Faulkner, Mississippi by Edouard Glissant

I found this book to offer a beautiful series of readings of Faulkner's works. Prompted by a drive to Oxford, Mississippi, this book reflects particularly well on race and the past in Faulkner's stories. It reads more like an essay or a reflection than a critical argument, but its insights are no less sharp for its tone.

The Mansion by William Faulkner

I found this book repetitive at times (Faulkner rewrites parts of the story not only from the earlier two books in the Snopes trilogy but also from other parts of his career) and frustrating at others. I do think that Faulkner has developed and nuanced his idea of what it means to be a Snopes from when he introduced Byron Snopes in Flags in the Dust. I also can't help but let Linda get under my skin. I'm not comfortable with her character, even though she is the only one in the novel who doesn't have to listen to Gavin Stevens all the time.

Faulkner's Fictive Architecture by William Ruzicka

This book explores Faulkner's architecture in several, but by no means all, of his novels. It has a good theoretical component, excellent floor plans, and fairly keen observations. It is organized by novel rather than by type of architecture.

William Faulkner and the Tangible Past by Thomas Hines

Written by an architecture professor with familial connections to Faulkner, this book provides an overview of architectural styles at play in Faulkner's fiction by style rather than by book. The architecture side of things seems solid. In terms of Faulknerian criticism, this book is an heir of Jane Haynes's William Faulkner: His Tippah County Heritage and William Faulkner: His Lafayette County Heritage, although this book has more areas related to Faulkner's fiction. O good overview of the architecture, and lots of beautiful plates.

The Town by William Faulkner

The second part of the Snopes trilogy builds more consistently than the first. In it, Flem Snopes makes the main part of his bid for respectability, the footprints on his way up, as he actually works against the less-than-savory members of his family, including Montgomery Ward and I.O.. Eula Varner remains fascinating, especially to Gavin Stevens, who also takes a liking to her daughter Linda. Although we never get Flem's perspective, this novel really helps to flesh out his character.

Intruder in the Dust by William Faulkner

This book is part detective fiction and part apologia for Southern slowness in correcting its racism and bigotry. The story and the writing are alright, but not outstanding in comparison with Faulkner's other work. The real disappointment is that instead of developing sophisticated, challenging and nuanced perspectives on race through character development (as we see in Go Down Moses and Absalom, Absalom!), here Faulkner puts his ideas about how the North, East, and West should back off the South and let it dealt with race on its own terms and in its own time in the mouth of Gavin Stevens and then creates a story where two young boys (one white and one black) and an old, white woman unite to save a black man from almost-certain lynching. There's an element of the coming-of-age story, but mostly this novel is a frustrating and heavy-handed attempt at self-justification.

Go Down Moses by William Faulkner

I enjoyed returning to this book. I'm not sure what to do with the misogyny this time around. I am more convinced than ever that fragmentation is important to this book, though whether we call it a novel or not is perhaps not the most relevant question. I'm also interested in the inclusion of "Pantaloon in Black," which for all its beauty and power, seems to me a way of dodging the race question by deflecting it onto a character that only appears once in a body of fiction that's so invested in repetition. This collection is really fascinating, and still bears much re-reading.

The Hamlet by William Faulkner

The first part of the Snopes trilogy is really a hodge-podge. The Snopes infiltration is fairly constant of course, and they're always tricking, or making fools of everyone, even VK Ratliff. I just don't know what to do with so many incidents in the story: Mink killing Houston, Ike Snopes and the cow, and Eula Varner Snopes and her inexplicably attractive immobility. There's definitely class consciousness running through the novel (and race seems to drop away again). It's almost like 2 or 3 novellas strung together as one novel.

The Unvanquished by William Faulkner

This collection of short stories focuses on the fortunes of the Sartoris family during the Civil War and Reconstruction. Granny Rosa Millard is a fantastic character: she's full of pluck and generosity. Also wonderful is cousin Drusilla, who defies conventions. These stories are Faulkner at his most nostalgic and he evokes a most rosy and unrealistic portrait of the South.

William Faulkner: His Tippah County Heritage by Jane Isbell Haynes

This book traces Falkner and Murry family roots in Tippah County, Mississippi. It makes the case that parts of Flags in the Dust and The Sound and the Fury are based more in Ripley than in Oxford. Appended to the end is a memoir by a woman who is part of the family whose son WC Falkner shot before the Civil War. There are great pictures, but overall, only worth reading if you're interested in tracing Faulkner's Mississippi roots.

Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner

By my count, this time was my fifth reading this book, and it remains one of my absolute favorites. I love the layers of story-telling, the resonances between Quentin, Shreve, and Henry, and even that demon, Sutpen. In this reading, I noticed many more similarities between Sutpen and his son Charles, the novel's tendency to use economic metaphors to describe transactions of the heart, and the chronological misplacement of Haiti in the narrative. I was also awed by the beautiful structure, which carefully builds up to the novel's awful climax. It's clearly a novel about what it means to tell a story, about perspective, about multiple discourses (including those we can never know), about the South, and about love, friendship, and pride. I don't recommend reading this novel once--read it many times, or never pick it up.

Light in August by William Faulkner

This time through, I found this book more misogynistic than I remembered. Faulkner's patronization of Lena Grove was increasingly irritating. But I also found beautiful moments and intriguing moments. Both Gail Hightower and Joe Christmas struck me as more sad than ever--especially when you see Joe so emotionally maimed that he resents Mrs. McEachern's attempts at kindness. I found Joe's "parchment" skin especially telling, because the characters in the story write their own readings of Joe as they consider him in context. I was also interested in the patterns of naming. Joanna and Joe are linked by the first syllables of their names, but one might also remember that Joanna is slightly mis-named, after her father's first wife, Juana (herself relatively dark-skinned as a Spanish woman). Overall, intriguing, but slightly more troubling than I remembered.

Requiem for a Nun by William Faulkner

This book is an odd hybrid of prose and drama. The prose fills in a lot of backstory on Yoknapatawpha County through the history of the courthouse and the jail. The drama is a play that continues the story of Sanctuary. While the return to Temple Drake's life is painful at best, and a wretchedly bad idea at worst, I think it's telling that Faulkner did choose to return. This renewed consideration of Temple implies that the "base idea" of Sanctuary was not just one conceived to make money, but one that continued to interest Faulkner in later years. Alternatively, one could suppose that Faulkner wanted to make some more money, but if that were the case, he wouldn't have had to include the prose sections.

Sanctuary by William Faulkner

This novel improved vastly from the first to the second reading. This time around I found more humor (especially from the Snopes side of things) and more humanity (in Popeye, of all people). While not as beautiful as Faulkner's better work, and definitely written to titillate (and make money), this book manages to confront questions of gender and sexuality in what is not a delicate, but is probably a thoughtful way.

As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner

This book repays re-reading insofar as it's gotten better, not worse, since the first time I read it, but it's neither Faulkner's best effort nor one of my favorites. Still, this time around, I paid particular attention to the tension between the epic and the mock-epic in Faulkner's tone, Darl's eerie omniscience in his narration, and Addie's infliction of trauma on Darl. Worth reading, and even more worth a re-read.

The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

Faulkner called this novel his most splendid failure; I am inclined to find it his most perfect book. At times the novel seems almost over-determined, and Faulkner has set up his story to cruelly highlight the losses of each of the three Compson brothers, even as their sister, Caddy, remains elusively absent from the text. Her absence was more painful and pronounced than ever, this time through.

Flags in the Dust by William Faulkner

This novel contains the roots of many of Faulkner's later Yoknapatawpha novels, especially Absalom, Absalom!, The Sound and the Fury, and The Unvanquished. The story of the Sartoris clan deals with the pressures of modernity and the decline of an old, Southern family (house). The structure of the novel was much more lucid this time around, and I liked the moments of repetition.