Faulkner Books

This little known volume comprises one of the few collections of how religion impacted Faulkner's literature, and how important understanding religion's impact on the South is to the understanding of Southern history and its literature. This collection is a series of lectures given at the 16th Annual Yoknapatawpha Conference sponsored by the University of Mississippi in 1989, and includes papers by the likes of Alfred Kazin, Charles Reagan Wilson, Richard King, Glenn Meeter, Virginia V. Hlavsa, Doreen Fowler and Evans Harrington on a diverse range of subject material within the discipline of religion and literature: William Faulkner and the Southern Religious Culture, the God of Defeat by Kazin, Quentin as Redactor: Biblical Analogy in Faulkner's "Absalom! Absalom!" and the Crucifixion in "Light in August" among other thought provoking papers. This is a must have for any serious student of Faulkner or the serious student of Religion and Literature.

In seeing the barn-burning scene in "As I Lay Dying" as representing "the impulse toward revolution" and a section of Jason's narrative in "The Sound and the Fury" as indicating capitalism standing triumphant after a period beginning about 1890 "when the expanding mercantile economy with an industrial base substantially redefined America's socioeconomic order," Atkinson discloses how Faulkner can be read as a "Depression writer who, in keeping with the times, found his own means of radical and revolutionary expression." Overall, "Faulkner gave to Depression readers an order of things in which totalizing concepts of unity, organic wholeness, and harmony exist not as achievable ends but rather as tenuous constructs" always vulnerable to the natural human desire to pursue individual liberty in multifarious ways. This reading of Faulkner is not an alternative to the generally accepted one of Faulkner as dealing mainly with the rural culture, class and personal relationships, and the psychodynamics peculiar to the latter 1800's and early 1900's South, but it expands it considerably. Rather than seen only as regional inhabitants suffering from their incapacity to accept defeat and in often half-crazed ways trying to maintain a semblance of the traditional social structure, Faulkner's Southern characters can be seen as well as representative Americans dealing with economic hardships and uncertainties of the Depression and struggling with political questions and temptations relating to an authoritarian regime, forms of socialism, and the budding new order offered by Roosevelt. Faulkner's place in the literary politics of his time, a topic often passed by in critical work to unravel the complexities of his characters and his style, is also dealt with in developing how his work reflects the conditions and mentality of his time. Atkinson--who teaches at Augusta State U. in Georgia--sheds light on this broader view of this major American author active in the mid 1900s by focusing on individual characters, incidents, and circumstances in his novels.

Faulkner, I think, understands more clearly than anyone else the craft of writing. That's why I bought this book, to enlighten myself on some of his opinions as to the direction, goals, and duties of literature. This book works because here Faulkner is at his most candid and while his responses to the students' questions are indeed eloquent, they at least do not sound rehearsed. And this is not just a book of Faulkner's thoughts on literary craft. Here we see his opinions on all facets of life. Faulkner was such a successful writer because he concerned himself primarily with telling engaging stories in ways no one has ever tried before, and he humbly acknowledges such. Beyond his novels, this is the first book you should add to any Faulkner library.

To be given high praise for both its scholarship and non-specialist general reader accessibility, Faulkner's Artistic Vision: The Bizarre And The Terrible by Ryuichi Yamaguchi (Aichi University of Washington) is an engaging and intriguing instant classic on William Faulkner and his work. Exploring the intricate mind of author William Faulkner and his outstanding collection of literary works of seemingly opposing genres, Faulkner's Artistic Vision informs the reader of what realities lay behind his great writings, his reasoning for such works, and the writer's intellectual premises and influential backings. A welcome and appreciated addition to academic library collections and American Literary Studies supplemental reading lists, Faulkner's Artistic Vision is very highly recommended for its strong message and previously unspoken truths to all students of seminal literary biographical studies.

This is a well-researched work that's easy to recommend. Doyle is an excellent historian who is well-versed in Faulkner.
The combination makes this fine book both an interesting history of Faulkner's native "postage stamp of soil" and an excellent introduction to Faulkner's world. It also provides a wonderful example of what a historian actually does (although not without some cautions along the way).

"Faulkner's County" was photographed by Martin Dain in 1961. He came by the Forest Service's office (which was the same up-stairs office as the Lawyer's office in the movie "Intruder in the Dust") and asked if any of the people working there would guide him around Lafayette County. The Government couldn't help, so Dain ended up following the Watkin's Products salesman on his rounds to kitchens flung far and near around the country side.

"Faulkner's County" went out of print, and, as I heard it, there were copyright problems with Dain's estate, so it was never republished. Fortunately, the University of Mississippi Press published many of these same photographs in a volume entitled "Faulkner's World" in 1997, for Faulkner's 100th birthday. The primary differences in the two books are: 1) "Faulkner's County" accompanies the photographs with quotations from Faulkner while "Faulkner's World" accompanies the photographs with identifications of the subject matter; 2) the dust jacket for "Faulkner's County" is a wide angle shot of the dismal looking Sardis Reservoir in winter, while the photograph for the jacket of "Faulkner's World" is the town square in Oxford; and 3) Faulkner's World contains photographs of Faulkner's funeral that Dain made on a second trip to Oxford in 1962.

As luck would have it, Martin Dain captured Oxford just as it was beginning to rennovate the store fronts, figure out a workable traffic pattern for the town square, and before all the roads in the county were paved (or even gravelled for some of them). Many of these photographs are, in a sense, historic, because some things Dain saw hadn't changed very much since the Civil War. In fact, it is hard to identify some of the places today because the University, the city and the county have changed so much since Dain was there.

In my opinion, these are excellent photographs, making effective use of high speed black and white film with a wide angle lens. The team of mules plowing towards the camera, while the rest of the scene converges into endless rows of plowed land in the distance; the barren feeling of the country school room, the grassless yards; and most of all, the faces, complement the photographic style very well.

Millgate is one of the best-known authorities on Faulkner, and this critical biography studies and explains some of the complexities in Faulkner's work. If you've found Faulkner inpenetrable, this book with help a great deal.

I am a great fan of the 'Prentice- Hall' critical essays series. And this is one of the better volumes.
Robert Penn Warren one of the great twentieth- century literary figures has gathered together essays by a critical 'Who's Who' of his time :George Marion O'Donnell, Malcolm Cowley, Conrad Aiken, Warren Beck, Claude Edmonde Maguy, Jean Pouillon, Michael Millgate, Lawrence Thompson, Gunter Blocker, Olga Vickery, Lawrence S.Kubie, Alfred Kazin, John L. Longley, Jr. Hyatt Waggoner , Cleanth Brooks, R.W.B. Wilson,Elisabeth Hardwick, Andrew Lylie, V.S. Pritchett, Norman Podhoretz. There are also comments by Andre Malraux , Allen Tate, Graham Greene, F.R. Leavis, Maxwell Geismar, Irving Howe, Leslie Fiedler, Clifton Fadiman, Carvel Collins,Pierre Emanuel, Eudora Welty, R.W. Flint, Marcel Ayme, John Crowe Ransom, Albert Camus.
Penn Warren opens with the story of Faulkner's relatively small critical reception at the beginning , and how it was only after the war with the publication of Malcolm Cowley's 'Viking Portable Anthology' that Faulkner's reputation soared. As Penn Warren understands it Faulkner spoke to the more complex and contradictory, the deeper sense of life which emerged after the war, when many battle- hardened veterans returned home. Penn Warren also commends Faulkner for having been the first writer who truly wrote of the South in a way which the people who lived there, knew it. He also makes much of Faulkner's creation of his own mythic world , and how that world was first understood in critical terms by George Marion O'Donnell and later Cowley. Penn Warren also surveys the strong criticism Faulkner was given at times for his having seemingly written with carelessness and neglect- and for his according to critics like Alfred Kazin not having really formulated philosophically a concept of his own work and world.
What is however revealed in reading through the Anthology's essays is how rich Faulkner's writing is in the creation of characters in conflict with themselves and how he did succeed in the words of his famous Nobel speech in writing of the eternal verities- sacrifice,and truth, compassion, and courage-
The theme of conflict between the Sartoris world and its traditional values and that of the Snopes usurpers is outlined in O'Donnell's essay. The great breakthrough in the 'Sound and the Fury' is discussed in a number of essays as is the remarkable Faulkner style with all its vast poetic mythic searching. The whole epic character of Faulkner's world in which the individual novels and stories are understood as parts of something greater than themselves , is also discussed.
Today the general critical opinion is that Faulkner was the great American novelist of the century- and that his work has and will have an enduring place in the canon of world literature.
These essays give insight into his vast work of genius- though since their time of publication the whole world of Faulkner criticism has expanded greatly.

One of my favorite authors was Erma Bombeck mainly because she could take a hum drum day, turn it inside out and find the humor in it. Well I am sure that Erma is giving Joyce Faulkner a standing ovation right now. Throughout this book, Joyce has taken just about every situation that could be described as a lemon and truly made lemonade out of it. Sharing so much of her own personal life stories and giving each one a good taste of plain out humor made me identify so much of my own tales, and wishing I had found some of that same humor. I can't tell you how many times I found myself laughing out loud. O.K., maybe I can. About 36 times. That's the same number of short stories that are in the book. About 14 of these made me lose control and just about fall off my chair. Not just the humor itself, but the way each story embraces you and makes you remember similar stories of your own life. Now I finally met Joyce recently and want all you readers to know that I believe every single story in this book! Joyce Faulkner looks at things with a smile and a wit, and draws the positive out of any situation. A lesson we can all learn and should practice. Thanks Joyce for putting a smile on my face!

This book is one of my absolute favorites to read to my four year old. He has had it for 2 years and it never ceases to have him in fits of laughter - and I mean big, belly laughs! The pages allow you to mix and match animals to create new animals with silly names. Highly recommended!