Light in August - William Faulkner

[melrose226]

Prior to our beginning this book, my American Literature professor gave us all a nearly half hour lecture on how terribly difficult this book was going to be to read. That was not the most inspiring thing to hear, but I still launched into Light in August hoping that I would both understand and enjoy the book, at least in parts, and in that I was not disappointed.

On the subject of the difficulty of the read, I honestly didn't have that big a challenge with comprehension. Perhaps this is because I was raised in the Southeastern United States and the Southern dialect and phrasing is perfectly natural to me, or perhaps it is because I am blessed with some profound ability to understand literature, or perhaps it is because our professor severely underestimated the class, or perhaps it is because I missed massive key points and really didn't understand the book as well as I thought I did. Some of these choices seem a lot more likely than others, and perhaps it is a combination of all of the above, although I'd like to think I understood at least the general theme of the novel, and certainly grasped the plot fairly well.

On to my enjoyment of Light in August: Speaking strictly on the plot line: I really liked this book. It wasn't perfect, and weird and sometimes unsettling things happened, as they tend to do in classic literature (at least the classic literature I always seem to be reading), but overall I liked the way it went and the things that happened, and I felt like there was both a point to the story and a satisfactory ending, two things that are often missing in classic lit, at least from my perspective. The characters were a fairly even mix of incredibly awful and vaguely likable, and there were two characters, Lena and Byron, who I actually really liked and felt for, although many of my classmates seem to have differing views on their motivations and overall likability. Still, I found myself rooting for them to be happy, and when I have characters to root for, I generally, if not always, find myself enjoying whatever I'm reading.

Finally, I feel as though I should include in this review the fact that I fully intend to read other Faulkner works as soon as the opportunity presents itself. For me to seek out "Literature" (with a capital L!) is a fairly big deal, since it is not generally the kind of thing I read in my spare time, so that in and of itself should be an indication of how generally impressed I was by Light in August.

Rating: 4.5 Stars (And I seriously debated giving it 5)

[Max Tyrone]

I love this novel. I think someone wrote once that as much as Faulkner seemed concerned with the South, what he truly held dear was the human heart. This strongly fits his work. I find at the heart of this novel a man dreadfully addled by what he is and a woman dealing with the same problem. It took a town to get them into motion, and at the end, I'm not sure if either of them found what they were looking for. Maybe Lena, but that would be a bit shallow to assume. As for Christmas, his tragedy still haunts me.

I recommend reading more Faulkner. I say this knowing I need to read more Faulkner haha! I recommend As I Lay Dying before The Sound and the Fury (the other two I've read of him). The former is a bit easier to follow than the latter, but Light in August is probably the easiest to follow.

Good review!

[DennisK]

I have been busy taking advantage of the great weather my area has been getting; so I've been neglecting my reading in preference to my projects outside. But still, I manage to get a few pages read before falling asleep. I've been reading William Faulkner's Light in August, and I felt the need to share my experience by using an excerpt from his book as an example.

Hightower is a preacher who was rejected by his congregation. Instead of moving on to another parish, he moved into a house that was within ear-shout of his former church. Each Sunday, he would sit by his window and listen to the music issuing from the church. In this passage, he is eavesdropping on a Sunday evening prayer meeting:
Sunday evening prayer meeting. It has seemed to him always that at that hour man approaches nearest of all to God, nearer than at any other hour of all the seven days. Then alone, of all church gatherings, is there something of that peace which is the promise and the end of the Church.
My reading is interrupted at this point. What does he mean, “the end of the Church”? To me, it is a clause that came from somewhere out of the blue, and it makes no sense. What does he mean, “the end of the Church”? Is he referring to the end of the week? He capitalized “Church”. I don't get it. I reread that section of the book a number of times with no success. I'm feeling irritated with Faulkner, but after a while I continue to read further from that passage:
The mind and the heart purged then, if it is ever to be; the week and its whatever disasters finished and summed and expiated by the stern and formal fury of the morning service; the next week and its whatever disasters not yet born, the heart quiet now for a little while beneath the cool soft blowing of faith and hope.
Now my irritation with Faulkner is interrupted. Gosh, I say to myself. That was beautiful! That is more poetry than prose. For me, this example is typical of Faulkner. Reading Faulkner is work – I experience a lot of interruptions just trying to understand, and then my reading is interrupted further simply because I want to linger at beauty that seems to blossom in the form of words.