Book Description
This magisterial collection of short works by Nobel Prize-winning author William Faulkner reminds readers of his ability to compress his epic vision into narratives as hard and wounding as bullets. Among the 42 selections in this book are such classics as "A Bear Hunt, " "A Rose for Emily, " Two Soldiers, " and "The Brooch." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (17)

You can't go wrong here...
... if you like Faulkner. You'll enjoy the stories here; this is also a great starting point for someone just learning to appreciate the genius of this writer.

A Rose for Emily
This short story is twisted, but that's why it's so great. The story is dark and gloomy, but it is really interesting. A Rose for Emily recounts the story of an eccentric spinster, Emily Grierson. An unnamed narrator details the strange circumstances of Emily's life and her odd relationships with her father, who controlled and manipulated her, and her lover, the Yankee road worker Homer Barron. When Homer Barron threatens to leave her, she is seen buying arsenic, which the townspeople believe she will commit suicide with. Faulkner based the story upon a true incident. The rose indeed was for his friend, Emily Grierson. In the story, the townspeople's points of views on Emily actually reflect the society's value at that moment to some extent. Emily feels that she is released when her father is dead.
However, I do not recommend this book if you might get scared easily. The ending might come as a surprise, but that's suspense. Go read it, if you like it a bit twisted.

Wow! Readable Faulkner!
As someone who read Flannery O'Conner before ever getting near Faulkner, I must say that he does hold his own with these stories. For better or worse, Faulkner will always be near the top of great American authors. I say for better or worse, because some people can be greatly turned off by his novels, and the difficulty in reading them. While I've been greatly critical of him in the past, I'm still trying to learn and understand his modus operandi. It's been a rewarding learning experience, but one that hasn't been without some exasperation.....I still like O'Conner better!

Wonderful
After reading "A Mule in the Yard," "That Will Be Fine," and "That Evening Sun" I was reminded of why this guy is one of the greatest storytellers ever. I know, his writing can be dense and even a times nearly unintelligible, but patience and concentration pays off with Faulkner. And his use of point of view is amazing.

STRONG AND POWERFUL
Amasing, strong and powerful.What else can one say about one of the best writers of the world? ... Read more

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.
... Read more

Customer Reviews (71)

A challenging read
A good value.Faulkner takes a while to adjust to, but a good opportunity to start in on classic American literature.

Errr... not for me !
I had a hard time to finish reading this package but... finally finished reading them after reading other books in between. I am quite surprised Oprah chose these books. In my opinion, she could have chosena better books. Unless you really like challenge, I doubt you will real find time to finish reading these.

Great American literature
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
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
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.
... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

GREAT SET OF CLASSICS
This is a great set of classics that I intend to read again. It is from this prolific novelist that we have a countering view that the American good ol' days of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, especially in the South, were actually not so desirable after all.

It is by reflecting upon this perspective that I found "A Rose for Emily", "Barn Burning" and "Dry September" to be the most memorable stories. These particular three had a sequence of developments that focused and reflected upon ugly truths that were hidden behind public veneers of "Southern niceties". In essence, the outcomes were essentially America's fictional and somewhat factual answer to the rampant pornography throughout England during what was regarded as the pristine Victorian Era.

Also, Faulkner had an uncanny way of depicting how societies with unwritten rules of proper mannerisms would be unraveled thanks to a bullying, uncouth citizen or family. His writing style was that of using actions and events that set the transition from what each person was like at the surface to what he or she was really like all along and how those around him or her would be affected in the aftermath.

If you are interested in stories about how a person, individually, might have either gotten along or contrasted with the norms and tones of an immediate culture, especially in rural America, Faulkner is the ideal author. And again, this is an excellent collection for those who want to start reading Faulkner. A slight word of warning: some of you might find it shocking that there were troubles and prejudices that set parts of America on edge, especially if most of your exposure to U.S. History has been largely sanitized.

As a recommendation, if you enjoy the stories but find some of the terms unfamiliar or the endings ambiguous, I suggest purchasing William Faulkner A to Z as a reading companion.

A life cannot be complete without Faulkner--
Since reading "A Rose for Emily" as a boy, I have been hooked on Faulkner.I kept a worn out copy on hand to show to my teachers who accused me of using run-on sentences (some of his sentences took an entire page.) He is a true master and when I feel homesick, after being too long in some foreign country, I read a Faulkner story and remember the South where I grew up.

"The past is not dead. In fact, it's not even past."--W. Faulkner

"Faulkner is the greatest artist the South has produced."
--Ralph Ellison

The greatness of the long- distance runner
Just as most athletes excel in one particular event, so many writers find their greatest work in one genre , primarily. Faulkner is an impressive storyteller but the work he is most remembered for is his long- distance works, his novels, "The Sound and the Fury" " Light in August" "Absalom, Absalom" among others.
The stories here nonetheless provide a real sense of Faulkner as a writer. The unmistakeable Faulkner style with its complex and Latinate sentences , its cumulative enveloping rhythm, its penetration of the inner lives of its characters, in grotesque and often extreme relationships, including those in which there is often real violence, is here in these stories.
Among the stories in this collection are "A Rose for Emily" " Dry September" "That Evening Sun""Lo" "Red Leaves".
Turnabout" .
I would say to truly know Faulkner at his best and fullest it is necessary to read the novels. But the stories too give the feeling and flavor of this great American master's work.

Nice Collection
This is a great collection for someone who hasn't read much Faulkner. Everyone needs to have at least read "A Rose For Emily" and "Red Leaves."

WHO'S AFRAID OF WILLIAM FAULKNER?
Faulkner scares readers.Before I read, re-read and loved "Light in August," I had tried books like "Absalom, Absalom" and "The Sound and The Fury" countless times only to get bogged down in the convoluted grammar and personal symbolism as well as the dialogue.For some reason, when I was ready to really read and concentrate, it was certainly not easy, but it was a great, distinct pleasure....one that has stayed with me. Faulkner is, as novelist and essayist Ralph Ellison calls him, "...the greatest artist the South has produced."

This Modern Library compilation of some of Faulkner's short stories is a perfect place to start to read this author, or to keep returning for his keen insights into the heart and nature of the Southerners he created from the Southerners he knew.There are thirteen stories here and they include one of Faulkner's most famous, "A Rose For Emily" a tale of great love and, perhaps, necrophilia.My personal favorite, depressingly sad though it is, is "Dry September" which tells of the extreme violence not only of small town whites to blacks but of whites to whites.Every one of these superb stories is a gem, masterfully written.Most were intended for magazines and so are much more straight forward and "simple" than the novels.

My only complaint and it is with Modern Library, is that, except in two cases, we are not told when Faulkner wrote the stories nor when they were published.Even so, HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. ... Read more

Book Description
These four novels show one of America's greatest writers at the height of his powers. Presented in authoritative new texts, they explore the struggles of characters in a South caught between a romantic and a tragic past and the corrupting enticements of the present. Quentin Compson and his Harvard roomate re-create the story of the insanely ambitious patriarch Thomas Sutpen--and discover that his grief, pride, and doom are the inescapable legacy of a past that is not dead. "The Unvanquished" recounts the ordeals and triumphs of the Sartoris family during and after the Civil War. In "If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem" (first published as "The Wild Palms"), paired stories tell of desperate lovers and a fleeing convict. In "The Hamlet," the outrageous scheming energy of Flem Snopes and his clan is vividly and hilariously juxtaposed with the fragile community and customs of Frenchman's bend, Mississippi. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Great Value on Faulkner
I agree with the previous review: Faulkner is an acquired taste. However, if you like his work and want to own some of his greatest novels without breaking the bank, this book fills the bill. It's a high-quality book. It's bound well, the paper stock is not flimsy and it holds up to reading after reading. I received mine as a graduation gift in 1997. Since then it's been read by me, some friends, family members and coworkers and it shows little wear.

These are some of Faulkner's greatest works. To own them under one cover for this price? You won't find a better deal.

great deal
You probably either love Faulkner's work or you hate it.If you hate it I won't argue with you.There are good reasons why you might not like his work (talk about acquired tastes).If you love him then you can't really find a much better deal than this book."Absalom, Absalom," "If I Forget Thee Oh Jerusalem," and "The Hamlet" are some of his best work and you can get this book, which is a nice little volume in about every way, for about 2/3 of what you'd pay to get them seperately as paperbacks.I'm not overly impressed by what I've read of "The Unvanquished," and scholars seem to share my opinion, but with works as good as the other three I think a little filler is okay. ... Read more

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. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Old Drunk Mellifluous
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
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 ...
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
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-boundhardcover, and its designed ability to *lie flat* at each page. The onlyfault I could find with this volume is that it would be nice to have _TheSound and the Fury_ included in a Library of America edition as well(currently, the Modern Library edition is the best that can be done). Istrongly recommend this edition to the serious reader who, familiar withFaulkner, is looking for a reference copy of these works that will notdeteriorate over time (did I mention acid-free paper and a clothbookmark?). Considering the price of each of these titles in paperback,this volume's value to the casual reader speaks for itself; you, too, areadvised to invest in this worthy tome.

My Mother is a Fish
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) thehigh point of English literature and Vardeman's internal dialoge (andchapter heading "My Mother is a Fish") is the purest form ofwriting expression and the high-water mark of American Literature. If youlike to read, there are so many subtle threads that run through "As ILay Dying." You'll recognize Chaucer, T.S.Eliot, and I thinkShakespeare's "Lear." Like Gorky, Faulkner uses common people toexpound upon universal themes like betrayal and unrequited love, but hedoes it better, and looks at it harder, than anyone has before or since. ... Read more

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

Customer Reviews (1)

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

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



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

... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

The Mansion
I can't find The Mansion on sale individually, so I'm reviewing that here.If you have plenty of time on your hands, you can check my reviews for The Hamlet and The Town.There are spoilers below if you're worried that Faulkner can be spoiled.

The Mansion concludes the Snopes trilogy, and at the end of it, I think that the story being told is not of the Snopes but of Gavin Stevens.Flem Snopes, the ostensible subject, is really never on the main stage during the whole trilogy and is one of the rare undeveloped characters in all of Faulkner.Flem holds no faults that don't show up in the characters scattered throughout the town, and while manipulative, is no more so than any of the townfolk that are dead set against his success.

Gavin Stevens is the more interesting character and the only one worthy of a starring role in a tragedy.Primarily, Gavin is devoted to a life well lived and tries to bring others on that path.He is an ideal for what a person can become given effort and commitment.Yet he is destroyed by contact with born greatness exemplified in Eula Varner.Eula has done nothing to achieve what she is, she is simply a milepost in humanity.Gavin's brush with greatness renders his commitment to goodness bland and unsatisfying.He never caves to immorality, but neither does he ever surrender to love or commit the great work that he is capable of (retranslating the Bible back into Greek and Hebrew).

The Mansion is the end of the tragedy with Mink Snopes as its vehicle, and there is an interesting suggestion of redemption for him a la Carson McCullers.However, it's unclear why salvation is offered at all unless it is that he like the rest of us are unwitting instruments of the Old Moster.This would be a much more interesting book if it hadn't been blown away earlier in Go Down, Moses.

Perhaps the most confusing writer of all time
Well, I quit. I admit it, I can't do it. I WANT to read William Faulkner, I WANT to like William Faulkner, so many people I know claim they love his writing and it's so deep and profound and beautiful and la la la, and I really wanted to get into it, I really did, but...I can't.

Here's a brief exerpt from The Hamlet: "They were young voices, talking not in shouts or screams but with an unhurried profundity of volume the very apparent absence from which of any discernible human speech or language seemed but natural, as if the sound had been emitted by two enormous birds . . . he had a fleeting vision of them as two cows, heifers, standing knee-deep in air as in a stream, a pond, nuzzling into it, the level of the pond fleeing violently and silently into one inhalation, exposing in astounded momentary amaze the teeming lesser subaerial life about the planted feet."

Now, it's not so much that I don't know what he's talking about, although I kind of don't, but it's more that he seems to be trying NOT to say what he's trying to say. I mean, whatever he's getting at in describing these two people, he is taking the longest possible route to get there, and he just loses me, every time. His word choice and sentence structure make Proust look like Hemingway. Next to Faulkner, reading "Ulysses" is like reading the Little Golden Books you had when you were a kid.

He's not a BAD writer at all, I mean he explodes with some amazing images from time to time, but you just cannot follow him, or I can't at least. I'm giving the book 3 stars because Faulkner clearly had tremendous talent, but...well, you know how John Lennon once commented on his genius by singing "No one, I think, is in my tree"? Well, in Faulkner's case, I think no one is in his whole ORCHARD. Maybe even his county.

Treat yourself to a trio
These books might be the most accesible Faulkner.They add structure, dimension, and color to the reality of his world of Yoknapataphwa county.The wealth of imagery, metaphor and symbolism is there for those who want it just beneath the surface of an engaging, at times laugh out loud saga of a family of unforgettable characters within a community of equally memorable characters.

Through this portal, one can enter Faulkner's universe, get a feel for his style and an appetite for his work to proceed with momentum to his more complex books.

The size of the book itself, with the 3 novels in one cover, might intimidate some and steer them away.The weight of 3 novels together can be uncomfotable during exended reading. But the text offers the trilogy to be read in succession - the story compels one to do so, and draws one back to do so repeatedly.

Great work from a great writer - a real treat and special component for the library of any reader.

Did Oprah...goof? Should she have chosen 'Snopes'?
Oprah's Book Club chose three novels by William Faulkner for the summer months: "As I Lay Dying," "The Sound and the Fury" and "Light in August."

When Oprah speaks, America listens, so the three-volume set of the novels Oprah picked -- 1,152 pages of Faulkner, a bargain on Amazon at $17.97 --- has leapt to #2 on the Amazon bestseller list. Home across the country which only have "The Da Vinci Code" and "Tuesdays with Morrie" on their bookshelves will now greet books by a novelist who would have been lionized by the symbolist writers of 19th century France. That's thrilling.

But..."As I Lay Dying" has multiple narrators who favor the stream-of-conscious style. The first section of "The Sound and the Fury" is narrated by an idiot who slips in and out of the present with only italics to guide you. "Light in August" is a comparatively straightforward "traditional" novel, but it's 528 pages.

I'll be stunned if 10% of Oprah's devotees reach page 100 of any of these novels.

The tragedy in Oprah's summer reading list? There are three books by Faulkner much better suited to her purposes. She just picked the wrong Faulkner.

The right Faulkner? Three novels that Faulkner conceived as a trilogy: "The Hamlet," "The Town" and "The Mansion." Compared to other Faulkner novels, these 1,088 pages ($17.61 at Amazon) read like pulp fiction --- the plot is lurid, the motivations of the characters couldn't be more contemporary, and the style breaks no new ground. They're not Grisham, but they're close.

"The Hamlet" is the story of Flem Snopes, all grown up and just about as unethical as his father, and of Flem's effect on the small, unsuspecting village of Frenchman's Bend. Flem's impotent --- but only below the belt. So when he discovers that Will Varner's daughter Eula is pregnant without a husband, he steps forward and offers to help Will out. That makes Flem the son-in-law of one of the town's leading landowners --- and neatly positioned to start taking over the hamlet. (This book was adapted into a film called "The Long Hot Summer," starring Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Orson Welles, Lee Remick and Angela Lansbury.)

Eula is a sensual woman, with a body that turns any man's thoughts to just one thing. In "The Town," Flem seems not to notice. He's too busy getting promoted --- first to chief of the power plant, then to vice president of the bank. Can the presidency of the bank be denied him? And, along the way, can he get his revenge on the man who's been having an eighteen-year affair with Eula?

In the final volume, justice finally comes Flem's way. But not before Frenchman's Bend has been transformed --- eaten alive, really --- by the kind of man never before seen in these parts. That is because Flem represents the unethical, unrestrained capitalism that only could flourish in the South after the Civil War had stripped it of its codes of honor. Flem has only one goal and one emotion --- power, and the love of it. In our time, we know this kind of man well. And, as often as not, we live in "communities" where people used to be like family to their neighbors and now barely recognize them to wave.

Rapacious capitalism. The loss of our sense of "home." Men who use women to advance their master plans. These are themes that Oprah's fans could really get into. Maybe after they've struck out with the brainbusters, they'll give these books a chance.

Snopes, the way it was meant to be read
If you love reading Faulkner, then I recommend the Modern Library edition of _Snopes_. Snopes, probably some of the most unjustly underrated Faulkner, is also a fine introduction to his fiction since it contains some of the stories published separately, such as "Spotted Horses." In Snopes Faulkner works the revolving point of view to great effect with primarily four narrators; V.K. Ratliff, the sanguine sewing machine salesman, Gavin Stevens, the sensitive, meddlesome county attorney, Charles mallison, the young boy who grows up with the 2nd and 3rd books, and finally the community of Jefferson itself as a kind of collective 3rd person. Snopes is an inviting, lyrical novel, one that accomodates the reader as a citizen of Jefferson and privileges that new citizen with as much gossip as any other. It's a rich and telling family chronicle as well as a novelistic treatise on time and change in rural Yoknapatawpha County and the town of Jefferson, with real relevance for our own time since as Cleanth Brooks says, Flem Snopes is himself a harbinger of Corporate expansion and agressiveness. Snopes is also a treatment on money, developing more at times a sense of the value of money from the point of view of those with precious little of it than just those with a good deal more of it. These books do get at the human condition, Faulkner wrests even from the innocuous daily affairs a tangible improvement in the catalog of human understading. He approaches his characters, especially the memorable Mink Snopes, with the passion and understanding that they are human and therefore complex and their reasons complex, even if they are simple and criminally minded. It is a pleasing volume that does not disappoint in the end, the satisfying resolution that the reader comes to believe may not happen but does. ... Read more

Book Description
One of America's great novelists, William Faulkner was a writer deeply rooted in the American South. In works such as The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, Light in August, and Absalom, Absalom! Faulkner drew powerfully on Southern themes, attitudes, and atmosphere to create his own world and place--the mythical Yoknapatawpha County--peopled with quintessential Southerners such as the Compsons, Sartorises, Snopes, and McCaslins. Indeed, to a degree perhaps unmatched by any other major twentieth-century novelist, Faulkner remained at home and explored his own region--the history and culture and people of the South. Now, in William Faulkner and Southern History, one of America's most acclaimed historians of the South, Joel Williamson, weaves together a perceptive biography of Faulkner himself, an astute analysis of his works, and a revealing history of Faulkner's ancestors in Mississippi--a family history that becomes, in Williamson's skilled hands, a vivid portrait of Southern culture itself.Williamson provides an insightful look at Faulkner's ancestors, a group sketch so brilliant that the family comes alive almost as vividly as in Faulkner's own fiction. Indeed, his ancestors often outstrip his characters in their colorful and bizarre nature. Williamson has made several discoveries: the Falkners (William was the first to spell it "Faulkner") were not planter, slaveholding "aristocrats"; Confederate Colonel Falkner was not an unalloyed hero, and he probably sired, protected, and educated a mulatto daughter who married into America's mulatto elite; Faulkner's maternal grandfather Charlie Butler stole the town's money and disappeared in the winter of 1887-1888, never to return. Equally important, Williamson uses these stories to underscore themes of race, class, economics, politics, religion, sex and violence, idealism and Romanticism--"the rainbow of elements in human culture"--that reappear in Faulkner's work. He also shows that, while Faulkner's ancestors were no ordinary people, and while he sometimes flashed a curious pride in them, Faulkner came to embrace a pervasive sense of shame concerning both his family and his culture. This he wove into his writing, especially about sex, race, class, and violence, psychic and otherwise. William Faulkner and Southern History represents an unprecedented publishing event--an eminent historian writing on a major literary figure. By revealing the deep history behind the art of the South's most celebrated writer, Williamson evokes new insights and deeper understanding, providing anyone familiar with Faulkner's great novels with a host of connections between his work, his life, and his ancestry. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Needed more history.
Surprisingly, considering that Williamson authored the excellent Crucible of Race, this book was shorter on relating Faulkner to southern history than on relating Faulkener's sexual history.Long stretches are more about Faulkner and his various mistresses than about Faulkner and southern history (there's even some rather strained meanderings on homosexuality).Literary analysis is shunted mostly to the end, and, when it comes to that, I have read better from English professors.There's a discussion of a lynching that Faulkner may (or may not) have witnessed as a youth.By far the best material on Faulkner and the South deals with the period when he became a liberal (by white southern standards) spokesman on racial issues in the fifties, was viciously attacked and beat an ignominious retreat; but this could have made a journal article.Overall, a neither fish nor fowl book, but still with some interesting sections.

The definitive Faulkner book
For anyone interested in William Faulkner, this book is far better thanany of the other biographies on the market.By illuminating the organicsociety of the South that is mirrored in Faulker's works, the author hasadded significant depth to the historical understanding of this greatauthor's works.

The definitive Faulkner book
For anyone interested in William Faulkner, this book is far better thanany of the other biographies on the market.By illuminating the organicsociety of the South that is mirrored in Faulker's works, the author hasadded significant depth to the historical understanding of this greatauthor's works. ... Read more

Book Description
The Library of America edition of the novels of William Faulkner culminates with this volume presenting his first four, each newly edited, and, in many cases, restored with passages that were altered or (in the case of Mosquitoes) expurgated by the original publishers. This is Faulkner as he was meant to be read.

In these four novels we can track Faulkner's extraordinary evolution as, over the course of a few years, he discovers and masters the mode and matter of his greatest works. Soldiers' Pay (1926) expresses the disillusionment provoked by World War I through its account of the postwar experiences of homecoming soldiers, including a severely wounded R.A.F. pilot, in a style of restless experimentation. In Mosquitoes (1927), a raucous satire of artistic poseurs, many of them modeled after acquaintances of Faulkner in New Orleans, he continues to try out a range of stylistic approaches as he chronicles an ill-fated cruise on Lake Pontchartrain.

With the sprawling Flags in the Dust (published in truncated form in 1929 as Sartoris), Faulkner began his exploration of the mythical region of Mississippi that was to provide the setting for most of his subsequent fiction. Drawing on family history from the Civil War and after, and establishing many characters who recur in his later books, Flags in the Dust marks the crucial turning point in Faulkner's evolution as a novelist.

The volume concludes with Faulkner's masterpiece, The Sound and the Fury (1929). This multilayered telling of the decline of the Compson clan over three generations, with its complex mix of narrative voices and its poignant sense of isolation and suffering within a family, is one of the most stunningly original American novels.

The editors of this volume are Joseph Blotner and Noel Polk. Joseph Blotner, who wrote the notes, is professor of English emeritus at the University of Michigan. Biographer of William Faulkner and Robert Penn Warren, he is a member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers and the French Legion of Honor. Noel Polk is professor of English at Mississippi State University and editor of The Mississippi Quarterly. He has edited the texts in all five volumes of William Faulkner's novels for The Library of America.

In his first four novels, William Faulkner moved beyond early experiments to discover the themes and style of his maturity. With Soldiers' Pay, a sardonic distillation of postwar disillusionment, and Mosquitoes, a freewheeling roman à clef satirizing the writers and artists of his New Orleans milieu, Faulkner served his restless apprenticeship as a writer of fiction before settling in Flags in the Dust (first published in truncated form as Sartoris) on the material that would chiefly engage him: a mythic Mississippi region dense with ancestral memories and echoes of the Civil War. The volume concludes with what many consider Faulkner's greatest work, The Sound and the Fury, a novel of family torment whose audacities of form and fearless explorations of the inner life continue to astonish. The newly edited texts in this volume include passages altered or in some cases expurgated by the original publishers. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

for the sound and the fury
The Sound and the Fury is such a wonder of book, that I give this publication 5 stars just for providing us, finally with this beautiful edition. I haven't read the first three of these books, because they seem to be by an author who hasn't yet found his voice. Just to throw this out there, but I'd love to have his complete short stories (with notes) in this format. Don't you agree, Faulkner lovers?

Beautiful edition of Faulkner's first four novels including the masterpiece "The Sound and the Fury"
We all owe the wonderful Library of America a great deal for publishing the volumes of William Faulkner's complete novels.It has taken more than twenty years to bring them out and now concludes with his first four novels.These were published from 1926 until 1929.This volume includes "Soldier's Pay", "Mosquitoes", "Flags in the Dust", and "The Sound and the Fury".

"Soldier's Pay" is a first novel and shows it.While it has some fine moments and shows Faulkner's style of presenting "reality" without context and focusing on emotional interiors and the aspects of life that we tend to hide even from ourselves, it is not a great work.However, it is still worth reading.The central figure is a disfigured and dying pilot brought home from the war by strangers into a complex family dynamic that is made much worse because the pilot was thought dead, but is now alive and horribly disabled.

I personally found "Mosquitoes" to be all but unreadable.It is too self-indulgent with a delight in talking about intimate things as if that were profound.No thanks.

"Flags in the Dust" was published in part as "Sartoris" in the late twenties.In 1973, Random House published the complete text as far as it could be restored.It reads much differently than his first two novels and it is here that the voice starts sounding like a mature and confident Faulkner.It concerns multiple generations that fester into ruin and misery of all kinds that seem to include perverse sexual relations and alcoholism.Yes, there is also racism in the books, but the books are not racist because the attitudes of the characters are consistent with their times and do not include any sympathy from Faulkner that I can find.And his is a worldwith living memories of the tragic Southern experience of the Civil War and the shock and loss of the Great War (WWI)for the living generation.

The volume ends with Faulner's first clear masterpiece, "The Sound and the Fury".While all Faulkner's prose is not easy to read and requires constant attention and often some re-reading, this book also has multiple unannounced perspectives and shifts in narrator.At the end of the book is an appendix that was first written by Faulkner for "The Portable Faulkner" edited by Matthew Cowley in 1946.You might want to read this first if you want to understand the story more clearly the first time through.However, it could be argued that you shouldn't because the confusion and disorientation is part of the reading experience that author wants you to have as you work through his story.

It is clear to me that Faulkner is a great master of prose and that his works are great treasures in the English language.However, his ethos is quite foreign to me.I do not find great value in reading about lives of misery, incest, adultery, perversion, ruin, and loss.Is that really all there is to human life?Not in my more than fifty years of experience.And since Faulkner was a young man when he wrote these works, what did he really know about life and what was just rumor and hearsay?

Still, the use of language is powerful and unique.Attempts have been made to copy aspects of his style, but none can come closer than mannerisms.Faulkner's was a genius that not only included his words, but in the way he conveyed reality.We don't experience our lives with chapter headings or with moments clearly delineated as part of this or that.We construct our filing system for events in retrospect.So, Faulkner presents us his stories in ways that require us to ask ourselves what is happening, what just happened, did anything happen?Where does this go?Who is this?Why the different names for the same people?Why the same names for different people?It is working through these and every other question that occurs to you that you come to an understanding of the work.And your understanding will almost certainly be personal and different from almost everyone else.

This is a fine volume with reliable texts for these important works, a chronology of Faulkner's life, notes on the texts, and a beautiful binding with materials and type that add to the quality of the reading experience.

All of Faulkner's novels now available in exquisite Lib/America eds!
Although chronologicallly the four novels in this volume (which includes Faulkner's masterpiece The Sound and the Fury) are Faulkner's first, this is the last volume of his novels to come off the presses of the Library of America. This is a landmark event in the world of Belles Lettres, not just American literature! The first volume (Novels 1930-35) was published in 1985, making the publication of the definitive texts of the novels of William Faulkner a 21-year enterprise. Kudos to Library of America and editors Noel Polk and Joseph Blotner.

For those who haven't heard of them, the Library of America (LOA) is a non-profit venture with the mission of publishing the definitive texts of the best of American literature in uniform clothbound editions designed to last. (Google them to find out more about their mission and for a complete list of titles in print and forthcoming.) But these are not just handsome books or cheesy Franklin Mint style collectables.Establishing the best texts for the works selected for the series is a difficult and tricky enterprise, and the most qualified scholars are sought to take on the series' diverse authors. For Faulkner this editorial task fell to two of the most prominent Faulkner scholars around, Joseph Blotner (also his biographer) and Noel Polk. LOA does not clutter up its pages with footnotes and does not commission literary introductions for its volumes, so the casual reader may be unaware of the extensive amount of scholarship that goes on "behind the scenes." As noted in brief "Notes on the Text" to the Novels 1926-1929, "By preserving Faulkner's spelling, punctuation, and wording, even when inconsistent or irregular, the Polk texts strive to be as faithful to Faulkner's usage as surviving evidence permits. In this volume, the reader has the results of the most detailed scholarly efforts thus far made to establish the texts of Soldier's Pay, Mosquitoes, Flags in the Dust, and The Sound and the Fury" (p. 1175).

Since the publisher's own description of this volume here on Amazon.com doesn't point this out, it should be noted that the version of The Sound and the Fury published by LOA includes the "Appendix (Compson: 1699-1945)" which does not exist in all editions of the novel still in print. Although this Appendix was first published in 1945 as part of The Portable Faulkner (16 years after the novel itself was published), I always found it perverse and annoying that it was excluded from all but the Modern Library edition of the novel. (After all, if readers want the experience of reading the novel in the pristine form of the 1929 first edition, all they have to do is ignore the Appendix.)

I don't know what else, if anything, of Faulkner's output LOA intends to publish going forward (short stories, screenplays, speeches, letters, poetry?), but these five volumes of novels contain (arguably?) the best works of American fiction by any author. Each volume is a handy size (though some contain four novels, they are all the size of one of Faulkner's novels as orinally published), and set in large and readable type. Buy them all and you can own all of Faulkner's best work without giving up three bookshelves to store them!

The Library of America's exquisite hardcover collection of four of William Faulkner's classic literary works
Faulkner Novels 1926-1929 is The Library of America's exquisite hardcover collection of four of William Faulkner's classic literary works: "Soldier's Pay", "Mosquitoes", "Flags in the Dust", and "The Sound and the Fury". Like all volumes in this publisher's authoritative texts of literary classics, Faulkner Novels 1926-1929 is a compact hardbound volume with a ribbon for easy bookmarking sewn into the spine. A chronology and sections of notes on the text as well as Faulkner's life round out this definitive "must-have" edition, ideal for public and college libraries as well as private reading shelves.
... Read more

Product Description
This work looks closely at the relationship between William Faulkner and Memphis novelist Joan Williams. Their story is significant not only in its depth but also in the years of their primary involvement, 1949 to 1953, a period over which Faulkner won both the Nobel Prize and a National Book Award. This is the first book-length study of the Faulkner-Williams relationship, and the first truly attentive consideration of Joan Williams, her impressions of Faulkner, and her commitment to writing. Until now, Williams, an acclaimed novelist, was an outside woman in Faulkner's life. Their affair and friendship is worthy of its own story.

Included here are extensive interviews with Williams conducted over several years about her relationship with Faulkner, their correspondence, and discussions of both his work and her own. It includes all of Williams's letters to Faulkner and his letters, either directly reproduced or paraphrased. ... Read more

Book Description
Three different ways to approach Faulkner, each of them representative of his work as a whole. Includes "Spotted Horses," "Old Man," and his famous "The Bear." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

The Bear
This was a challenging story, like all works of Faulkner.But also a very rewarding story.When you finish this one you feel like you have been somewhere... truly immersed in a time period... truly immersed in a family.
No author, ever...has had the knack of creating a world of ordinary people so expertly intertwined throughout his novels.Faulkner either by design or accident (I doubt that??) has created a rich tapestry in his books, of characters subtlely connected by time and circumstance.
I have read The Sound and the Fury and most of Light in August; and it is not difficult to see the connections in just these two books plus the short story The Bear.Everything I have chanced to read by this amazing author has had careful, deep, intricate connections to the other works.
I know this is a well known fact... but the way in which Faulkner executes it, leaves me amazed each and every time I encounter it.
The Bear is a coming of age story about Ike McCaslin.It traces his development to a young man through several vingettes.Each time we see him he is involved in a hunt. That is until the last 2 sections in which we see him at age 21 looking back on his family history and discussing his right to the land.Once we see him as a young boy and then onward into his teenage years.
The story revolves around an aged bear who roams the forests and swamps where they hunt.It is interesting to see Ike develop as a hunter and man, as the hunters get closer and closer to the old bear.
There are many rich characters in this story.... far to many for me to touch on in this short review.
A big theme that impressed me in this one was how our personal history is inexticably tied to the land we grow up on.Ike McCaslin was, "who" he was because of where he was from, and he could never escape that fact.
Faulkner was an author unafraid to delve into the scriptures in developing his ideas.I believe his use of scriptural narratives only serves to strengthen his work.What he says, rings with authority when he uses Abraham, Adam and Eve as illustrations.He expertly uses the story of Abrahams travels to the promised land to show how his characters have squandered their "rights" to the land they grew up on...their "promised land".
There is no doubt William Faulkner knew how to put a story together.Any of his works, beg to be read again and again.I will surely be picking this one up again...I recommend it to anyone who loves books!William Faulkner is a giant in the world of literature!

A critical look at The Bear
Among Faulkner's best work, The Bear is more than a simple story of the hunt for an ellusive bear. Faulkner uses the backdrop of the hunt in 19th century Mississippi to show the progress his protagonist, Ike McCaslin, makes towards the unltimate achievement of man. Faulkner was convinced of the godd that man is capable of; Ike, the typical Faulkner youth seen in other works, shows this idea in full detail.
Ike begins his hunt as a young man, growing to accept the ways of nature as taught to him by a fallen Indian chief. The connotations of a fallen race abound in the story, yet they are no more obvious than in the detailed fourth chapter. Readers are advised not to merely skim this section; it remains one of the best testaments to Faulkner's ability to create some of the most complex material of the 20th century.

Three short novels by America's greatest writer.
Three Famous Short Novels gathers together three long and diverse works by America's greatest writer (that's my opinion, others my contest it, I will only agree to disagree).Spotted Horses is a humorous tale culled from the pages of The Hamlet, the first novel in the famous Snopes Family Trilogy.The Bear is the expanded version of the somber and mythic hunting story about the killing a legendary bear that means so much more than just that.The final story is the exciting adventure yarn Old Man and was one half of the two conjoined novellas that made up The Wild Palms (aka If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem).Although each story has more power than many writers have in their entire output, they acheive even more when woven into the wide fabric of Faulkner's far reaching, generations spanning Jefferson, Mississippi.Required reading.

Not for children
If you expected Faulkner's "The Bear" to be as difficult as "Pat the Bunny" you will be deeply disappointed. High school teachers may assign it in segments to English classes, but it is at heart an adult story, with deep seams of place and poetry. In this coming of age novella, the relationship between the boy Isaac and Old Ben the bear takes place against the backdrop of threatened forest land. Faulkner's passionate writing about the value of the woods rings true for nature conservationists today. The lengthy section on Civil War ghosts and the equivocality of inheritance, often considered an intrusion within the main narrative, also rewards careful reading. As for Faulkner's infamous run-on sentences -- well, here they are on full steam ahead, and even Faulkner's machismo is forgiveable in the context of his marvellous sentences. ... Read more

Book Description
In prose of biblical grandeur and feverish intensity, William Faulkner reconstructed the history of the American South as a tragic legend of courage and cruelty, gallantry and greed, futile nobility and obscene crimes. No single volume better conveys the scope of Faulkner's vision than The Portable Faulkner.

Edited by Malcolm Cowley ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Portable As Cement
When you see a book with the title "The Portable Anything", you may figure it a handy compendium, digestible in relatively short order to give you a feeling about something without running you through the gauntlet.

What you may not expect are two of the longest sentences in the American literary canon, one alone running some 35 close-set pages; double-parentheses; 100-page stream-of-consciousness narratives about bad horses and deadly bear hunts, and churning through names like Eck Snopes and Tomey's Turl. Unless maybe the book is "The Portable Faulkner", in which case what you are dealing with is not a title but an oxymoron.

There's nothing simple about Faulkner. Even ordinary things come out convoluted, like graffiti, "the gross and simple terms of his gross and simple lusts and yearnings, the gross and simple recapitulations of his gross and simple heart" as described near the beginning of that 35-page sentence in "The Jail". Forensic science is easy compared to making headway of a plot like "Old Man" or "Was". In short, Faulkner's hard to read, and Malcolm Cowley's book doesn't make him any easier by picking these three pieces and other examples of Faulkner's singularly manic density as nuggets for sampling.

For Cowley, who first put this together in 1946, the goal was to rescue Faulkner from obscurity. It seemed to work. Largely unregarded except by other notable American writers (Hemingway touted him in "Death In The Afternoon"), Faulkner emerged over the next few years as a Southern-fried combination of Poe and Hawthorne, of dreams and morality served up in the messy racial and generational gumbo of the American South. It culminated in his winning the 1950 Nobel Prize for Literature, and his reputation has not only endured but prevailed ever since.

I just wish it was available in digestible form. There are some examples of a more direct and comprehensible style to be found in this book, like Faulkner's Nobel address. "A Rose For Emily" sums up Faulkner's whole view of the South as cleverly and succinctly as a "Twilight Zone" episode. There are two other fine stand-alone short stories in that vein, "A Justice" and "Red Leaves", while "That Evening Sun" and "Appendix: The Compsons" serve as a perfect prequel and postscript to "The Sound And The Fury", one of the richest and most daring novels I ever read.

I just wish Cowley had gone easy on the novel excerpts. "Dilsey," a quarter section of "The Sound And The Fury", thrusts you into the Compson saga as it is winding down, and there's little help for you if you don't know going in that the fellow named Quentin referred to here is actually a girl. Supposedly these pieces were chosen by Cowley to flesh out Faulkner's imaginary Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, though "Old Man" is set well outside county lines while the boring and pedantic "Ad Astra" occurs in France.

In a terrific introduction, Cowley describes Faulkner's writings "like wooden planks that were cut, not from a log, but a still living tree. The planks are planed and chiseled into their final shapes, but the tree itself heals over the wound and continues to grow."

Cowley's enthusiasm for Faulkner's artistic messiness is admirable and even necessary in getting the right handle on what made Faulkner great, but it doesn't make for the best of introductions. "The Portable Faulkner" works best for those who know the writer well enough not to need a "portable" version in the first place.

Edges out short stories anthology
An influential collection, partly responsible for the late 1940s resurgence of interest in America's greatest author, this construction of Faulkner's narrative world is certainly no substitute for any of the novels.But it has its uses: readers who don't plan to read more than 3 of Faulkner's best novels may find some of Cowley's excerpts a reasonable consolation; Cowley's chronological ordering not only clarifies Faulkner's fictional world but exposes its organic unity; with the exception of "Barn Burning," most of the essential short fiction (including the frequently excerpted "The Bear") can be found here; the concluding commentary and genealogy which Cowley elicted from Faulkner himself is both helpful and a kind of Faulknerian literary piece in its own right.

A slight "down side" (apart from some questionable excerpting and over-emphasis on chronological at the expense of "narrative" time) is Cowley's somewhat "dated" aesthetic judgements (though at times refreshing, since the author was applying them to a "non-canonical" writer).

As for "Burn Burning," it's readily available, free of charge, on the Internet.

A great introduction and companion, but use wisely
The Portable Faulkner is a wonderful intro to Faulkner, but it's just that--an introduction.It can't do whan the entirety of one of Faulkner's novels will do, and in some cases I recommend skipping a bit in the Portable Faulkner until the corresponding novel has already been read (for example, Dilsey's section of The Sound and the Fury shouldn't be read in the Portable if you haven't read The Sound and the Fury.Trust me, TSatF is a book where you don't want to read the last chapter before the first three).

Better than an introduction, the Portable Faulkner also serves as a very interesting companion to those already familiar with Faulkner--it does the great service to readers of putting Yoknapatawpha stories in chronological order, which is an interesting perspective we may not otherwise get to see.

However, above all, there are two reasons why I bought this book.

First, it includes the Compson Appendix.If you've read a copy of the Sound and the Fury that didn't include the Compson Appendix, you need this.It's something that has to be read after the Sound and the Fury to capture the whole of Faulkner's story.

Second, it includes Faulkner's Nobel acceptance speech, which is wonderful, especially as a complement to reading the books themselves, and which is very nice to have in book format like the Portable Faulkner.

A terrific introduction to Faulkner
The Portable Faulkner is THE way to be introduced to William Faulkner, arguably the best of 20th century American novelists.Cowley arranges whole work and excerpts chronological for Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County;it should be noted that Faulkner did not write his body of workchronologically.By arranging the work in this way, Cowley does us a greatservice in seeing Faulkner's great creation as an ordered whole.

Thedrawback to this work is in its goal -- to make more understandableFaulkner's creation in his mythic county.The drawback is that, by design,none of Faulkner's other work is included, such as The Fable.

ThePortable Faulkner should be viewed only as an introduction, a tantalizer. Upon seeing the greatest of the work, we can then proceed to the work inits entirety.

The Paramount Faulkner Companion
Malcolm Cowley is a genius, only to be suceeded by Faulkner himself.This is the ultimate history of Faulkner's (non?)fictional world. ... Read more

Amazon.com
The ostensible subject of The Sound and the Fury is thedissolution of theCompsons, one of those august old Mississippi families that fell on hardtimes and wild eccentricity after the Civil War. But in fact what William Faulkneris really after in his legendary novel is the kaleidoscope of consciousness--the overwrought mind caught in the act of thought. His rich, dark, scandal-ridden story ofsquandered fortune, incest (in thought if not in deed), madness, congenital brain damage, theft, illegitimacy, and stoic endurance is told in the interiorvoices of three Compson brothers: first Benjy, the "idiot" man-child whoblurs together three decades of inchoate sensations as he stalks the fringesof the family's former pasture; next Quentin, torturing himself brilliantly, obsessively over Caddy's lost virginity and his own failure to recover the family's honor as he wanders around the seedy fringes of Boston; and finally Jason, heartless, shrewd, sneaking, nursing a perpetual sense of injury and outrage against his outrageous family.

If Benjy's section is the most daringly experimental, Jason's is the mostharrowing. "Once a bitch always a bitch, what I say," he begins, lacing into Caddy's illegitimate daughter, and then proceeds to hurl mud at blacks, Jews, his sacred Compson ancestors, his glamorous, promiscuous sister, hisdoomedbrother Quentin, his ailing mother, and the long-suffering black servant Dilsey who holds the family together by sheer force of character.

Notoriously "difficult," The Sound and the Fury is actually one ofFaulkner's more accessible works once you get past the abrupt, unannouncedtime shifts--and certainly the most powerful emotionally. Everything ishere: the complex equilibrium of pre-civil rights race relations; theconflict between Yankee capitalism and Southern agrarian values; a meditationon time, consciousness, and Western philosophy. And all of it is rendered in proseso gorgeous it can take your breath away. Here, for instance, Quentin recalls anautumnal encounter back home with the old black possum hunter Uncle Louis:

And we'd sit in the dry leaves that whispered a little with the slowrespiration of our waiting and with the slow breathing of the earth and the windless October, the rank smell of the lantern fouling the brittle air,listening to the dogs and to the echo of Louis' voice dying away.He never raised it, yet on a still night we have heard it from our front porch.Whenhe called the dogs in he sounded just like the horn he carried slung on his shoulder and never used, but clearer, mellower, as though his voice were apart of darkness and silence, coiling out of it, coiling into it again. WhoOoooo.WhoOoooo.WhoOooooooooooooooo.

Customer Reviews (183)

Made me want to be a writer...
This was my first "favorite" novel.I read it as an adolescent and (perhaps because I was young and non-judgmental?) found it quite an easy read.I hadn't yet read the other great modern writers - Woolfe, Joyce.Later, I would place them among my favorites as well, but "Fury" was my original taste of "stream of consciousness" and I ate it up. I remember being blown away by the first chapter; the thunder-clap of recognition as I realized that it was "a tale told by an idiot;" that was the best of it for me, though I raced through the rest of the novel greedily, and re-read it for things I had missed (as one reviewer has said here, you could read it again and again for this reason).In any case, when I was finished, I knew I would be a writer. For many years I wrote in a Faulkner-ish style.I suppose many of us did.However, I have just picked it up again, as a mature reader and find that it is just as magnificent as my first "taste."However - I have been enjoying other parts of the novel as much, if not more, than that first, enigmatic, mind-blowing chapter. Here's to you, WF, wherever you are, for starting me on a great journey!

Ambivalent about S&F
I suppose I should be falling all over myself right now to ascribe genius, vision, originality, insightfulness, and other demi-god-like qualities to Faulkner because of his book.But I can't.I keep having this nagging suspicion that Faulkner made Benjy's section (and to a lesser extent Quentin's) deliberately distorted, confusing, bizarre and contradictory just to have a laugh at our expense, or, even worse, to make us think that somehow it was avant-garde, daring or original.One reviewer has complained that he felt the pages were randomly shuffled; occasionally I get that "Electric Lunch" feeling too.

And I couldn't relate to Caddy."Heart's darling"? If this is Faulkner's idea of a heart's darling, then he has some deep seated psychological issues to work out.So Caddy was tramp; big deal.She dared to lose her virginity at 15.Wow.She got pregnant and gave the child to her mother to raise.How original.Exactly what were her redeeming qualities supposed to be? That she missed the child she abandoned? Ironically, I actually could relate more to Jason, the only member of the Compson family who at least has got some common sense, even if, as one reviewer correctly noted, he is pure nastiness.

When this book appeared in 1929, it probably was considered very progressive in its treatment of then-taboo subjects.But in today's world the themes are at the very best quaint, and the very worst trite.All in all, the family is really nothing more than a southern, 1920s version of the Jerry Springer show: ..., suicidal, thieving brothers, alcoholic father, ...sister and granddaughter, neurotic mother.What's so original about dysfunctional southern families? Hell, we've had one in the White House.Please folks -- when you praise this book, make "dam" sure you're not praising the merely cleverly banal.

Like an Impressionist painting
Reading through this novel about the tragedies that beset a white family of the American South is like first examining an Impressionist painting up close and then slowly pulling away. At first you see the beauty of the brush strokes but can not make out the entire composition, but by the end your view ecompasses the entire work but does not see it with the sclarity of a photograph. The first three of four chapters are told in a stream of consciousness format that gives the reader only disjointed segments of the plot. The reader must trust that the entire story will come out in the end. However, the beauty of the work does not lie in the storyline, but in the characterizations of the central players. As one is jarred by the difference between the simple-minded but often confusing thoughts of the first chapter and the tortured thoughts of the second, one becomes aware that words do not simply describe people, the words are the people.

This work will make you frustrated if you expect clarity from the onset. Read all the way through and you will understand more than you think. If you want to read a summary or review before you're done, you're outsourcing your thinking - there's no point in reading this book if you're not going to think for yourself.

One trifling annoyance with this particular volume is that it came with a big Oprah Book Club sticker on it. I peeled it off, but I found it annoying that it was there on the front cover.

Not a fan of Faulkner...
I shouldn't start out with such a negative attitude because, to be honest, I've never read anything else by Faulkner, but this is NOT the book to start out with if you want to get a taste of him.This is the biggest muddle I think I've ever tried to read, and if it weren't for online Cliff's Notes, which broke down the entire book in 20 pages and better explained it than Faulkner himself, I would never have understood a single work of it.
His style is simply impossible to follow in this book, trying from a sane and intellectually sound individual's perspective to try to duplicate the mind of a 33-year-old infant whose thoughts he can't even possibly comprehend.He shifts through time back and forth until I was almost pulling my hair out, and I just couldn't even begin to understand what was going on.Once past that point, I was so frustrated that the next section didn't make any sense either.I didn't understand a single word until I read the review online, and never before have I had a problem with a work like this.

An Intense & Rewarding Experience, if it's Your Cup of Tea
First, it should be noted that the editorial review for this book above is better than usual at giving the plot of this book. All the same, the story is somewhat secondary (if not occasionally irrelevant) to HOW the story is told--a fact that is either a joy, or a cause to hate this book with particular venom.

Second, it is apparent from the wide range of reviews that some people have a wholly dismal reaction, while others praise the book to the stars. Aside from the fact that this must obviously arise from the reader's point of view (if not simply what a reader expects from a novel), it would still be helpful if a review didn't just scream "wonderful" or "horrible" but gave some sort of lighthouse by which to judge where you would fall on that spectrum.That is the purpose of this review.

If it is necessary to understand "what is going on" with perfect clarity, then this is not a book for you.If you don't mind being lost in places, even sometimes for long periods, then you already are at least somewhat prepared for what this book has to offer.Quite frankly, I don't believe those reviewers who said they understood the book perfectly; I think they're grandstanding. I say this, partly because I don't think Faulkner understood the book perfectly as he wrote it, and I think that there are portions where understanding is no longer the purpose, or is simply impossible. Faulkner himself said (and he may have been lying when he said it) that "The Sound and the Fury" is nothing more than his four attempts to tell the same story, and that he failed each time.

Understanding this novel is made more complicated by the fact that each of its four sections is told in progressively more lucid prose. Benjy's section juxtaposes time and space in a very disorienting way. The kind offers of people to give crib notes about how to make sense of the Benjy section are somewhat beside the point.Similarly, for those who think that Joyce "invented" stream of consciousness, or that Faulkner is imitating him, Joyce's "stream of consciousness" (the über-famous interior monologue from Mrs. Bloom at the end of "Ulysses") is nothing like either Benjy's stream of consciousness, or Quentin's in the section that follows. In any case, Faulkner immerses you in Benjy's and Quentin's stream, and as such one must swim constantly or drown, or sometimes just go with the flow.

And that is a fine strategy for reading the first two sections of this book. Strangely, it is likely that you will find interior landscape of Benjy's mental retardation more "logical" than Quentin's furiously self-conscious think. Again, instead of trying to understand every leaf, stone, and creature scuttling on the bank of Faulkner's stream of consciousness, one can simply catch what one does and go with the flow.Part of the most powerful effect of this work, in any case, is in its language.

Faulkner is sometimes accused of having more genius than talent, and that the many doubling of words and phrases with synonyms, such as "his was the grand, if not the epic, the penultimate humiliation" as the failure of a writer grasping for words, or (more charitably) at something beyond his understanding. There are other, more literary ways to read this kind of repetition, but if nothing else, they add weight, repetition, and seriousness to the text. Yes, sometimes to the point of ridiculousness. But what this means is that if you are open to the very language itself of the novel, and not simply what it is saying, then you're already better prepared to enjoy this book than other people.If that's not what you can tolerate in a novel, then avoid this book, and most of what this author writes.

It's this excess of language, this stuff that looks like narrative stumbling to some critics, and narrative thunder-building to others. Certainly there are days when this book is insufferable. The flat truth is, you have to be in a mood for it and, what's more, you have to be prepared to take the book on its own terms.If you want a conventionally crafted story, with the usual plot arc, and clear, lucid plot-points, this book will frustrate you. It offers, by contrast, a four-fold view of the Compson family, without offering a resolution or reconciliation to all those points of view.It offers images that can haunt you for years; even to this day, the final shadowy image of Mr. Compson in the doorway, while the four Compson children are piled into bed (as remembered/seen by Benjy) is an inexplicably heart-wrenching image to me. After all of the mental confusion (on my part) reading Benjy's section, this crystal-clear image is all the more effective because of the confusion, and also because its peace is in such stark contrast to the present-day Compsons.I'm not sure a conventional narrative could achieve this, but if it's not how you like to get to your emotional climaxes in a book, then this is not your book.

It seems like many reviewers feel a need to apologize for not liking this book. Aside from the fact that "not liking" says nothing about the book, one can certainly find elements of it distressing.Caddy is, indeed, the central character, but only as reflected through the eyes of her brother? Why don't we see her point of view? Perhaps because Quentin's obsession with Caddy's purity is just white male objectification of women all over again. Faulkner certainly indulged this excessively in the middle volume of his Snopes trilogy, "The Town". The mediocrity of philosophy can be pointed to, although there are plenty of half-baked philosophers who are revered in literature; Tolstoy, in "War and Peace", perhaps the most, and no one questions the mind-bending artistic accomplishment of that book.Faulkner himself continuously struggled with the image of being seen as a Southern hayseed, especially when in trendy New York or fast-paced Los Angeles; he lied about his own life to compensate for this. And most of all, if not also most unforgivably of all so far as modern literature is generally concerned, he an insanely passionate writer;