A Readers Guide to William Faulkner [Hardcover]

Edmond Loris Volpe (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1975 | ISBN-10: 0882549669 | ISBN-13: 978-0882549668

Both clear and scholarly, this book provides an introduction to William Faulkner, his style, techniques and themes, and it offers a detailed, illuminating analysis of the nineteen novels.

Faulkner is a difficult artist. A cooperative reading of his novels can enhance the pleasure that his art affords and deepen appreciation of it. The author's aim is to reveal the greatness of Faulkner's art and the scope and profundity of his personal vision of life. The Guide is divided into three sections. The first describes the dominant patterns in the fiction, by isolating Faulkner's major themes and by analyzing his narrative techniques and style. The second section offers extensive, individual interpretations of the nineteen novels, tracing the development of Faulkner's ideas. The final section contains detailed chronologies of the difficult novels like The Sound and the Fury.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Octagon Books (January 1975)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0882549669
• ISBN-13: 978-0882549668
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,292,263 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Tremendously Useful, November 11, 2001

By 

John Hilgart (Memphis, TN USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Reader's Guide to William Faulkner (Reader's Guide Series) (Paperback)

The second and third sections of this book are invaluable to the serious reader or repeat teacher of Faulkner. Volpe has done all of the difficult sorting and taxonomy we are obliged to do before we can come to our own terms with a novel. Who is each narrator or character, what do the events look like in chronological order, etc. To have that kind of work done for you for such novels as "Absalom! Absalom!" and "The Sound and the Fury" is worth the price of admission.

In the second section, each novel is given a reading, and while one may not always agree entirely, they almost invariably identify all the major features and events of the novels and are often closer to very careful glossed summaries than they are argumentative. If you've read a novel, these are comprehensive enough to return to you whatever you might have forgotten. If you haven't read a novel, they function very adequately to convey the essentials.

The third section provides detailed chronologies of events for nine novels.

If you're interested in making your own sense of the novels, Volpe's meticulous work will allow you to get down to business more quickly.

22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Has Its Uses, February 14, 2003

By 

Samuel Chell (Kenosha,, WI United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Reader's Guide to William Faulkner (Reader's Guide Series) (Paperback)

The author explains Faulkner in a direct, straightforward, "Hemingway" style, risking reductiveness but undeniably expanding the potential audience for the book. Readers entirely new to Faulkner may benefit from the general introduction as well as the interpretations (basically sound, "widely-received" readings) of individual novels. Others may understandably take a pass on the first two sections in favor of the third, which provides a breakdown of the narrative order as well as the "actual" chronology of each of the chapters in Faulkner's novels. Included are scene descriptions based on compiled evidence from the chapter as well as verbal clues that alert the reader to scene shifts in a narrator's consciousness.

A downside: Like most other commentators on Faulkner, Volpe often takes too seriously the seriousness of Faulkner. This is especially apparent in discussions of "Absalom, Absalom!" Unquestionably, it is apocalyptic, tragic, visionary narrative, but it is also supreme farce. Readers need to know that it's OK be bemused by the first chapter and to laugh out loud at the second. Critics have done a grave disservice to Faulkner by representing the novel with such unrelenting sobriety. (Reading Robert Browning's "Caliban Upon Setebos" might be the first step to a cure from much insensitivity to the playfulness of Faulkner's discourse.)

Finally, the page references to Faulkner's novels have not been updated to agree with the current Vintage editions. And the decision to ignore all of the short fiction might have been more palatable had the author not cast aesthetic judgement upon it, in effect "ranking" it beneath the novels. Faulkner's short fiction is not only of the same high order as his long narratives but is inseparable from them.