A Reader's Guide to William Faulkner: The Novels (Reader's Guides)

Let's get one thing clear: you have to read Faulkner first. This book will help you clarify your reading experience of a very challenging author but it's no substitute for the experience itself.

The author explains Faulkner in a direct, straightforward, "Hemingway" style, risking reductiveness but undeniably expanding the potential audience for the book. Readers entirely new to Faulkner may benefit from the general introduction as well as the interpretations (basically sound, "widely-received" readings) of individual novels. Others may understandably take a pass on the first two sections in favor of the third, which provides a breakdown of the narrative order as well as the "actual" chronology of each of the chapters in Faulkner's novels. Included are scene descriptions based on compiled evidence from the chapter as well as verbal clues that alert the reader to scene shifts in a narrator's consciousness.A downside: Like most other commentators on Faulkner, Volpe often takes too seriously the seriousness of Faulkner. This is especially apparent in discussions of "Absalom, Absalom!" Unquestionably, it is apocalyptic, tragic, visionary narrative, but it is also supreme farce. Readers need to know that it's OK be bemused by the first chapter and to laugh out loud at the second. Critics have done a grave disservice to Faulkner by representing the novel with such unrelenting sobriety. (Reading Robert Browning's "Caliban Upon Setebos" might be the first step to a cure from much insensitivity to the playfulness of Faulkner's discourse.)Finally, the page references to Faulkner's novels have not been updated to agree with the current Vintage editions. And the decision to ignore all of the short fiction might have been more palatable had the author not cast aesthetic judgement upon it, in effect "ranking" it beneath the novels. Faulkner's short fiction is not only of the same high order as his long narratives but is inseparable from them.

The second and third sections of this book are invaluable to the serious reader or repeat teacher of Faulkner. Volpe has done all of the difficult sorting and taxonomy we are obliged to do before we can come to our own terms with a novel. Who is each narrator or character, what do the events look like in chronological order, etc. To have that kind of work done for you for such novels as "Absalom! Absalom!" and "The Sound and the Fury" is worth the price of admission.In the second section, each novel is given a reading, and while one may not always agree entirely, they almost invariably identify all the major features and events of the novels and are often closer to very careful glossed summaries than they are argumentative. If you've read a novel, these are comprehensive enough to return to you whatever you might have forgotten. If you haven't read a novel, they function very adequately to convey the essentials.The third section provides detailed chronologies of events for nine novels.If you're interested in making your own sense of the novels, Volpe's meticulous work will allow you to get down to business more quickly.