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A Rose for Emily / Wash

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Audio Cassette

Published December 1, 1984

22 people want to read

About the author

William Faulkner

1,428 books10.8k followers
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".

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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
Profile Image for Anne.
1,349 reviews21 followers
March 16, 2018
I need to read more Faulkner!
Profile Image for Jillian.
2,135 reviews107 followers
April 19, 2018
I have heard mixed things about William Faulkner, but clearly he understands how to write an engaging short story. A Rose for Emily is delightfully creepy and tightly crafted. He is a master of detail, setting everything up so that the reveal at the end is shocking but makes sense in the context of the clues they were given. If he had written a novel about Emily Grierson, I would go buy it right now.

I find Miss Emily so fascinating as a character. She gives off very Miss Havisham vibes, another one of my favorite creepy literary ladies. I'm the type of person who sort of wishes that Great Expectations was solely Miss Havisham and Estella's story; I could do without Pip. I want to know more about Miss Emily. Did she actually kill Homer? What would it like to get inside her head? Also, when she just flat out refused to pay taxes and no one could do anything about it, I cheered. What a boss.

If Faulkner's other female characters are as compelling and complicated as Miss Emily, I will give his novels a try. I hope that this story is not a red herring designed to disappoint me later. Recommended!
Profile Image for Jeff Thorsen.
5 reviews
August 18, 2021
I really liked this story. It was very difficult to write an essay on this topic, but I coped up with it. I found the site https://supremestudy.com/a-rose-for-e... and found out more about this tragedy. Writing examples helped me to more clearly describe the tragedy of a woman, the consequences of which cannot be changed.
Profile Image for Alia.
209 reviews1 follower
December 3, 2017
I've heard some shit about Faulkner and I believe most of it, but he writes reasonably well.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews

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