The Essential Faulkner

Book excerpt: A collection of essential pieces by an American master • “A real contribution to the study of Faulkner’s work.”—Edmund Wilson In prose of biblical grandeur and feverish intensity, William Faulkner reconstructed the history of the American South as a tragic legend of courage and cruelty, gallantry and greed, futile nobility and obscene crimes. He set this legend in a small, minutely realized parallel universe that he called Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi. No single volume better conveys the scope of Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha legend than The Essential Faulkner. The book includes self-contained episodes from the novels The Sound and the Fury, Light in August, and Sanctuary; the stories “The Bear,” “Spotted Horses,” “A Rose for Emily,” and “Old Man,” among others; a map of Yoknapatawpha County and a chronology of the Compson family created by Faulkner especially for this edition; and the complete text of Faulkner’s 1950 address upon receiving the Nobel Prize in literature. Malcolm Cowley’s critical introduction was praised as “splendid” by Faulkner himself. Also includes: “A Justice” “The Courthouse” (from Requiem for a Nun) “Red Leaves” “Was” (from Go Down, Moses) “Raid” (from The Unvanquished) “Wash” “An Odor of Verbena” (from The Unvanquished) “That Evening Sun” “Ad Astra” “Dilsey” (from The Sound and the Fury) “Death Drag” “Uncle Bud and the Three Madams” (from Sanctuary) “Percy Grimm” (from Light in August) “Delta Autumn” (from Go Down, Moses) “The Jail” (from Requiem for a Nun)