Light in August
One of Faulkner's most admired and accessible novels, "Light in August reveals the great American author at the height of his powers. Lena Grove's resolute search for the father of her unborn child begets a rich, poignant, and ultimately hopeful story of perseverance in the face of mortality. It also acquaints us with several of Faulkner's most unforgettable characters, including the Reverend Gail Hightower, who is plagued by visions of Confederate horsemen, and Joe Christmas, a ragged, itinerant soul obsessed with his mixed-race ancestry. Powerfully entwining these characters' stories, "Light in August vividly brings to life Faulkner's imaginary South, one of literature's great invented landscapes, in all of its impoverished, violent, unerringly fascinating glory. This edition reproduces the corrected text of "Light in August as established in 1985 by Noel Polk.
Stats for nerds
1recommend
2mentions
2people
2015–2025years
50% recommend50% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- I am biased towards fiction.
To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee. The timeless beauty and innocence of the book remains unparalleled.
Light in August, by William Faulkner. It is the opposite of the above, dealing with complex emotions. Faulkner's prose and characters are unmatched in their depth.
- Mainstream films (or works of art writ large) rarely trust their audience. Artists imbue their work with a lot of handholding for the audience's sake; if it's a need or a want on the audience's part, conscious or unwitting, who can say.
I don't particularly enjoy having my hand held through a narrative, but I know plenty of people who don't mind, don't care, or don't know. It's easier to "participate" as an audience by passively consuming the art than to engage with it actively, and no doubt such art is easier to produce.
Many people seemingly desire a contract to be enforced between artist and audience, where the artist constructs a narrative that is sensible and palatable and neat and tidy. Look at the reviews for Birdman (2014), for example. Plenty of people couldn't tolerate the ending, even if it thematically and tonally made sense.
Gone with the Wind (Mitchell, 1936) upholds such a contract; Light in August (Faulkner, 1932) does not. With no slight against the former, the latter could be used as an example of a work with a radical trust of its audience.
