Faulkner Books

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!

From the cover: In the 1940s, at his home, Rowan Oak, in Oxford, Mississippi, Faulkner told ghost stories to the children in his family. One of those children, Dean Faulkner Wells, has recounted some of these stories in this book. Though the world knew Faulkner as a Nobel Prize-winning author, the children of Rowan Oak called him "Pappy." and knew him as the teller of tales that were tragic, sorrowful, funny, and sometimes terrifying. Presented here are the haunting and heartbreaking story of Judith, the chilling tale of the Werewolf, and the macabre story of the Hound.

Matt Faulker has produced a book that could be sufficient with just the drawings. Each colorful page is filled with whimsical characters that children and their parents can enjoy by the hour. Add to that a cute little story about a lonely Princess in a toweer, an imp that can't behave and their coming to know each other, and you have a special Giving Season!

If you ever wondered how Joyce Carol Oates prepared "The Career Woman's Meal," or what Eudora Welty put in "Charles Dickens's Eggnog," or how Ray Bradbury made "Peach Kuchen," this book is your chance to find out. Among the recipes (or disclaimers to lack of culinary skills) are Bill Moyers's "Championship Chili Mix," Arthur Miller's "Reflections on Butterflied Leg of Lamb," a salad composed by Helen Gurley Brown and another by Joan Didion, John Steinbeck's "Mysterious Striped Bass" and Jessica Mitford's "Fish & Shrimp Casserole." There's even a recipe for grits by Tennessee Williams. Two not to miss: "Supply-Side Economics Fudge" by William F. Buckley, Jr., and "Open-Face Cigarette Special Hot & Cold Sandwich with Artichoke Appetizer" by the late Hunter S. Thompson.

A collection of tales from the finest writers of the time that illustrated the growth of aviation.Painted front cover of two airplanes by Jack Floherty. Introduction by Colonel Andrew F. Gordon, USAF. Anthology of 20 stories, some true, some fiction, all are exciting recounts of man's efforts to fly longer, higher, faster and more safely. Authors include Charles Lindbergh, James Thurber, William Faulkner, Saint-Exupery, Richard Hillary, Ernest Gann, Walt Sheldon, Guy Murchie, Oreste Pinto, Ward Taylor, 10 others.

This book is great because my grandfather wrote it!

This is Faulkner's trilogy saga, rendered in 1st-person technique by a palatable sewing machine salesman, of The Snopes Family (among others) who appeared in old rural Mississippi like a thief in the night and with the overall effect of a virulent venereal disease.

The Snopes's are an uneducated and unethical pack of scoundrels as there is upon the face of the planet. But there is a bit of a "shrewd streak" that runs though the characters of most of the clan, (with a few exceptions), which continues to dribble into "The Town" just a little at a time. Ultimately, (by the third volume) there seems to have been no end to their vast numbers as well as their apparent ability to take over, with a Catholic-like aggression, through emmigration and through breeding themselves into the local gene pool.

The Snopes's start out with next to nothing but before it's all over, they get to be the big fish(es) in a small pond.

As with any small town, throughout eternity, everywhere on the planet, this one experiences no shortage of scandals -- the kind that are whispered about, even years later, in corners and between old near-deads at church socials. Of course, the Snopes's are at the root of many of these peccadillos over the decades and Faulkner renders the details of each one in his initially cumbersome, but ultimately clear, literary fashion.

To the point, these three books are hilarious, sad yes, at times, but hilarious nonetheless. At least Faulkner gives us adequate reason to despise these unfortunates before they are appended their just due. And, of course, there are those occasional moments of rural exploitation such as where the likes of the much-demented Ike Snopes, (who can't even pronounce his own name), periodically copulates with a cow as the locals peep through the barn slats, much entertained by this dubious act of sodomy.

So if you're up for a good long read, and you savour raw rural humor and a good tale of rotten politics and injustice rampant, this will be a good tome to launch into. The books should be read in order for the benefit of continuity.

One of the best series I ever read and fine literature, in an ultra-Twain sense, to boot.

An excellent intro to Faulkner. Beautifully written and one of his most accessible works. See the "Long Hot Summer" with Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward which is a filmisation of a novella of the same name in 'The Hamlet'. Great stuff!

From the preface: "All persons, except the trained writer or speaker, find themselves often unable--in speech or conversation--to convey the ideas that are present to the mind with exactness, or to indicate with nicety the subtle shades and distinctions which accompany the development of these ideas... The cultivation of an exact use of language is necessary to the exercise of thought." This book is an excellent resource for expanding your avenues of communication, and allowing you to speak, think and write more effectively.

I came across this book as I was preparing a presentation on 'divine hiddenness' for a philosophy of religion course. I bought it, thinking it would be a philosophical discussion on the subject. It isn't, not directly.

It was originally a series of lectures delivered during the 1930's, updated and revised for print in the 1950's by the author himself. It talks about the role of the artist, the problem (described by Tillich) in modern culture of man being reduced to "a mere thing", where the world has been arranged so that "everything is a means to ends which are themselves means", without any ultimate goal, and how the true artist offers mankind a vision to grow beyond this.

He also explores the relation between the vision/philosophy/activity of the various authors and the Christian vision/philosophy/activity towards life, at first in relation to virtue (courage, discipline), to the reality of evil as something that cannot be explained away, but must be confronted (this was hauntingly well done), to the experience of the eternal within the temporal (mostly Eliot), some kind of awakening/conversion (all the authors), the corrosiveness and destruction of rationalism of any sort (everyone but Hemingway), and redemption (mostly Warren). It wasn't overdone or proselytizing, it was an accurate and fair appraisal of the authors themselves (Hemingway is _not_ made into a Christian, etc.). I actually found it very corrective and illuminating for my own understanding of these things, it made them much more concrete, manifest, less obscure and theoretical, less campy and sub-cultured (I was an Anglican Christian derascinating from Protestant Evangelicalism at the time I read the book).

The conclusion again briefly revisits the role of the artist within a society as one who offers you a vision of reality and explores it, helps you encounter it; whereas most of what passes for art today is really kitsch, a narcotic playing on assumed sympathies, entertainment rolled off a factory line that deadens the mind and dulls the wits. He notes how these authors bring the reader to a new encounter with reality, and the author himself did this for me in the process, while whetting my appetite to read the authors he writes about.

I can't more highly recommend it. I would also read Adorno's _Critical Models_ along with this.