Light in August, William Faulkner's Portraits of Loneliness and Isolation Light in August, First Edition, Smith & Haas, New York, New York, 1032"Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders." William Faulkner, "Light in August," Chapter Six, Paragraph One.It takes guts to write a review of one of the great American novels by one of the great American writers. I could call it chutzpah. But I'm not Jewish. Just call it Irish-American blarney with a bit of a Cracker twist and a streak of red over my shirt collar. After all, I'm from Alabama.The truth of the matter is there's been worse hacks than me that tried to take a hatchet to William Faulkner. It's hard to believe any man could be that damned good. Some men, critics for the most part, just can't live with how good he is. So they say he isn't.But I'm in Oxford, Mississippi this morning. What Oxford hasn't torn down and replaced with high rise apartments and condominiums still leaves traces of William Faulkner that are there for anyone to see if they take the time to look for it.Last night I met a lovely young woman and her mother over at Square Books. They were down from Joplin, Missouri, for the daughter to take the tour of Ole Miss. She's already been accepted at the University of Alabama, but she thought she should take the Ole Miss tour. Where you meet the most interesting people in OxfordWe met in the Faulkner section. They were there first. Both were lovely. The daughter was seventeen. Her mother was graced with a timeless beauty that must give her daughter a good deal of satisfaction at what she has to look forward to when she takes a hard look in the mirror in forty years or so."Oh," the mother said, "We're in the way.""No Ma'am. You're not. I never step between a young woman and William Faulkner. It's always nice to see.""Mom, I don't know which one to get.""Sweetheart, get all you want. Wherever you go to school, you'll want them.""But if I get them all, then I'll want to read them all. I'll read them too fast and I won't get what I need to get out of them."The temptation was too great."Miss, just how much Faulkner have you read?""I've only read 'The Sound and the Fury.' I don't know where to go next."I have to admit it. I kind of let out a sigh, and sat down in one of those big easy chairs, conveniently placed by all the works of Faulkner and the many references published by various scholars through the Ole Miss Press."Have you ever felt like you didn't belong somewhere? Didn't fit in?"She had already told me she was seventeen going on eighteen. I figured it was a safe bet she remembered being fifteen pretty well. Fifteen year olds get not belonging anywhere.I saw her mother smile."Well, sure. Hasn't everybody?""Oh, yeah. Everybody. That copy of 'Light in August' you're holding there. It's all about that. Nobody in that book belongs where they ought to be."So over the next few minutes I told her about Lena, walking all the way to Jefferson from Doane's Mill, Alabama looking for the man that made her pregnant. I told her about Joe Christmas, left on the step of an orphanage on Christmas morning, beaten by his foster parent because he couldn't learn his catechism. I told her about Joanna Burden being a Yankee from an abolitionist family who was never welcome in Yoknapatawpha County. And I told her about Preacher Gail Hightower whose wife left him and then committed suicide and how his own congregation wished he wasn't the man in the pulpit.I asked if she knew what light in august meant. She shook her head no. I told her how livestock dropped their young in August. And I asked her if she'd ever seen those few days of peculiar light on an August day when the shadows were at their deepest and just before dark, before the shadows turned to black how everything flashed gold for just a few seconds, so fast, if you weren't looking for it you would miss it. She hadn't noticed. I told her when she lived some more years she would see it.There was a tear in her mother's eye. I wondered if she still hadn't seen it."Tell me about the man. Tell me about William Faulkner."And I did. I told her about how he wanted to go to war. How he lied about being shot down. How he wore his Canadian RAF Uniform around Oxford. I told her about Estelle, how he loved her, how he lost her, how he got her back and then wished he hadn't. William and Estelle Oldham Faulkner, who called the quality of the light in August to her husband's attention I told her to read, read everything--that Faulkner said that. I told her how he checked mysteries out out of Mac Reed's Drug Store and people started stealing his check out cards because they figured his autograph would be worth something one day.We ended up laughing and talking a good while. "Say. If I went to Ole Miss, would you be one of my professors?"I don't know what it is that makes people think that. Maybe it's the old cardigan sweater with the leather buttons. Maybe it's the white beard. I don't know. It happens a lot, though."No, I'm not a professor. I grew up and became Gavin Stevens. I'm a lawyer."They both laughed. We exchanged pleasantries, information. I told her mother that if her daughter ended up in Tuscaloosa, she could always call me. The daughter left with "Light in August," and "Absalom, Absalom."The young man working the coffee bar brought me over a cup of coffee in a Flannery O'Connor mug. "It's on the house. You sold that Faulkner.""No. I sold HER on Faulkner. There's a difference.""Sir, you know something? You should have been a professor."Yeah. Maybe so. But everybody's gotta be somewhere, whether they fit in there, or not. Well, it's 8:30. Store opens at nine. They want me in the Faulkner section today if I can stop by. I could use another cup of coffee.Dedicated to the memory of Miss Maxine Lustig, my guide to Yoknapatawpha County and many other wondrous worlds.
If you are intimidated by Faulkner, you are not the first. If someone has told you just to let Faulkner’s words “wash over you” and resist the urge to figure them out right away, welcome to the group. Maybe you will love Faulkner and want to read everything he has ever written. Maybe you will say, “Be gone, Mr. Bill!” I am not the first to fail Faulkner 101 and I will not be the last. I have been somewhat successful in letting The Sound and the Fury wash over me. I have been soundly defeated by Absalom, Absalom!. I have believed that Light in August is the most accessible Faulkner story, read the summary at http://www.shmoop.com/light-in-august... and found that I just was not drawn in by the tale in its entirety. I have seen many GR reviewers whom I respect give Faulkner four and five stars. But I spent far too much time wanting to stop reading.OK, wait a minute. I love the part where Joe falls in love with Bobbie and the scene at the dance and when he steals his foster mother’s money to give it to Bobbie so she will marry him. I am stunned to be cruising, or maybe a better word is enjoying, Faulkner. But then – oh, dear – it is back to the bog and the solid yellow line keeps me in my lane in the slow moving traffic. And the long descriptions, page after page of being hungry. Five hundred pages are just too many for me for this story. There are many subplots and stories of individuals that could get three stars from me. But tossing some good parts together with a whole lot of other material has left me with far too much for my brain to comprehend. Faulkner has swamped me over and over. Just worn me out. The fact is that Faulkner is a legend but is too complex for me in the quantity of material he presents. I would say that the final chapter of this book is potentially a three star short story for me except that I am not sure if it could survive on its own. While I was reading Light in August, I watched the film of Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying and found parts of it riveting. That film gave me a sense of the world of the early 20th century South that Faulkner portrays in his work. That helped me understand what it might be like to take a step back for a broad view of Faulkner’s impoverished world.My experience of this book is that Faulkner offered much more than I was able to take in. There were occasional sparkling flecks and some word gems but I just could not stay above the surface in Faulkner’s deep water. A GR friend suggested that I try the Faulkner short story A Rose for Emily, a favorite of hers. It is a story with a beginning, middle and an end! I liked it! So now I have a whole book of short stories to beacon me back to William Faulkner another day.Let me end with a small discursion about my view of the GR rating system. I thought that if I made it through Light in August, I would give it two stars and that if I couldn’t make it all the way through, I would give it one star. So here I am. I made it to the end due to a whole lot of determination and even found the last chapter somewhat entertaining. But I Didn’t Like It! So it gets one star. This is just about my personal reaction to this book, not Mr. Faulkner’s talent. Clearly he has considerable talent.
What do You think about Light In August (1991)?
This novel is my first experience of William Faulkner’s writing. I was drawn to it partly because one of my favourite novelists, John Steinbeck, was a great admirer of Faulkner’s work and partly because I felt it was time to fill the gap in my literary education caused by my unfamiliarity with one of the great novelists of the 20th century. My research into which of Faulkner’s novels to start with indicated that Light in August is one of his more accessible works. This proved to be so, or at least, I found it very accessible. In it, Faulkner weaves together three stories. The novel starts with the story of Lena Grove, a young woman who has walked from Alabama to Mississippi looking for the father of her unborn child. It moves on to the story of Joe Christmas, an abused orphan obsessed with his uncertain racial identity, and to the story of Gail Hightower, a disgraced preacher living on the fringes of society. Their stories intersect in the fictional town of Jefferson and through them Faulker explores themes of alienation, religious intolerance and race and gender relations. Faulkner’s narrative structure is fascinating. It combines omniscient third-person narrative with interior monologues and extended flashbacks. Faulkner also allows characters to tell parts of the story to each other, relating their experience of particular events and speculating about parts of the action they have not directly witnessed. The point of view constantly changes from one character to another and the narrative travels back and forward in time and place, which allows the same scene to be described from different perspectives. As I listened to the audiobook I was irresistibly reminded of the writing of Thomas Hardy. In the past couple of years, I’ve learned to appreciate Hardy’s writing much more than I have in the past. This makes me think that I probably wouldn't have liked Faulkner if I’d read him in my teens or twenties. When I read Hardy now it feels like I’m reading Greek or Shakespearean tragedy in the form of a novel. That’s also how I felt when I listened to Light in August. While the narrative style of the two novelists is quite different, they both set their novels in a fictional location based on a real place - Yoknapatawpha County for Faulkner and Wessex for Hardy. Other similarities between Hardy and Faulkner include their focus on characters living on the margins of society whose idiom they capture in striking dialogue, as well as their use of powerful symbolism and imagery that is almost painterly in its intensity. Further, Hardy and Faulkner were both poets as well as novelists and their poetry seems ever present in their prose. And somehow I think I'm going to be as haunted by Joe Christmas as I am by Jude Frawley and Michael Henchard. Will Patton narrated the audiobook. His accent and speech rhythms brought the characters to life. Listening to the characters’ words and not just reading them transported me to their world - a world which both shocked and moved me. Listening to this novel was a very special literary experience.
—Kim
Trong cái tháng chói chang của tháng 8, của cát bụi và sự mệt mỏi, của mồ hôi và đôi chân mang vác một thân xác đang mang bầu, Lena đi theo tiếng gọi của con tim mình, đi tìm người cha đứa bé, người đã hứa sẽ trở về với cô khi tìm được công việc ổn định. Một người phụ nữ, trẻ, xinh đẹp, điềm tĩnh, nhẹ nhàng, chấp nhận số mệnh nhưng cũng thách thức số phân, đi bộ đến một nơi vô định, tìm một kẻ mà nhân diện chỉ còn lại một cái tên giả mà hắn đã dùng khi ở bên cô.Tác phẩm bắt đầu như vậy, những con chữ đầu tiên đã mang một ma lực mãnh liệt, từ hồi đọc Dostoievski đến giờ, tôi mới bắt gặp được một giọng văn quyến rũ và u buồn đến như vậy. Cái u buồn của một thế hệ người, được Faulkner đi sâu vào quá khứ, đi sâu vào bối cảnh lịch sử, tôn giáo, vào thân phận, số phận liên quan đến sắc tộc, giới tính. Không có trang nào vui, nhưng trang sách nào cũng đầy sự tháng thiện và yêu thương. Con người không có ác, chỉ có xã hội là tàn ác, mà thực ra xã hội không có ác, mà cái nhân tính của con người đôi khi hành xử mang một ác tâm vô thức.Quá khứ là thứ làm lên mỗi cá nhân. với giọng văn hồi tưởng, và khả năng kể chuyện tuyệt vời, mỗi nhân vật hiện ra với sự rõ nét đến nao lòng, sự sắc sảo trong cách ông để ý đến những chi tiết nhỏ nhặt nhất của nhân vật làm ta cảm giác nhân vật đó đang ở ngay trước mặt ta, cho ta quan sát, cho ta xót thương, cho ta mong đợi và cho ta hy vọng.Hy vọng, cuộc đời dù cho tồi tệ thế nào cũng có hy vọng. Một nhân vật chết đi thì khuôn mặt cũng đầy phúc lành. Một tội ác được thấu hiểu đến tận cùng của sự bí bách do tồn tại mà tha thứ. Mỗi số phận vừa tách nhau, vừa đan xen nhau trong thứ ánh sáng tháng 8, để rồi ta lộn ngược về quá khứ, để thấu hiểu tâm hồn của mỗi người. Tác phẩm vô cùng ấn tượng bởi tôi có thể nhìn thấy sự cứu rỗi linh hồn con người, và những hy vọng mong manh như tia nắng, như nó đủ để mỗi số phận thấy được ánh sáng của đời mình cuộc đời chìm trong những ẩn ức về dòng tộc, về vị trí được sinh ra. Hẳn đấy là cách một tác phẩm vĩ đại được sinh ra, hoài thai bằng thứ tình yêu và nỗi thấu hiểu con người của nhà văn, nắm bắt và đi đến tận cùng tâm hồn con người, để "mỗi tôi là một chúng ta", mọi thế hệ độc giả, ở mọi mièn văn hoá đều có thể đồng cảm và yêu mến.Nếu tôi phải vật lộn để đọc Âm thanh và Cuồng Nộ trong hoang mang và bối rối vì cách kể chuyện lạ lắm, khó nắm bắt như những dòng hồi tưởng rối loạn và bất tận, thì Nắng Tháng Tám dễ đọc hơn nhiều. Và nếu tôi đọc xong Âm Thanh và Cuồng Nộ và chưa thể lĩnh hội được tại sao ông lại vĩ đại như vậy, thì sau khi đọc Nắng Tháng Tám, chỉ cần tác phẩm này thôi, tôi đã hoàn toàn đồng ý về vị trí của ông trong nền văn học Mỹ nói riêng và văn học thế giới nói chung.
—Lalarme23
So I'm back in school now, and for the first time in ages am being made to read books. Now I don't have any personal experience with desperately trying to get pregnant, but reading novels for school reminds me of that: there's this activity that I'm used to doing purely for fun when I feel like it, that I'm now grimly pushing through on an inflexibly dictated schedule, whether I'm in the mood or not, with this intense sense of purpose that seems to poison the whole event. The result is that I'm not really enjoying any of the books I read these days -- I feel so oppressed powering through 700 pages in a week under the threat of a syllabus that it's impossible for me to tell whether I'd like the books I'm reading in more organic conditions. So I guess if my star-rating average drops a lot, that'd be why.This is my first Faulkner, and I didn't hate it or anything, but it may well be my last. I'm glad I read it, because never having read him was always more than a little embarrassing, but now I get the gist of what his deal is, and it's basically more or less what I thought: lovely and often startling language, legions of poetically insane and religiously fanatic and sexually rampant violent southerners, and frequency of n-word drops that'd make a rap star turn green with envy. It was less formally innovative than I imagine his other stuff being, I guess, so maybe I'll try one of those someday to see. There were some great things in this book -- mostly language, and the evocation of mood, power relations and place -- but I thought it was overly long and fell apart at the end into some sloppy-seeming bloatedness and kind of Hollywoodish whatever. I read this for a class the same week that we also did The Power and the Glory, and this made for an interesting comparison with its thoroughly created and self-contained nightmare world of terrorism and fear (though I liked the Graham Greene a whole lot more).I dunno, it was fine, and it did have its moments, but I really suffered through the last 150 pages. Admittedly this was because I had to finish it by the next day for class, but nonetheless that was my experience, and it was pretty brutal and bad.
—Jessica
