Book Description

William Faulkner never stood taller than five feet, six inches, but in the realm of American literature, he is a giant. More than simply a renowned Mississippi writer, the Nobel-Prize winning novelist and short story writer is acclaimed throughout the world as one of the twentieth century's greatest writers, one who transformed his "postage stamp" of native soil into an apocryphal setting in which he explored, articulated, and challenged the "old verities and truths of the heart."

Customer Reviews (2)

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

Book Description
The years 1942 to 1954 saw Faulkner's greatest success--and greatest inner anguish. Plagued by depression and alcohol, he knew he had more to achieve and a finite amount of time and energy to achieve it. This volume gathers four groundbreaking works from this fascinating period. "Go Down, Moses" is a haunting novel that explores the intertwined lives of black, white, and Indian inhabitants of Yoknapatawpha County. It includes "The Bear," one of the most famous works in American fiction. "Intruder in the Dust," a detective novel, is a compassionate story of a black man on trial and the growing moral awareness of a southern white boy. "Requiem for a Nun" tells the fate of a passionate, haunted Temple Drake and her tortured redemption. "A Fable," Faulkner's recasting of the Christ story set in World War I, earned him the Pulitzer Prize. ... Read more

Book Description
Absalom, Absalom! has long been seen as one of William Faulkner's supreme creations, as well as one of the leading American novels of the twentieth century. In this collection Fred Hobson has brought together eight of the most stimulating essays on Absalom, essays written over a thirty-year span which approach the novel both formally and historically. Here are critical responses by Cleanth Brooks, John Irwin, Thadious Davis, and Eric Sundquist, as well as four essays published in the last decade. The casebook concludes with Faulkner's own remarks on the novel, delivered in a discussion with students at the University of Virginia. What emerges from all the selections is a rich and suggestive treatment of a work which Faulkner himself called "the best novel yet written by an American" and a less biased critic has called "the greatest American novel of the century... joining Moby-Dick and Huckleberry Finn at the pinnacle of American fiction." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Very good if you like this sort of thing...
I told my duaghter that I finished a great book, "Absalom, Absalom", and that now I was going to read a book ABOUT that book.She gave me a look, as if she never heard of anything so strange.

For literary scholars and the academic community, I'm sure this line of thinking is naive, but for many readers, a book of critcal analysis is just wierd, nerdy, or painfully boring.Well, I like reading about great books once I've read them, and I find that I get much more out of the experience.I've done this for War and Peace, Brothers Karamzov, and many others and I'm very glad I did.

It can be slow going at times, for sure, but some of the information is very brisk and enlightening, and the historical background context provided is very interesting.Another amusement for me is how "academic" and "preposterous" some of the anaysis can be; I think some of the critics are really reaching!This book is on par with the best of the ones that I have read. If you enjoy this sort of thing and have read Absalom, Absalom, I think you'd do well tocheck this one out.
... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Excellent Critical Review of Faulkner
I would strongly recommend this book to anyone who enjoyed any of Faulkner's works or is interested in learning about Faulkner and his writings.My English teacher lent me his copy of this book, and I must say that it is very informative and interesting, at least in the parts I have read. I am waiting to read the sections concerning certain books that I have yet to read until I read them. Fundamentally, this book helps you get at the root of some of Faulkner's works that you may not be sure you understand as well as you'd like to or would like to know a bit about before you begin reading. ... Read more

Book 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 (4)

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.

Essential for the Faulkner completist
William Faulkner is one of the most celebrated and popular authors in all of American literature. With his widespread popularity, and stature within the literary world, a book such as this needs to be in print. The book basically picks up everything -- or nearly everything -- of Faulkner's that had not been published up to that point, including:short stories that were later made into novels, short stories published in various fiction magazines that were never collected in a previous Faulkner anthology, and Faulkner stories that had never before been published anywhere. Some of the first group are nearly identical to the books of which they would eventually become a part -- The Unvanquished; The Hamlet; Go Down, Moses; Big Woods; and The Mansion -- but some are radically different. The alterations made to these stories offer a fascinating peek into Faulkner's writing process. They also offer a taste of some of Faulkner's novels, and, thus, work well as a sampler:the reader can read these stories and see which of the novels he or she might like to subsequently pick up. The previously uncollected stories contain some real gems and are eminently worthy; also, only the most hard-core Faulkner reader will have read them before. The previously unpublished stories are not of a significantly lower quality, as one might expect; indeed, some of them are very good -- just as good, or better, as some of the published stories. In any case, they constitute a goldmine for the Faulkner reader. The same goes for the book as a whole:though this certainly does not contain his best work, it contains much that is very good, and everything else is worthy -- perhaps some are even superlative. To be sure, some stories are of less worth than others, but they are all vintage Faulkner, and this is an essential volume for both Faulkner fans and scholars.

An Incomplete Un-Collection
Although I have not read all of his short stories, I find Faulkner's tales to be poigniant reflections of American life, without being overtly obvious in their symbolism.The reader draws as much, or as little, as he wishesfrom Faulkner.

Being a work of 'uncollected' stories, it does not havethe consistency as, say, These 13, or others arranged by Faulkner, but itdoes have its gems.

Consider it the "B-side" to a great albumcollection, some of which you may otherwise never have read, but worth itread, nonetheless. ... Read more

Amazon.com
Faulkner's distinctive narrative structures--the uses of multiple points of view and the inner psychological voices of the characters--in one of its most successful incarnations here in As I Lay Dying. In the story, the members of the Bundren family must take the body of Addie, matriarch of the family, to the town where Addie wanted to be buried. Along the way, we listen to each of the members on the macabre pilgrimage, while Faulkner heaps upon them various flavors of disaster. Contains the famous chapter completing the equation about mothers and fish--you'll see.Book Description
One of William Faulkner's finest novels, As I Lay Dying was originally published in 1930, and remains a captivating and stylistically innovative work. The story revolves around a grim yet darkly humorous pilgrimage, as Addie Bundren's family sets out to fulfill her last wish: to be buried in her native Jefferson, Mississippi, far from the miserable backwater surroundings of her married life. Told through multiple voices, it vividly brings to life Faulkner's imaginary South, one of the great invented landscapes in all of literature, and is replete with the poignant, impoverished, violent, and hypnotically fascinating characters that were his trademark.

This edition reproduces the corrected text of As I Lay Dying as established in 1985 by Noel Polk. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (181)

fascinating writing
I'm in the middle of it now and it's quickly become one of those books I hope will never end.


what writing!

"Darl. Darl is my brother. Darl Darl..."It's OK. OK The book's OK. OK
William Falkner's As I Lay Dying tells of the death of Addie Bundren and her country family's obligation to honor her wish to be buried in her hometown, which proves to be a trying and taxing trek.Along their journey through the Mississippi countryside secrets are revealed and the family is put to the test.Falkner tells his tale through having different characters narrate the scene from the first person, varying from a young boy's view of his dead mother (the infamous "My mother is a fish") to the clear and sometimes eloquent view of Darl, one of Addie's sons, who seems to possess a keen, perhaps psychic sense.

I was fully prepared to love this book.Considered to be an American classic and with a plot that promised to be ripe with pathos and gallows humor, I have to say that the book ultimately left me wanting.The first fifty pages are a difficult trudge as characters are introduced without much context and it becomes difficult at times to tell which characters are present in which situations.Beyond this rocky opening the novel does become more coherent and interesting, and keeps the reader's interest with harrowing situations and interesting character twists.However, a few of these twists feel a bit unnecessary by the end, particularly Darl's descent into madness, which is unconvincing.Some narrations, too, can try one's patience, such as young Vardaman's incessant repetitions - again, this was unnecessary.At times too, especially with Darl, Falkner seems to be reaching for memorable quotes of profound philosophy, but these often seemed forced and ineffective.

All in all, As I Lay Dying is an interesting book, but flawed, and not one that can come strongly recommended.You won't regret reading it, but you won't feel enlightened or satisfied either.

Confusion about ordering
I liked the book a lot but was unhappy about getting (and paying for) two copies rather than just one. I ordered one copy via the one-click method but there was no evidence that the order went through. Then I ordered again and the second time I got the usual confirmation. I was surprised when two separate deliveries came with the same book! Now I'm wary of using one-click ordering.

Some will say "tragic" -- some "hilarious"
I am of the latter group. I love Faulkner's brand of humor. One could look at this as early "mississipius peccadillus" and be right on the money. Certainl the poor folks of Mississippi had layers of problems back in the early 20th Century (and as they do today!) and this family was no exception. Maw dies, but before she does, she forces Paw to promise that he'll bury her where she wants to be buried -- far away! They have neither money nor viable means to get her there but the old man tries his damndest to make good on his dubious promise.
I should say that this work is VERY much akin (a pun there) to Jesse Stuart's "Taps for Private Tussie" in both subject matter and in Flavour as well. So if you end up loving this one you may as well grab "Tussie" too!
This one is a hoot, albeit, some folks will say I'm a sicko for saying that. One of Faulkner's best and true to his bizarre writing style.

The dialog is like "music" and you hear it.A stream of Consciousness, first class approach to telling a story
The story is set in Yoknapatawpha County. As you begin to read you seem to step into a different time and place. It is the dialog, the tone, and voice presented that makes this book such a positive experience.
This is the story of Addie Bundren, the mother, and of her family and how they wait and then deal with her death. It also is the struggle to bury her and how that struggle is met with by each of the characters.It starts out with her lying on her bed waiting to dye. Close by her son Cash is sawing and hammering together her coffin. Another son Darl talks another brother Jewel into going to get a load of lumber for the coffin.
The events are told over 59 chapters from the point of view of 15 different narrators. Each chapter is the point of view of one character-narrator. By the time you get through the trip and events you have heard the points of view of all of them and even the thinking of Addie from inside her coffin as she lay then dead.
It is the approach and style of telling the story that is most interesting. The words bring the characters to life. Each seems to compliment each other is rhyme and tempo but each looks at the events different.
The writing style is called "stream of consciousness:" and it is a method where you feel the inner thinking and reactions of the narrator who points out much more than the simple events in the words they express. You seem to hear their inner thoughts.
This book is considered Faulkner's best novel. It is not easy to read. It may take several readings and it is better read slowly trying to listen to the words.
... Read more

Book Description
"…Elizabeth M. Kerr has, with the publication of William Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha: 'A Kind of Keystone in the Universe,' completed a comprehensive examination of Faulkner's mythical county…this latest work deals with the 'symbolic values related to the themes of the separate narratives and to the encompassing mythology.' In successive chapters, Kerr examines (1) recurrent symbols and archetypes in Faulkner's fiction; (2) mythology in the modern world, the South, and Yoknapatawpha; and (3) 'the basic Christian humanism which underlies Williams Faulkner's existential focus on the human condition' - most specifically as it relates to Time, Motion, and Change. The book is scholarly, well written, and carefully organized…Highly recommended."—Choice"Aiming for the universal in Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha fiction, this book reads somewhat like an annotated bibliography, or three bibliographies: one on symbols in Yoknapatawpha, citing (copiously) dissertations, articles, and books on symbolism in general and Faulkner's own symbols; one on various myths Kerr and other critics have noticed in Yo9knapatawpha; and one on the 'total meaning' of the Yoknapatawpha myth as an individualistic, existential, Christian humanism."—University Publishing ... Read more

Book Description

William Faulkner was a literary genius, and one of America's most important and influential writers. Drawing on previously unavailable sources -- including letters, memoirs, and interviews with Faulkner's daughter and lovers -- Jay Parini has crafted a biography that delves into the mystery of this gifted and troubled writer. His Faulkner is an extremely talented, obsessive artist plagued by alcoholism and a bad marriage who somehow transcends his limitations. Parini weaves the tragedies and triumphs of Faulkner's life in with his novels, serving up a biography that's as engaging as it is insightful.

Customer Reviews (8)

Still Waiting
After 4 decades of reading and studying Faulkner, I believe Parini's book gets us closer to taking the measure of the man; but I wonder if even Parini realises what a true genius Faulkner was.I want some scholar to say finally that he's not only America's greatest writer (of all time), but the finest writer in English that the 20th century produced. The literary criticism here is a bit hit and miss, but mostly hits.The current literary fads and obsessions at times tend to dilute the focus on Faulkner's achievement, but this could have been a lot worse. In general, Faulkner scholarship has yet to rise to the level of quality of Faulkner himself.The one notable exception is Cleanth Brooks' WILLIAM FAULKNER: THE YOKNAPATAWPHA COUNTRY, which after over 40 years is still the most distinguished, best written, most level-headed, and downright brilliant explorationof the Yoknapatawpha novels.

One Matchless Time is time spent with Southern genius Wm. Faulkner
William Faulkner was a genius! The 1949 winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature was a complex man, He was "a mystery wrapped in an enigma. Faulkner was a great artist but a troubled human being. He was an alcoholic, womanizer (several affairs followed his marriage to the troubled Estelle Oldham), lier
(such as his wild tales of his spurious adventures as a flier in the World War I RAF!), poor husband, prodigal son of the rich soil of his Mississippi birthplace.
Faulkner was more! He was the creator of Yoknapatawhpa county
bringing to the realm of world literature such characters as
Flemn Snopes, the Bundren and Compson families, Temple Drake,
Joe Christmas and so many more. Along with Balzac and Dickens he was the creator of a whole world of fictional life in what he
called his "postage stamp sized landscape."
Joseph Blotner has written the best book on FAulkner but I would use this fine work by Parini if I was teaching an English
class on the great "Dixie Epress" from Oxford.
Though an academic, Jay Parini does a good job in summarizing the complex novels; relating the life of FAulkner and putting this material down in an easy to read style freeof pyschobabble.
I enjoyed this fine book especially the details on Faulkner's
complicated family history in Mississippi which was dominated
by the memory of his great-grandfather Colonel Falkner.
If you need to know a lot about Faulkner in a short space of time turn to Parini. Well done!

One matchless eternity
This briskly paced biography of Faulkner summons the image of the man very well, and brings some resonance to the extraordinary period from 1928 to the nineteen forties when the inspiration to create a mysterious world in a series of masterworks overtook this shambling southerner breaking out of the initial conditions of his birth. The gestation of the first novels then sudden appearance of Sound and the Fury is one of the great literary tales of the twentieth century, and the extant vision is of the Golgotha of a lost and passing world, no sentimentality needed for this tragic view, of the peculiar and flawed society of the South after the Civil War and Reconstruction. Faulkner's work echoes this ominous mood in his matchless evocation and cathartic cutting to the core of the unconscious of that world and summons, next to Moby Dick, the tragic genre to the telling of the tale of the American Dream.

Well Done!
What was William Faulkner doing when he wrote THE SOUND AND THE FURY, LIGHT IN AUGUST, THE HAMLET, ABSALOM, ABSALOM! and GO DOWN, MOSES? In this fascinating biography, Professor Parini tells you, as his narrative moves from Faulkner's life to his work and back again, describing this great writer`s personal and historical world while analyzing his demanding oeuvre.

How did Faulkner acquire his estate, Rowan Oak, after only modest sales for his first books? How did his ultimately lucrative connection to Hollywood affect his work? The answers to such questions are in this thorough, but not long, book. On this level, this biography is a feast for Faulkner fans.

Even so, this biography has a maddening quality. In particular, this reader was blind-sided as Faulkner, without any preparation by the author, recited complete Shakespearean sonnets at a dinner party, acknowledged his love of French literature, or spoke French. These incidents obviously capture influences on Faulkner's artistic sensibility. Yet, they are never really built into the experience of the historical man and artist thatParini describes.

Faulkner, in addition, was obviously well-read. Yet Parini never discusses what Faulkner was reading, when he was reading it, and how the reading affected him. For an isolated and struggling writer, his reading-though hard to pin down-had to be animportant influence and inspiration. In my opinion, occasional references to his reading would have been interesting. But as it is, this biography shows Faulkner in his most creative period without any such literary interests or precursors. In ONE MATCHLESS Time, he is either working madly or on an alcoholic binge.

A Sad Life And One Filled With Integrity
Parini does his best work investigating the early days of Faulkner and putting them into a social, specifically Southern, context, but unlike Blotner he manages to enlarge that context into the whole space of American modernism.He makes you feel Faulkner's yearning to be accepted as part of an international avant-garde, and yet at the same time he didn't want that, he wanted, like his grandfather,to be a writer revered by his peers down home.Parini does enough with the "gay male friends" theme to warrant further scholarly investigation into gay modernist Southern art and literature, though such a topic doesn't necessarily depemd on the weight of Faulkner's name for it to be interesting in and of itself.And how about his friendship with Bil and Helen Baird and the whole puppeteering thing, I could read about this forever.

About the women in Faulkner's life, Parini stumbles a little.I don't think he makes Estelle, Jill, Meta Carpenter, Jean Stein or Joan Williams as interesting as Blotner did.They all kind of converge into an foggy enemy figure, like Judy and Madeleine in Hitchcock's VERTIGO--maybe this was Parini's intention (to paint his hero as a victim of sexual obsession), but the truth is that all of these women were very different characters, and in my opinion still the best book written about Faulkner is the wonderful A LOVING GENTLEMAN, Meta Carpenter Wilde's very moving memoir of her love affair with W. Faulkner.That said, I admire Parini's book and the skill with which it comes together.It makes you want to re-read some of the neglected books, I especially like his defense of the cobbled-together 50s collection BIG WOODS.The truth is I could read a new Faulkner biography every year, they're all pretty good and this one, as the newest, deserves the attention of all of us. ... Read more

Book 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

Product Description
Nobel prize winner for literature of 1950 author William Faulkner pens another novel. ... Read more

Book Description
The story of Thomas Sutpen, an enigmatic stranger who came to Jefferson in the early 1830s to wrest his mansion out of the muddy bottoms of the north Mississippi wilderness. He was a man, Faulkner said, "who wanted sons and the sons destroyed him."


From the Trade Paperback edition. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (118)

Absolutely incredible!
Absolutely incredible!The writing structure is extremely difficult along with the shifting narrators, but it is an amazing book in large part because of these challenging aspects.Faulkner's use of language is exquisite, so that you feel like you are flowing down a meandering river and taking in the sights as you move through the text.Definitely one of the best ever!

A Fourteen Way Of Looking At A Blackbird
This is a dark, convoluted, complex novel written in a stream of consciousness text that can easily confuse and scare the casual reader away.For the serious reader who is willing to put the time and effort into this work of art you will not be let down. First, however, you must read The Sound and the Fury (SAF).If you work your way through that novel and you "get it" and love it, then Absalom is a absolute must.But be prepared. T.S. Eliot once said of the book that it communicates before it is understood.Typical Faulkner.It takes some fortitude and a little background.Let me help with a little background. For starters, The title comes from an the Old Testament (2 Samuel 13). Absalom, one of David's sons kills his brother Amnon for raping their sister Tamar.Hence the title and a clue.The book is full of clues and in a sense can be taken by the reader as detective story full of mystery and revenge, suspense and gothic drama.This is the story of Southern tradgedy and the fall of the House of Sutpen.The central character is Thomas Sutpen who is the fountainhead of the southern, self-reliant man seeking to reach the American dream through creating a grand design of dynasty. To pass his dynasty on to his eldest legitimate son is part of the design and part its downfall.The story takes place before, during, and after the Civil War and issues such as race, miscegenation, class, economy, worker's rights, women's rights are all spun into the story that is a portrait of Southern realism.The story is told by four narrators: Quentin Compson (from SAF), Quentin's father, Quentin's roomate Shreve, and Miss Rosa Coldfield.Quentin however is the central narrator and by reading SAF one can better understand the issues facing Quentin and the reason he struggles so much with this story. Absalom is very much the story of Quentin's hatred for the bad qualities in the southern country that he loves.Much of the story as told by Quentin and Shreve is purely imaginative construction of what could have been as they speculate on the enigmatic drama that unfolds.In the back of the book is a genealogy and chronology which is extremely helpful as the story often jumps from one time period to another and from one character to another.Work on keeping it straight and reread if necessary.The book doesn't get any easier as it moves toward the conclusion. Do trust Faulkner.If you pay attention, he pulls it together and you will discover why this novel is, in my opinion, the greatest American novel of the 20th century.

Absalom, Absalom
Absalom, Abasalom is high Faulkner.It looks into the themes that he usually covers: the South and racism and other types of evil and abnormality.The method of exposition is one Faulkner used before in The Sound and the Fury, but here Faulkner's use of multiple points of view and the stream of consciousness technique attains a more highly developed, indeed baroque, level.Faulkner drops the relevant details of the plot into the stream, usually with no great fanfare, so this book must be read closely even to understand the basic information of who did what.Discerning these details involves reading a lot of sentences like the following one and, occasionally, encountering a valuable clue:

"Or perhaps it is no lack of courage either: not cowardice that will not face that sickness somewhere at the prime foundation of this factual scheme from which the prisoner soul, miasmal-distillant, wroils ever upward sunward, tugs its tenuous prisoner arteries and veins and prisoning in its turn that spark, that dream which, as the globy and complete instant of its freedom mirrors and repeats (repeats? creates, reduces to a fragile evanescent iridescent sphere) all of space and time and massy earth, relicts the seething and miasmal mass which in all years of time has taught itself no boon of death but only how to recreate, renew; and dies, is gone, vanished: nothing- but is that true wisdom which can comprehend that there is a might-have-been which is more than truth, from which the dreamer, waking, says not `Did I dream?' but rather says, indicts high heaven's very self with `Why did I wake since waking I shall never sleep again?'"

This novel is art, even great art, but is it a good read?In my opinion, no.This is a book that really must be studied rather than read, preferably with pencil and paper at hand to keep track of the relationships between the characters.(Faulkner helpfully ends the book with a chronology and a list of characters.I discovered this too late and at any rate the chronology is not complete.)For me, the effort required to get through this book somewhat outweighed the rewards.Doubtless other readers would disagree.

Unreliable Narrators, Dated Anxieties, An Empire Collapses
ABSALOM, ABSOLOM! tells two intertwined stories. The first is the story of Thomas Sutpen, born a poor white in West Virginia, who creates a great estate through sheer determination and eventually becomes an elite in the Antebellum South. Through Sutpen, Faulkner once again explores the quest for money and respectability in the rich imaginary world of Yoknapatawpha County.

The second braid of this story is slavery and its historical repercussions. In this case, Sutpen, a slave owner and plantation master, fathers two mixed race children. Ultimately, it is Sutpen's unwillingness to treat a son with "black blood" as a man and equal that destroys what he has achieved. This son is the Absalom of the title.

To tell this story and explore these themes, Faulkner creates a series of unreliable narrators who have exaggerated views of Sutpen. One is Miss Rosa, who is outraged by his sexual unscrupulousness, as well as his ability to pull an empire from the wilderness. (Her own devout Methodist father was a failed businessman.)

Then, there are the highly rhetorical Mr. Compson and Shreve. Both of these narrators approach Sutpen with amazed and fascinated speculation. A modern parallel to their voices might be celebrity interviewers who wait outside the theater at the Oscars, savoring every detail about the stars. But if you don't share their obsession? Then, their hyper focus and passionate conjecture simply seem weird, and not a little pathetic.

For me, the amazed and obsessive speculation of these voices seemed out of proportion to the faults and actions of Thomas Sutpen. I think, in part, this shows that Faulkner's theme--race, miscegenation, and its historical consequences--are no longer viewed as cataclysmic threats to American society. This is a great and positive change from the Jim Crow climate in Oxford Mississippi in the 1930s, when Faulkner wrote and where defeated Confederate soldiers and freed slaves still lived.

This is not to say that we've become a race-blind society. But the concerns that animate Mr. Compson and Shreve--Interracial sex! We'll all have black ancestors in a thousand years!--no longer brew that muddled hysteria that energizes their narrative voices, especially that of Shreve.

In my opinion, this challenging book is Faulkner-for-professors. I still prefer THE HAMLET.

It is a masterpiece, though not easy to understand.
Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner. I "read" this book the first time in college in 1972.I recently reread the book after several attempts.The length of the sentences at first overwhelmed me.The first sentence in the book was 70 plus words long.It is a masterpiece.It is both troubling and satisfying.The level of literary intensity and imagination is extraordinary.Faulkner's gives a great look into the depths of the human heart.This is not an easy book to read and understand.The book teaches much on love.It also teaches much on hate.You see much about the racial struggle of that period. You also get an interesting view into the old southern United States.This book is not for everyone.It requires a great love of reading and concentration.If you read the Nobel and Pulitzer winners, this is a must read.

Reviewed and read by Jimmie A. Kepler. ... Read more

Book Description
A Cultural History of the American Novel interweaves a wide selection of the novels of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries with a series of cultural events ranging from Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show to the "Southern Renaissance" of the 1930s.Minter rereads the novels of the period as works of art that arise from and that remain embedded in culture, arguing conversely that cultural events differ in degree but not in kind from novels. Portrayed as provocative fusions of the real and the imagined, novels and events are made to yield insight into the structures and procedures of American society as well as the structures and procedures of the American imagination, during a critical era of national transformation. ... Read more

Book Description
Arguably the greatest novelist yet to emerge from the United States, William Faulkner was a white Southerner creatively obsessed with problems of personal identity, social change, region, sexuality, race, and that elaborate circuitry of passion and power, the family. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Faulkner: a Biographical Masterpiece
Gray more than does justice to Faulkner's literary prowess! He delves deep into the mindset of Faulkner and the South during the pre and post Civil War time frame.Gray also deals with Faulkner's social commentary, andcreative imagination when portraying characters.ALL in all, a superbbiography and critical study! ... Read more

Product Description
Background, bibliography and study helps, illuminating Faulkner and the novel, by Leslie Shepard of the Department of Comparative Literature at New York University. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Thomas Sutpen was...
I thought Thomas Sutpen was just a man who was trying to survive and gain respect, rather than the villain with the wild Niggers that they made him out to be. ... 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