Category: the-art-of-narrative
- Pass the BottleAll My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers a novel by Larry McMurtry. Liveright. 277pp. $15.95 **** Everybody loves a story about a fuck-up. When you read about a guy who is as likely to spend the night on a couch in the university library as he is in his bed at home (he has a ...Read more
- The Mario Puzo SolutionErasure by Percival Everett. Graywolf Press. 265pp. $16.00 ***** For much of my reading of Erasure, I thought it was a sad novel at the heart of which—as a novel within a novel—was a wicked satire. By the end, really just the last couple of pages, I realized the whole thing was a wicked satire. Yet ...Read more
- You Can Too Go Home Again(The Faulkner Project) William Faulkner Novels 1926-1962 Library of America. Five volumes. 5454 pp. $157.00 ***** I began this project on a whim last June with a nagging question: why did my father, dying of leukemia at the age of 47, read almost nothing but Faulkner in his final years? I had the second volume of ...Read more
- Old Master(The Faulkner Project) The Reivers, a Reminiscence from William Faulkner Novels 1957-1962. Library of America pp. 723-921. ***** In the summer of 1961, though he had recently written a friend that he was ready to give up writing, William Faulkner sat down to write a story he’d had in mind for some time. He wrote the ...Read more
- U R a Snopes(The Faulkner Project) The Mansion from William Faulkner Novels 1957-1962 Library of America pp. 327-723 ***** Somewhat to my surprise, this time around I enjoyed The Mansion the most of all three Snopes novels. Part of the reason is that I had just read the others; I suspect that when I read this novel the first ...Read more
- Ratliff Was a Zen MasterVladimir Kyrilytch, That Is Though pedantry denies It’s plain the Bible means That Solomon grew wise While talking with his queens I don’t know who was Faulkner’s favorite among his narrators, in the Snopes novels and elsewhere. Sometimes I think it’s (for me the rather tiresome) Gavin Stevens, a lawyer who likes to elaborate endlessly, or maybe Charles Mallison, Stevens’ ...Read more
- Flem Makes His Move(The Faulkner Project) The Town from William Faulkner Novels 1957-1962 Library of America pp. 1-326 **** It’s an irony of William Faulkner’s career that he finally became financially solvent—and began to receive kudos in his own country—for work that is far inferior to his best. Intruder in the Dust put him over the top financially, primarily ...Read more
- Faulkner’s Breakthrough(The Faulkner Project) Intruder in the Dust from Faulkner Novels 1942-1954 Library of America pp. 284-471 $40.00 ***1/2 In 1940 William Faulkner wrote his publisher seeking an advance on what he called a “blood and thunder mystery novel,” one in which a black man was arrested for murder, put in a jail cell, and solved the ...Read more
- Faulkner at his Knottiest(The Faulkner Project) Go Down, Moses from Faulkner Novels 1942-1954 Library of America pp. 1-281 ***** I had an odd thought when I began this novel, the thirteenth in my survey of Faulkner’s work: This is the real Faulkner. It’s a strange thing to say about a man who had already written four or five masterpieces, ...Read more
- They’d Even Cheat Another Snopes(The Faulkner Project) The Hamlet from Faulkner Novels 1936-1940. Library of America pp.727-1075 ***** The most surprising thing about Faulkner’s Snopes novels is that he took so long to get around to them. He was apparently writing sketches about the Snopes in his twenties, before his career really began, and wrote several versions of the story ...Read more
- Living for Love(The Faulkner Project) If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem from Faulkner Novels 1936-1940. Library of America. **** Somewhat to my surprise, this is my least favorite of all the novels I’ve reread in the Faulkner Project. I had read it only once, and I think I was still in college, because I remember telling a friend about ...Read more
- Faulkner to the Nth Degree(The Faulkner Project) Absalom, Absalom! from Faulkner Novels 1936-1940. Library of America. ***** I have a long-ago memory of a PBS documentary that I watched about Faulkner—I guess it was an American Masters—in which he supposedly said to someone, after completing Absalom, Absalom!, “This is the greatest novel ever written by an American.” An oddly revealing ...Read more
- Yair (and No)(The Faulkner Project) Pylon from Faulkner Novels 1930-1935 pp. 775-992. Library of America. **** Years after the fact, Faulkner told a class at the University of Virginia that he wrote Pylon because Absalom, Absalom! had become “inchoate” and he needed to take a break from it. Only William Faulkner would take a break from writing a ...Read more
- Caught Between Two Worlds(The Faulkner Project) Light in August from Faulkner Novels 1930-1935. Library of America. pp. 399-774. ***** Of Faulkner’s great novels, this is the one I like the least. I don’t believe I’d previously read it more than once, though I was shocked at how much of it I remembered, including whole paragraphs and sentences that stuck ...Read more
- We Look on in FascinationFor my 73rd Birthday Last Tuesday as I walked around Duke’s East Campus I saw the freshmen moving in (when I was at Duke, East Campus was for women; now it houses freshmen), all these fresh-faced, anxious, unformed young adults, and realized to my astonishment that it was fifty-five years ago that I did the same ...Read more
- Signifying Everything(The Faulkner Project) The Sound and the Fury from Faulkner Novels 1926-1929 Library of America pp. 877-1141. ***** I think of this as Faulkner’s greatest novel, which means that no one in America has written a better one. If there is a Great American Novel (there isn’t), this is it. This is my fifth or sixth reading ...Read more
- The World Opens Like a Flower (The Faulkner Project) Flags in the Dust from William Faulkner Novels 1926-1929. Library of America. pp. 541-875. ***** In October of 1927, in the rush and enthusiasm of finishing his third novel, his longest and most ambitious by far, William Faulkner sent this note to his publisher, Horace Liveright. “At last and certainly, * * * I ...Read more
- You Can Go Home Again. You Have To.(The Faulkner Project) Mosquitoes from William Faulkner Novels 1926-1929. Library of America. pp. 257-541. **** My first semester at Duke University, I had the great good fortune to encounter the two best professors of my life, Reynolds Price and Wallace Fowlie. I had courses with both of them (and it was all downhill from there). Price ...Read more
- Dressed Up and Nowhere to Go(The Faulkner Project) Soldiers’ Pay a novel by William Faulkner. Library of America William Faulkner, Novels 1926-1929. pp. 1-257. ***1/2 I’ve always been haunted by the fact that my father read Faulkner at the end of his life. He was only 47 when he died, and had had leukemia for six years; in the final years ...Read more
- Not the One Who Likes SpinachSanctuary by William Faulkner. Library of America Faulkner Novels 1930-1935. pp. 179-399 **** The official version of the genesis of Sanctuary—which Faulkner told in the preface to the Modern Library edition—is that, after publishing four novels, he was tired of making no money (how he thought The Sound and the Fury would make money I do ...Read more
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All Shook UpWhat's in a Song? IIWriting for his LifeWhat’s in a Song?Mixed Feelings
View Other Essays by Topic
aging (127)American literature (226)art (123)Buddhism (171)Christianity (132)creative process (262)death and dying (144)meditation (125)movies (167)music (42)race (110)religion (196)sex (187)spirituality (174)the art of narrative (266)Uncategorized (21)world literature (23)