Light in August

Rating:
Summary: A Good Place to Start
Review: Faulkner is an intimidating writer; certainly nowhere moreso than at the very outset of his two most famous books, "The Sound & The Fury" and "Absalom, Absalom."

"Light in August", by contrast, begins in a comparatively friendly way, relating the story of the indefatiguable Lena Grove who has "come a fur piece" indeed in search of the man who made her pregnant (and then fled, post haste). Along the way, she ends up on the fringe of what is the main body of the story--the confused and confusing fate of Joe Christmas, a man of unestablishable racial heritage in Faulkner's fictional town of Jefferson, Mississippi. Along the way, we meet three of Faulkner's most famous minor characters--two religious maniacs, and a white supremacist--along with a host of locals, so that the town itself becomes a character in the novel. Central to the story is the relationship of Joe Christmas with Joanna Burden; a relationship mordantly confused by the simultaneous attraction and repulsion of Joe's uncertain racial background, as well as the additional issue of Joanna's masculine personality compared to Joe's sometimes passive nature. (Naturally, it is no accident that they are both named Jo. The last names Burden and Christmas are self-evidently suggestive enough, and the JC of Joe Christmas has prompted comparisons with Jesus, at least to the extent that both men die as a result of the sins of society.)

"Light in August" is not always a cakewalk though. Organized like concentric rings (the first and last chapter are about Lena, the second and next to last about Rev. Hightower, and all the rest of the inner "rings" concerning Joe Christmas until you get to the center chapter, or hub, the murder of Joanna), the two chapters on Rev. Hightower serve as "spokes" that connect Lena to the Joe narrative. The fit is rather casual, although one can draw the obvious conclusion, since the white father of Lena's child is named Brown.

The most difficult parts of the book are definitely the Rev. Hightower chapters. Not even Faulkner seems to have satisfactorily explained what he was getting at with them, and the truth is that it's a bit hard to really feel compelled to figure it out. My advice would be to just read it through, get what you can, and not worry about it's supposed to be. Because the rest of the book is definitely full of rewards and has some of Faulkner's most compelling prose. In particular, in the first few pages of the book, Faulkner imaginatively raises up the image of a mill with an especially good description, only to tear it down by the end of the paragraph by "the hookwormridden heirs at large" who dismantle the mill and carry it away for firewood; an image that does more to illustrate the transitory nature of the mill industry than a whole novel about the topic would.

It is certainly fair to say that the Lena Grove and Rev. Hightower elements of the novel are perhaps not satisfactorily integrated into it. And it is certainly fair to say that the Rev. Hightower portions are as unforgiveably abstruse as that notorious section of "The Bear". Even so, these are defects of a genius, and as such are still considerably more interesting than 99% of most of what's written. It also serves as a way to be introduced to Faulkner's demanding prose without also having the extra task of trying to decipher the plot or meaning of his two most famous novels.

The title supposedly refers to the quality of light in August, though it has also been suggested that Lena will be light in August after the birth of her child.

Rating:
Summary: A Good Place To Start Your Faulkner Studies
Review: Faulkner is often hailed by a great majority of the well-read as the patron saint of the American novel. The American novel, or more precisely the Southern Novel, differs in some important ways from its parent the European novel. The American novel is often daunting to those who have had little experience with serious literature. The Southern novel has a tendency to work the Aristotelian diagram to its most complex, while still playing by its rules. There is conflict and rising action, there is a moment of recognition, and there is a conclusion. But the dark world of the American Southern writer is often more complex and metaphoric than the world of earlier novelists like Cervantes or Flaubert. Their is a grief of and for the human condition embodied in the Southern novel that is more rich and painstakingly portrayed than in any other genre of fiction.
Faulkner is no exception. His novels are dark and verbose, embedded with a sense of doom. Though a few of the trials around which Faulkner arranges his novels may seem trivial to the modern reader it is the metphoric content of these trials that makes them more poigniant and infernal than any fiction being written today.
While 'A Light In August' is not without this sort of depth, it is not so heavily clouded with a complex format, or philosophical prose. A Light In August is principally about four characters. Faulkner weaves these characters past and through one another to sketch a world governed by fortune and the will of man.

Rating:
Summary: An excellent fusion of Southern literature & modern writing
Review: Faulkner is one of the the most important figures in modern literature and this novel certainly shows. It reads wonderfully, in contrast to some other modern writers such as Joyce and his friends, but has an amazing complexity. The characters are entirely unique and fascinating in there own right--both the central characters (Joe Christmas!) and the more peripheral characters. Everthing touched by Faulkner has a beautiful complexity and the novel resonates with lush and moving descriptions that have a rare and surprising relevance. This novel is one of my favorites.

Rating:
Summary: An interesting perspective on racism
Review: Faulkner may be one of the more difficult writers to read, but his works are well worth the effort. Light in August is no exception. It is a truly remarkable story. The 4 stars simply differentiate the best from the very best. Although this book is not as complicated as As I Lay Dying or The Sound and the Fury, it contains many of the same ingenious qualities regarding point of view and time.

The real difference here is that in those books, Faulkner was concerned with the consciousness of the individual characters themselves while here we are dealing with the relationship of the consciousness with the external forces of nature/nurture and the outside world.

This is a story about racism in the south. Although the story line itself covers only a few days, the book refers back two generations. Each of the main characters, Christmas, Hightower, and Burden are dominated by racism in different ways. It is racism and their reaction to it that brings them to their ultimate end. Most of the other characters and the town itself are also driven by the same demon. It boils down to the simplicity of white is good while black is evil with the shades in between being a transition from one to the other. When Christmas puts on the black boots of a negro, his transition from white to black is complete and he is then prepared to accept his fate.

The only character untouched by racism is the unwed and pregnant Lena. Interestingly the white father of her child who runs to escape his responsibility is called Brown(the one truly unlikable character in the book). Lena literally strolls into town and the story at the beginning and strolls out at the end, untouched by the happenings. Her ignorance of her personal moral shortcomings also insulate her from the moral shortcomings of a racist society.

Does this storyline make this novel outdated today? Absolutely not. It may be even more true today than then. Today people's reaction to racism or perceived racism is driven more by outside influences than internal feelings or experiences and those who ignore those influences are like Lena and go on with their lives not to be dominated by it.

Faulkner is one of the truly great American writers. I ignored him for 50 years and have now read 4 of his novels in the last 2 years. I've enjoyed them all.

Rating:
Summary: An august masterpiece
Review: Faulkner's "Light in August" is difficult to classify. Part intense character study, part Dixiedrama, part crime story, part commentary on race relations, it drives itself forward with inexorable energy, never stopping to let the reader catch his breath. It thrives on restlessness, desperation, confusion: One man, named Joe Christmas, has spent his whole life trying to escape his identity; another, named Lucas Burch, is trying to escape responsibility. It all culminates in what turns out to be one unforgettable August in Jefferson, Mississippi.

Lucas has gotten his girlfriend Lena Grove pregnant back in Alabama; he moves to Jefferson and gets a job at a planing mill, intending never to see her again. However, Lena manages to track him to Jefferson and arrives in town just in time to see the rising smoke from a burning house.

The house belongs to Miss Burden, a charitable spinster who had let Joe Christmas live in a cabin on her land. Christmas used to work with Lucas at the mill, but the two of them went into bootlegging and roomed together in the cabin. When it is discovered that Miss Burden was murdered before the fire broke out, Lucas accuses Christmas of the crime, hoping to collect a generous reward offered by Miss Burden's nephew.

Most of the novel is concerned with the events in Christmas's life that brought him to this predicament. Christmas, the offspring of an interracial relationship, has known nothing but rejection and ostracism since his birth. He was raised in an orphanage before being adopted by a strict religious couple; as a young adult he became a vagrant, drifting from town to town doing menial jobs, getting into trouble, always with a sullen chip on his shoulder, nursing enmity for the whites who consider him a "negro" when he reveals his ancestry.

Too dense to understand that Lucas doesn't want any part of her or the baby, Lena is willing to follow or search for him anywhere, accepting any help she can get from strangers. One of these strangers is another mill worker named Byron Bunch who falls in love with her. Byron has a friend named Reverend Hightower, a former Presbyterian minister who was evicted from his church because of suspected insanity. Byron wants to help Lena and consults Hightower about the right course of action, but his solicitousness is misdirected; he's like Faulkner's Mississippi manifestation of Don Quixote. Hightower, in turn, tries to be Byron's moral compass, but his own needle has gone haywire in its frantic search for magnetic North.

"Light in August" features a more straightforward narration as opposed to the experimental prose styles that characterized "The Sound and the Fury" and "As I Lay Dying." However, there are still some colorful narrative techniques, such as information delivered through monologues by minor characters outside of the main plot. The characters are so lively and the story is so absorbing that the obvious statement about bigotry -- how white people attribute the crimes of Christmas, who is outwardly a white man, to his "negro blood" -- seems almost standard issue. But the history of the old South provides so many facts with which Faulkner can support his point that he doesn't have to exaggerate the irony.

Rating:
Summary: Cosmos no one knows
Review: Faulkner's chief source of strength is overabundant imagination, literally spewing forth voices, images, characters and situations. "Light in August" is an example of his hypnotic power in creating a microcosm of hallucinatory intensity. This novel, in my opinion, surpasses his ( and critics's ) favorite "The Sound and the Fury", and, together with "Absalom" and "As I Lay Dying", is the center of faulknerian cosmos; cosmos, I'd say contrary to a famed critic Weinstein, no one not owns, but no one *knows*. While whole other novels could be written on Hightower, Lena or Joanna, Christmas indisputably remains the center of the novel; he is the cause of all action & tragedy, the center without which the novel would dissolve.

I'd say that Faulkner's main intention was to convey convulsions and victimization in the fierce struggle for self-identity. That's why he deliberately left unresolved the central ambiguity of the novel- Christmas' inability to overcome his maniacal racial obsession and his pushing self-confrontation to a deadly conclusion are signs that something was wrong with him, but also with the society which warped and infected him with self hatred. There is no substantial reason, apart from psychological, to believe that his racial status is based on anything more than socially induced projections. On the other hand- some nagging mystique hovers over him; though we frequently get the entrance into his consciousness, the whole matter with him remains grotesque and hyperbolical: his childhood history can be easily accepted and explained in Freudian terms; but his relentless, "unflagging" solipsism frets his whole life- one would expect either an ordinary vagabond-criminal career like Popeye or soul-searching struggle to solve the riddle of his ancestry or to dismiss the whole issue as irrelevant. The mystery is that he is too rich a character to be reduced to ordinary "sins" (fornication & bootlegging)-there is always a presence of some "greater" life he is a part of. I consider that the central Faulkner's intention with his main character was to put not only white racism, but what we could call extreme white racial con sciousness to the front plane. Another theme is Joe's alienation, his not knowing who he is and what to do with his life ( there is a resembla nce with Camus's Mersault in "Stranger"). Faulkner's main hero cannot escape circumstances, cannot find liberation in universal human values, cannot get rid of his obsession with racial identity. That's what Andre Gide meant when he said that Faulkner's heroes had no soul. Oh- they have. But theirs is a soul where passive, receptive consciousness suffers "invasion" and, ultimately, corrosion from the hypnotically powerful "outer" world; Faulkner's novels are transcripts of the flood of impressions drowning psyche of his heroes ( or hero-villains ) unable to resist the magnetic force of a stupefactive external nexus of events. Time and Fatality crush them all.

What I consider the most shattering theme in the novel ( apart from the incredibly forceful passage on Christmas's last passion & mutilation, reminiscent on Dionysus's dismemberment ) is Joe & Joanna "love story". On a more human level, what happens here is the most exalted and passionate love story in entire Faulkner's work. Of course, it lacks tenderness and fruitful perspective of life. It is overloaded with meandering perversities. But, in portrayal of a woman who desperately tries to make up for things life had not let her have, Faulkner achieved profound, and in his work unsurpassed, pathos and compassion..

Rating:
Summary: The Passion of the American "soul"
Review: Faulkner's chief source of strength is overabundant imagination, literally spewing forth voices, images, characters and situations. "Light in August" is an example of his hypnotic power in creating a microcosm of hallucinatory intensity. This novel, in my opinion, surpasses his ( and critics's ) favorite "The Sound and the Fury", and, together with "Absalom" and "As I Lay Dying", is the center of faulknerian cosmos; cosmos, I'd say contrary to a famed critic Weinstein, no one not owns, but no one *knows*. While whole other novels could be written on Hightower, Lena or Joanna, Christmas indisputably remains the center of the novel; he is the cause of all action & tragedy, the center without which the novel would dissolve.

I'd say that Faulkner's main intention was to convey convulsions and victimization in the fierce struggle for self-identity. That's why he deliberately left unresolved the central ambiguity of the novel- Christmas' inability to overcome his maniacal racial obsession and his pushing self-confrontation to a deadly conclusion are signs that something was wrong with him, but also with the society which warped and infected him with self hatred. There is no substantial reason, apart from psychological, to believe that his racial status is based on anything more than socially induced projections. On the other hand- some nagging mystique hovers over him; though we frequently get the entrance into his consciousness, the whole matter with him remains grotesque and hyperbolical: his childhood history can be easily accepted and explained in Freudian terms; but his relentless, "unflagging" solipsism frets his whole life- one would expect either an ordinary vagabond-criminal career like Popeye or soul-searching struggle to solve the riddle of his ancestry or to dismiss the whole issue as irrelevant. The mystery is that he is too rich a character to be reduced to ordinary "sins" (fornication & bootlegging)-there is always a presence of some "greater" life he is a part of. I consider that the central Faulkner's intention with his main character was to put not only white racism, but what we could call extreme white racial con sciousness to the front plane. Another theme is Joe's alienation, his not knowing who he is and what to do with his life ( there is a resembla nce with Camus's Mersault in "Stranger"). Faulkner's main hero cannot escape circumstances, cannot find liberation in universal human values, cannot get rid of his obsession with racial identity. That's what Andre Gide meant when he said that Faulkner's heroes had no soul. Oh- they have. But theirs is a soul where passive, receptive consciousness suffers "invasion" and, ultimately, corrosion from the hypnotically powerful "outer" world; Faulkner's novels are transcripts of the flood of impressions drowning psyche of his heroes ( or hero-villains ) unable to resist the magnetic force of a stupefactive external nexus of events. Time and Fatality crush them all.

What I consider the most shattering theme in the novel ( apart from the incredibly forceful passage on Christmas's last passion... reminiscent on Dionysus...) is Joe & Joanna "love story". On a more human level, what happens here is the most exalted and passionate love story in entire Faulkner's work. Of course, it lacks tenderness and fruitful perspective of life. It is overloaded with meandering perversities. But, in portrayal of a woman who desperately tries to make up for things life had not let her have, Faulkner achieved profound, and in his work unsurpassed, pathos and compassion..

Rating:
Summary: Major but Flawed
Review: Faulkner's was a self-indulgent, irresponsible, uneven gift. But at his best, as sometimes in these pages, he is a poet and rhapsodist without equal, and we continue to read him. As a rational thinker he was a nullity; he had no practical insights, no social program, no agendum, no framework that could serve as a starting point toward a solution of the problems he so tellingly describes. This became abundantly clear around the time of his winning the Nobel prize for literature, when he disappointed and exasperated followers who were looking to him for guidance as to a beacon. At least Faulkner had the self-knowledge to know that he did not know, did not in fact even want to know. For knowledge was inimical to his art, not-wanting-to-know a precondition for it. That, and bourbon. The bourbon released his inhibitions and silenced his inner editor (its voice had never been loud), unleashing a torrent of words, much of it bilge but some diamonds too. The result in Light in August is an exasperating novel that contains some thirty scattered pages of the highest poetic value and one potentially great character in the person of Joe Christmas. I say this as a man of 54 who has read the book five times in the course of his life, having been introduced to it in high school. Of course I didn't understand much of it then, but its inimitable style and voluptuous confusion have beckoned me back to it.

One is attracted above all by the descriptions of the simple processes of life in all their earthy particulars, the negro cabins, the town lights, the smells, everything rank and dark and elemental. Except for Joe Christmas and possibly Gail Hightower, the characters are all stereotypes, especially the women. Intellectually, there is little of substance in the novel, its appeal is entirely emotional. There is a clean, bracing no-nonsense description of hypermasculine elements and experiences to which Joe seems to gravitate naturally. For instance, of McEachern's harness strap ("clean, like the shoes, and it smelled like the man smelled: an odor of clean hard virile living leather") and Joe's rapt expression when being beaten by it; of Joe's preference for the clean, hard air of men. Given his latent homosexuality, one feels Joe would have done much better as a votary of the strap. But there was a problem. Biologically he was wired for pussy, and no mistake. Even as a child in the orphanage with the dietician he showed this susceptibility: "On that first day when he discovered the toothpaste in her room he had gone directly there, who had never heard of toothpaste either, as if he already knew that she would possess something of that nature and he would find it." He was still too young to understand what Charley was enjoying, but when he came of age he learned that it too, like the toothpaste, was not always sweet ("periodic filth between two moons suspended"). Unfortunately, Joe had no use for the rest of the package and never learned to like and appreciate women as people. This was the root of his troubles with women and by cutting him off from a source of life helped to seal his doom.

Several reviewers have stated that Joe had some negro blood. This is an error and is refuted by the evidence given in the book, although it suits Faulkner (if not Joe) to make Joe out as a possible negro and even to foist him off as one. I think Faulkner's device here, of using the negro as the ultimate symbol of the outcast, is a dreadful mistake, so serious as even to call into question his integrity as an artist and his understanding of his greatest character. Why? Partly because it is too easy, too cheap a shot. It's also overkill, since Joe's alienation has already been powerfully delineated by other, artistic means. But the main, the fatal objection, is that raising the N question does great damage by introducing confusion precisely where the novel demands clarity and restraint -- it entangles Joe's problem of identity with something completely separate and other. This other is a serious communal problem in its own right and certainly should not be abused as a symbol in the way that Faulkner abuses it (neither should the word Christmas). Faulkner is monkeying around with things bigger than himself, things he does not understand, in an attempt to endow his work with a greater significance than he was capable of developing on his own horsepower as a creative writer; this is what I mean when I say he is irresponsible. Joe's problem is in fact his alone. Damaged in childhood and partly cut off from the sources of life, he has to renew and rebuild himself to a degree not necessary to his complacent countrymen, who by virtue of their utter mediocrity are granted automatic membership in small, stultifying, inbred towns like the one in which the action unfolds. Faulkner's punishment is swift and certain -- it is precisely here in the book that he begins to stumble, to overreach for a grand synthesis that isn't there. The performance is increasingly over-the-top until eventually artistic control is lost. He doesn't seem to grasp the limitations of his creations, and the book becomes a stew. Faulkner was nothing if not confused, and here alas the confusion damages the work. Where was that inner editor?

After the murder, a building momentum sweeps the reader on to the end. However, there is no true catharsis and no real tragedy, only an overreaching for a grand synthesis that fails. The reader is struck by the feeling that something has gone wrong, and on going back finds he has been the victim of a swindle. The book closes with that sucker Byron Bunch in tow with his damaged goods in the form of Lena Grove and her bastard infant. Faulkner seems to be saying that in spite of some mistakes, life has returned to its immemorial path. But if this is salvation, one must be glad for Joe that he is safely dead and out of harm's way. Not everyone is cowed by the eternal feminine, and Joe himself would have no trouble giving the Lena Groves of the world what they deserve -- the back of his hand.

So after forty years and five attempts at this book, what of value can I take away? Perhaps some thirty pages of beautiful poetry, and the memory of Joe Christmas. He sought to rebuild and renew himself through the transformative power of hard physical labor and I would like to leave him there, continuing now and forever on the roads he freely chose for himself, that run "through yellow wheat fields waving beneath the fierce yellow days of labor and hard sleep in haystacks beneath the cold mad moon of September, and the brittle stars."

Rating:
Summary: It was pretty good. three and a half.
Review: Faulkner's writing style employs a lot of rambling, but sometimes it's a bit much. His writing is very full and fluid, except that it often borders on the long-winded and redundant. the character development was very nice, and I do recommend it, but I can't say I loved it. There were a lot of themes, but this book was more art than substance. (which is not necessarily bad.)

Rating:
Summary: Winds around, somewhat confusing, but a tale for sure
Review: Faulkner... well, you either love him, or you don't. I don't love him, but I can appreciate his work. His story winds around and around. Some of his sentences just go on and on and on. If you can get past all of that, this is a good story. The characters are well-drawn and the specifics of the story were well worth the read.