Goodness Faulkner!

A powerful depiction of racial tensions in the South during the early 1900s. Faulkner manages to curve out the consequences of identity crisis through Christmas, who is a racially mixed man that can't fit in with the black or white people because he doesn't truly know his parentage.

Faulkner strikingly paints the racism and discrimination against black people in the Southern U.S.A whilst creating well-rounded main characters such as Lena and Hightower and Christmas himself.

However, the black characters apart from Christmas, were cliché and nowhere as striking as the main characters.

All in all a strong work by an extraordinary talent that I'd recommend to anyone! ( )

49. Light in August by William Faulkner
Introduction: Richard H. Rovere (1950)
OPD: 1932
format: 454-page Modern Library hardcover from 1950
acquired: 2006 read: Jul 20 – Aug 8 time reading: 17:31, 2.3 mpp
rating: 4
genre/style: Classic novel theme: Faulkner
locations: Yoknapatawpha county, Mississippi
about the author: 1897-1962. American Noble Laureate who was born in New Albany, MS, and lived most of his life in Oxford, MS.

I'm a little spoiled after [The Sound and the Fury], and [As I Lay Dying], which were astounding to read this year for the first time. This more traditional narrative does some great stuff, but it's on a different, lower stage, occasionally lifting itself above that plain. Also sometimes making me very uncomfortable, as Faulkner's characterizations of racism in his county have no critical component to them.

My edition has an introduction by [[Richard H. Rovere]], where he tells us with Faulkner, "we do not so much observe experience as undergo it". I think that's a terrific way to capture Faulkner. But it's not a blind compliment. It means to get the rewards you also have suffer more, suffer tangibly, through the parts that may not work for you.

Light in August has a wonderful opening section on Lena, a pregnant teenager from Alabama, wandering into Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County, knowing no one, trusting everyone, and looking for the father of her baby. The book is her story in a way, except that Faulkner inserted within this the story of Joe Christmas, a restless orphan who suspects he is of mixed race. The two are loosely connected, but together they bring in several other stories, notably Byron Bunch, who falls in love with already pregnant Lena. Joe Brown, who helps Joe Christmas run liquor (this is the Prohibition era). Joanna Burden, the daughter of murdered abolitionists who spends her life working with African American communities across the south. And Gail Hightower, an ex-minister, ousted by his own church because of his wife's infidelity, now self-isolated in his own unkept home. Hightower's role seems curious but pointless, until suddenly we get his story, resulting in one of the best, and most moving chapters this book.

This is all just a mixed, imperfect bag. Lena is terrific. Joanna is also a wonderful character, and tragic. Hightower becomes a great character. But Joe Christmas does not. And yet, Christmas is most of the book. Strange choice. I can't help but feel that Faulkner gets lost in his narrative sometimes, and I think he just couldn't let Christmas go - not his past, present or future.

One of the themes in this book is how a character's heritage determines their fate. Hightower is doomed by his heritage of southern ministers and doctors, resistant to slavery in a slave state. Their personal principles condemning them. But Joe Christmas is doomed by his mixed blood. And that's an uncomfortable statement at any time period, including 1932. It's cruel. On the flip side is how Faulkner captures the kindness of black community. Joanna, who mainly interacts with the black community, has no fear of crime or any danger. No one would hurt her. Meanwhile we have a sheriff who beats information out innocent black men, and not only tolerates, but blesses a posse of armed white racists who will eventually carry out a kind of lynching. But the narrative hovers on the sheriff's interesting aspects and passes over the black characters as if they aren't worth the narrator's attention.

I'm not literary critic, and they like this book. I seemed to like it a lot when Joe Christmas wasn't the focus, especially the beginning and the end. But I didn't enjoy the Joe Christmas sections.

For those interested, I guess my advice is, have some patience. You may not like all aspects.

2024
https://www.librarything.com/topic/362165#8596799 ( )

This synopsis (which I find kind of hilarious and not quite accurate) is hand-written inside the back cover of my copy:

Joe Christmas, who, because of his heritage, finds it impossible to assimilate into either the black or white cultures. He is doomed to remain until his death, in the isolation of self brought on by social norms and mores.
( )

Published in 1932, this classic American southern gothic novel, set during Prohibition, follows the intersecting lives of five people not following a traditional path in life. They are viewed as outsiders because they do not adhere to social norms. Joe Christmas is an orphan who is abused as a child and believes he is of mixed racial ancestry but has no proof. He is searching for his place in the world. Lena Grove is in an unwed pregnant young woman looking for the father of her unborn child. Gail Hightower is a disgraced reverend who is plagued by his family’s past and his wife’s scandalous death. Joanna Burden, now living alone on a large property, is part of an abolitionist family that has been ostracized for years by their rural southern community. Byron Bunch is a nondescript, poor, hardworking, quiet man whom no one notices. The plot centers around a criminal act of murder and arson. Themes include the search for identity and how individuals are oppressed by racism, patriarchy, and religious zealotry.

The book is written in third person omniscient. It focuses on one character, then shifts to another. It is not chronological. The storyline goes forward and backward in time fluidly, catching the reader up on what has been missed after focusing closely on what happens to one specific character. It sounds convoluted but it really works well in keeping the reader’s interest. Faulkner uses unusual pairings of words, running them together to create vivid images.

This novel is mostly dark, violent, tragic, and sad, with only a faint flicker of hope. It requires a certain maturity to assimilate the metaphors, religious allegory, and complexities inherent in this story. I tried reading Faulkner when I was young, but most of it flew over my head. I think it requires a breadth of life experience to appreciate his work. I have not read his entire canon, but this book would be a better starting point than The Sound and the Fury or Absalom, Absalom! ( )

Monday mornings at the planing mill:
P.41:
"some of the other workers were family men and some were bachelors and they were of different ages and they led a catholic variety of lives, yet on Monday morning they all came to work with a kind of gravity, almost decorum. some of them were young, and they drank and gambled on Saturday night, and even went to Memphis now and then. yet on Monday morning they came quietly and soberly to work, in clean overalls and clean shirts, waiting quietly until the whistle blew and then going quietly to work, as though there were still something of Sabbath in the over lingering air which established a tenet that, no matter what a man had done with his sabbath, to come quiet and clean to work on Monday morning was no more than seemly and right to do."

There's a fire in Jackson, the day Lena arrives, looking for the father of her baby:
P.53:
" 'we could see it from the wagon before we got to town," she says. 'it's a right big fire.'
'it's a right big old house. It's been there a long time. don't nobody live in it but one lady, by herself. I reckon there are folks in this town will call it a judgment on her, even now. she is a Yankee. her folks come down here in the reconstruction, to stir up the n******. Two of them got killed doing it. They say she is still mixed up with the n******. visits them when they are sick, like they was white. won't have a cook because it would have to be a n***** cook. folks say she claims that n****** are the same as white folks. That's why folks don't never go out there. Except one.' "

Christmas grows up sheltered, knowing nothing about women:
P.184-5:
"but he and the other boys talked about girls. Perhaps some of them – the one who arranged with the negro girl that afternoon, for instance – knew. 'they all want to,' he told the others. 'but sometimes they can't.' the others did not know that. they did not know that all girls wanted to, let alone that there were times when they could not. They thought differently. but to admit that they did not know the latter would be to admit that they had not discovered the former. So they listened while the boy told them. 'it's something that happens to them once a month.' he described his idea of the physical ceremony. perhaps he knew. Anyway he was graphic enough, convincing enough. if he had tried to describe it as a mental state, something which he only believed, they would not have listened. but he drew a picture, physical, actual, to be discerned by the sense of smell and even of sight. It moved them: the temporary and abject helplessness of that which tantalized and frustrated desire; the smooth and Superior shape in which volition dwelled doomed to be at stated and inescapable intervals victims of periodical filth. that was how the boy told it, with the other five listening quietly, looking at one another, questioning and secret."

The first woman Christmas has sex with:
P.198:
"Usually they met outside, went somewhere else or just loitered on the way to where she lived. perhaps he believed up to the last that he had suggested it. then one night she did not meet him where he waited. he waited until the clock in the courthouse struck 12. Then he went on to where she lived. He had never done that before, so even then he could not have said that she had ever forbidden him to come there unless she was with him. but he went there that night, expecting to find the house dark and asleep. The house was dark, but it was not asleep. He knew that, that beyond the Dark Shades of her room people were not asleep and that she was not there alone. How he knew it he could not have said. neither would he admit what he knew. 'it's just max,' he thought. 'it's just max.' But he knew better. He knew that there was a man in the room with her."

Christmas runs away from home and kills his stepfather's horse ( )

2 livros o outro é da editora Abril /Controljornal

Reason read: alpha challenge (F). And it’s August so why not. I’ve owned this for awhile. I like Faulkner but this might not be my favorite. This one jumps around a bit and doesn’t overdo the SOC so much but it is still hard at times to follow because of the jumping back and forth and changing narrators. I don’t even know where to begin to review it. The main characters are a pregnant woman, a man who can pass as white but he believes he is of mixed ethnicity. These two people are connected by another man. Themes of race, class, religion abound. ( )

This may be "more accessible" than other Faulkner works, but it is still dense reading. I found the big chapter on Hightower needlessly bewildering: the father, the son, the grandson, all refer to multiple people. It takes some mapping out to get the point. On the other hand the evocation of inner live of Byron, Lena, and Hightower was solid. Christmas seems like both a demon and a victim of his circumstances who has failed to resolve his dilemma. I hope to find time to reread this soon as I think there is more to be learned about his prose style and his underlying world view. ( )

This is less "experimental" than Faulkner's earlier novels, The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying, more linear, more "comprehensible", perhaps. The story is told mainly by an omniscient narrator, rather than through the stream of consciousness, internal monologues of his tormented characters. Faulkner may have considered himself a "failed poet", but I believe his only failure was in not realizing that his poetry was never meant to be confined to traditional forms. The writing here is often profoundly poetic. The story is grim, being primarily concerned with the fate of an orphan and eventual murderer named Joe Christmas, who believes himself to be carrying the "taint" of Negro blood. As a child, he is abandoned by his family, tormented by other children, harassed by staff members at the orphanage, and eventually brought up under rigid religious constraints by his adoptive parents. None of this can come to good, of course. Although he could "pass" for white (and he may be white for all the factual evidence we are given to the contrary), he chooses to wave his assumed racial identity like a red flag in the face of everyone with whom he becomes close. He hates himself, he hates the rest of the human race, and in his view there is no salvation possible. His violent death is a foregone conclusion. Framing this tragic tale is the almost innocent "love story" of Lena Grove and Byron Bunch, while underlying it all are the back stories and obsessions of Christmas's victim, Joanna Burden, and his would-be savior, the Rev. Gail Hightower. An argument has been made that every principal character in this novel is pathological. There are certainly more archetypical outcasts in this story than you are likely to find in any other single work. It can seem a bit grotesque, in retrospect, but it does not feel like that in the active reading. I would give the book 5 full stars, except that every time I read it (at least 3 times in the last 40-some years) I get mired in Hightower's final chapter, stumbling over pronouns and generations, and never completely grasping the significance of his vision.
(Read a different edition Reviewed in 2013) ( )

After The Sound and the Fury, I found this much more straight forward but still challenging in places. Joe Christmas is part persecuted Christ figure and a partly demonic one. I thought his genesis from abused child to destructive adult was explained in stark terms by Faulkner. Other characters too, like the grotesque Doc Hines and the tragic Reverend Hightower were also unforgettable. It was a very compelling tale with a detailed psychology of characters aswell as being an entertaining storyline. I hope the work continues to be read as it gives such a strong picture of racial bigotry and religious fanaticism. On the stylistic level I loved the poetic compound words he used- it was so descriptive and evocative. The atmosphere of oppressive evil particularly in the section with Joe Christmas's lover, which is all done with the suggestion of perversity, stamped itself on my memory. I want to try all of Faulkner eventually. ( )

I read the edition published by Random House in 1950. Most of the writing was beautiful, but the book was frequently difficult to both follow and understand. However, Faulkner made many moral statements, and presented them by the actions of the characters. There was much pain in this book, and unfortunately much of it still exists. ( )

I'm still entertaining the idea of rereading this one one of these days...it was required reading my senior year, and most required reading that year never got a fighting chance. I decided instead to read Crime & Punishment on my own at the same time this was assigned. Crime & Punishment totally won. ( )

Lena Grove is looking for her man. The father of her unborn child. He told her that he’d go ahead, find a job and set up home, then he’d send for her. But he never did write. So she decided to go out and track him down. An unmarried pregnant woman walking the roads. But Lucas Burch, who doesn’t go by that name any longer, isn’t really a man to depend on. He has recently left, his job and is working selling whiskey with Joe Christmas. In Prohibition era America. Christmas is another enigma. He just showed up in town and started work at the mill one day. Never talked to anyone much. Never socialised. Then one day he stopped working there. His other business became much more profitable.

The book then tells us his back story. He is an orphan, he may have some African-American heritage, although he “passes” as white at first in the town.1 His past is not a happy one. And his future isn’t going to be happy either. He isn’t a nice character. Not many in the book are really. Lena I liked, but she didn’t have much chance to shine.

I really liked the first quarter of the novel. The language is beautiful, and while I didn’t really warm to any of the characters or the plot, nothing really put me off it. But then the constant racism and sexism and classism. It just got wearying. And I didn’t have anything to enjoy about it, or admire in it, and it was quite long. And the narrative style was all hoping about in time and in memory and from one character to another, none of whom I could invest in. And so much senseless violence, it makes you despair of people.

And I say that having read the likes of Beloved where there is even more violence and wrong-doing because it is about the whole institution of slavery. Yet there were characters you could feel for. I couldn’t feel for anyone in this book.

Not my cup of tea.

And yet I can appreciate a lot of what it was trying to say. So many outcasts. So many things wrong with society. I think it was just too bleak for me. ( )

A much better, more nuanced look at race than previous Faulkner novels, with much less modernist experimentation in style. The timeline is complex and interesting, and the characters have tragic stories. Feels very different from other Faulkner works. ( )

A much better, more nuanced look at race than previous Faulkner novels, with much less modernist experimentation in style. The timeline is complex and interesting, and the characters have tragic stories. Feels very different from other Faulkner works. ( )

A much better, more nuanced look at race than previous Faulkner novels, with much less modernist experimentation in style. The timeline is complex and interesting, and the characters have tragic stories. Feels very different from other Faulkner works. ( )

A much better, more nuanced look at race than previous Faulkner novels, with much less modernist experimentation in style. The timeline is complex and interesting, and the characters have tragic stories. Feels very different from other Faulkner works. ( )

Any work by William Faulkner is going to be heady, confuse sometimes, and be filled with long, descriptive prose. Light in August, one of Faulkner’s earlier works in Yoknapatawpha county, Mississippi, is no exception. In it, he compares the plight of the American negro in the early-twentieth-century South to the sufferings of Jesus Christ while interweaving several points-of-view into a coherent tale.

Joe Christmas (whose initials suggest that he is a Christ figure) is a restless African American male living a few generations after slavery. He lacks a purpose and a stable societal structure around him. While Faulkner does not suggest that returning to slavery is a worthy option, he does portray Jim-Crow-era racism in a vivid light. Although Joe Christmas ends up committing crimes, the reader cannot help but feel sorry for him and empathize with his alienation from the society around him. It’s no wonder that a man such as he – despised by the whites around him and expected to be inferior (much like the Suffering Servant in Second Isaiah or Jesus in Roman Palestine) – would not respect societal rules.

This story is reputedly one of the best novels in twentieth-century English and is structured as stories told from different people around one central narrative. The stories of Lena Grove and the Reverend Gail Hightower serve as bookends that intertwine with a central story of listless Joe Christmas. Each chapter opens skillfully without obvious identification of the prime actors. In fact, usually, the reader takes several pages to identify who the main actors are. This tactic, while sometimes frustrating, builds intrigue and engages the reader’s analytic functions. One has to infer the context not by characterization but by the setting in which the characters are placed. Brilliant, I say.

My only substantive criticism of the work is that the last chapter seems weak and contrived. It serves a bookend to wrap up the stories of Hightower and Grove. While such a denouement is necessary to the story, it could have been made stronger by twisting the narrative more. Instead, it seems disjointed as compared to the rest of the book. I kept waiting for a point when there was on. It seemed like a literary add-on whereas by virtue of its placement at the end, it should have more “punch.”

Nonetheless, this work – especially the final sections – is vintage Faulkner. The descriptions (of course, bound in wild, untamed sentences) note observations that only Faulkner would sense. While the shifting, dark nature of the prose seems like it would adapt well to a movie, the enigmatic style of the prose and especially of the dialogue (so much Faulkner’s style) would be a wreck in spoken form. It still stands as a beautiful piece of writing. I spent much of this book attempting to parse the prose into smaller sentences that normal writers would write. This heavily intellectual and taxing process of reading makes Faulkner’s works fun. Again, Light in August is no exception. This writing particularly appeals to readers interested in a Christ-story that is mentally engaging, does not preach, and strikes a style opposite to Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea. These words bring forth compassion for our fellows who are outcast while on their journey on earth.

( )

The master. ( )

Beautifully written, but it felt like it began to ramble toward the end. Perhaps a bit too much into the thought processes of each individual character for my tastes. ( )

Read this for a summer reading discussion at work. I read a decent amount of genre fiction, mysteries, etc, so when I do read real literature it really knocks me out. Such greatness, but also such great work that goes into spending the time and effort to really dive into a work as complex as this!

Both read and listened to this book (more of the latter). What a great job by the narrator Will Patton. ( )

Primer acercamiento a Faulkner y me deja con un gusto muy agradable. Narrativamente es el padre de muchos que vinieron después, sobre todo de los latinoamericanos del Boom. Personajes inolvidables y muy compejos emocional y psicológicmente, saltos temporales, historias aisladas que se van cruzando y poco a poco forman una trama brutal. Es una experiencia completa de lectura. Totalmente recomendado y un buen lugar para empezar con el autor. ( )

can't decide between cryptic brilliance or waste of time

can't decide between cryptic brilliance or waste of time

A brilliant novel, and perhaps Faulkner's most accessible. This is the one I recommend to people to start with, if they haven't read Faulkner before. ( )