Faulkner Books

An engaging adventure enfolds when Bushi escapes a gang of school yard bullies by fleeing into a karate studio. He falls, losing consciousness and dreams (another interpretation from the book jacket is that he travels back in time) he meets the master who founded the school and has an adventure, in which he learns to escape a larger adversary by jumping aside during an attack. When he reawakens, he uses this technique to land the bully in a fountain and escapes again to attend karate class. Includes small glossary of Japanese words used in the story and vivid illustrations.

Once again Mat Faulkner have brought another great book into american liture this book is the best i love his illistrations and te story line is great i hope his next book maybe a sexquil? Will be just as good.

An engaging adventure enfolds when Bushi escapes a gang of school yard bullies by fleeing into a karate studio. He falls, losing consciousness and dreams he meets the master who founded the school and has an adventure, in which he learns to escape a larger adversary by jumping aside during an attack. When he reawakens, he uses this technique to land the bully in a fountain and escapes again to attend Karate class. Includes small glossary of Japanese words used in the story.

Once again Matt Faulkner demonstrates his outstanding abilities in the literary as well as artistic realm. "Black Belt" rises to the top among his other works such as: "Amazing Voyage of Jackie Grace," and"Jack and the Beanstalk." His illustration is so beautiful you almost need no words to read the story of Bushi and his nemesis Yag yu. What child has not lived through Bushi's experience and dreamed that he would be the victor. The story has everything that makes a book exciting for a child: Magical illustrations, a real life problem, a possible solution, and a surprise ending that leaves you wishing for more. What more could you ask for?

I used most of the techniques here to help me through college and my MBA. I didn't use all his ideas, but what I used was great !!! I always felt sorry for the students who had no short hand method. Every student needs some method. I have not come accross a better one. Teachers were always talking way too fast for most of us students - any shorthand method is an enormous help. Notescript does not use any strange characters or symbols. Once you learn it, it's very natural. I can not believe this book is out of print !!!

The principles are simple: easily remembered 1-4 character symbols for the 100 most common words & abbreviation rules for the rest: mostly omission of vowels. Thus: "/" for "and" and "\" for "the" (follows the word shape); "tt" for "that" & "ts" for "this." He showed how to adapt the system to the typewriter. Today I use it on the Palm Pilot keyboards. I echo the other reviewers: BRNG IT BCK!

Notescript was an easy to learn, very effective technique of "short-hand for the masses!" This note-taking technique helped me get through law school. I was able to quickly write down not only the important things, but also some of the other statements that helped "color" the lectures. Now, I have a daughter entering high school. It seems a shame that this technique may no longer be available.

I think it should go back into print. I hate to think his technique is lost

Although this book was published in 1993 (ancient for many science texts!), its experiments are highly relevant, interesting, and fun. I use them in my science classroom, and everyone finds them very easy to understand and complete. It's not like biology; earth science didn't completely evolve in the last 15 years.

I purchased this book as a christmas present from my son's Earth Science teacher this year. She loved it! The teacher said, "Oh my gosh, I was able to open it to any page and easily pick out an engaging idea for my students to observe. Thank you. This is one of the best Christmas gifts I've ever received from a student."

I am never disappointed by a Janice VanCleave Book!

This book lends itself well to experimenting with earth science using the scientific method. It outlines the purpose, materials needed, procedure, results expected, and explanation of results for each experiment. Experiments are included in the areas of space, rocks and minerals, movement of the earth's crust, erosion, atmosphere, weather, and ocean. The best thing is that they use common, easy to obtain materials!

I use these books in my classroom a lot!

This book is wonderful. It gives you the experiments and provides explanations for the results. I have five and six year old sons and they love the experiments from this book. I'm buying it after renewing it at the library several times.

I just ran across Satan and Adam a few weeks ago and have thouroughly enjoyed the 3 CDs they released. This book is a very interesting look into some of the experiences they had while touring as well as an outsider's view of making into an insider's position as regards Adam's acceptance into the blues community.

I have been following Adams teaching for a while. His new book "Journeyman's Road" only increases his street cred. After reading the book I got a better feeling for talking the talk and walking the walk. If your a harmonica player, a New York blues fan, or a street musician this book is a must read. Adam Gussow give a first hand look at music in Harlem, his adventures with Mr. Satan, and becoming a respected musician.

Over the last several years I have written a lot of reviews for Crowsfeet Productions. They handle publicity for several labels. Betsie Brown has been my contact for the West Coast. It has been a pleasure to bring the wonderful entertainment of the East coast to the attention of readers and listeners here in Washington. Occasionally the review I'm asked to write is on other than music releases. Such as in this case. When I was asked if I was interested in reviewing this book I jumped at the chance. Even though book reviews are a lot more time consuming, than reviewing CDs or even DVDs, I feel that they are a media source that need more coverage in Blues reviews.

The secondary title to this book might suggest a very highbrow and hard to read tome concentrating on the literary works of Faulkner. Fear not. While there is a healthy chapter dedicated to the analysis of Faulkner's relationship to the Blues the majority of this text is an appealing, and easy to follow, observation of life as a street musician, jam session veteran and club performer. There are highlighted profiles of New York area Blues musician's that are compelling as well as occasionally touching.

Gussow is not only an award-winning scholar and an Assistant professor (English & Southern Studies-University of Mississippi). He is also a very accomplished harmonica player and recording artist who has been nominated for a W.C. Handy award. His partnership with Sterling "Mr. Satan" Magee was remarkably unlikely from the beginning. Adam Gussow was young, white and Ivy League and "Mr. Satan" was older, black, street-wizened and an accomplished one-man band. Nonetheless together they built a very large fan base, made a few albums, and performed all up and down the East Coast. In reading this book I became so intrigued that I bought two of their three CDs and have played them on my radio show. For my money that's why it's good that we, on the West Coast, can hear about this stuff. We need to know that there is some wonderful music that normally doesn't get distributed to this side of the country.

There are many parts of this book that I can point to as a highlight for me. Gussow's words of disgust for southern racism are similar to my own beliefs. His mentoring of young Bluesman Jason Ricci is a good read because I was participated in a post-concert interview with Jason and heard of his victory over his troubles with substance abuse. I found him to be a sensitive and talented artist. Addam Gussow can claim a little credit for that. My favorite part is Adam's writing about his own mentoring by Sterling Magee. This relationship is covered well in Gussow's first book, "Mr. Satan's Apprentice". There is enough of the Satan & Adam storyline here to serve as an excellent backdrop to the bigger dissertation. It blends together well compilations of articles Gussow has written for Harper's and Blues Access as well as critical essays. The comprehensive examination of William Faulkner's relationship with the Blues is covered here fro the first time. It is deep but I found it enlightening. It made me think about the famous author's place in literary history a little more.

What I assumed would be a slightly self-indulgent semi-autobiographic of Mr. Gussow's life in Blues actually became more of a modern day true life text book. This would serve well any class on black history, Blues history or literary history. There is so much more to Journeyman's Road- other than what I have outlined here. Find out more by visiting his web page & on YouTube (www.modernbluesharmonica.com & www.youtube.com/kudzurunner). To purchase contact www.utpress.org ($30 hardcover)

Well done Mr.Gussow! I believe I shall now have to find Mr. Satan's Apprentice. I can't wait to read it.

I first became aware of Adam Gussow through his YouTube blues harmonica lessons. That is how I became aware of the fact the he was writing this book. I have read many books. This is the first time that I have ever felt the need to write a review.

At first glance it would seem to be a collection of short stories or articles which could stand on their own if read as such. It is much more; it is a book that should be read from front to back in its entirety. It is actually several books in one, each with their own appeal.

It is the story of Adam Gussow, an interesting man, who is both a street blues musician who played the streets of Harlem, and toured the blues joints, and a teacher of much more than the blues harmonica. He bares his soul through his music (his CDs are available at Amazon.com), and with this book.

It is the story of blues musicians, and indeed, it is even the story of the blues itself. A story of the call and response music form that is the cry of love lost, or unfound, and the promise of how good life could be if you can just find it.

He reminds us of the "bad old days" that spawned the blues, where the black man's call for love went unanswered. It is a bit painful to read, but he takes the reader to a place of hope. Perhaps the influence of the music itself is an answer to that call.

It is the story of Sterling Magee (Mr. Satan), and Adam's relationship with him. It is a story of respect and love for the man that he apprenticed himself to.

Mr. Gussow gives the love to the blues men, and women, who gave him the gift of their music. He passes on their gift, and he finds the love. The long awaited response to his own blues call.

The first readers of this book will undoubtedly be blues harmonica players. The book deserves a much wider audience than that. It will appeal to a wider audience than that. I hope that many people discover this book, and read it. I'm glad that I did.

We had recently visited The Henry Ford Museum and I saw this advertised in my grandmother's Museum magazine, so ordered it for my boys & father (who is a Ford retiree). They have LOVED reading it together, and it's such a great follow-up to things they heard about at the museum! This will become a classic for our Ford family!

The kids loved it! We collect Model T Fords and gave the book to friends of ours in the Model T Club. They have 2 sons, age 4 and 1.5. The 4 year old loves Model T's and really got into the book. His first words were "T". This book was the perfect gift for them.x

Just before Christmas in 1908, Henry Ford was trying to find a way to make his Model T automobile more affordable for the average family when his little son Edsel suggested that Daddy write to Santa Claus for advice. The notion seemed reasonable to son and father because didn't Santa make toys for millions of children? Therefore he should be in a position to provide practical advice on producing inexpensive cars for ordinary families. Much to the surprise of Henry Ford, Santa replies to the letter with an invitation to visit the North Pole workshop. It's when Henry sees the assembly line arrangement of Santa's elves in the manufacturing of toys that he gets the idea to apply what he's seen and creates the world's first automobile assembly line. Carol Hagen's clever and original picturebook story is nicely illustrated throughout by Matt Faulkner. The result is a wonderfully entertaining and highly recommended addition to family, school, and community library Christmas book collections and reading lists for children.

I ordered this book to use in a college class that I'm enrolled in. I was put into a group to develop lesson plans pertaining to Michigan history. When I saw this book advertised on a local billboard, I immediately knew that I could work with it to develop lessons. I finished the lesson plans on Henry Ford and the assembly line before receiving the book. I was not disappointed in the least when I read the book. I loved the illustrations and the content. I think it only inspired me more to think of other ideas to incorporate with the book.

This book is very well laid out. I am a teacher and would absolutely recommend this as an intro textbook to marine science. It contains all that you would need to know. great as a first year colledge text or even an advanced high school textbook.

Purchase and delivery were right on key. Very pleased with whole process. Item arrived in excellent condition. My daughter received a B+ on her first Oceanography College Exam (just points away from an A). That makes all the difference in the world....................Thanks.

This textbook is very well written. It is ubnderstandible to students and others of all ages and interests. It contains intersting color pictures and graphics about the subject material for each chapter. Each chapter also contains web links to a homepage that accompanies the book. The book is full of intersting personal stories, history, theory, and facts. Dr. Garrison and all who have contributed to this book have set the standard for textbooks and integrated learning for the next decade.

I took Tom Garrison's class at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa, CA. Wonderful class! He taught along with the book and every session was both insightful and interesting. Dr. Garrison is without a match in instructional etiquette and eloquence. Indeed, this book showcases his best work on the subject. Read the book... Be educated by the diagrams and charts... Be taken back at the amazing realms of life under the ocean... And most of all, be in awe of a marvelous earth (or "Oceanus") that is in great need of our consideration right now. Otherwise we end up dead like the aliens... Oops.. I hope I did't give a way the ending! If you have few bucks, come and take the class at OCC. You will be so glad you did. Just don't come in late through one of the side doors, or leave your cell phone on. He can't STAND those things! It drives him CRAZY!

I'm only around a quarter of the way through this book. But it has been so good that even if all the rest of the pages were blank, I'd still give it a strong five stars. This is one work of literary criticism that is worth every literature reader's time.

I've been reading Proust off and on for over thirty years, and Proust is easily my favorite author. But when I read Weinstein's book, my eyes really opened. Even with my already deep appreciation of Proust, I had no idea of how much I was missing, or how superficially I was reading.

I can't say enough about this book. It has taught me so much already about literature, how to read (more deeply and carefully), about what Modernism is (something I've never understood until reading this book, and I have taken whole college courses on just that topic), about the arts in general, and, finally, about life. What a great book, a classic; for few books manage to bring such deep and meaty relevance, along with pure enjoyment into their pages.

Reading this book makes me dearly wish that Weinstein lived in my neighborhood. I would love to have him over as a dinner guest. I'd make sure the meals were extra tasty and that his wine glass was always filled with good wine. I'd love to converse with him (that would be a pure joy) and I would be happy to promise him that I would do most of the listening!

If you care about the arts, modernism, the great authors he discusses, as well as the nature of a human life (your life included), then do yourself a favor and buy this book. It will be one you always treasure. It's easily the best book I've read this year, and possibly one of the best books I have ever read.

Arnold Weinstein has been teaching Proust, Joyce and Faulkner (and many other writers) to students at Brown for more than 30 years. Recovering Your Story is his seminal work sharing his life's study of these writers with general readers for the first time. His readings of Proust, Joyce, Faulkner, Morrison and Woolf are without peer - instead of the garbled prose of the academy, Weinstein delivers a poetic and humanistic argument for why these authors speak to us now and will speak to so many generations to come. But more importantly, it is Weinstein's argument itself about literature and life and the relationship between the two that speaks to us as few critics do today. In a world where reading - especially among young people - seems to take a back seat to other media, Weinstein passionately makes the case for the experience of sitting down with a book and entering a writer's universe as an active participant. Reading in this fashion becomes a creative act and an act of self-making and self-discovery or, as Weinstein puts it, self-recovery; it provides us with access to parts of our lives that otherwise lay buried under the routine of every day life. In that way, literature - like all great art - draws us deeper into ourselves while inspiring us to live our lives more fully. Literature as such is a gift, and this remarkable book is a gift from one of the great humanist critics and thinkers on the scene today. This book should be of great interest not only to students of the specific authors and novels discussed, but to anybody interested in understanding life. The book rings with the truth of somebody who has lived a full and deeply contemplated life, and who has a great deal to teach students of all ages (we are all students, whatever our age) of how to continue to educate our brains and our hearts as we forge ahead through our lives.

This is my favorite of all of Weinstein's books (and I have read all of them) because it makes available some of the most challenging works of the twentieth century and in all of the ways that count. I think the piece on Virginia Woolf is the most sensitive and moving treatment of To the Lighthouse out there. His reading of Proust makes me have the courage to read the whole collection and I have just ordered it for my summer project. Though he has written a great deal elsewhere about Faulkner, Weinstein shows us that there are new ways of connecting with that text, and that the project of Modernism has much to offer all readers still. Though I am not wild about his title, the first few chapters show the logic of it. I urge readers to read the whole damn thing. This is an English teacher's treasure trove. Morrison's Beloved is beautifully explained and "uncovered." What a fresh take on these familiar authors!

I have been working for a long time writing a novel: this work elicits polar opposite reactions from readers (when I have them) and I did not know what to think except that I decided I better learn how to read (although I did read voraciously) as well as how write fiction. How lucky I was to come across Arnold Weinstein's Recovering Your Story early in this quest! He traces how Marcel Proust, James Joyce, and VA Woolf (the ones I have read--also Wm Faulkner and Toni Morrison come under his reading eye) drew their writing problems from their own lives (why Proust felt a glow from a tea-dunked Madeleine, why VA and her siblings peered through the gate of the house by the sea one evening shortly after their father died) and pulled their readers into those worlds with new forms prose that brought the writer and reader closer together. As Hermione Lee, chairman of the 2006 Booker prize committee, said all the novels entered in that competition had as their message, "something happened." This work will let the reader see how several great writers sorted out "something happened" and developed the writing styles and forms that let the reader experience it.

Professor Weinstein speaks with warmth of his journey with these authors and conveys the growth that can be gained by traveling with them. Though they have a reputation for difficulty, he communicates the richness and depth won from living through their characters. The mundane, painful and joyful can be met with more insight and appreciation, if we can witness our own inner narration. From the moment we wake, memories and observations, thoughts and feelings emerge and form our (often chaotic) inner world. To witness this story and create meaningful links is to recover our own story everyday. As a result, we can weather the tragedy with more grace and laugh harder at the comedy.

At first this book reminded me of Of Human Bondage (Signet Classics) or Lolita By Vladimir Nabokov, but he seems to have avoided the pit falls in this novel.
It is more like star crossed lovers by the end:
the older man and the brilliant young girl he loves.
It has depth and full flowering of passion and experience.
It is better written than the history by Melvyn Bragg that got me interested.
It pretty much covers a lot of bases in the love affair area:
Love, obsession, deception, romance, infidelity.
It is certain;y one of the best novels I have read lately.
It even has suggested reading: William Hazlitt's Liber Amortis.

This is a well-written, beautifully evocative story of an illicit, thinly veiled relationship between a retired bank manager and an 18-year old young woman in the North of England in the late 1980s.

On the face of it, this story evokes reminders of Nabokov's "Lolita". Yet, as "A TIME TO DANCE" unfolds, the reader sees the blossoming of a relationship between a retired bank manager (who remains nameless) and Bernadette Kennedy, a young lady from a socially disadvantaged background who first comes to the attention of the retired bank manager through an essay she had submitted to a literary contest sponsored by the Rotary Club to which the aforesaid retired bank manager belonged.

Impressed by the quality of Bernadette's essay, he helps carry the winning vote for her. It wasn't until a little later in the story that he meets Bernadette for the first time to congratulate her for winning the top prize, and by degrees, their relationship grows and deepens.

Later in the story, complications develop in the relationship, which cause it to break up.

While this is a story of a love between 2 people from different generations, it is also a very deeply affecting human drama. "A TIME TO DANCE" will leave the reader with nary a dry eye, seeing how it is that Love on a very personal level can broaden and enrich our everyday lives.

This is a well-written, beautifully evocative story of an illicit, thinly veiled relationship between a retired bank manager and an 18-year old young woman in the North of England in the late 1980s.

On the face of it, this story evokes reminders of Nabokov's "Lolita". Yet, as "A TIME TO DANCE" unfolds, the reader sees the blossoming of a relationship between a retired bank manager (who remains nameless) and Bernadette Kennedy, a young lady from a socially disadvantaged background who first comes to the attention of the retired bank manager through an essay she had submitted to a literary contest sponsored by the Rotary Club to which the aforesaid retired bank manager belonged.

Impressed by the quality of Bernadette's essay, he helps carry the winning vote for her. It wasn't until a little later in the story that he meets Bernadette for the first time to congratulate her for winning the top prize, and by degrees, their relationship grows and deepens.

Later in the story, complications develop in the relationship, which cause it to break up.

While this is a story of a love between 2 people from different generations, it is also a very deeply affecting human drama. "A TIME TO DANCE" will leave the reader with nary a dry eye, seeing how it is that Love on a very personal level can broaden and enrich our everyday lives.

This novel is in the form of a long letter from a 54-year-old man to his 18-year-old lover. At first it sounds like the man is more in love with love than with Bernadette, his lover. He is also married, not necessarily unhappily either, though his wife is ill and soon (conveniently for the plot) dies. But before that happens, Bernadette becomes pregnant,and the story deepens from that point on. He and Bernadette decide to see each other while his wife is ill, though he continues to care for his wife with much love and tenderness. Bernadette tells him she will wait for him, and she does. Some of this comes across as just a tad too pat and unmessy - too idealistic - but Bragg is an excellent writer, and it's impossible not to find this book interesting: he pulls you right into the story.

This is a must read for anyone interested in the future of business.

Upsizing seems more a visionary work to me than one to read to find out the environmental consequences of human industrialization (See review below). Pauli presents a vision for an economically viable world where there's ZERO pollution, and offers a number of real-world experiments that seem so far to have worked. However, the path he encourages won't be an easy one -- it requires systematically rethinking what industry is, how it works, and how it fits into our world. Upsizing begins to construct an argument for why we should do this and shows how the rethought world might look.

Basically, Pauli is making a case for turning all industrial waste toward productive purposes. Our current processes, for instance, to make paper result in a huge loss of productivity when waste wood products -- which could be turned to other uses -- are burned or disposed of such that they are lost forever.

While the ideas in this book are incredibly exciting, the delivery seemed to me a bit rough. While competently presented, as an argument this book seems a little bit disparate and untamed, and its style is a bit flat, if not boring. Still, kudos to Pauli for writing it. His is an exciting vision, and I only hope his projects get the press and consideration they deserve. I'm giving it four stars because of the extraordinary ideas: more people should know about how we can make our waste productive.

Pauli has succeeded in doing a rare thing indeed...that of demonstrating how the environment and the economy can complement each other to create synergies! All this in the context of protecting and preserving our environment for current and future generations.

The book is well written and supported by solid facts and well-developed case studies. It serves as a guide post for people of all walks of life, including CEOs, entrepreneurs, environmentalist and public servants, who want to act or promote action that will help reduce, even eliminate waste, while stimulating economic development. More importantly, this book gives hope that we can adopt ways of doing business that reduce the negative impacts on our environment.

This is an excellent book for anyone who's interested in the environmental consequences of human industrialization and development. I had never heard of the author or his organization (ZERI: Zero Emissions Research Institute), but it's all described in this book, and it's a fascinating proposition.

At first I was a little worried that this book would be a little boring, but it's succinct and well-written. You'll think that the proposals are impossible or unattainable, but the author backs them up at the end with real-world implementations that are successful.

I recommend this book for the CEO of any manufacturing company. The concepts presented in this book will show you how to expand your product offering, minimize environmental impact, and make more money all at the same time.

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?

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!

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.

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.