false 0 2009-03-12T08:38:38-07:00 494519 50 2009-03-12T08:38:38-07:00 3 0 false false Mon Jun 22 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Thu Mar 12 08:38:25 -0700 2009 Mon Jun 22 22:21:00 -0700 2009
It follows the threads of several lives, among them: Joe Christmas, an orphan, raised white, haunted by the fear that he may have Negro blood; Lena Grove, young, poor, pregnant, unmarried, in search of the father of her child; Gail Hightower, disgraced reverend haunted by his own past and the pasts of his ancestors; Byron Bunch, simple, hard-working, determined in mind to do what's right but drawn by his heart to betray his own ideals.

It's Faulkner, so of course "Light in August" is set in the Deep South, and of course it looks plainly at the naked ugliness of post-Civil War apartheid. If that appeals to you, I recommend his most brilliant indictment of this stain on the soul of the south: "Absalom, Absalom!"

This book also tackles misogyny more explicitly than any other Faulkner book I've read. Men and women don't understand one another. Men fear, hate, dominate and idolize women. Women are defined by men, fear men's brutality, yet view much of the masculine world with detached bemusement. What women think, however, is relatively unimportant - both to the men in this book, and to the overall storyline.

One man early in the story: "You just let one of them ... get into trouble without being married, and right then and there is where she secedes from the woman race and species and spends the balance of her life trying to get joined up with the man race. That's why they dip snuff and smoke and want to vote." Better not to let that happen, the men concur. Instead, another man reveals the appropriate role of the gentler sex: "Passive and Anonymous whom God had created to be not alone the recipient and receptacle of the seed of his body but of his spirit too."

At least Faulkner shows us the foolishness of the men who think these thoughts. In fact, he reveals the foolishness of nearly everyone we meet. And the book's one wise detached female, who in the hands of a lesser author would be a pristine virgin fated for a pitiful death, defies the stereotype. Lena, determined mother of a bastard, breathes air untouched by society's scorn, men's oppression, and even her own poverty.

Across his many books, Faulkner is not afraid of rot and death, he faces incest and takes on the curse of slavery's aftermath. But "Light in August" is the most violent Faulkner I have read. The characters' lives are all upended by the brutal murder of a white woman, possibly at the hands of a black man. Her decapitation unleashes a search across the countryside that ends, eventually, with a gruesome lynching.

Sounds exciting, and at times it is, but "Light in August" is also dull for long stretches. Faulkner's insight into his characters' minds is brilliant, but sometimes that means we have brilliant insight into dull and plodding minds. He also relies too heavily on dialogue to advance the action, and several times introduces new characters whose sole purpose is to tell us what happened from their points of view. Show us what happened, man! Don't invent a whole new character just so some yokel can back us into a crucial plot point by discussing it with his redneck pals. This book could have done with a little restraint. Instead, the author throws in everything he's got and trusts that the good stuff is what will linger. Maybe he's right.

"Light in August" may well be a good way to get to know William Faulkner. The narrative is cohesive, thoughts and dialogue bounded by punctuation, you always know whose story you're reading. If you're turned off by the "My mother is a fish" of "As I Lay Dying" or the every-shifting perspective of "The Sound and the Fury," this may be the Faulkner novel that you can wrap your head around. If you love the confusion of his tightly-written-rejections-of-the-standard-novel, however, "Light in August" will likely be a disappointment.]]>