Novels, 1926-1929

by William Faulkner, Noel Polk (Editor), Joseph Blotner (Editor)

The Library of America edition of the novels of William Faulkner culminates with this volume presenting his first four, each newly edited, and, in many cases, restored with passages that were altered or (in the case of Mosquitoes) expurgated by the original publishers. This is Faulkner as he was meant to be read.

In these four novels we can track Faulkner's extraordinary evolution as, over the course of a few years, he discovers and masters the mode and matter of his greatest works. Soldiers' Pay (1926) expresses the disillusionment provoked by World War I through its account of the postwar experiences of homecoming soldiers, including a severely wounded R.A.F. pilot, in a style of restless experimentation. In Mosquitoes (1927), a raucous satire of artistic poseurs, many of them modeled after acquaintances of Faulkner in New Orleans, he continues to try out a range of stylistic approaches as he chronicles an ill-fated cruise on Lake Pontchartrain.

With the sprawling Flags in the Dust (published in truncated form in 1929 as Sartoris), Faulkner began his exploration of the mythical region of Mississippi that was to provide the setting for most of his subsequent fiction. Drawing on family history from the Civil War and after, and establishing many characters who recur in his later books, Flags in the Dust marks the crucial turning point in Faulkner's evolution as a novelist.

The volume concludes with Faulkner's masterpiece, The Sound and the Fury (1929). This multilayered telling of the decline of the Compson clan over three generations, with its complex mix of narrative voices and its poignant sense of isolation and suffering within a family, is one of the most stunningly original American novels.

Genres: Fiction, American, Classics, Literature, Novels, 20th Century

1180 pages, Hardcover

First published April 6, 2006

About the author

William Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer. He is best known for his novels and short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, a stand-in for Lafayette County where he spent most of his life. A Nobel laureate, Faulkner is one of the most celebrated writers of American literature and often is considered the greatest writer of Southern literature.
Faulkner was born in New Albany, Mississippi, and raised in Oxford, Mississippi. During World War I, he joined the Royal Canadian Air Force, but did not serve in combat. Returning to Oxford, he attended the University of Mississippi for three semesters before dropping out. He moved to New Orleans, where he wrote his first novel Soldiers' Pay (1925). He went back to Oxford and wrote Sartoris (1927), his first work set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County. In 1929, he published The Sound and the Fury. The following year, he wrote As I Lay Dying. Later that decade, he wrote Light in August, Absalom, Absalom! and The Wild Palms. He also worked as a screenwriter, contributing to Howard Hawks's To Have and Have Not and The Big Sleep, adapted from Raymond Chandler's novel. The former film, adapted from Ernest Hemingway's novel, is the only film with contributions by two Nobel laureates.
Faulkner's reputation grew following publication of Malcolm Cowley's The Portable Faulkner, and he was awarded the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature for "his powerful and unique contribution to the modern American novel." He is the only Mississippi-born Nobel laureate. Two of his works, A Fable (1954) and The Reivers (1962), won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Faulkner died from a heart attack on July 6, 1962, following a fall from his horse the month before. Ralph Ellison called him "the greatest artist the South has produced".

Reviews

[Andrew]

This book collects Faulkner's first four novels, and is the first book in a beautiful series of five from the Library of America that together comprise his collected novels. The first two books here (Soldier's Pay and Mosquitos) are pretty negligible, even for the truly devoted. Flags in the Dust is the first novel Faulkner wrote set in the mythical Mississippi area that would become the setting for pretty much all his work after it, and it's interesting if for no other reason that it sets the stage for this huge epic.

I just finished The Sound and The Fury for the first time since I was 18, and I'm equally blown away by what an amazing and difficult work it is. It's the first of his novels that really reveals his sense of the depth of emotions of such a disparate range of characters and people, and it's that alone that engages the reader since, like so much of Faulkner's work, you finish the book and look back not on a story but rather on a series of intersecting lives and relationships in the truth of their complexity and beauty. I love Faulkner.

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

Soldiers’ Pay - 3/5
Mosquitoes - 3/5
Flags in the Dust - 4/5
The Sound and the Fury - 5/5

[Ed]

Reviews:
- Soldier's Pay
- Mosquitoes
- Flags in the Dust
- The Sound and the Fury

[Martin Hernandez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Primer libro de los 5 tomos que donde la Librería de América reúne la la obra de este autor indispensable. Este volumen incluye "Soldiers' Pay" (1926), su primera novela publicada, que me gustó bastante; "Mosquitoes" (1927), que no me gustó tanto (mis reseñas en las ligas del título de cada libro); continúa con "Flags in the Dust" (publicada en 1929 como "Sartoris") que también me gustó mucho, y termina con
"The Sound and the Fury" (1929), una verdadera obra maestra de la Literatura.

Como siempre, la cuidada edición de la Librería de América vale lo que cuesta! y es la opción más recomendable para agregar libros reales a la biblioteca.

[Brendan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Four great novels. I thoroughly enjoyed reading these in chronological order; you can visibly see Faulker's skills improving as he settles in to his own original voice.

[Kent]

Just read "Soldier's Pay" and most of "Mosquitos" before heading for "As I Lay Dying."

It doesn't work to read Faulkner the way you would read, say, Tolkien or Sir Walter Scott. The latter gentlemen tell a fairly monotextured story--in the course of which, to be sure, they handle serious themes and evoke sensations and images that go far deeper than the "plain" text--which is best appreciated at face value. Even a more complex work like, say, a Shakespeare play, must still be appreciated on that foundational level first. Overall, these writers mean what they say, say what they mean, and further digging is rewarded by an amplification or deepening of the face value. With these two Faulkner works, it seems as though you have to ignore any "face value" meaning of the story, for the simple reason that there isn't one, because it isn't one. They're mostly a collation of sensations, psychologies, and blurry images, not always even in logical or chronological order.

For me (and I fully admit this is my shortcoming) Faulkner doesn't carry enough ethos to justify the kind of digging required to appreciate what he's doing. He can certainly turn a good phrase, and the characters are kinda interesting, and the scene setting pleases my historical ego, but I aspire too much to eighteenth century sensibilities to believe that what Faulkner has to say is worth the violence done to the natural order of things.

Since, however, I have admitted this is a shortcoming, I will continue to seek to remedy it. Maybe "Absalom" or "Light in August" will work better.

[James Henderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sartoris is the first novel Faulkner located in Yoknapatawpha County where he would go on to set fourteen more novels. In it he introduces the Sartoris family but the Snopes are also present in this early novel. It seems that he began to find his own voice in this novel, improving over his two earlier offerings (Soldiers' Pay and Mosquitoes).

He tells the story of a Southern family of the 'romantic' type, exhibiting chivalry and courage in a haughty and sometimes vain style. Bayard the younger, his grandfather is also a Bayard, comes home after the Great War and succeeds in demonstrating a recklessness that is more in tune with the times than traditional Sartoris family life is comfortable with. Thus there is the tension between tradition and modernity that permeates the novel. Faulkner's inimitable prose style is beginning to emerge and there are paragraphs of pure poetry in prose. Though not so many as would appear in works following. The combination of story and soul, action and intimations of the future provides a satisfying introduction to the South as seen from a porch in Yoknapatawpha County.

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pre-Yokna Faulkner, about what we pay for war. A great deal, indeed. He's getting his stylistic legs here in terms of shifting narrative perspective and juggling characters, of course. But the human/philosopho observations are already sharp and prescient. How 'bout this for a look forward to our current evangelistas: "We purchase our salvation as we do our real estate. Our God need not be compassionate, he need not be very intelligent, But he must have dignity." Ah, dignity!

[Christopher Sutch · Rating 4 out of 5]

See reviews for the individual works. I was most interested, particularly in my second reading of _The Sound and the Fury,_ to note that Faulkner used social inequities (between women and men, African Americans and European Americans, and between economic classes) as sources of much of the conflict and tension in his novels. The class-lines seem particularly interesting and fruitful for him in these early works.

[Jim Leckband · Rating 4 out of 5]

In three short years Faulkner somehow made the leap from the comparably slight and almost forgettable first three novels to the masterpiece of "The Sound and the Fury". I can't think of another author in the Library of America collections I've read that blew such a butterfly out of such a dull chrysalis.

[Brenden]

William Faulkner: Novels 1926-1929: Soldiers' Pay / Mosquitoes / Flags in the Dust / The Sound and the Fury (Library of America) by William Faulkner (2006)

[Bill]

Jan, 2010: Soldiers' Pay. Earliest Faulkner novel. Beginning of my 3-year project to read all his novels and short story collections, in order.
April, 2010: Starting Mosquitoes.

[Matt]

Oh yeah, I'm just taking a break from Melville with a little Faulkner as a palette cleanser.

[Erik · Rating 3 out of 5]

Faulkner's first four novels. The Sound and the Fury is a masterpiece. The earlier three are more forgettable, though still worth reading for anyone interested in his evolution.