Conversations with William Faulkner is a wonderful little collection of essays about Faulkner by those who were lucky enough to have known him in all different capacities. His friends, neighbors, and publishers discuss Faulkner's life and works with additional input by a few of his students while a guest lecturer at Ole Miss. This book is a must have for any fan of Faulkner's work who would like to know the author more closely.

This review is certainly belated, but the 1996 collection of New Stories from the South is worthy of review nevertheless. The curiosity of the collection is William Faulkner's "Rose of Lebanon", a story written in 1930, but only recently rediscovered and published in The Oxford American, thus "qualifying" it (as if there are judges standing by with little cups for the various stories to pee in?) for inclusion in this year's anthology. Although Kirkus Reviews and Booklist hail the rediscovery, I have to think there must have been a good reason Faulkner himself did not pursue its publication more actively. While the plot and characterisations are admirable, there is a certain awkwardness about how the tale is told. Consider the following sentence, "She looked like something made in an expensive shop, of lace and bright frosting, and turned upside down in the center of a hollow square of troops all young and none of whom had ever heard a bullet; by strange faces which, for all their youth and inexperience and perhaps foreboding, wore none the less of doubt for that." Beautiful writing indeed, but that is supposed to be a line of dialogue. Also: "They all galloped bareheaded with brandished sabres when they had them, but anyway galloping, off the stage altogether, into a lot more rain than a December drizzle; maybe into somewhere else where they could bang themselves to pieces again, like puppets banging themselves to pieces against the painted board-and-plaster, the furious illusions of gardens and woods and dells; maybe to meet brighter faces than Lewis Randolph looking out a carriage window halted in a muddy road." True, the South has a long tradition of storytelling and oratory which Faulkner, via the speaker, is clearly tapping in to; but it all seems a bit much for believable dialogue. I grew up in the South, and although I love run-on sentences more than most, I've never heard anyone talk like that. But this is a minor quibble, and the story is certainly worth a read, as are all the stories in the book. Tim Gautreaux's "Died and Gone to Vegas" taps into the modern tradition of Southern Oratory--lies told over a card table; and while, like many of the stories, it is afflicted with a touch of the stereotypical view of Southerners as trailor trash, is nonetheless equally amusing and touching. My favorite story is "Jealous Husband Returns in the Form of a Parrot" by Robert Olen Butler. Inspired by a tabloid headline, what seems to be an absurd idea actually takes on poignancy and becomes a surreal study of regret. Susan Perabo's "Some Say the World", Annette Sanford's "Goose Girl", and Lee Smith's "The Happy Memories Club" all portray female protagonists at odds with the world and making their place in it as best they can. Ellen Douglas's "Grant" rings with the truth of lost chances, when the narrator's husband's uncle, dying of cancer, moves in with them to live out his remaining days.

Most problematic was Tom Paine's "General Markman's Last Stand", which Kirkus Reviews pans as "simply unconvincing." There is certainly an aspect of the story than makes it seem that Paine began with a vision of the final scene and worked backward from there. But in some ways it is the most intriguing of the bunch--suggesting rather than telling. Markman is a Marine general at the point of retirement who has earned the respect of his men by falling on a grenade (which turned out not to be live) in Vietnam. He has a dark secret, though--he has a fetish for women's lingerie, and the shame of his fetish drives him to self-destructive behaviour. The cause-and-effect of Markham's life is not clear. Paine hints that his fetish developed in the battlefields of Vietnam, where his wife's underwear (originally sent as a reminder of her?) took on a totemic power providing for his personal safety, and that Markham's valiant grenade dive was actually an attempt to destroy himself. Markham finally manages at least professional self-destruction, but somehow Paine's story doesn't quite come off. Perhaps it is as simple as needing to know what happened next. But it certainly has one of the most shocking opening lines I've read, "The General's panties were too tight."

If the 1996 anthology is any measure of the quality of the whole, New Stories from the South is a series to watch out for. 15 stories and not a bit of absurd gunplay, just touching or amusing slices of Southern Life.

While I may be biased, since the author is a former professor and good friend, "Threads Cable Strong" presents a compelling argument that "Go Down, Moses" stands by itself as a complete novel rather then a collection of short stories. With particular attention to the sections of "The Bear" that make little sense lacking the context of the greater novel, this book is convincing, interesting, and well written.

Although I have not read all of his short stories, I find Faulkner's tales to be poigniant reflections of American life, without being overtly obvious in their symbolism. The reader draws as much, or as little, as he wishes from Faulkner.

Being a work of 'uncollected' stories, it does not have the consistency as, say, These 13, or others arranged by Faulkner, but it does have its gems.

Consider it the "B-side" to a great album collection, some of which you may otherwise never have read, but worth it read, nonetheless.

This book, Bloom's Short Story Writers edition on William Faulkner, was exactly what I had been looking for. I needed to write a paper comparing criticisms on one author, and this book was perfect. It contains several different critical essays centered around three of Faulkner's works, and the essays provide drastically different types of criticisms. Some are favorable, some are not, but all of them are well written, and excellent for anyone looking for a greater insight into the works of William Faulkner.

I think that if you are into literature than you might like this book but I think that it wasnt as great as my professor said it was going to be

I read this book for OAC english. It is very hard to understand when Darl Narrates. Other than that it is a well written novel.
Knibb high football rules

i love the way willian faulkner wrote this book,u get each characters own thoughts, and personal expierences of the adventure this family went through. In the begining of the book, i guess it was because theyre were so many diferent nerators, it was kind of confusing, and hard to get into. But as i progressed through the book i found myself not being able to put the book down in curiosity of what would lie before me in the folowing chapters. i dont read much but i enjoyed this book.

Blotner did a prodigious amount of research for this biography. Any later writer who wants to produce a biography of Faulkner will inevitably find himself or herself relying on much of Blotner's work. The reader, however, will not be so grateful. Blotner seems incapable of distinguishing between that which is important and that which is not. It seems as though he has dumped almost everything he learned into this book. And he learned quite a lot. Why we need, for example, to know the names of everyone Faulkner came into contact with? Finally, Blotner is not a gifted writer; his style is typical of the academic. I can only hope someone writes a shorter, more readable biography of Faulkner someday.

Originally published in two volumes, Joseph L. Blotner's biography of the imminent writer of the American South, William Faulkner, is often touted as THE chronicle of Faulkner's life. Blotner's style is really quite readable. Indeed, this text is so accessible, one must question his accountability on some instances of Faukner's words to friends and loved ones. (Who really remembers what his wife's father said to him on a particular day--famous or not?) All in all, though, this chronicle sits on the top of the biographical heap for the time being. And it probably won't be displaced for many years to come.

This is the first Faulkner book I ever read (I did get about 1/3 through "The Sound and the Fury" but quit when I realized that I didn't understand anything that had gone on in the book so far). As has been discussed in many reviews about Faulkner, he has a unique writing style.

Basically, Faulkner writes really long sentences, sometimes going on for a page or two. They are often devoid of any punctuation marks. I find it very difficult to read a style like this, as I usually read a sentence, and when I get to the period, I absorb the meaning of the sentence. When confronted with a very long sentence conveying numerous ideas, I suffer from information overload. One way that I dealt with this problem was to treat commas like periods. All the same, dealing with Faulkner's style at times frustrated me.

However, I persevered, and I'm glad that I did. The story, which is basically a mystery, was suspenseful and entertaining. What happened with Lucas and the deceased? Who is involved in the body switching?

I really liked the character of Lucas. He did not assume to role of a subservient black, which in the South made him an unlikely candidate for redemption. Despite the reservations of his saviors, who were products of the white South, their reluctant respect for the indominable Lucas pushes them forward.

This novel depicts race relations in the South in some interesting ways, tells a good mystery, and creates some memorable characters. I still have problems with the style of writing that diminished my enjoyment of the novel.

All the same, with one Faulkner book under my belt, I plan to tackle another in the future. Perhaps with more familiarity with Faulkner's style, the problems I have with his style will be mitigated.

No it's not one of Faulkner's "big four" (the classics "The Sound and the Fury," "As I Lay Dying," "Light in August" and "Absalom! Absalom!"), but "Intruder in the Dust" is certainly in his next tier of top novels, and is the one book that can fly in the face of the "he never wrote anything great after World War II" way of thinking. I enjoyed this book immensely. Yes, the sentences tend to be extremely long and the book is slow to get going, but find Faulkner's rhythm and stick with the story; you'll be glad you did. As always, the highlight is Faulkner's beautiful use of language, which always towers over whatever story he's writing and whatever flaws you may stumble upon along the way. This story of a black man wrongly accused of murder doesn't always go where you think it will or even where you want it to, but somehow it works brilliantly. Faulkner throws in his take (apparently) on how the South should handle civil rights on its own -- not really necessary to include and a small flaw in the book, I think. But stick with it, get drunk on the prose and enjoy an underappreciated work from a master. This relatively short book will be over too soon.

I had to choose a novel for an independent reading assignment, so of course, being the striver I am, I had to choose an obscure Faulkner novel. I thought the book was excellent. Faulkner's rich prose helped to develop his deeply southern charachters. The culture of the South and it's deeply imbedded morals were brought out through Faulkner's lengthy sentences and gothic elements such as suspense and enhanced senses. The coming of age story of Chick Mallison and several subplots gave the novel many layers with which to envelop the reader. Overall, the novel turned out to be a tough read that was well worth the time.

As the past reviewer I did not arrive to the page with THE END printed on it, and I really hate to be unable to finish a book. Anecdote aside, I am aware that my review lacks proper grounds, but since there is so much to read and too little time, I strongly suggest you to look for other works of this author. During the first chapter I seems to be going great, the drama was cleaver and catchy. But suddenly in the second chapter it just stops and all the events seem to be going nowhere. Besides the construction of the language is boring and confusing. It feels like the author worked in this novel for a while, then left it during some years locked in a closet and one fine day decided to complete it, but without being at ease doing so.

I've read some other novels by Faulkner, and this is the first away from Yoknapatawpha. Personally, I like most of the time difficult reading, with which I can struggle to understand it, even when sometimes (like this) I don't get it at all. I find that is brave in an author, to write whatever his head produces, without caring if the reader is going to get it. I think Faulkner wrote a great part of this novel without caring. The story is captivating in its resemblance to jesus life not quite accurately, but in the exact level to find it believable. And it shows how a single life is important for the rest of us.

I must agree that, at times, the experience of reading _A Fable_ is much like feeling one's way through a very dark tunnel. However, there is indeed a light at the end of that tunnel; as with many of Faulkner's works, the individual stories that make up the novel dont come together until the last hundred or so pages. It takes a very patient reader to glean the important details from the beginning and middle of the novel, and to remember those details when they emerge again later in the book. One must also be fairly well-acquainted with Christ's passion in order for a true understanding of the correlation to reveal itself (which, in many places, it didn't for me). Contrary to the book's selling-points, Faulkner is not merely retyping the Christ story in _A Fable_. He's updating a myth (or "fable," if you will), and using his narration to describe humanity's condition in mid-century (cf. many paragraphs w/ 1950 Nobel Prize speech). This is a long, tedious, and fanatically detailled narrative, but a great novel that pays off with a terrific closing 50 pages for the patient reader. Both the new and the acquainted should be prepared for Faulkner at his most brilliant and difficult.