Light in August with numerous characters and plots seems to be always opening, boundary crossing, and fighting shy of borders. Lena Grove, Joe Christmas, Gail Hightower, Byron Bunch, and Joanna Burden are only a few of the people that populate this expansive novel. The different plot lines intersect at points and diverge again with little novelistic responsibility. I don't say that as a criticism because I think Faulkner was trying to cross the literary boundary of the novel and arrest life here and there and present it fresh, surprised to find itself captured on paper. The main characters in Light in August are outsiders all alienated from society. One of these outsiders the Reverend Gail Hightower has a tragic obsession with his Grandfather a figure Hightower enshrines with all the romantic heroic imagery of the doomed, chivalrous exploits of the Civil war. His Grandfather had been involved in a successful raid on Grant's stores in Jefferson and later on a looting expedition he was shot by a householder in a henhouse while stealing a chicken. Hightower manages to keep that latter detail of his Grandfather's vulgar demise blocked from his romantic vision of raids and galloping cavalry. Fresh out of seminary Hightower gets himself posted as minister to a church in Jefferson the scene of his Grandfather's exploits. Hightower's vision becomes inextricably part of his religion. His sermons are a violent mixture of christian dogma and martial glory. "up there in the pulpit with his hands flying all around him and the dogma he was supposed to preach all full of galloping cavalry and defeat and glory" Hightower finally understands that he had neglected his wife and his life for a romantic vision of the past. In this epiphany Hightower sees a vision of the church. "That which is destroying the Church is not the outward groping of those within it nor the inward groping of those without, but the professionals who control it and who have removed the bells from its steeples. He seems to see them, endless, without order, empty, symbolical, bleak, skypointed not with ecstasy or passion but in adjuration, threat, and doom. He seems to see the churches of the world like a rampart, like one of those barricades of the middle ages planted with dead and sharpened stakes, against truth and that peace in which to sin and be forgiven which is the life of man." In part of his epiphanic revelation Hightower views his time as a minister. "a charlatan preaching worse than heresy, in utter disregard of that whose very stage he preempted, offering instead of the crucified shape of pity and love, a swaggering and unchastened bravo killed with a shotgun in a peaceful henhouse.." Despite his tragic flaws I liked the Reverend Hightower and leave the novel and him with "the wild bugles and the clashing sabres and the dying thunder of hooves."

Light in August with numerous characters and plots seems to be always opening, boundary crossing, and fighting shy of borders. Lena Grove, Joe Christmas, Gail Hightower, Byron Bunch, and Joanna Burden are only a few of the people that populate this expansive novel. The different plot lines intersect at points and diverge again with little novelistic responsibility. I don't say that as a criticism because I think Faulkner was trying to cross the literary boundary of the novel and arrest life here and there and present it fresh, surprised to find itself captured on paper. The main characters in Light in August are outsiders all alienated from society. One of these outsiders the Reverend Gail Hightower is my favorite character in Light in August and in all of Faulkner because of his tragic obsession with his Grandfather a figure Hightower enshrines with all the romantic heroic imagery of the doomed, chivalrous exploits of the Civil war. His Grandfather had been involved in a successful raid on Grant's stores in Jefferson and later on a looting expedition he was shot by a householder in a henhouse while stealing a chicken. Hightower manages to keep that latter detail of his Grandfather's vulgar demise blocked from his romantic vision of raids and galloping cavalry. Fresh out of seminary Hightower gets himself posted as minister to a church in Jefferson the scene of his Grandfather's exploits. Hightower's vision becomes inextricably part of his religion. His sermons are a violent mixture of christian dogma and martial glory. "up there in the pulpit with his hands flying all around him and the dogma he was supposed to preach all full of galloping cavalry and defeat and glory" Hightower finally understands that he had neglected his wife and his life for a romantic vision of the past. In this epiphany Hightower sees a vision of the church. "That which is destroying the Church is not the outward groping of those within it nor the inward groping of those without, but the professionals who control it and who have removed the bells from its steeples. He seems to see them, endless, without order, empty, symbolical, bleak, skypointed not with ecstasy or passion but in adjuration, threat, and doom. He seems to see the churches of the world like a rampart, like one of those barricades of the middle ages planted with dead and sharpened stakes, against truth and that peace in which to sin and be forgiven which is the life of man." In part of his epiphanic revelation Hightower views his time as a minister. "a charlatan preaching worse than heresy, in utter disregard of that whose very stage he preempted, offering instead of the crucified shape of pity and love, a swaggering and unchastened bravo killed with a shotgun in a peaceful henhouse.." Despite his tragic flaws I liked the Reverend Hightower and leave the novel and him with "the wild bugles and the clashing sabres and the dying thunder of hooves."

Let us heedfully peer at this passage describing Lena Grove on her journey westward through rolling hills toward Jefferson at the beginning of Light in August:
"Behind her the four weeks, the evocation of the word far, is a peaceful corridor paved with unflagging and tranquil faith and people by kind and nameless faces and voices: Lucas Burch? I don't know. I don't know of anybody by that name around here. This road? It goes to Pocahontas. He might be there. It's possible. Here's a wagon that's going a piece of the way. It will take you that far: backrolling now behind her a long monotonous succession of peaceful and undeviating changes from day to dark and dark to day again, through which she advanced in identical and anonymous and deliberate wagons as though through a succession of creak-wheeled and limp-eared avatars, like something moving forever and without progress across an urn."
When questioned about the origin of the title Light in August Faulkner tells us "In August in Mississippi there's a few days somewhere about the middle of the month when suddenly there's a foretaste of fall, it's cool, there's a lambence, a luminous quality to the light, as though it came not from just today but from back in the old classic times. It might have fauns and satyrs and the gods and that's all that title meant, it was just to me a pleasant evocative title because it reminded me of that time, of a luminosity older than our Christian civilization. Maybe the connection was with Lena Grove, who had something of that pagan quality, of being able to assume everything . . . And that was all that meant, just that luminous lambent quality of an older light than ours."
Of course the ancient gods used to be paid homage in groves so Lena's last name is accounted for along with the book's title with that "older luminosity".
Light in August with numerous characters and plots seems to be always opening, boundary crossing, and fighting shy of borders. Lena Grove, Joe Christmas, Gail Hightower, Byron Bunch, and Joanna Burden are only a few of the people that populate this expansive novel. The different plot lines intersect at points and diverge again with little novelistic responsibility. I don't say that as a criticism because I think Faulkner was trying to cross the literary boundary of the novel and arrest life here and there and present it on paper for the reader's perusal. Most novels obey literary forms life does not. Before Joe Christmas's stigmata, five shots through a wooden table, he experiences a moment of oneness. "It is just dawn, daylight: that gray and lonely suspension filled with the peaceful and tentative waking of birds. The air, inbreathed, is like spring water. He breathes deep and slow, feeling with each breath himself diffuse in the neutral grayness, becoming one with loneliness and quiet that has never known fury or despair. 'That was all I wanted,' he thinks, in a quiet and slow amazement. 'That was all, for thirty years. That didn't seem to be a whole lot to ask in thirty years."
By the close of this novel, with the story still opening out, there is a sense of a pervasive compassion in the air adding to the older luminosity that is Light in August.

Let us heedfully peer at this passage describing Lena Grove on her journey westward through rolling hills toward Jefferson at the beginning of Light in August:
"Behind her the four weeks, the evocation of the word far, is a peaceful corridor paved with unflagging and tranquil faith and people by kind and nameless faces and voices: Lucas Burch? I don't know. I don't know of anybody by that name around here. This road? It goes to Pocahontas. He might be there. It's possible. Here's a wagon that's going a piece of the way. It will take you that far: backrolling now behind her a long monotonous succession of peaceful and undeviating changes from day to dark and dark to day again, through which she advanced in identical and anonymous and deliberate wagons as though through a succession of creak-wheeled and limp-eared avatars, like something moving forever and without progress across an urn."
When questioned about the origin of the title Light in August Faulkner tells us "In August in Mississippi there's a few days somewhere about the middle of the month when suddenly there's a foretaste of fall, it's cool, there's a lambence, a luminous quality to the light, as though it came not from just today but from back in the old classic times. It might have fauns and satyrs and the gods and that's all that title meant, it was just to me a pleasant evocative title because it reminded me of that time, of a luminosity older than our Christian civilization. Maybe the connection was with Lena Grove, who had something of that pagan quality, of being able to assume everything . . . And that was all that meant, just that luminous lambent quality of an older light than ours."
Of course the ancient gods used to be paid homage in groves so Lena's last name is accounted for along with the book's title with that "older luminosity".
Light in August with numerous characters and plots seems to be always opening, boundary crossing, and fighting shy of borders. Lena Grove, Joe Christmas, Gail Hightower, and Joanna Burden are only a few of the people that populate this expansive novel. The different plot lines intersect at points and diverge again with little novelistic responsibility. I don't say that as a criticism because I think Faulkner was trying to cross the literary boundary of the novel and arrest life here and there and present it on paper for the reader's perusal. Most novels obey literary forms life does not. By the close of this novel, with the story still opening out, there is a sense of a generous compassion in the air adding to the older luminosity that is Light in August.

The American paperback editions of Faulkner published by Vintage are far more readable and user-friendly than the British editions due to font size, layout, page size, gutter width, paper and general design. This is a wonderful book which should be a pleasure to read. My one concern, and I am not alone in expressing it, is that the 'corrected' text is to some extent a reversion to a draft that Faulkner himself (as I understand it) agreed to change in the light of editorial suggestions which, in many cases, he accepted as improvements. To correct back to an editorial stage before the involvement of an editor is an odd editorial practice and, when a writer has been as tactfully and agreeably edited as Faulkner, rather a doubtful one. A parallel text, or a fuller description of the logic of the Polk emendation, would have been useful, for the general as well as the specialist reader. All the same, a wonderful edition to read.

This "Absalom,Absalom", and "Go Down, Moses" are my favorite novels by Faulkner. "Light in August" has the advantage of being his most readable book. I will let you in on a little secret, though. I have found that Faulkner is much better to LISTEN to than read straight. I'd read several of his books when I discovered my local library had a number of tapes and CDs of his work. Those read by Mark Hammer are in a class by themselves. Not only does he have the proper accent, but his pauses in Faulkner's often long,involved sentences show a great familiarity with the work and add a strong element that make his words sparkle like jewels with brilliance and an uncanny insight into the characters he displays for us. After that, reading Faulkner is never the same.

I found my first Faulkner a bit too disquieting to be rated as a 5-star classic. Faulkner's flashback-filled style of writing in "Light in August" goes backwards as much as forwards, and the first major character introduced and followed through the first third of the book disappears for the middle third and most of the last third. While Faulkner makes Lena Grove likable and unforgettably strong in her straightforward simplicity, the character Joe Christmas who is introduced and dominates the middle third seems too over-the-top to be believed; he ends up reading more like a literary type than a real character.

Faulkner by toning down Joe Christmas and focusing on Lena Grove could have written a heartwarming story about the girl who redeems her youthful mistake to become a strong Southern women in, in spite of, and even because of her heritage and surroundings. But that wouldn't be the story Faulkner has in mind--every character has flaws, and one's heritage and surroundings may be greater than even the most moral character can overcome. The best one can hope, as does Lena by the end of the story, is to survive by moving on (as another great Southern writer would pen, you can't go home again).

The story is heightened and perhaps driven by its contrasts--set in the Depression-era deep South, townsfolk live uneasily alongside country folk, whites share geography but can scarcely be said to live beside blacks, cars and mule-drawn wagons share the roads, houses are lit by kerosene and electricity, the occasional open-minded unprejudiced citizen (universally hated and condemned by their neighbors) lives uneasily alongside and amidst the virulently racist majority and the atmosphere that breeds this backwards-looking, closed, feudal society.

I can tell from this first reading that I concur with the majority of literary critics that Faulkner is one of the great writers of the last century. I respect him, I'm just not sure I can say I found the story likable. The Amazon-suggested tag "southern discomfort" captures the essence of this book succinctly.

A friend recommended this to me. I cannot belive how wrong he was about it. First off, I found it extremely annoying and confusing that there were several characters who had the same or similar names; it was kinda hard to keep track of who was who or what was going on. Second, and my main problem with the book is that I just could not relate with or even like one character in this book. I can't connect with a book if I hate every single character. Overall, this book was just dismal, although its one redeeming quality was its narratives about racism and the differences between whites and blacks. That is the only thing keeping me from giving this a one star review.

A friend recommended this to me. I cannot belive how wrong he was about it. First off, I found it extremely annoying and confusing that there were several characters who had the same or similar names; it was kinda hard to keep track of who was who or what was going on. Second, and my main problem with the book is that I just could not relate with or even like one character in this book. I can't connect with a book if I hate every single character. Overall, this book was just dismal, although its one redeeming quality was its narratives about racism and the differences between whites and blacks. That is the only thing keeping me from giving this a one star review.

This book has been touted as being Faulkner's most accessible. Although a bit easier to follow having less stream of consciousness it still requires some patience and appreciation for nuance. Further, if you take the story at face value you will be missing out on 90% of what it has to offer. The themes run deep and the characters symbolic. I'd recommend reading exerpts from One Matchless Time by Jay Parini who provides some good insights into Faulkner's life and his writings. I'd also read the review written by A.Mason (below). This was one of the more violent and sexual books that I have read of Faulkner. Although I was surprised, I was in awe of his tact and style in portraying these events in a subtly gruesome way that takes the reader off gaurd. The climactic scene of Joe Christmas's undoing was Faulkner at his best. I'd recommend this book to anyone who loves good writing and is fascinated with the tragedy of the post-Civil War southerner.

This book was my introduction to Faulkner, based on a suggestion by my well-read aunt.

It is certainly possible to recognize the skill of a writer without necessarily finding the story he tells endearing. That was the case here. Faulkner's prose is often like poetry and his use of the language is unquestionably masterful. He shows his talent not so much in the words he uses - the vocabulary is actually quite plain - but rather in the way he combines those words. Simple adjectives are used to create compelling scenes and even more compelling characters.

Faulkner strikes me as the consummate observer. He doesn't moralize, he doesn't become overwrought, he doesn't offer judgement. He simply observes the way things are, not the way we want them to be, and there is a sense that we are being propelled towards not tragegy but simply reality in his writing.

Light in August is ostensibly about Joe Christmas, a headstrong and mysterious drifter in the 1920s deep South, but surprisingly we aren't introduced to him until several chapters into the book. The book chronicles the intersecting people and events that surround Joe Christmas in Faulkner's fictional town of Jefferson, Mississippi. However, the author introduces us to so many other non-incidental characters that it is often hard to separate the leading from the supporting cast.

If I had to describe the characters in this book in a single word it would be "trapped." There is an overwhelming sense of stuck-ness we get in observing their lives. One does not necessarily get the impression that they saw themselves as stuck and hopeless - indeed many seemed to exist in frustrating ignorance of reality. But for the outside observer to whom Faulkner tells this story using his rich narrative, it is obvious that to a person, every character in this book is indeed on a treadmill. Slavery may be over, but the people that populate these pages are in very real servitude to themselves and their pasts.

The book is a glimpse at the deep South immediately prior to the depression era. We're presented with a culture that still hasn't quite come to grips with life on the other side of the Civil War and racialism is so deeply ingrained that although slavery is no longer law, the caste system it birthed lives on in the arrogant attitudes of the whites and the subservient squalor of the blacks.

The loyalties and alliances and relationships in this book are complex, as are the characters, and more than once I found myself wanting to slap these characters into sense. Without exception, each was their own worst enemy and managed to almost single-handedly sail their lives into the rocks. Although many were admittedly pointed rock-ward via their upbringing, they had ample opportunities to change course but continued sailing directly for the cliffs.

Although I have not yet read other books by Faulkner, I'm told this is the most approachable of all his writing, reading the most like a traditional novel. There is plenty of tension in the story, as the saga of Christmas and the other characters unfolds dramatically. Consequently, most people will find themselves turning the pages in anticipation of what happens next. Faulkner takes the reader on numerous side journeys, showing how the characters came to be what they are, and those characters often share certain aspects of their history in common, not just their present circumstances.

As the book draws to a close, the treadmill keeps turning with characters trudging futilely into the sunset, still stuck in the same ruts in which the beginning of the story found them. I'll say little more. To do otherwise is to risk spoiling the plot.

I can perhaps describe the overall experience here as bittersweet. The writing sweet, but the tale itself thoroughly bitter.

This book was my introduction to Faulkner, based on a suggestion by my well-read aunt.

It is certainly possible to recognize the skill of a writer without necessarily finding the story he tells endearing. That was the case here. Faulkner's prose is often like poetry and his use of the language is unquestionably masterful. He shows his talent not so much in the words he uses - the vocabulary is actually quite plain - but rather in the way he combines those words. Simple adjectives are used to create compelling scenes and even more compelling characters.

Faulkner strikes me as the consummate observer. He doesn't moralize, he doesn't become overwrought, he doesn't offer judgement. He simply observes the way things are, not the way we want them to be, and there is a sense that we are being propelled towards not tragegy but simply reality in his writing.

Light in August is ostensibly about Joe Christmas, a headstrong and mysterious drifter in the 1920s deep South, but surprisingly we aren't introduced to him until several chapters into the book. The book chronicles the intersecting people and events that surround Joe Christmas in Faulkner's fictional town of Jefferson, Mississippi. However, the author introduces us to so many other non-incidental characters that it is often hard to separate the leading from the supporting cast.

If I had to describe the characters in this book in a single word it would be "trapped." There is an overwhelming sense of stuck-ness we get in observing their lives. One does not necessarily get the impression that they saw themselves as stuck and hopeless - indeed many seemed to exist in frustrating ignorance of reality. But for the outside observer to whom Faulkner tells this story using his rich narrative, it is obvious that to a person, every character in this book is indeed on a treadmill. Slavery may be over, but the people that populate these pages are in very real servitude to themselves and their pasts.

The book is a glimpse at the deep South immediately prior to the depression era. We're presented with a culture that still hasn't quite come to grips with life on the other side of the Civil War and racialism is so deeply ingrained that although slavery is no longer law, the caste system it birthed lives on in the arrogant attitudes of the whites and the subservient squalor of the blacks.

The loyalties and alliances and relationships in this book are complex, as are the characters, and more than once I found myself wanting to slap these characters into sense. Without exception, each was their own worst enemy and managed to almost single-handedly sail their lives into the rocks. Although many were admittedly pointed rock-ward via their upbringing, they had ample opportunities to change course but continued sailing directly for the cliffs.

Although I have not yet read other books by Faulkner, I'm told this is the most approachable of all his writing, reading the most like a traditional novel. There is plenty of tension in the story, as the saga of Christmas and the other characters unfolds dramatically. Consequently, most people will find themselves turning the pages in anticipation of what happens next. Faulkner takes the reader on numerous side journeys, showing how the characters came to be what they are, and those characters often share certain aspects of their history in common, not just their present circumstances.

As the book draws to a close, the treadmill keeps turning with characters trudging futilely into the sunset, still stuck in the same ruts in which the beginning of the story found them. I'll say little more. To do otherwise is to risk spoiling the plot.

I can perhaps describe the overall experience here as bittersweet. The writing sweet, but the tale itself thoroughly bitter.

I enjoyed this book much more than I expected. It explores the questions of race thoroughly without hitting the reader over the head with it. The characters seem real, neither demonic nor angelic. The impact of race is ultimately devastating to Joe Christmas and many of the people around him.

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."

Light in August by William Faulkner is the book for the first time Faulkner reader to start with. The book is very readable. Unlike some Faulkner stories, the story line is easy to follow. His verbosity is not as apparent in this work as in some of his others where lengthy sentences and tangent monologues within the story derail the reader. The plot is more typical than any of his other works. The average reader will appreciate the book and get a hunger to dip into other works by this southern master writer.

Read and reviewed by Jimmie A. Kepler

I remember an anecdote from Joseph Blotner's biography of Faulkner. Faulkner and his wife are sitting on the verandah sipping bourbon or whatever in the late afternoon. She says something like "Isn't the light in August like no other" to her laconic husband, absorbed in his literary world. He suddenly stands up and exclaims "That's it!" and disappears for a time.

At first, the thing that was so striking to me upon rereading this book was the feel the author had for nature and the elements, and the way he used words to evoke the actual presence of the place. People in this day and age of information technology tend to be very insulated and protected from the outdoors. The experience of Lena Grove in walking and hitching rides on mule-drawn wagons from Alabama to Mississippi takes us to a different world. The writing is so evocative and interior - it seeks to show the point of view of the characters, who though they may not be very sophisticated, still face conflicts that are timeless and heartrending.

The novel revolves around a kind of ultimate outcast in Joe Christmas and involves four other major characters: Lena Grove, Byron Bunch, Rev. Gail Hightower, and Joanna Burden. Contrary to the wonders of nature and the mysteries of creation and birth, the characters find themselves subject to a strict moral order apart from nature. In particular, we find a rigid system of segregation that separates everything according to race and a Protestant religion that features an inflexible code of ethics. Joe Christmas does not know what his heritage is, whether he has a black lineage or not, and he does not fit on either side. The efforts of his religious-fanatic foster father to beat into him a strict catechism leave him further alienated, as it results in his denying the vitality and importance of the female, as something that weakens his own masculine will, the only thing that he has left to survive.

The story proceeds in a complex fashion. There are flashbacks and stories from the past, and all the events converge to Faulkner's mythical town of Jefferson. Lena Grove and Byron Bunch are relatively simple, earthy characters, but the other two, Hightower and Joanna Burden, are definitely more complex, at least partly owing to the fact that their family heritages contain a lot of conflict with slavery. Hightower, as someone who is haunted by ghosts by the Civil War past, is particularly difficult to understand, and must have reflected a part of Faulkner's own self.

I remember an anecdote from Joseph Blotner's biography of Faulkner. Faulkner and his wife are sitting on the verandah sipping bourbon or whatever in the late afternoon. She says something like "Isn't the light in August like no other" to her laconic husband, absorbed in his literary world. He suddenly stands up and exclaims "That's it!" and disappears for a time.

At first, the thing that was so striking to me upon rereading this book was the feel the author had for nature and the elements, and the way he used words to evoke the actual presence of the place. People in this day and age of information technology tend to be very insulated and protected from the outdoors. The experience of Lena Grove in walking and hitching rides on mule-drawn wagons from Alabama to Mississippi takes us to a different world. The writing is so evocative and interior - it seeks to show the point of view of the characters, who though they may not be very sophisticated, still face conflicts that are timeless and heartrending.

The novel revolves around a kind of ultimate outcast in Joe Christmas and involves four other major characters: Lena Grove, Byron Bunch, Rev. Gail Hightower, and Joanna Burden. Contrary to the wonders of nature and the mysteries of creation and birth, the characters find themselves subject to a strict moral order apart from nature. In particular, we find a rigid system of segregation that separates everything according to race and a Protestant religion that features an inflexible code of ethics. Joe Christmas does not know what his heritage is, whether he has a black lineage or not, and he does not fit on either side. The efforts of his religious-fanatic foster father to beat into him a strict catechism leave him further alienated, as it results in his denying the vitality and importance of the female, as something that weakens his own masculine will, the only thing that he has left to survive.

The story proceeds in a complex fashion. There are flashbacks and stories from the past, and all the events converge to Faulkner's mythical town of Jefferson. Lena Grove and Byron Bunch are relatively simple, earthy characters, but the other two, Hightower and Joanna Burden, are definitely more complex, at least partly owing to the fact that their family heritages contain a lot of conflict with slavery. Hightower, as someone who is haunted by ghosts by the Civil War past, is particularly difficult to understand, and must have reflected a part of Faulkner's own self.

"Light in August" may well be my favorite Faulkner novel. With its three interwoven plots, its use of flashback, and its family secrets, the book reads like a multi-generational saga--even though the main storyline occurs over a mere nine days. It deals unflinchingly and unsettlingly with such complex themes as isolation and bigotry in small-town life, race relationships (and, particularly, the meaning of race itself), the constrictions of a strict religious upbringing, and the terror of sexual pathology. And, like Faulkner's other work, it paints an often unsettling, occasionally gloomy, and even comic portrait of the American South.

The lives of several initially far-flung characters overlap in the novel's complex plot. First, the naïve Lena Grove arrives in Jefferson, searching for Lucas Burch, the man who abandoned her after getting her pregnant; she meets instead Byron Bunch, a quiet man who believes working on Saturdays will keep him out of trouble. Unrelated to Lena's personal calamity is Bunch's friend Reverend Gail Hightower, who lost his ministry and became a reclusive outcast when his wife openly cheated on him and eventually killed herself.

But the most powerful and memorable character is the mysterious Joe Christmas, a brooding wanderer whose ancestry is unknown and who finds work (and more) from Joanna Burden, a descendant of abolitionists who continues alone her family's historical advocacy for civil rights. Bringing the stories full-circle is Christmas's relationship with the elusive Lucas Burch; the two drifters operate a moonshine business while they live on Burden's property.

In the character of Joe Christmas, Faulkner has invested all his own conflicted feelings and insecurities about race and religion. Raised first in an orphanage and later by an abusive and fanatically religious man and his doting and pious wife, Christmas believes he may be part black, but, since he can "pass" for white, it's never made clear to him whether this is true. After the book was published, Faulkner claimed that "the tragic, central idea of the story [was] that he didn't know who he was, and there was no way for him to find out." Uncontrollable, random, and violent forces form Christmas's personality and cultivate his personal demons, but in the end the reader is undecided whether Christmas is a monster or a martyr.

The book's deliberate ambiguity is what makes it so potent, but there's enough mystery, murder, madness, and mayhem to keep it from being an aimless morality tale (and it is one of the easiest Faulkner books to read). It's the type of book you think about after you finish, and then flip through again to flesh out all the secrets and uncertainties you missed the first time around.

"Light in August" may well be my favorite Faulkner novel. With its three interwoven plots, its use of flashback, and its family secrets, the book reads like a multi-generational saga--even though the main storyline occurs over a mere nine days. It deals unflinchingly and unsettlingly with such complex themes as isolation and bigotry in small-town life, race relationships (and, particularly, the meaning of race itself), the constrictions of a strict religious upbringing, and the terror of sexual pathology. And, like Faulkner's other work, it paints an often unsettling, occasionally gloomy, and even comic portrait of the American South.

The lives of several initially far-flung characters overlap in the novel's complex plot. First, the naïve Lena Grove arrives in Jefferson, searching for Lucas Burch, the man who abandoned her after getting her pregnant; she meets instead Byron Bunch, a quiet man who believes working on Saturdays will keep him out of trouble. Unrelated to Lena's personal calamity is Bunch's friend Reverend Gail Hightower, who lost his ministry and became a reclusive outcast when his wife openly cheated on him and eventually killed herself.

But the most powerful and memorable character is the mysterious Joe Christmas, a brooding wanderer whose ancestry is unknown and who finds work (and more) from Joanna Burden, a descendant of abolitionists who continues alone her family's historical advocacy for civil rights. Bringing the stories full-circle is Christmas's relationship with the elusive Lucas Burch; the two drifters operate a moonshine business while they live on Burden's property.

In the character of Joe Christmas, Faulkner has invested all his own conflicted feelings and insecurities about race and religion. Raised first in an orphanage and later by an abusive and fanatically religious man and his doting and pious wife, Christmas believes he may be part black, but, since he can "pass" for white, it's never made clear to him whether this is true. After the book was published, Faulkner claimed that "the tragic, central idea of the story [was] that he didn't know who he was, and there was no way for him to find out." Uncontrollable, random, and violent forces form Christmas's personality and cultivate his personal demons, but in the end the reader is undecided whether Christmas is a monster or a martyr.

The book's deliberate ambiguity is what makes it so potent, but there's enough mystery, murder, madness, and mayhem to keep it from being an aimless morality tale (and it is one of the easiest Faulkner books to read). It's the type of book you think about after you finish, and then flip through again to flesh out all the secrets and uncertainties you missed the first time around.

Light in August by William Faulkner is an easy book to read but a reader without understanding of Southern language and of its dialect, it might be difficult. Also, with dark themes and exploitation of racism throughout the book, it might not be fun to read. Light in August portray human dilemmas with issues of moral ethics that cannot be debated by politics. The book starts out with Lena Grove, orphaned at age twelve and she is pregnant, searching for her child's biological father because she wants what is good for her soon to be born child. She later gives birth to the child in a cabin. Later in the child, the father of her child, Joe Brown, sees her holding the baby and runs off. The story changes its views from Lena to Joe Christmas, a protagonist and an antihero with biracial background, who is first seen as a martyr but the violence and his development of becoming a thief, bootlegger, sex fiend and a murderer. He develops an affair with Joanna Burden, who later tries to help him but he ended up murdering her. Afterwards, he is jailed and later he escaped, found, shot and killed, and castrated by a bounty hunter. Another character's viewpoint that the readers know is Reverend Hightower, a preacher who is obsessed with the past of the Civil War, and he stands as moral or philosophical center of the novel. There is a scene where he vividly recalls a scene where the cavalryman falling off his horse. Later he prepares to kill himself after recalling the past. The book ends up with Lena and her companion, Byron Bunch, a good honest hardworking man, who falls in love with her, in search of her child's biological father. There are many moral issues in this book that are undebatable, which I believe Faulkner intented.