Light in August

I wanted to read a work of Faulkner's. I bought the Kindle edition so that I could follow the sparkling prose and fabulous literary presentation both aurally and visually.

The story was good. The idea of the passages each character endured in his/her life was excellent. It was not especially unique, which was kind of good too, because there was a truth, reality about it.

I just don't understand Faulkner's use of the flashback-flashforward structure in the telling. It was not difficult to keep track of -- well maybe a little with the names of Bunch, Burch, and other near-sound alikes. The individual stories were great stories. The saga of Joe Christmas was Dickensian if nothing else and the story of Rev. Hightower, while not as riveting as Joe's, was very good, very logical, very well told. I don't think the women characters were so well fleshed out. Lena was a single-faceted character. She had one goal in mind and she was tenacious about it, but.. shrug... so what?

I am not a Faulkner scholar, so my opinion should hold little weight with those wishing to pursue this literature, but I am well read in many genres and many eras. I came away feeling Faulkner was a troubled man... turns out, after reading more about him, he really was a kind of lost soul. I felt the passion in the prose, but I had to work so hard to read the story/stories and to follow all the links between them, that it was tedious rather the pleasurable.

I don't think I will read another Faulkner -- not by Audible or in print. Life's too short.

I have tried many times to make it through a Faulkner novel, only to become frustrated with my inablility to follow the complicated (albeit brilliant) style of his writing. He and Joyce are the two greats that I have not read to finality with any of their novels that I have attempted. Consequently, I was delighted to see that Audible was publishing this audio book with Will Patton as the narrator. Having listened to at least a dozen of his readings, light dawned instantly that this was the answer to my predicament. I was confident that, with his assistance, Faulker would no longer be a puzzle that I could not solve. He would provide the roadmap to get me through the Mississippi terrain.

I was not wrong in my expectations and I have not been disappointed in Mr. Patton or Mr. Faulkner. Each time I pull into my parking place at work, or into the driveway at night, I am disappointed that I must wait to continue with the story. But it is such a prize that I want to stetch out the experience for as long as possible.

While I was not alive during the era he writes of, I can remember my youth in the South twenty years later. The storyline and culture are eerily familiar. The strands of human nature still woven into today's headlines. Mr. Pattons's voice is a welcome friend and contains not a trace of falsity to the Southern tongue. The story line is relevent today both as history and commentary. It is all here......and I cannot recommend it highly enough.

This is my first time reading the notoriously difficult Faulkner. I did not find Light in August to be particularly difficult, though it's also said to be his most accessible work. Faulker writes in a sort of sparse poetry that reminds me a little of Cormac McCarthy (though it's probably more appropriate to say that McCarthy reminds me of Faulkner). Faulkner is not as sparse, though; his prose requires a fair degree of sophistication to grasp and he weaves many, many themes through this novel, so I can see why he's considered a challenging read, especially in the era of YA ascendancy.

I was captivated by that prose very early. I was prepared to fall in love with Faulkner. The first act of the novel is compelling: the simple tale of a naive young woman named Lena Grove who leaves home in pursuit of the ne'er-do-well who done left her in an expectin' sorta way, possessing an almost childlike faith that it was all on account o' him not knowin' the situation and planning to send for her anyway once he's all settled, so once she catches up with him, the Lord will see to it that they is married like a couple with a baby comin' ought.

Yeah, right, and pigs will fly.

While the writing remained beautiful and poetic throughout the book, the third act, in which Faulkner wraps up all his themes, ties up all the loose ends, and brought it all home, dragged to the point that I thought he spent quite a few pages just indulging himself in the portentous importance of his own ponderous prose. It didn't diminish the genius of his writing, but it did wear on me, as someone who has developed a much greater appreciation for literary writing in the past few years, but still prizes storytelling as an essential ingredient in a great novel. The flashbacks and stream-of-consciousness chapters pile on, never becoming less finely written, but I started to see why Faulkner is considered "challenging"; the book starts out as a fine Southern tragedy, but dumps us deep in literary Faulkner-land by the end.

Also, this book is squirm-inducing in its beautiful and poetic rendering of the rankest misogyny and racism. The n-word abounds and yes, it's set in a time and place in which it would be unbelievable not to hear it flung about freely, but I found myself uncertain to the end just where Faulkner stood and what he was trying to say about his racially ambiguous anti-protagonist Christmas, who spends his life reflecting the world's contempt and abuse back at it. Joe Christmas grows up hard and mean and who can blame him? What I also found as horrific as it was authentic was the multi-layered hatred of all womankind, expressed through every single male character in one way or another, even the relatively sympathetic ones. Women in Light in August are the enemy even when they are self-sacrificing martyrs, oppressing men by the very act of martyrdom. I know it's fashionable to dismiss authorial intent, Death of the Author and all that, but man, methinks Faulkner had some issues with women. One of the most compelling passages in the book was the one explaining Christmas's solidarity with the unloving, hated adoptive father who beat him against his doormat of an adoptive mother who did nothing but try to comfort him. It was hard and true and ugly, and just left me awed at such prose that could fill me with such disquiet.


“She is like all the rest of them. Whether they are seventeen or fortyseven, when they finally come to surrender completely, it's going to be in words.”


This was really quite an experience. One has to have a taste for Faulkner, I think, and I suspect people will have wildly varying emotional reactions to him. I was drawn into Light in August enough that I will certainly read Faulkner again. 4 stars, because the prose is truly Nobel-caliber, but the story became abstruse and, for me, hard to love by the end.

A fine performance by Will Patton, whose accent is Southern enough to be authentic without being so thick as to hinder clarity.

Will Patton did a really good job on this. I just didn't like many of the characters and when Christmas started beating a horse on the head, I gave up.

Faulkner is a bit intimidating and difficult to process. I read several of his books in school, but somehow missed this novel. "Light in August" is undoubtedly the easiest to enjoy.

In the fictional town of Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, the time period is just after the Civil War during a time of extreme racism while rebuilding. This theme is carried out by the main character, Joe Christmas, an angry man of mixed ethnic origin who doesn't know who his parents are and who rebels against prejudice, embarking on a murderous rampage as a cry for help. He's trying to find his way in the face of cruelty; committing unthinkable atrocities. The themes of violence, perseverance, and hope walk you through the story without judgment by Faulkner. You draw your own conclusions and are free to interpret as you wish. He is truly the voice of Southern literature.

This book has definitely turned me OFF of Faulkner.

The plot is too thin and the chronology is so complex that is doesn't translate well as an audiobook.

I first read this book back in college when it was an assigned reading. I liked it then but in my youth had not yet had the life experiences which made me love it as I did this time with Will Patton's evocative narrative. Since downloading it, I've listened to it twice through and every time I glean new insights on the human condition. The characters still live for me. Great job, Audible!

Not to personalize here, but I went to Vanderbilt, majored in English Lit, and read a number of Southern authors. Nonetheless, to say that this book is slow is an understatement. Molasses is quick by comparison. You need to be really into style in order to appreciate Faulkner, and frankly, I got over that in the late sixties. There may be a plot here, but I couldn't find it. I do really like the sound of Will Patton's voice, and have enjoyed a number of books that he has read. But, not this one.

Yes, I would recommend. I loved the visual created by the words. I very much enjoyed the language and dialect of the writing and performance. The story was a about a simple place and time.

The language.

no

A young pregnant girl and her journey. Christmas and his story.

Highly recommend.

I read William Faulkner or at least tried to read him in my 20's. I never really thought much about him after that until audible offered up this book as part of its Audible Modern Vanguard classic selections. The plot seemed interesting and I liked that it was narrated by actor Will Patton, who also narrates the James Lee Burke novels I enjoy, and since he's from the south where this book takes place, he had the southern accents down to a T.

This is a thought provoking book that touches on several different topics. Since it's set in Mississippi in the 1930's, it is a timepiece novel looking at that era, post Civil War but where racism still existed even all those years later. But it also touches on the hopes and dreams of people who are just trying to get by in life. It touches on the effects our parents and even out grandparents have on our lives. Did we lead the lives our parents wanted us to or did we stay true to ourselves and lead the lives we wanted to? Was it possible to do both? How did our grandparents effect the lives of their children and how then did that get passed down onto us? Many of us rebel and strike off on our own but as we get older we sometimes think that we are leading the life we were supposed to and now we've gone full circle.

Faulkner touches on all these issues in this book. Yes, it's a novel of the deep south in the 1930's but it is also universally timeless. I enjoyed this book much more than I thought I would when starting out. Read it slow and think about it, as i said, it's thought provoking.