Possibly the first in an ongoing, very infrequent series of book reviews of William Faulkner novels.
Light In August is a good Faulkner novel but not my favorite. I am trying to do a reread of all the Faulkner I can, in an attempt to get a feel for the way he fills out the crust of a novel with āthe Faulknerian gel.ā Sometimes thereās too much filling. Forgive the mixed metaphors, but he also can be in one gear and going along really nicely but then he shifts gears into a character like Hightower and things get kind of gummed up. Thereās no questions his characters have levels and depths and murky areas we perhaps arenāt meant to get a clear view of. I read The Hamlet, then this, and I found I could get in the flow of the novels better when there is dialogue and character and plot is revealed that way. Iām still trying to readjust to the lengthy blocks of paragraphs elucidating (or plying with obscurities) the inner lives and consciousnesses of characters. I know thereās art deep in there, and profundity. I might be reading Faulkner right now for the comedy and the surface, which is probably barking up the wrong tree (more metaphorsā¦).
Light In August is known for, among other things, its portrayal of the racially mixed Joe Christmas who is doomed to be an outsider and a refugee from the law for a crime he didnāt commit (according to Hightower). He is put in the pathway of not one but two father figures who are harsh, evil taskmasters and racists: his adoptive, highly religious foster father and his grandfather who wants to see him lynched for the crimes against nature that Christmasā mother committed by sleeping with a black man.
The Hamlet read like a set of interlinked short stories, and I know from memory that Go Down, Moses has this similar feel. And in spite of what I said earlier about gear-shifting and abrupt changes, Light In August does feel more unified than those other novels. Itās just that the author seemed to need to give the deep biographies of every character crossing the stage, including (spoilers) the man who eventually shoots Christmas and defiles his corpse. I felt that the haunting of the past ā ever a concern of Faulknerās ā wore out their welcome at the seance in some instances. Itās a thick book. Itās very good. But next Iām going to try As I Lay Dying (a second reading) in hopes that the wagon will move down the dirt road a little bit faster.
I liked how Lena Grove opened and closed the novel with the somewhat comical observation that it would take months to move across the South from Alabama to Tennessee. Slow time for a slow novel. That being said, it was a good novel.