book data
4307 ratings, 4.00 average rating, 280 reviews
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published
April 2nd 2002
(first published 1959)
by Modern Library
binding
Hardcover, 528 pages
isbn
067964248X
(isbn13: 9780679642480)
description
To declare that Light in August is William Faulkner's finest work would be to invoke debate of irreconcilable conclusion. Yet for many follower...more
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avg 4.00
Read in May, 2008
A bit of introspection later, I've decided to downgrade this book from 4 stars to 3. I can't really explain why, except that within a week of finishing this book, I also finished reading two other books, by Anthony Burgess and Milan Kundera, respectively. That isn't to say I didn't like this book; it's just that I found it nearly unapproachable from a personal perspective. Essentially, Light in August falls in line with several of those other books where you can totally respect the craft, dig...more
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It inspired Boris Vian and that's enough in my book. Joe Christmas is one of the great fictional characters in fiction. I can smell Southern culture right off these pages. Taste it and live the tale.
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Lena Grove travels, on foot and with the aid of strangers, through the South in search of the father of her unborn child. Her journey introduces the reader to a variety of characters, including the child's father, a man who falls in love with Lena, and a biracial man named Christmas. Like Lena, all of these characters have stories to tell, and Faulkner interweaves a number of back stories and histories in the body of this book. One of his more accessable texts, Light in August is easy to ...more
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Read in August, 2008
recommends it for:
people who enjoyed "Barton Fink"
It seems to me that in this novel populated with ghosts and ghost-hunters, the most important ghost is the idea of essential identity. These characters drive themselves crazy searching for a Way to Be--by which they mean rest, immobility, freedom from yearning and disappointment and change--yet that kind of being doesn't exist and never has. So Hightower lives a kind of living death immersed in the fantasy of his Confederate hero grandfather who was shot for stealing a chicken; Lena and Byron ...more
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Read in July, 2008
I’ve been working my through some great books I read many years ago. I don’t know as I’m picking up on new things reading with older eyes, but so far I’ve not been disappointed. The emotional wallop in these great novels still remains. My latest effort was Faulkner’s Light in August. It’s not Faulkner’s greatest book (see Absalom, Absalom), but it is the most accessible of his great novels. And it contains one of the saddest characters in all of literature: Joe Ch...more
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Like some bemused god looking down on his creations with a trace of empathy, but also with a hint of disdain at their hopeless bigotry, indolence, and willful ignorance, Faulkner's keen, cool eye for the way humans can be chilly in its precision. But there is no denying that Faulkner knows his characters and, by extension, his readers. This is a somewhat grim novel, with little evidence of hope for any of the characters who manage to walk away, but you will be hard pressed to find a more hones...more
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Read in August, 2008
recommended to Ann by:
Liz
I finished reading this and I am glad to have finally completed it; it took a long time. I had never read Faulkner and my sister had mentioned his work a lot so I wanted to check him out. The story centers around Christmas, a man who doesn't know if he is black or white. Faulkner's writing is interesting and goes from place to place, telling detailed and elaborate side stories that all come together (but very slowly). He has passages where I am not going to lie, I have no idea what is going...more
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Read in August, 2008
Read the Modern Library College Edition, with an introduction by Cleanth Brooks.
This is the most accessible epic I've read yet by Faulkner. Instead of the complicated genealogy of Go Down, Moses or the difficult stream of consciousness of The Sound and the Fury, what Light in August offers are Faulkner's patented time shifts and extreme subjectivities rendered through colloquial, usually plain speaking language. I'm just starting to wonder at the reason for this difference...more
This is the most accessible epic I've read yet by Faulkner. Instead of the complicated genealogy of Go Down, Moses or the difficult stream of consciousness of The Sound and the Fury, what Light in August offers are Faulkner's patented time shifts and extreme subjectivities rendered through colloquial, usually plain speaking language. I'm just starting to wonder at the reason for this difference...more
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Read in August, 2006
Faulkner is amazing - he is always making up words that are several words put together. I like this technique because that one combination-word somehow creates a whole different picture. For example: cinderstrewnpacked or Augusttremulous or pinkwomansmelling. It's a harsh story but, I think, so beautifully written. Sometimes he writes whole paragraphs that are just a jumble of memories - like just a bunch of loosely related details in one sentence, with nothing connecting them. Those take a whil...more
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Read in March, 2008
murder, intrigue, ::gasp:: fornication, lots of white men being really terrible to women and black people. i am very happy that i was not alive in the 1930s. in the u.s. and the south, at least. it sounds like a very miserable time and place.
one character, disillusioned about love and reality, thinks toward the very end of the novel "how false the most profound book turns out to be when applied to life." i didn't find any of the characters in this novel are especially sympathetic, li...more
one character, disillusioned about love and reality, thinks toward the very end of the novel "how false the most profound book turns out to be when applied to life." i didn't find any of the characters in this novel are especially sympathetic, li...more
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Read in February, 2008
this book is so beautifully wrought i could hardly stand it. it literally pained me, mostly because this is the book i would want to write if i was a novelist. i now understand why gabriel garcia marquez said he had to kill faulkner in his own writing, so influential were faulkner's books on his development. this book grapples with all the great themes of the south, yet is universal in its scope and insight into the human condition. i knew i was taken because of the way i suffered right along wi...more
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In Faulknerland there are no facial expressions. Everyone is "implacable" or "impenetrable." Sometimes they show "outrage," whatever that looks like, but then immediately retreat into expressionlessness. I'm sure Faulkner thought he was saying something about Southern restraint. Or the impossibility of communication. Or some bullshit. I say he was too lazy (or too drunk) to describe an actual facial expression.
The first 100 pages are great. The rest is persisten...more
The first 100 pages are great. The rest is persisten...more
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Read in November, 2007
Well, it took me quite a while to tackle a Faulkner novel after only having read his short stories. I came away impressed by the skill and originality of his storytelling as well as surprised by the readability of the book. It is a dark story to say the least, but nonetheless I was sucked in after the first 50 pages and remained that way to the finish. I´m not going to rush out and jump into another Faulkner work, but I will certainly pick him up again in the future.
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Read in April, 2007
I did not LOVE this book as a whole, but parts of it were amazing.
I think that Faulkner’s over-all style takes away from the brilliance of some of the scenes. Because every scene is written like it should be brilliant, but it isn’t. Sometimes it's ok to just say what you mean in a quick and efficient manner.
The word fecund, used repeatedly annoyed the hell out of me.
I think that Faulkner’s over-all style takes away from the brilliance of some of the scenes. Because every scene is written like it should be brilliant, but it isn’t. Sometimes it's ok to just say what you mean in a quick and efficient manner.
The word fecund, used repeatedly annoyed the hell out of me.
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Read in January, 2004
Incredible characters, and Faulkner handles the subject of race in the south in the 20's unflinchingly. As usual, everybody in his books, black or white, is deeply flawed and superficially unlikeable, but has some quality which compels a connection. Some of the best final 50 pages of any book ever.
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recommended to Amy by:
Professor Moss - American Literature; Wake Forest University
I'm a big Faulkner fan and this is my favorite of his! I read it during an American lit class at Wake during summer school and it was definitely the best and most enjoyable paper I ever had to write in college. Faulkner rocks. :)
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William Faulkner is a challenging author. It's unfortunate that people usually start with "The Sound and the Fury" as an introduction to Faulkner. I consider this one of his more difficult books.
I thought this book was okay. Not my favorite. I definitely like "Absalom Absalom" more. But it is an interesting look at race in the South, since it is mostly about an orphan mulatto who never finds out who he really is. It's definitely a book that requires patience, since...more
I thought this book was okay. Not my favorite. I definitely like "Absalom Absalom" more. But it is an interesting look at race in the South, since it is mostly about an orphan mulatto who never finds out who he really is. It's definitely a book that requires patience, since...more
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Read in October, 2008
recommends it for:
The stalwart: Faulkner is harsh.
Does a book on tape count? In this case, listening to this work was a painless way to review this novel which I read way back in Grad School.
What a grim and macabre tale. With his usual ironic finesse, Faulkner names his antagonist, Joe Christmas. He is the product of miscegination born to a white mother whose father wrests the child away from the grandmother after the girl dies and brings him to a white orphanage on Christmas Day. As in many if not all of his works, racism is the is...more
What a grim and macabre tale. With his usual ironic finesse, Faulkner names his antagonist, Joe Christmas. He is the product of miscegination born to a white mother whose father wrests the child away from the grandmother after the girl dies and brings him to a white orphanage on Christmas Day. As in many if not all of his works, racism is the is...more
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Read in November, 2008
I've not read a lot of Faulkner, but of this is probably the best of his works I've read so far. The racial dynamics in the novel, as illustrated primarily with Christmas, were very complex and definitely interesting. Faulkner managed to weave together different characters' points of view in a way that helped the movement of the plot and kept chapters which moved a little more slowly from being boring.
I did find that some of my favorite segments were more along the lines of the stream-of-c...more
I did find that some of my favorite segments were more along the lines of the stream-of-c...more
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Read in September, 2008
This book, and my response to it, is so complex I hardly know how to begin here. The book gave me a lot to hate--whether it was Faulkner expressing his own beliefs, Faulkner reflecting the attitudes of his society, or Faulkner revealing truths about humankind. I found myself, for example, wondering whether Faulkner really believed women and African Americans are all inclined to be as weak, violent, or manipulative as his characters...although it seemed he incriminated the entire human race by th...more
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