Light in AugustLight in August is a 1932 novel by the American author William Faulkner.Light in August is an exploration of racial conflict in the society of the Southern United States. Originally Faulkner planned to call the novel Dark House, which also became the working title for Absalom, Absalom Supposedly, one summer evening while sitting on a porch, his wife remarked on the strange quality that light in the south has during the month of August. Faulkner rushed out of his chair to his manuscript, scratched out the original title, and pencilled in Light in August.
This introductory book provides students and readers of Faulkner with a clear overview of the life and work of one of America's most prolific writers of fiction. His nineteen novels, including The Sound and the Fury and Absalom, Absalom! are discussed in detail, as are his short stories and nonfiction. Focused on the works themselves, but also providing useful information about their critical reception, this introduction is an accessible guide to Faulkner's challenging and complex works.
At the heart of this 1930 novel is the Bundren family's bizarre journey to Jefferson to bury Addie, their wife and mother. Faulkner lets each family member--including Addie--and others along the way tell their private responses to Addie's life.
William Faulkner once called the short story "the most demanding form after poetry." In that form, he achieved splendid success. He wrote over a hundred short stories, published nearly all of them during his lifetime, and became one of the most frequently anthologized writers in the genre. Countless readers of Faulkner have first entered his world through one of the forty-two doors in Collected Stories. Reading Faulkner: Collected Stories attempts to make the process of reading America’s major modern writer less daunting. It is a useful guide to Faulkner’s allusions, distinctly southern phrases, difficult words, and historical contexts, as well as to the intricacies of the prose. Arranged according to the Vintage edition’s table of contents, the annotations provide information about the material, political, and literary cultures that found their way into Faulkner’s greatest short fiction, including commentary on such classics as "A Rose for Emily," and "Barn Burning." Such information ranges from descriptions of 1930s farm implements and Great War airplanes to analyses of real estate deals and racial protocols. The authors offer explications of Faulkner’s allusions to other artists and thinkers from Christopher Marlowe to Voltaire to T.S. Eliot. An excellent companion volume to Collected Stories for beginning and experienced readers of Faulkner, Reading Faulkner: Collected Stories allows a fascinating glimpse of Faulkner’s mind at work on the materials of the world around him.
One of America's greatest writers, William Faulkner wrote fiction that combined spellbinding Southern storytelling with modernist formal experimentation to shape an enduring body of work. In his fictional Yoknapatawpha County--based on the region around his hometown of Oxford, Mississippi--he created an entire world peopled with unforgettable characters linked into an intricate historical and social web. An introduction to the Nobel-Prize-winning author's life and work, this book devotes opening chapters to his biography and literary heritage and subsequent chapters to each of his major works.
