Is this novella worth talking about, considering it's really a part of the larger novel "Go Down, Moses"? Maybe. I'll start by saying it feels like a somewhat straightforward and pleasant five-chapter adolescent adventure story, except for Chapter 4 where, seemingly, Faulkner COMPLETELY LOSES HIS MIND. Fortunately, at this point the main character is kind of losing his mind as well, trying to justify walking away from a major inheritance, which he does by compressing all of his family's history, and southern racial history, and all of American history, and all of Earth's history, and all of mankind's existence, and all of God's intentions, into one singular thought (I suppose if this were simply a story about killing a legendary bear we wouldn't still be talking about it.) Needless to say, this chapter gave me a headache—apparently, a radical compression of time and experience involves a 60-page chapter made up of only 15 sentences (or so) and the identities of scores of characters, across generations, somehow being merged and confused (if you imagine that the wilderness, the bear's home, can be considered an everlasting cycle of chaos, birth, death, and destruction, all happening simultaneously, without reward or reason, the past never being past, then you can sort of see Faulkner's unique stylistic choices here.) Is it possible for one man to exit this endless morass of recycled sin, committed by every single person on earth, committed by every single family on earth, committed by every single race on earth? Well, you can say an awful lot of contradicting things about this story—loaded, intertwining symbols are pretty much ripe for the picking in this one—but it's noteworthy to me that our overthinking, idealistic main character in the end, despite plotting the only escape he could think of, achieves absolutely nothing but near paralysis (the symbol he becomes instead is also of note.) If anything, the problem with this story is that the characters feel so symbolic, it's difficult to relate to them as people, though I also suspect that was Faulkner's intent: "Don't focus on the people, focus on the enormous ideas! Gahd!" But! Is it a good read? Yeah. It is. It's a really good read, in fact. Especially if you like getting mad. Three stars.
"Sanctuary" by William Faulkner (1931)
I bet you could make the case that "To Kill a Mockingbird" stole a great deal from this book, except making sure good was good, bad was bad, facts were facts, and giving all the characters a Full House-like sheen of adorableness. Also many fewer mobsters, whores, and pitch-black instances of sexual terror. Four stars.
"Light in August" by William Faulkner (1932)
As you get older, running into art that you find powerful but impossible to articulate becomes a rarer and rarer commodity. I can't explain why I loved this book—there's a lot of talk about borders, and running away, and chasing after, allusions to Christ and religion, and much ado about collective society. There's an overwhelming amount of humanity, the complicated maddening kind, stuffed into 500 pages of text. The narrative is modernist and angular, scrambled but not indecipherable. The language is typical Faulkner, the kind of fecund sentence structure that rewards those who have learned how to read slowly (which nowadays I would argue is a virtue absorbed by virtually no one.) It isn't a logic puzzle. It isn't a book that rewards the mind over the heart. It isn't even what you expect or have been told it's going to be because, again, it's impossible to articulate what the story is, at least in a couple of sentences. I know I just finished it, but I love it. You don't really love Faulkner books. But I love this one. Four stars.
"Collected Stories" by William Faulkner (1950)
I'm only 200 pages into a 900-page book but I feel I have enough: If you're interested in reading stories that were sort of shat out whenever Faulkner was strapped for cash and oftentimes very much read like it, then this door stop is for you. Also, don't be fooled by the 1951 National Book Award for Fiction—he probably won it more for the earlier series of extraordinary novels everyone ignored at the time; in fact, many of these stories feel like a writer working out his ideas more than one who dearly cared for the craft of the short form. One star.