short stories

Faulkner may be one of the more difficult writers to read, but his works are well worth the effort. Light in August is no exception. It is a truly remarkable story. The 4 stars simply differentiate the best from the very best. Although this book is not as complicated as As I Lay Dying or The Sound and the Fury, it contains many of the same ingenious qualities regarding point of view and time.

The real difference here is that in those books, Faulkner was concerned with the consciousness of the individual characters themselves while here we are dealing with the relationship of the consciousness with the external forces of nature/nurture and the outside world.

This is a story about racism in the south. Although the story line itself covers only a few days, the book refers back two generations. Each of the main characters, Christmas, Hightower, and Burden are dominated by racism in different ways. It is racism and their reaction to it that brings them to their ultimate end. Most of the other characters and the town itself are also driven by the same demon. It boils down to the simplicity of white is good while black is evil with the shades in between being a transition from one to the other. When Christmas puts on the black boots of a negro, his transition from white to black is complete and he is then prepared to accept his fate.

The only character untouched by racism is the unwed and pregnant Lena. Interestingly the white father of her child who runs to escape his responsibility is called Brown(the one truly unlikable character in the book). Lena literally strolls into town and the story at the beginning and strolls out at the end, untouched by the happenings. Her ignorance of her personal moral shortcomings also insulate her from the moral shortcomings of a racist society.

Does this storyline make this novel outdated today? Absolutely not. It may be even more true today than then. Today people's reaction to racism or perceived racism is driven more by outside influences than internal feelings or experiences and those who ignore those influences are like Lena and go on with their lives not to be dominated by it.

Faulkner is one of the truly great American writers. I ignored him for 50 years and have now read 4 of his novels in the last 2 years. I've enjoyed them all.

This is a great story. It is the easiest book in terms of structure (as much as Faulkner can be easy!) by Faulkner that I have read. _Light in August_ has such a complicated plot, that I cannot even begin to summarize it and do a good job, but I will make an ill-fated attempt at doing so. Lena Grove is looking for the father of her child, and she finds her way to Jefferson, Mississippi. While in Jefferson she meets myriad characters, among them are Byron Bunch, who is in love with her; Joe Brown, the father of her baby; Joe Christmas, a confused man in search of his ancestry; and Gail Hightower, a former preacher who is haunted by his Grandfathers demise. And that is only a few of the characters. I don't think that this book is better than _The Sound and the Fury_, but I do think that it is far better than _As I Lay Dying_. It certainly is a masterpiece and deserves all of the critical acclaim that it has received. Every time I read William Faulkner I am blown away. He writes with such feeling and compassion. _Light in August_ cemented my inkling that Faulkner was the greatest writer America has ever produced.

LIGHT IN AUGUST is one of Faulkner's knottier works, layered with braided plotlines and themes. It could just as well be a work of science fiction, set as it is in a post-apocalyptic world, where cast-up survivors stagger about in a frightful disconnect, trying to reconstruct meaning and a code to live by. Of course, they are doing a terrible job. This is no nuclear winter, though. It is the rural south of the early 20th century where the Civil War happened yesterday and the failures of Reconstruction continue to take their toll.

The plot lines are not easily sorted out for a capsule account. It is tempting to begin, "At the heart of the book . . .," but Faulkner would be the first to respond, "how do you know with any certainty that that is the nucleus, that is the real truth?" The tattered social code that these people have snatched from the fire of the Civil War comes down to a few "givens"- white is supreme, black is untenable, men must be strong leaders unbent by lesser forces, women must be virgins until they marry and true to their husbands, and murder, especially of white by black, must not go unpunished. Truth is at once harshly stolid and easily muddied.

The author devotes the greatest amount of energy to the grizzly murder of a spinster, ostracized by her Mississippi community by virtue of her Yankee heritage and her social ministerings to the black community. That she is white and the accused is assumed to have partial black heritage gives the white populace something with which it can define itself, a fierce, righteous drive to avenge the death. Faulkner sorts out the histories of the players to determine why they have become involved, the truth of their individual existences as well as their knowledge in respect to the case. Weaving in and out, like a stupid Cassandra, is the very pregnant Lena, who begins the book by pursuing on foot her missing boyfriend out of Alabama, and continues to pursue him even while it is obvious he is a lost cause, even when there is someone else willing to assume responsibilities.

Faulkner's use of language and symbolism is breathtaking. This is worthy reading, but do be warned, it is not for the faint of heart. Seventy-five plus years later, it causes you to ask the disturbing question, have we come far enough away from the cave of dark violence and ignorance he depicts?