The Life of William Faulkner - (Wiley Blackwell Critical Biographies) by Richard Gray (Paperback)
About this item
Highlights
- In this major reassessment, now available in paperback, Richard Gray uses and develops recent theories about the relationship between writing and historical experience, language and social change, to draw a brilliantly detailed portrait of the place and times Faulkner inhabited.
- About the Author: Richard Gray is Professor of English at the University of Essex.
- 484 Pages
- Biography + Autobiography, Literary Figures
- Series Name: Wiley Blackwell Critical Biographies
Description
Book Synopsis
In this major reassessment, now available in paperback, Richard Gray uses and develops recent theories about the relationship between writing and historical experience, language and social change, to draw a brilliantly detailed portrait of the place and times Faulkner inhabited. Attending closely to each of the novels, Gray shows how they brim with an often undisclosed biography that is at once personal and cultural.From the Back Cover
Arguably the greatest novelist yet to emerge from the United States, William Faulkner was a white Southerner creatively obsessed with problems of personal identity, social change, religion, sexuality, race, and that elaborate circuitry of passion and power - the family.In this major reassessment, now available in paperback, Richard Gray uses and develops recent theories about the relationship between writing and historical experience, language and social change, to draw a brilliantly detailed portrait of the place and times Faulkner inhabited and to reveal just how intimately woven together were the tangled threads of Faulkner's personal and public experience - the privacy that Faulkner cherished and this history in which, whether he liked it or not, he was ensnared.
Review Quotes
"Richard Gray's study of Faulkner is biographically and historically informative in the most appropriate way; it is also critically sophisticated, lucid, and continuously accessible. Avoiding the usual biographical reductionism which subsumes a writer's work to its psychological or sociological context, Gray traces the inter-relationships between the man, the time, the place, and the writing, with exemplary and illuminating tact and insight. Frankly, I do not see how it could be better done; and, to anyone embarking on any kind of study of Faulkner, this is the first book I would recommend." Professor Tony Tanner, University of Cambridge
"... much more than a level-headed biography, it's a profound and beautifully written interpretation of Faulkner and his work. Gray combines formidable knowledge of Southern literature, culture, and history with wide-ranging critical expertise, giving us a work that is both thoroughly grounded in Faulkner's world and richly provocative in its interpretation of that world. Few writers on Southern literature possess Gray's breadth of knowledge and depth of insight. The Life of William Faulkner goes far to solidify Gray's position as one of the premiere critics in the field." Professor Robert H. Brinkmeyer, Jr, University of Mississippi
"The critical discussions are the strength of this volume, especially the commentaries on the novels written from 1929 to 1935. Recommended." T. Bonner, Jr. Xavier University of Louisiana, Choice
"... the book exhibits some expository strengths, such as in illustrating how the economic history of the South, specifically the dominance of cotton and the sharecropping system, connects to the motifs in his fiction." Virginia Quarterly Review
About the Author
Richard Gray is Professor of English at the University of Essex. His previous books include Writing the South: Ideas of Writers Region (1986), which won the C. Hugh Holman Award.
