Short Story Collections
“I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.” —William Faulkner, on receiving the Nobel Prize Go Down, Moses is composed of seven interrelated stories, all of them set in Faulkner’s mythic Yoknapatawpha County. From a variety of perspectives, Faulkner examines the complex, changing relationships between blacks and whites, between man and nature, weaving a cohesive novel rich in implication and insight.
“I’m a failed poet. Maybe every novelist wants to write poetry first, finds he can’t and then tries the short story which is the most demanding form after poetry. And failing that, only then does he take up novel writing.” —William Faulkner Winner of the National Book Award Forty-two stories make up this magisterial collection by the writer who stands at the pinnacle of modern American fiction. Compressing an epic expanse of vision into hard and wounding narratives, Faulkner’s stories evoke the intimate textures of place, the deep strata of history and legend, and all the fear, brutality, and tenderness of the human condition. These tales are set not only in Yoknapatawpha County, but in Beverly Hills and in France during World War I. They are populated by such characters as the Faulknerian archetypes Flem Snopes and Quentin Compson, as well as by ordinary men and women who emerge so sharply and indelibly in these pages that they dwarf the protagonists of most novels.
Gavin Stevens, the wise student of crime and folkways of Mississippi's Yoknapatawpha county, plays the major role in these six stories of violence.
The hunter and the hunted are portrayed in four stories with preludes and an epilogue that link the individual narratives.
From the Modern Library’s new set of beautifully repackaged hardcover classics by William Faulkner—also available are Snopes, As I Lay Dying, The Sound and the Fury, Light in August, and Absalom, Absalom! William Faulkner was a master of the short story. Most of the pieces in this collection are drawn from the greatest period in his writing life, the fifteen or so years beginning in 1929, when he published The Sound and the Fury . They explore many of the themes found in the novels and feature characters of small-town Mississippi life that are uniquely Faulkner’s. In “A Rose for Emily,” the first of his stories to appear in a national magazine, a straightforward, neighborly narrator relates a tale of love, betrayal, and murder. The vicious family of the Snopes trilogy turns up in “Barn Burning,” about a son’s response to the activities of his arsonist father. And Jason and Caddy Compson, two other inhabitants of Faulkner’s mythical Yoknapatawpha County, are witnesses to the terrorizing of a pregnant black laundress in “That Evening Sun.” These and the other stories gathered here attest to the fact that Faulkner is, as Ralph Ellison so aptly noted, “the greatest artist the South has produced.” Including these stories: “Barn Burning” “Two Soldiers” “A Rose for Emily” “Dry September” “That Evening Sun” “Red Leaves” “Lo!” “Turnabout” “Honor” “There Was a Queen” “Mountain Victory” “Beyond” “Race at Morning”
In 1925 William Faulkner began his professional writing career in earnest while living in the French Quarter of New Orleans. He had published a volume of poetry ( The Marble Faun ), had written a few book reviews, and had contributed sketches to the University of Mississippi student newspaper. He had served a stint in the Royal Canadian Air Corps and while working in a New Haven bookstore had become acquainted with the wife of the writer Sherwood Anderson. In his first six months in New Orleans, where the Andersons were living, Faulkner made his initial foray into serious fiction writing. Here in one volume are the pieces he wrote while in the French Quarter. These were published locally in the Times-Picayune and in the Double Dealer . The pieces in New Orleans Sketches broadcast seeds that would take root in later works. In their themes and motifs these sketches and stories foreshadow the intense personal vision and style that would characterize Faulkner’s mature fiction. As his sketches take on parallels with Christian liturgy and as they portray such characters as an idiot boy similar to Benjy Compson, they reveal evidence of his early literary sophistication. In praise of New Orleans Sketches , Alfred Kazin wrote in the New York Times Book Review that “the interesting thing for us now, who can see in this book the outline of the writer Faulkner was to become, is that before he had published his first novel he had already determined certain main themes in his work.” In his trailblazing introduction, Carvel Collins often called “Faulkner’s best-informed critic,” illuminates the period when the sketches were written as the time that Faulkner was making the transition from poet to novelist. “For the reader of Faulkner,” Paul Engle wrote in the Chicago Tribune , “the book is indispensable. Its brilliant introduction . . . is full both of helpful information . . . and of fine insights.” “We gain something more than a glimpse of the mind of a young genius asserting his power against a partially indifferent environment,” states the Book Exchange (London). “The long introduction . . . must rank as a major literary contribution to our knowledge of an outstanding writer: perhaps the greatest of our times.”
Three different ways to approach Faulkner, each of them representative of his work as a whole. Includes "Spotted Horses," "Old Man," and his famous "The Bear."
Scarce First Random House Edition, 1960. Ex-library hardcover with dustjacket, usual ex-library markings, stamps etc.
One of 300 copies. Two stories that appeared in The New Orleans Times-Picayune in 1925. Appearing here for the first time in book form.
Forty-six stories never before published in any collection include twenty that were incorporated into longer works after magazine publication, eleven that appeared in periodicals, and fifteen never published at all
A collection of the essential works by William Faulkner, the American novelist and short story writer. "I'm a failed poet. Maybe every novelist wants to write poetry first, finds he can't and then tries the short story which is the most demanding form after poetry. And failing that, only then does he take up novel writing." - William Faulkner
Faulkner's prolific publication history began at the age of 16 with poems and sketches for the Ole Miss campus newspaper, The Mississippian . The author continued to contribute to the publication throughout his student days at the university as well as after dropping out. These early works of poetry and prose reflect his gift for keen observations and the growing refinement of his voice as one of the greatest of America's Southern authors. Eighteen of Faulkner's elegant pen-and-ink drawings provide an atmospheric complement to the selections. An Introduction by noted Faulkner scholar Carvel Collins is also included. Mississippi native William Faulkner (1897–1962) made his reputation with such psychologically intense and technically innovative novels as The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, and Light in August, and he received the 1949 Nobel Prize for Literature in addition to two Pulitzer Prizes. Faulkner is especially noted for the rich literary landscape he created in the fictional setting of Yoknapatawpha County, from which he drew characters, places, and themes that reappeared throughout his fiction.