by William Faulkner
Rating - 5 stars
Posted - June 20. 2005
I will admit it.
I have never watched Oprah on television. Thankfully, my wife is a fan.
Otherwise I would have missed this opportunity to spend time with my favorite
author - William Faulkner.
I was introduced to Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County while I was in college. Back
then I was asked to read The Sound and the Fury. I will admit I was more than a
little confused with what I was later to learn was Faulkner's hallmark shifting
of the narration from one character to another; his disorienting disruptions of
a timely chronology.
As I read more, I began to appreciate the genius behind the technique. It was
like my days as a newspaper reporter. Each witness to a story had his or her
version of what had happened. The more I dug, the more likely I was to emerge
with a story that resembled the true event.
While Faulkner's narration and characters appear complex, his themes are simple.
He writes about life's great issues - life and death, good and evil, love and
hate, wealth and poverty, individual and family, sanity and insanity, success
and failure.
Faulkner's characters speak to their ability to transcend their settings and
endure their sufferings. They emerge pained, yet ennobled.
Although I am not fond of the heat and humidity, I am looking forward to
spending a portion of my summer's reading time in the Mississippi hill country
of Yoknapatawpha County.
