William Faulkner wrote I think four novels that took place outside of his fictional Yoknapatawpha County. Others take place in other places but explicitly refer back to the county as well. This is one of those novels. It’s also his first novel, and it’s also one of his few works that takes on the idea of flying, this and his novel Pylon, and a handful of stories. He was fascinating by flying and tried to join the US Army’s flying corps, the British flying corps, […]

If someone is ever interesting in getting into Faulkner, you could very well start with this book. I still think the best book to start with is actually As I Lay Dying because it primes you for Absalom, Absalom! and The Sound and the Fury, but this is a good introduction into the ideas and themes that carry throughout most of his work. It’s also, I think, the only book where he tackles the war head-on and specifically the war and the aftermath during Reconstruction. […]

My estimation for this book continues to grow as I read and re-read throughout my life. I first read it in college, and the complexity of Faulkner’s portrayal of interior lives and families was about all I could handle in one of his novels. I could also handle the stark portrayals of race and gender in something like Light in August as well. But this book which attempts to complexly show interiority of white and Black characters, how those characters interact not only within a […]