Review of The William Faulkner Audio Collection

The William Faulkner Audio Collection by William Faulkner
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Excellent readings of great stories. Just wanted to fill in some of the gaps in my Faulkner reading. Spotted Horses was the longest story here, and it was not disappointing. As it usually does, "A Rose for Emily" gave me the creeps. What a fantastic, creepy, weird story.

Faulkner is one of my favorite writers; that's not to say that I always like his content or his word choice, but that's neither here nor there, in my opinion. The man could write, stringing sentences together out of that not long ago time when things were not as pretty as they are now, making those sentences sing with repetition and other strategically placed rhetorical devices, causing those words to sing together in a wonderful dark beautiful sad Southern symphony.

Or something. If you like Faulkner, I recommend this audio collection, narrated by Debra Winger (remember her?), Keith Carradine, and Arliss Howard.

View all my reviews

Get yourself a copy, here:

Review of The Devil All the Time by Donald Ray Pollock

The Devil All the Time by Donald Ray Pollock
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Many times while reading The Devil All the Time I thought of Flannery O'Connor, especially her "A Good Man is Hard to Find." Also, a couple of times Joyce Carol Oates's short story, "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" came to mind. Both excellent stories, and I recommend them highly if you like The Devil All the Time. It's not so much in the way Pollock writes, he's not a copy cat, but has his own style and voice. It's more the content that reminds me of those other stories.
The novel follows the life of Arvin Russell: beginning with him and ending with him. The other characters, though initially seeming to have nothing to do with Arvin, all slowly become part of his story. I got the feeling of a drain swirling, with whatever is caught in that whirlpool moving ever closer to the center; in this case the center is Arvin. The characters are well written and the tension is pretty good and the chapters are fairly short: which means "I can get one more chapter in before I go to sleep." Then, four chapters later, I actually close the book. It kept me interested.
Pollock's novel is set in and around Knockemstiff, Ohio, which was new to me. And some of the description reminded me of Cormac McCarthy's novels set in Tennessee, especially the shorter ones, like Orchard Keeper, Outer Dark, and Child of God.
I stumbled onto Donald Ray Pollock during some research for another author. I found that Pollock had won several awards and honors for his work and decided I would read something by him. I was not disappointed.
If you like the stories mentioned above, or other stories, such as The Wettest County in the World by Matt Bondurant (recently adapted into the film Lawless), or Faulkner or McCarthy, then I would recommend The Devil All the Time. Now, that's not to say that if you don't like any of those I have mentioned, you won't like this book. The best I can say is: read it and see for yourself.


View all my reviews

Get your own copy, here:

Review of Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury

The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Faulkner was not afraid to break from mundane and predictable writing; that which later leads to obscurity. If you are looking for a nice point A-to-point B type story, this is not it. This leans more toward something like a mixture of his other work and Joyce/Woolf amalgamation. Yes, it has that in it (stream of consciousness writing). That said, it isn't Joyce or Woolf. It is Faulkner rollicking in the intoxicating power of words, at the height of his game. I love it because of that. Stick with it and you will see that there is a method to the madness; it is not for the faint of heart, to be sure (please excuse the cliché); it requires breaking out of the trained-laziness that much of contemporary literature and internet reading is breeding in us.

On that note, it is disheartening and nauseating to read about people who get bored because there wasn't tension in the previous two sentences, or because an author wants to take some time and really have a play with language. Editors, agents, publishers, writing gurus all spew the same thing: tension, tension, tension. It's as if the entire world is suffering from learned ADHD (not to take that disease lightly: I struggle with this condition myself, so I understand the pain it can cause; but, we cannot allow it to govern everything: i.e. make literature easier, more exciting, tension, tension, tension; but instead, we must make ourselves stick to something and why shouldn't that something be great works of literature?). If this is to change, we have to change it. Reading great literature requires sacrifice and sometimes it requires breaking out of the the blasé expectations of how literature "ought to be." "Oughts" are very ugly things....

Faulkner's writing, especially in this case, is more art than craft. Many of his other works are very tight, craft-wise (as is The Sound and the Fury; but it's tight in its own way: i.e. when there is what seems like a lot of jumping around, it really should not bother a contemporary reader, whose attention span has been hacked down to nearly nil by television and internet; this part of the book is very much like a movie: quickly switching from scene to scene, bringing into the reading the dizzying effect that the character is experiencing on the page).

The Sound and the Fury is one of Faulkner's more difficult books and didn't really catch on until after he had published Sanctuary. It isn't my favorite of those I've read of his works, but it is a strong book and has a lot to recommend it: chief being the way Faulkner plays with language and builds his characters.

Don't give up, it's worth the time you put into it.

View all my reviews
Get yourself a copy: