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| View Larger Image | Light in August (The Corrected Text)
by William Faulkner
by Joseph Blotner, Noel Polk
| | List Price: | $13.95 | | Price: | $11.16 | | You Save: | $2.79 (20%) |  | | Available: | Usually ships in 24 hours | | | | | Sales Rank: | 6798 | | Studio: | Vintage International/Random House | | | Binding: | Paperback | | Number Of Pages: | 528 | | Publication Date: | October 01, 1990 | | Publisher: | Vintage International/Random House |
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EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
Joe Christmas does not know whether he is black or white. Faulkner makes of Joe's tragedy a powerful indictment of racism; at the same time Joe's life is a study of the divided self and becomes a symbol of 20th century man. |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 76 reviews)
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Light in August (The Corrected Text) 
The American paperback editions of Faulkner published by Vintage are far more readable and user-friendly than the British editions due to font size, layout, page size, gutter width, paper and general design. This is a wonderful book which should be a pleasure to read. My one concern, and I am not alone in expressing it, is that the 'corrected' text is to some extent a reversion to a draft that Faulkner himself (as I understand it) agreed to change in the light of editorial suggestions which, in many cases, he accepted as improvements. To correct back to an editorial stage before the involvement of an editor is an odd editorial practice and, when a writer has been as tactfully and agreeably edited as Faulkner, rather a doubtful one. A parallel text, or a fuller description of the logic of the Polk emendation, would have been useful, for the general as well as the specialist reader. All the same, a wonderful edition to read.
July 27, 2008 | |
Faulkner's Best (One of them, anyway)
This "Absalom,Absalom", and "Go Down, Moses" are my favorite novels by Faulkner. "Light in August" has the advantage of being his most readable book. I will let you in on a little secret, though. I have found that Faulkner is much better to LISTEN to than read straight. I'd read several of his books when I discovered my local library had a number of tapes and CDs of his work. Those read by Mark Hammer are in a class by themselves. Not only does he have the proper accent, but his pauses in Faulkner's often long,involved sentences show a great familiarity with the work and add a strong element that make his words sparkle like jewels with brilliance and an uncanny insight into the characters he displays for us. After that, reading Faulkner is never the same.
May 14, 2008 | |
My first Faulkner 
I found my first Faulkner a bit too disquieting to be rated as a 5-star classic. Faulkner's flashback-filled style of writing in "Light in August" goes backwards as much as forwards, and the first major character introduced and followed through the first third of the book disappears for the middle third and most of the last third. While Faulkner makes Lena Grove likable and unforgettably strong in her straightforward simplicity, the character Joe Christmas who is introduced and dominates the middle third seems too over-the-top to be believed; he ends up reading more like a literary type than a real character.
Faulkner by toning down Joe Christmas and focusing on Lena Grove could have written a heartwarming story about the girl who redeems her youthful mistake to become a strong Southern women in, in spite of, and even because of her heritage and surroundings. But that wouldn't be the story Faulkner has in mind--every character has flaws, and one's heritage and surroundings may be greater than even the most moral character can overcome. The best one can hope, as does Lena by the end of the story, is to survive by moving on (as another great Southern writer would pen, you can't go home again).
The story is heightened and perhaps driven by its contrasts--set in the Depression-era deep South, townsfolk live uneasily alongside country folk, whites share geography but can scarcely be said to live beside blacks, cars and mule-drawn wagons share the roads, houses are lit by kerosene and electricity, the occasional open-minded unprejudiced citizen (universally hated and condemned by their neighbors) lives uneasily alongside and amidst the virulently racist majority and the atmosphere that breeds this backwards-looking, closed, feudal society.
I can tell from this first reading that I concur with the majority of literary critics that Faulkner is one of the great writers of the last century. I respect him, I'm just not sure I can say I found the story likable. The Amazon-suggested tag "southern discomfort" captures the essence of this book succinctly.
March 29, 2008 | |
Wow I did not like this book 
A friend recommended this to me. I cannot belive how wrong he was about it. First off, I found it extremely annoying and confusing that there were several characters who had the same or similar names; it was kinda hard to keep track of who was who or what was going on. Second, and my main problem with the book is that I just could not relate with or even like one character in this book. I can't connect with a book if I hate every single character. Overall, this book was just dismal, although its one redeeming quality was its narratives about racism and the differences between whites and blacks. That is the only thing keeping me from giving this a one star review.
December 19, 2007 | |
Eleven Days In August
This book has been touted as being Faulkner's most accessible. Although a bit easier to follow having less stream of consciousness it still requires some patience and appreciation for nuance. Further, if you take the story at face value you will be missing out on 90% of what it has to offer. The themes run deep and the characters symbolic. I'd recommend reading exerpts from One Matchless Time by Jay Parini who provides some good insights into Faulkner's life and his writings. I'd also read the review written by A.Mason (below). This was one of the more violent and sexual books that I have read of Faulkner. Although I was surprised, I was in awe of his tact and style in portraying these events in a subtly gruesome way that takes the reader off gaurd. The climactic scene of Joe Christmas's undoing was Faulkner at his best. I'd recommend this book to anyone who loves good writing and is fascinated with the tragedy of the post-Civil War southerner.
August 12, 2007 | |
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