Faulkner's Inheritance (Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Series) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 157806953X ISBN 13: 9781578069538

Publisher: University Press of Mississippi, 2007

Synopsis

Essays by Susan V. Donaldson, Lael Gold, Adam Gussow, Martin Kreiswirth, Jay Parini, Noel Polk, Judith L. Sensibar, Jon Smith, and Priscilla Wald

William Faulkner once said that the writer "collects his material all his life from everything he reads, from everything he listens to, everything he sees, and he stores that away in sort of a filing cabinet . . . in my case it's not anything near as neat as a filing case; it's more like a junk box." Faulkner tended to be quite casual about his influences. For example, he referred to the South as "not very important to me. I just happen to know it, and don't have time in one life to learn another one and write at the same time." His Christian background, according to him, was simply another tool he might pick up on one of his visits to "the lumber room" that would help him tell a story.

Sometimes he claimed he never read James Joyce's Ulysses or had never heard of Thomas Mann--writers he would elsewhere declare as "the two great men in my time." Sometimes he expressed annoyance at readers who found esoteric theory in his fiction, when all he wanted them to find was Faulkner: "I have never read [Freud]. Neither did Shakespeare. I doubt if Melville did either, and I'm sure Moby-Dick didn't."

Nevertheless, Faulkner's life was rich in what he did, saw, and read, and he seems to have remembered all of it and put it to use in his fiction. Faulkner's Inheritance is a collection of essays that examines the influences on Faulkner's fiction, including his own family history, Jim Crow laws, contemporary fashion, popular culture, and literature.

About this title

Book Description

Examinations of the many influences on Faulkner?s fiction

From the Publisher

This examination of the many literary influences on the Nobel Laureate

- Collects essays by prominent Faulkner scholars exploring the influences on his work and life

- Features essays by Susan V. Donaldson ( College of William and Mary); Lael Gold (University of California-Berkeley); Adam Gussow (University of Mississippi); Martin Kreiswirth (University of Western Ontario); Jay Parini (Middlebury College); Noel Polk (Mississippi State University); Judith L. Sensibar (Arizona State University); Jon Smith (University of Montevallo); and Priscilla Wald (Duke University).

- Features illustrations

- Continues the Faulkner & Yoknapatawpha Series

About this edition

• Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 157806953X
• ISBN 13: 9781578069538
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 192
• Editor: Urgo Joseph R., Abadie Ann J.