Light in August (1932) by William Faulkner

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Light in August (1932)

by William Faulkner

Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi

Mississippi: 1/18

  Faulkner might be considered the apotheosis (a word he uses at least three times in Light in August) of high modernism in America, in that he won the Nobel Prize in Literature.  Faulkner won in 1949, Hemingway in 1954, Steinbeck in 1962.  Only Faulkner is comprable to the high modernism/experimentalist prose of the early 20th century, both Hemingway and Steinbeck are the opposite of the flowery, ornate prose and complicated plot structures of Faulkner.   Faulkner has also maintained a legacy through the writers he influenced- Cormac McCarthy, to name one. At the same time, it's hard not to think Faulkner's time has past- a dead white male, an alcoholic and a frequent user of the n word, there are plenty of textual and non-textual reasons that a contemporary student of literature could through an MFA program without reading more than a short story here or there.

   At the same time- and I'm saying this as someone who is 250 books into the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America, there is no denying the Faulkner simply is one of the top five American novelists of the 20th century.  It is simply undeniable, even if you don't like modernist prose, the south or writers who use the n word. If you think about it in terms of the south as a literary place, consider that Margaret Mitchell published Gone With the Wind, one of the great prose narratives of the South, in 1936.  The movie came out in 1939. Faulkner wins the Nobel a decade later. 

  I listened to the Audiobook because I've read plenty of Faulkner novels, and I've always felt like they would be good Audiobooks.  This version was only recorded 10 years ago.  I think it a fair observation that the American literary establishment itself didn't appreciate the brilliance of Faulkner at the time he was writing- I went and looked at the New York Times and saw a plea from Malcolm Lowery- published in the 40's, that said Faulkner was out of print.