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16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Sad Life And One Filled With Integrity, January 15, 2005
This review is from: One Matchless Time: A Life of William Faulkner (Hardcover)
Parini does his best work investigating the early days of Faulkner and putting them into a social, specifically Southern, context, but unlike Blotner he manages to enlarge that context into the whole space of American modernism. He makes you feel Faulkner's yearning to be accepted as part of an international avant-garde, and yet at the same time he didn't want that, he wanted, like his grandfather, to be a writer revered by his peers down home. Parini does enough with the "gay male friends" theme to warrant further scholarly investigation into gay modernist Southern art and literature, though such a topic doesn't necessarily depemd on the weight of Faulkner's name for it to be interesting in and of itself. And how about his friendship with Bil and Helen Baird and the whole puppeteering thing, I could read about this forever.
About the women in Faulkner's life, Parini stumbles a little. I don't think he makes Estelle, Jill, Meta Carpenter, Jean Stein or Joan Williams as interesting as Blotner did. They all kind of converge into an foggy enemy figure, like Judy and Madeleine in Hitchcock's VERTIGO--maybe this was Parini's intention (to paint his hero as a victim of sexual obsession), but the truth is that all of these women were very different characters, and in my opinion still the best book written about Faulkner is the wonderful A LOVING GENTLEMAN, Meta Carpenter Wilde's very moving memoir of her love affair with W. Faulkner. That said, I admire Parini's book and the skill with which it comes together. It makes you want to re-read some of the neglected books, I especially like his defense of the cobbled-together 50s collection BIG WOODS. The truth is I could read a new Faulkner biography every year, they're all pretty good and this one, as the newest, deserves the attention of all of us.
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Well Done!, March 14, 2005
This review is from: One Matchless Time: A Life of William Faulkner (Hardcover)
What was William Faulkner doing when he wrote THE SOUND AND THE FURY, LIGHT IN AUGUST, THE HAMLET, ABSALOM, ABSALOM! and GO DOWN, MOSES? In this fascinating biography, Professor Parini tells you, as his narrative moves from Faulkner's life to his work and back again, describing this great writer`s personal and historical world while analyzing his demanding oeuvre.
How did Faulkner acquire his estate, Rowan Oak, after only modest sales for his first books? How did his ultimately lucrative connection to Hollywood affect his work? The answers to such questions are in this thorough, but not long, book. On this level, this biography is a feast for Faulkner fans.
Even so, this biography has a maddening quality. In particular, this reader was blind-sided as Faulkner, without any preparation by the author, recited complete Shakespearean sonnets at a dinner party, acknowledged his love of French literature, or spoke French. These incidents obviously capture influences on Faulkner's artistic sensibility. Yet, they are never really built into the experience of the historical man and artist that Parini describes.
Faulkner, in addition, was obviously well-read. Yet Parini never discusses what Faulkner was reading, when he was reading it, and how the reading affected him. For an isolated and struggling writer, his reading-though hard to pin down-had to be an important influence and inspiration. In my opinion, occasional references to his reading would have been interesting. But as it is, this biography shows Faulkner in his most creative period without any such literary interests or precursors. In ONE MATCHLESS Time, he is either working madly or on an alcoholic binge.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Biography as spur, January 6, 2005
This review is from: One Matchless Time: A Life of William Faulkner (Hardcover)
It is a measure of the success of Jay Parini's William Faulkner biography, ONE MATCHLESS TIME, that the overwhelming desire on finishing it is to return to the works of the author and read, or reread, them from the beginning. It is particularly refreshing to find in the sections that analyze the books individually no descent into the obscurantism that pervades so much "professional" literary criticism. Parini's account is, however, marred, as a previous reviewer pointed out, by an unaccountable number of typographical and other mistakes that are no less maddening for their slightness. For example, "Jefferson County" appears several times when Lafayette is intended; there is the birthdate error; and about 20 other typographical glitches. These serve to break the spell that would otherwise propel most readers, I think, to finish this fine book in a gulp.
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