing their lives. One does not necessarily get the impression that they saw themselves as stuck and hopeless - indeed many seemed to exist in frustrating ignorance of reality. But for the outside observer to whom Faulkner tells this story using his rich narrative, it is obvious that to a person, every character in this book is indeed on a treadmill. Slavery may be over, but the people that populate these pages are in very real servitude to themselves and their pasts.

The book is a glimpse at the deep South immediately prior to the depression era. We're presented with a culture that still hasn't quite come to grips with life on the other side of the Civil War and racialism is so deeply ingrained that although slavery is no longer law, the caste system it birthed lives on in the arrogant attitudes of the whites and the subservient squalor of the blacks.

The loyalties and alliances and relationships in this book are complex, as are the characters, and more than once I found myself wanting to slap these characters into sense. Without exception, each was their own worst enemy and managed to almost single-handedly sail their lives into the rocks. Although many were admittedly pointed rock-ward via their upbringing, they had ample opportunities to change course but continued sailing directly for the cliffs.

Although I have not yet read other books by Faulkner, I'm told this is the most approachable of all his writing, reading the most like a traditional novel. There is plenty of tension in the story, as the saga of Christmas and the other characters unfolds dramatically. Consequently, most people will find themselves turning the pages in anticipation of what happens next. Faulkner takes the reader on numerous side journeys, showing how the characters came to be what they are, and those characters often share certain aspects of their history in common, not just their present circumstances.

As the book draws to a close, the treadmill keeps turning with characters trudging futilely into the sunset, still stuck in the same ruts in which the beginning of the story found them. I'll say little more. To do otherwise is to risk spoiling the plot.

I can perhaps describe the overall experience here as bittersweet. The writing sweet, but the tale itself thoroughly bitter.

Fine characterization.......2007-02-07

I enjoyed this book much more than I expected. It explores the questions of race thoroughly without hitting the reader over the head with it. The characters seem real, neither demonic nor angelic. The impact of race is ultimately devastating to Joe Christmas and many of the people around him.

Major but Flawed.......2007-01-20

Faulkner's was a self-indulgent, irresponsible, uneven gift. But at his best, as sometimes in these pages, he is a poet and rhapsodist without equal, and we continue to read him. As a rational thinker he was a nullity; he had no practical insights, no social program, no agendum, no framework that could serve as a starting point toward a solution of the problems he so tellingly describes. This became abundantly clear around the time of his winning the Nobel prize for literature, when he disappointed and exasperated followers who were looking to him for guidance as to a beacon. At least Faulkner had the self-knowledge to know that he did not know, did not in fact even want to know. For knowledge was inimical to his art, not-wanting-to-know a precondition for it. That, and bourbon. The bourbon released his inhibitions and silenced his inner editor (its voice had never been loud), unleashing a torrent of words, much of it bilge but some diamonds too. The result in Light in August is an exasperating novel that contains some thirty scattered pages of the highest poetic value and one potentially great character in the person of Joe Christmas. I say this as a man of 54 who has read the book five times in the course of his life, having been introduced to it in high school. Of course I didn't understand much of it then, but its inimitable style and voluptuous confusion have beckoned me back to it.

One is attracted above all by the descriptions of the simple processes of life in all their earthy particulars, the negro cabins, the town lights, the smells, everything rank and dark and elemental. Except for Joe Christmas and possibly Gail Hightower, the characters are all stereotypes, especially the women. Intellectually, there is little of substance in the novel, its appeal is entirely emotional. There is a clean, bracing no-nonsense description of hypermasculine elements and experiences to which Joe seems to gravitate naturally. For instance, of McEachern's harness strap ("clean, like the shoes, and it smelled like the man smelled: an odor of clean hard virile living leather") and Joe's rapt expression when being beaten by it; of Joe's preference for the clean, hard air of men. Given his latent homosexuality, one feels Joe would have done much better as a votary of the strap. But there was a problem. Biologically he was wired for pussy, and no mistake. Even as a child in the orphanage with the dietician he showed this susceptibility: "On that first day when he discovered the toothpaste in her room he had gone directly there, who had never heard of toothpaste either, as if he already knew that she would possess something of that nature and he would find it." He was still too young to understand what Charley was enjoying, but when he came of age he learned that it too, like the toothpaste, was not always sweet ("periodic filth between two moons suspended"). Unfortunately, Joe had no use for the rest of the package and never learned to like and appreciate women as people. This was the root of his troubles with women and by cutting him off from a source of life helped to seal his doom.

Several reviewers have stated that Joe had some negro blood. This is an error and is refuted by the evidence given in the book, although it suits Faulkner (if not Joe) to make Joe out as a possible negro and even to foist him off as one. I think Faulkner's device here, of using the negro as the ultimate symbol of the outcast, is a dreadful mistake, so serious as even to call into question his integrity as an artist and his understanding of his greatest character. Why? Partly because it is too easy, too cheap a shot. It's also overkill, since Joe's alienation has already been powerfully delineated by other, artistic means. But the main, the fatal objection, is that raising the N question does great damage by introducing confusion precisely where the novel demands clarity and restraint -- it entangles Joe's problem of identity with something completely separate and other. This other is a serious communal problem in its own right and certainly should not be abused as a symbol in the way that Faulkner abuses it (neither should the word Christmas). Faulkner is monkeying around with things bigger than himself, things he does not understand, in an attempt to endow his work with a greater significance than he was capable of developing on his own horsepower as a creative writer; this is what I mean when I say he is irresponsible. Joe's problem is in fact his alone. Damaged in childhood and partly cut off from the sources of life, he has to renew and rebuild himself to a degree not necessary to his complacent countrymen, who by virtue of their utter mediocrity are granted automatic membership in small, stultifying, inbred towns like the one in which the action unfolds. Faulkner's punishment is swift and certain -- it is precisely here in the book that he begins to stumble, to overreach for a grand synthesis that isn't there. The performance is increasingly over-the-top until eventually artistic control is lost. He doesn't seem to grasp the limitations of his creations, and the book becomes a stew. Faulkner was nothing if not confused, and here alas the confusion damages the work. Where was that inner editor?

After the murder, a building momentum sweeps the reader on to the end. However, there is no true catharsis and no real tragedy, only an overreaching for a grand synthesis that fails. The reader is struck by the feeling that something has gone wrong, and on going back finds he has been the victim of a swindle. The book closes with that sucker Byron Bunch in tow with his damaged goods in the form of Lena Grove and her bastard infant. Faulkner seems to be saying that in spite of some mistakes, life has returned to its immemorial path. But if this is salvation, one must be glad for Joe that he is safely dead and out of harm's way. Not everyone is cowed by the eternal feminine, and Joe himself would have no trouble giving the Lena Groves of the world what they deserve -- the back of his hand.

So after forty years and five attempts at this book, what of value can I take away? Perhaps some thirty pages of beautiful poetry, and the memory of Joe Christmas. He sought to rebuild and renew himself through the transformative power of hard physical labor and I would like to leave him there, continuing now and forever on the roads he freely chose for himself, that run "through yellow wheat fields waving beneath the fierce yellow days of labor and hard sleep in haystacks beneath the cold mad moon of September, and the brittle stars."

The book for the first time Faulkner reader to start with........2007-01-15

Light in August by William Faulkner is the book for the first time Faulkner reader to start with. The book is very readable. Unlike some Faulkner stories, the story line is easy to follow. His verbosity is not as apparent in this work as in some of his others where lengthy sentences and tangent monologues within the story derail the reader. The plot is more typical than any of his other works. The average reader will appreciate the book and get a hunger to dip into other works by this southern master writer.

Read and reviewed by Jimmie A. Kepler

William Faulkner : Novels 1930-1935 : As I Lay Dying, Sanctuary, Light in August, Pylon (Library of America)

Average customer rating:

Old Drunk Mellifluous
Good Intro to Faulkner
Some of the best from one of the South's best writers ...
A superb collation and an outstanding value
My Mother is a Fish

William Faulkner : Novels 1930-1935 : As I Lay Dying, Sanctuary, Light in August, Pylon (Library of America)
William Faulkner
Manufacturer: Library of America
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0940450267

Book Description

Between 1930 and 1935, William Faulkner came into full possession of the genius and creativity that made him America's greatest writer of the twentieth century. "As I Lay Dying" is a dark comedy, full of horror and compassion, of a rural Mississippi family bearing the corpse of their matriarch to burial in town. "Sanctuary," a violent novel of sex and social class that moves from Mississippi back roads to the flesh-pots of Memphis, features a sadistic gangster named Popeye and a debutante with an affinity for evil. "Light in August," a near-religious vision of the hopeful stubbornness of ordinary life, is perhaps Faulkner's most moving work. "Pylon," a tale of barnstorming aviators, examines the bonds of loyalty and desire among three men and a woman. All are presented in restored texts as part of The Library of America's new, authoritative edition of Faulker's complete works.

Customer Reviews:

Old Drunk Mellifluous.......2006-05-17

Faulkner has a savage and beautiful voice, if you can call it his voice: it's like some linguistic force comes from nowhere and overwhelms his stories and takes them to places that the novel-form never went before. His writing is wildly modern yet full of ancient, mythic resonances - the Bible, the Greeks - which creates a very large sense of time and history in his work. Events traumatize, ripple across history. At his best (As I Lay Dying, The Sound and the Fury, Absalom! Absalom!), Faulkner is difficult but fascinating, worth our patient reading efforts. He invents new ways of writing for a modernizing world that needs some way to keep contact with the past and the dead, and this is both taxing and exhilarating.

Good Intro to Faulkner.......2003-09-11

I am currently reading Sound and the Fury and it is not an easy read. Fortunately, I started out with this volume and read Sanctuary. If you want to get into Faulkner this is an excellent place to start. It is a great story, shocking though it may be, and gives a good idea of what's to come if you want to delve deeper into WF. Next I read Light in August which may be one of his best. Faulkner is a genius at creating characters and then going into the details of their psyche. Every now and then he gets a little over-indulgent in his wordsmithing but always seems to bring it back home before going too far afield.

Faulkner is the green tea of literature. He's a great story teller but still a bit of an aquired taste. Once you get into his work, though, you'll definitely want more.

Some of the best from one of the South's best writers ..........2001-10-14

Faulkner is, without a doubt, one of the South's best writers, and re-reading this collection of novels after many years affirms that belief for me. He was a master of words and I wish we had more Faulkner novels to feast on. Almost no one can measure up to him!

A superb collation and an outstanding value.......2000-05-28

There is nothing quantitative in this volume that you can't get in other editions of Faulkner's work; however, the Library of America copy is to be strongly commended for the clarity of its typeface, its sturdy cloth-bound hardcover, and its designed ability to *lie flat* at each page. The only fault I could find with this volume is that it would be nice to have _The Sound and the Fury_ included in a Library of America edition as well (currently, the Modern Library edition is the best that can be done). I strongly recommend this edition to the serious reader who, familiar with Faulkner, is looking for a reference copy of these works that will not deteriorate over time (did I mention acid-free paper and a cloth bookmark?). Considering the price of each of these titles in paperback, this volume's value to the casual reader speaks for itself; you, too, are advised to invest in this worthy tome.

My Mother is a Fish.......2000-03-30

There are many great books, but I have read only two perfect ones, "As I Lay Dying" by Faulkner and Shakespeare's "King Lear." Lear's "howl" after Cordelia's death is (I think) the high point of English literature and Vardeman's internal dialoge (and chapter heading "My Mother is a Fish") is the purest form of writing expression and the high-water mark of American Literature. If you like to read, there are so many subtle threads that run through "As I Lay Dying." You'll recognize Chaucer, T.S.Eliot, and I think Shakespeare's "Lear." Like Gorky, Faulkner uses common people to expound upon universal themes like betrayal and unrequited love, but he does it better, and looks at it harder, than anyone has before or since.

Light in August: The Corrected Text (Modern Library)

Average customer rating:

Major but Flawed
Annoying binding
Not as complex as Faulkner's other work, but shows great skill and insight into humanity. Recommended
Amazing audio performance of a great book
Out of the ordinary and great!

Light in August: The Corrected Text (Modern Library)
William Faulkner
Manufacturer: Modern Library
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 067964248X
Release Date: 2002-04-02

Amazon.com

To declare that Light in August is William Faulkner's finest work would be to invoke debate of irreconcilable conclusion. Yet for many followers of Faulkner, this novel showcases many of his best moments and characters. As usual, he mines the rich soil of Mississippi mud to create his subjects, this time in the form of Reverend Gail Hightower, Lena Grove and Joe 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 immensely layered text and the multicolored beauty of his writing.

Book 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.

Customer Reviews:

Major but Flawed.......2007-02-05

Annoying binding.......2007-01-04

This edition of the book was bound so that the inner margins of each page are very small and you have to bend the book a bit in order to read, which was annoying at first, but I got used to it. I would recommend a version with better margins, however.

Also, page 280 is missing. Where p. 280 should be, p. 279 is reprinted and then the book skips to p. 281.

This is the only one of Faulkner's books that I've ever read, and I enjoyed the lush imagery and even some of the words he invents, like "Augusttremulous," etc. Because I had to read it very quickly for school, this book seemed to drone on and on. If you must read it, take it in slowly. It's set in the South, which is portrayed as a place where life is not rushed. Don't rush reading it, and you should enjoy it.

Not as complex as Faulkner's other work, but shows great skill and insight into humanity. Recommended.......2006-08-08

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.......2005-10-18

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!.......2005-04-27

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.

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Light in August
William Faulkner
Manufacturer: Harrison Smith & Robert Haas
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

William Faulkner, Four Novels, (A Light in August, As I Lay Dying, Sanctuary, The Sound and the Fury)

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William Faulkner, Four Novels, (A Light in August, As I Lay Dying, Sanctuary, The Sound and the Fury)

Manufacturer: Random House
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Product Description

Hardcover, Red Binding, Gold Lettering, Collector's item

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Light in August
William Faulkner
Manufacturer: International Collectors Library
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

ASIN: B000FWCZ2E

Twentieth Century Interpretations of Light in August

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Twentieth Century Interpretations of Light in August
David L. Minter
Manufacturer: Prentice Hall Inc
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000FBPHRA

Product Description

"The critical consensus that proclaims Faulkner's gretness is important primarily because it enables us more adequately, if still tentatively, to define the nature and extent of his achievements-to distinguish its qualities and fix its boundaries.

Cliffsnotes Light in August (Cliffs Notes)

Average customer rating:

extremely interesting

Cliffsnotes Light in August (Cliffs Notes)
James Lamar Roberts
Manufacturer: Cliffs Notes
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0822007444

Book Description

It is said that the character of Joe Christmas, the protagonist, is the only tragic figure in 20th-century literature. Faulkner penetrated deeply into the psychological motives for our actions and investigated our dilemma in the modern world.

Customer Reviews:

extremely interesting.......1998-11-05

Faulkner used his creative skills to create a very compelling and realistic book... It appeals to the senses.

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Light in August - V743
William Faulkner
Manufacturer: Vintage
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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