Customer Reviews (1)

A life masticated upon far too long...
... leaving a dried mass hard to swallow, not to mention digest. However it is possible to savor some flavors from the man's life, and there are moments of insight embedded in all the verbiage.

It was a glorious spring Sunday morning in 1993; I was on the square in Oxford, and a wonderful bookstore was open "for services."A fitting place to buy the book, and later wander with it around Faulkner's estate of Rowan Oaks; I was blessedly alone since it was closed for renovations. Clearly the setting set high hopes for the book, yet still...

Make no mistake; it is all there, starting with the larger than life character of his great-grandfather, the "old colonel," through his own life as a returning WWI "war hero," with embellished tales of service, and trying to gain traction as a writer through most of the `20's, which included joining the "Movable Feast" in Paris. Finally it "clicked" in the year 1929, the "annus mirabilis," and in 30 days as he famously worked on the night shift at the water works, he wrote "As I Lay Dying," the title inspired by a line from the Odyssey. "The Sound and the Fury," and "Light in August" were complete in a short period, and within 20 years he was seated next to Bertrand Russell in Stockholm, receiving the Nobel Prize for literature. He had only 12 more years of life, one highlight of which was a year at the University of Virginia.

His personal life is also there, from the need to embellish war service, to the numerous rejections for women, to the alcoholism and the later philandering, no doubt making up for those earlier rejections. Faulkner once said that he spent a lot of his life "fumbling under women's skirts." But Karl does not convey the passion of any of this; it is dealt with in that dry academic detached style.

More useful is certain descriptions of the mythical Yoknapatawpha county, as rendered on page 182, how pretty it looked from a distance, which hid such graphically conveyed matters at the "...drying spittle of religious controversy..." Later, (p286), Karl summarizes Faulkner's genius: "This transformation of what appeared on the surface a rather low-keyed place into a beehive of rancor, hatred, and violence, intermingled with routine life, was a great act of imagination, and Faulkner's greatest contribution to American fiction."

Karl describes the influences of other writers, such as James Joyce, on him, and in turn how Faulkner influenced a generation of Latin American "magic realism" writers. In "The Unvanquished," a chapter is entitled "The Vendee," and in an interview with Coindreau Faulkner said that from his reading of Balzac's "Les Chouans," he felt "Southerners and people from La Vendee had much in common." Later (p725) Karl quotes Sartre, who said: "for the youth of France, Faulkner is a god."

Five years before this book was published, Joseph Blotner also wrote a "door-stop" biography of Faulkner, yet at"only" 788 pages it was considerably less than this tome.It is a shame, perhaps some in the academic world proclaim these works, but the general reader could use a livelier, briefer biography of perhaps the greatest American writer.
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Product Description
A guide to reading "As I Lay Dying" with a critical and appreciative mind encouraging analysis of plot, style, form, and structure. Also includes background on the author's life and times, sample tests, term paper suggestions, and a reading list. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

A confusing story that does not need to be told
This story is both complex and well written through the use of perspective, but its complexities do not make it a good story.Personally, I feel it is a story that does not even need to be told.The charactersare backward and hard to understand.Initially you feel as if all of thefacts and details that are included will lead to an interesting end, but itis not an ending at all just a weird closure.Basically it is a story of abunch of hicks that carry their dead mother around in a coffin and learn oftheir mental incapasity to deal with it.

The book which 'Last Orders' copies from
Graham Swift's Booker prize winning novel is an unashamedly disguised version of Faulkner's brilliant novel. It has some of his finest passages in it including the famous one-line chapter of mothers being a fish

Southern Rednecks
Yoknawpatawpha County must have been a sorry place tolive. God's Country?I hope not.Faulkner has some good books,butthis isn't one of them.Somebody hit these people with the stupid stick.In the sequel, Dewey Dell's works in the local cathouse and wonders why she's got ten kids. Cash has more concrete in his head than on his leg.Vardaman is still dumb as dirt. Addie is still dead and stinking up the county.And teachers make you read this stuff? ... Read more

Product Description
This cogent, magnificent entre into the lives of the powerful Southern Whites in ante-bellum slavery days is the most revealing when it begins with the planter's plantation and his pillared mansion, a fawning adaptation of Greek temple pillars in a similar slave society. "One of the central images in Falkner's work, his short stories and his novels alike, is the impressive structure of colonial and quasi-Greek architecture, which whites and blacks called "the big house."" It was the seat to the life that Sutpen tore from the North Mississippi wilderness. Thus begins the book... "In all, the plantation house supplied beauty amidst the social decay and moral corruption endured by the South after the war." With similar penetration, Miller explores those iconic symbols and social practices that conferred an almost indestructible power upon whites in the South, particularly the Planter class, that involved family and clan, blood, social mores, taboos, slavery, and conquest of the wilderness... among other rites and power-generating influence. This book is well-documented, with copious references to the man's work, an illustrious writer for a region and a time, as was Mark Twain. The reader can no more dismiss Faulkner as a provincial and regional than he can Twain, or for that matter New Englanders Howells and Dickinson, or Stephen Crane and Hemmingway. Regionalism is inherently a part of their work, as it is Faulkner's. This book makes a scholarly contribution to the study of an experimental write (The Bear) and a great regional American writer. ... Read more

Product Description
Absalom, Absalom! has long been seen as one of William Faulkner's supreme creations, as well as one of the leading American novels of the twentieth century. In this collection Fred Hobson has brought together eight of the most stimulating essays on Absalom, essays written over a thirty-year span which approach the novel both formally and historically. Here are critical responses by Cleanth Brooks, John Irwin, Thadious Davis, and Eric Sundquist, as well as four essays published in the last decade. The casebook concludes with Faulkner's own remarks on the novel, delivered in a discussion with students at the University of Virginia. What emerges from all the selections is a rich and suggestive treatment of a work which Faulkner himself called ""the best novel yet written by an American"" and a less biased critic has called ""the greatest American novel of the century... joining Moby-Dick and Huckleberry Finn at the pinnacle of American fiction."" ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Very good if you like this sort of thing...
I told my duaghter that I finished a great book, "Absalom, Absalom", and that now I was going to read a book ABOUT that book.She gave me a look, as if she never heard of anything so strange.

For literary scholars and the academic community, I'm sure this line of thinking is naive, but for many readers, a book of critcal analysis is just wierd, nerdy, or painfully boring.Well, I like reading about great books once I've read them, and I find that I get much more out of the experience.I've done this for War and Peace, Brothers Karamzov, and many others and I'm very glad I did.

It can be slow going at times, for sure, but some of the information is very brisk and enlightening, and the historical background context provided is very interesting.Another amusement for me is how "academic" and "preposterous" some of the anaysis can be; I think some of the critics are really reaching!This book is on par with the best of the ones that I have read. If you enjoy this sort of thing and have read Absalom, Absalom, I think you'd do well tocheck this one out.
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3 volume set in slipcase. ... Read more

Product Description
As I Lay Dieting, "Abe's Saloon! Abe's Saloon!" Sound like Faulkner with a twist? It is-bad Faulkner, or, to be exact, some of the best of bad Faulkner composed by the hundreds who have entered the Faux Faulkner Contest. Here, too, are outstanding Faulkner parodies from the past-even one written by Faulkner himself. Caricatures.
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Customer Reviews (3)

Grow your own third hootie-eye....

This book is a hoot!Or series of same, to be both brief and precise.It's been so long since I read college Faulkner that I can't remember a shred (skein?) of it, but who would be so dyspeptic as to argue that either absurdist humor or bathroom reading are unworthy literary categories -- let alone a genre that combines both?

More to the point: sure, the best single way to learn about style is to read and re-read the great stylists, and so come to grok both the breadth of their differences and the depth of their similarities, and thereby enliven a sense of the space of possibilities for human expression -- both to enhance appreciation of each writer's uniquely in-formed and informing "flavor", and to articulate within oneself a "framing space" for placing (and perchance assessing) the perspectives and technical accomplishments of future writers (yikes -- this style parody stuff is corrupting!).

But reading skillful parody *does* add an undeniable dimension to this enrichment process, by shining a light on the nature of style as such.I recently read selections from some book or other of multi-author parodies (I think it was one of those "an education in a book" titles), and was amazed at how deft they were, at how incapable I would have been to produce such eloquent verbal portraiture -- distorted as in a fun house mirror, but in spite of this (or because of it) so revealing, in terms of elements as subtle as "tone" and "voice".

Interestingly enough, I may have learned more from the parodies of the authors I hadn't read than of those I had.This says something on an intensely fashionable "meta" level about something or other involving mind, language and Being, but, existential self-referentiality being as ineffable as the ineffability of Being itself, I'll have to be excused from articulating it.

ANYway, what the heck -- why not triangulate on these fascinating aspects of literary form?Compare authors with each other, compare them with their respective parodies to sharpen your eye and ear, compare parodies with each other (and do a little theoretical reading on the subject, perhaps) to gain a sense of the stylistic (meta-stylistic?) "vocabulary" or meta-same of literary burlesque -- and by extension (or inversion, or un-perversion, or pre-version -- SOMEbody's version), of the root-level resources of language itself...

P.S.There's a whole subfield of Vedic philosophy dedicated to the analysis of modes of learning from analogies by examining where and how they fail; isn't there an analogy here to the fruits of study of parodies, precisely in terms of their failings as precise metaphors?If so, only the finest products will do for such analyses -- unless they become SO fine as expressions of the authors' sensibilities that it becomes a looking-glass proposition as to which "authorless text" be considered the "original" and which the "'parody'". Even then we might learn something, though it might well be limited to which hemisphere of our brain looks better in a mirror, versus in real life...

Come on Mara, lighten up...
A splended collection of Faux Faulkner.Having lived in Oxford and passed the time of daywith him in Krogers (he would always stop us to talk to our little boy)...i.e. when we had not mixed him up with Brother John...I can tell you how much he enjoyed this Faux stuff...I suggest that anyone who has grown as a result of sharing his world try their hand at faux...and read the old Oxford Eagle...If Mr. Bill puts your soul on warp speed, order this book right now.

What a Stupid Idea.
I realize that an American tradition is mocking great writers and painters, but this is ridiculous. Why don't all these idiots go and write their own books?What did Faulkner do to deserve such a FATE? And this brings up a question:WHAT kind of PERSON would WASTE their time reading "faux" Faulkner? The only answer to that QUESTION is No one. No one who has read Faulkner would EVEN BOTHER to imitate him. The only people left to read this book are bored old ladies sipping tea in the south and amusing themselves with a little LITE SOUTHERN "LITERATURE." ... Read more

Product Description
A COLLECTION OF STORIES BY WILLIAM FAULKNER ... Read more

Product Description
This Centennial Special contains references to100 years of publishing activities in the Boston area. The feat was made possible mainly by Mr. Edmund Brown, who in 1909 incorporated his first publishing company, The Four Seas. With the advent of the Depression, he subsequently incorporated Bruce Humphries; finally in the sixties, he incorporated Branden Press, which continues to this day as Branden Books. This volume also contains images of various published works as well as photos of art work published herewith for the first time, inclusive of the images on the front cover Boston Scene by Randolph Brown and The Boy Fishing by Marjorie Very on the back cover. Edmund was married to Alice Very, Chief Editor, and Randolph was his artist father. In his lifetime, M. Brown published more than two thousand authors and musicians as can be seen by the four extensive bibliographies in the book whose main feature is the re-publication of William Faulkner s The Marble Faun as it was first published in 1924. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Centennial Special Features William Faulkner's 1924 First Book!
Celebrate! There are many reasons to celebrate the Centennial Special 1909 to 2009!

· It features William Faulkner's 1924 First Book - The Marble Faun!

· It celebrates the 100-year history of Branden Books!

· Photos of early book covers and publishing staff through the years are included!

· Back and Front covers showing the art work, Boy Fishing by Marjorie Very and Boston Scene by Randolph Brown! (shown above)

· A complete bibliography, by respective publisher/owners for 100 years!

· An excellent commentary on The Marble Faun by Nicole Starrett, granddaughter of Adolph Caso!

For poetry lovers and readers of William Faulkner, a total reprint of "a copy" of his first and only poetry book will be coveted! I thought it was interesting in these days of arguing over self-published versus being published by major publishing companies, that his friend Phil Stone, who indicated that he felt Faulkner's work showed promise subsidized his first book: Perhaps we should all remember these early days when talent was supported by those that loved literature and the arts!

Here's a short passage from the Prologue to give readers a taste of his book-length poem:

Why am I sad? I?
Why am I not content? The sky
Warms me and yet I cannot break
My marble bonds. That quick keen snake
Is free to come and go, while I
Am prisoner to dream and sigh
For things I know, yet cannot know,
`Twixt sky above and earth below.
The spreading earth calls to my feet
Of orchards bright with fruits to eat,
Of hills and streams on either hand;
Of sleep at night on moon-blanched sand:
The whole world breathes and calls to me
Who marble-bound must ever be. (p. 12)

If I were free, then I would go... (p. 13)

May I just say that having the opportunity to read and add to your home library the first book of a Nobel Prize and Pulitzer Prize author is a rare opportunity!

Nicole Starrett, "Nikki," who is a Sophomore at Amherst College and granddaughter of Adolfo and Margaret Caso, was asked to write a commentary on one of the most important authors who had been published by Branden Publishing Company. Her highlights included that while Faulkner was a literary giant, he had never graduated from high school or received a college degree, but had, in less than a decade, churned out some of the best books ever written by an American.

Branden Books, which had been the Four Seas Company in 1924, printed only 1000 copies and its reception was "lukewarm." Fortunately for America he turned to novel writing.

Yet, Ms. Starrett states, that his choice of material upon which to write provided proof that his primary goal was to become an author. She notes that he is "unhesitating and precise in his use of language. His words stream freshly and freely, radiating unselfconsciousness that more accomplished poets pursue in vain." (p. 165)

Starrett concludes with a comment from her grandfather publisher when he points out "It is hard to imagine the discipline he had to have had in mastering the metrical structure of prosody which is more normally used by established poets than by writers without any formal education and writing experience." Indeed!

I thought it important to highlight that what has been published is an actual copy of the 1924 original "mottled green boards, with the paper label on the front cover designed by Marjorie Very, showing a faun with pipes seated among leaves." (p. 160)

Ok, I have to admit that when Adolfo wrote me that the book was coming out and that he was inviting me to the 100th birthday celebration--and that I was listed in the book--I was thrilled! To be part of an established legendary publishing company that has been publishing continuously a wide and diversified array of books, mostly nonfictional, that continue to be received in high regard by the public for 100 years, and still going strong, well, you've just got to be pleased to have been just a small part of their activities!

Get this once in a lifetime book, which features the reprinting of 1924 book, The Marble Faun, by William Faulkner for your personal library today!

G. A. Bixler
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Product Description
A landmark in American fiction, "Light in August" explores Faulkner's central theme: the nature of evil. Joe Christmas - a man doomed, deracinated and alone - wanders the Deep South in search of an identity, and a place in society. After killing his perverted God-fearing lover, it becomes inevitable that he is pursued by a lynch-hungry mob. Yet after the sacrifice, there is new life, a determined ray of light in Faulkner's complex and tragic world. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Faulty binding and Missing pages
The book ended up being worthless as it had two duplicate sections of approximately 70 pages each while it was missing 70 pages of text that should have been there.
Unfortunately, this issue was not discovered until my son was 300 pages into the book, necessitating a trip to a local bookstore for a replacement. This problem was not readily identifiable upon initial inspection of the received book and by the time it was discovered we did not have the time to return it and re-order.

I don't see any way to prevent this from happening again, so I probably won't be buying any more books through you. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A short trip to the Yoknapatawpha County
Last year, when I was assinged a report on the author William Faulkner, I knew nothing about him.I went to my school's library and checked out over 10 books.Out of the 6 non-fiction books that I checked out on the subject, this was the most complete, informative, and easy-to-understand.If it was not for this book, I doubt that I ever would have completed my Term Paper.

I highly recamend this book to anybody looking to learn about the life of one of america's most universal writers during the 1920s up until the early 60s. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

William Faulkner: First Ecounters
This is an excellent book for those just starting to read Faulkner and for those who wish to bring together what Faulkner's writing is all about.Professor Brooks has created a simple approach to the human complexities in Faulkner's works.

Excellent Critical Review of Faulkner
I would strongly recommend this book to anyone who enjoyed any of Faulkner's works or is interested in learning about Faulkner and his writings.My English teacher lent me his copy of this book, and I must say that it is very informative and interesting, at least in the parts I have read. I am waiting to read the sections concerning certain books that I have yet to read until I read them. Fundamentally, this book helps you get at the root of some of Faulkner's works that you may not be sure you understand as well as you'd like to or would like to know a bit about before you begin reading. ... Read more