William Faulkner

by Carolyn Porter and Pete Gomez

Book Overview

In this newest volume in Oxford's Lives and Legacies series, Carolyn Porter, a leading authority on William Faulkner, offers an insightful account of Faulkner's life and work, with special focus on the breathtaking twelve-year period when he wrote some of the finest novels in American literature.
Porter ranges from Faulkner's childhood in Mississippi to his abortive career as a poet, his sojourn in New Orleans (where he met a sympathetic Sherwood...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0195310497
• ISBN13: 9780195310498
• Release Date: May 2007
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.8" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

Challengng but good starting point for any serious reader of WF

Don't dismiss this book because of its brevity. Porter clearly knows her stuff. Without any apparent biases (Marxist, Freudian, or archetypal) she gives clear, insightful, and helpful readings of all of Faulkner's major novels and is clearly well-read in all of the important Faulkner criticism and scholarship produced over the past half-century. It is refreshing to find an academic who can produce an "introduction" of this breadth and complexity without writing down to those just beginning their foray into her subject. She assumes her readers are interested in getting the most out of their reading of Faulkner and provides sufficient background (biographical as well as critical) to help them do so. I read this book with great interest over the course of a week, underlining many of her points for future reference. She covers all of Faulkner's major works (The Sound and the Fury; As I Lay Dying; Sanctuary, Light in August; Absalom, Absalom!) and makes a good case for including Go Down, Moses and The Hamlet among them. She even argues in favor of taking Faulkner's last novel, The Reivers, (often dismissed as a nostalgic reverie) as a serious contribution to the Yoknapatawpha literature. In addition, she acknowledges the value of a number of non-Yoknapatawpha texts (such as Pylon and The Wild Palms) for understanding Faulkner's experimentation and innovation in the art of narrative (a key theme throughout her book). At the same time, she is not blind to Faulkner's weaknesses (such as his early failings as a poet, his insecurities and need to self-mythologize, his alcoholism, and his eventual decline as an artist after his "major phase" from 1929 to 1942). Her discussions of race and gender issues are frank, helpful, and unfreighted by polemics. Her "Final Note to New Readers: Bibliography" is full of helpful tips on how to read Faulkner. "I tell my students always," she writes, "get used to not knowing exactly what's going on. Understanding will come, but the pleasure of confusion comes first. The language itself should be your first seduction" (p. 187). Porter has not written "Faulkner for Dummies," but has offered a great introduction into the vast and diverse imaginative world of the greatest American writer of the twentieth century.

RAISE A WHISKEY TO PORTER ... FAULKNER, TOO

Todd Sentell is the author of the mother of all golf satires, Toonamint of Champions Since 12th grade I've been fascinated with William Faulkner ... his work and the way he lived was revealed to me then by my high school English teacher and that fascination is coming up on thirty years. And like all Faulknerians, I devour, as quickly as it comes out, any book on the man. Carolyn Porter's recent work has just been devoured by me in a wonderful June afternoon and she's provided something special ... something no other Faulkner explainer has ever provided ... and it's in her final chapter, titled, A Final Note to New Readers: Bibliography. In this chapter she gives you some tips on the best place to start with Faulkner ... and where to go from there. Sure, this is a book review ... but it's also a thank you note from me to Carolyn Porter. Thanks for a new road map. A road map I'm happy to begin again. by Todd Sentell, author of the wickedly hilarious social satire, Toonamint of Champions