- Paperback: 528 pages
- Publisher: Harper Perennial; 1 edition (Jun 9 2005)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0060935553
- ISBN-13: 978-0060935559
- Product Dimensions: 20.6 x 13.7 x 3.6 cm
- Shipping Weight: 476 g
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #783,384 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
Veteran novelist and biographer Parini (Robert Frost; The Last Station) crafts a thorough account of the Nobel laureate's life (1897–1962), pausing with the publication of each book to reprise its plot and critical reception, and add his own evaluation of its merits. This is a reasonable approach, which benefits from the insights of such literary figures as Robert Penn Warren and Cleanth Brooks, whom Parini interviewed before their deaths. But there isn't any startling new material to supersede Joseph Blotner's massive 1974 biography, though Parini strains to be up-to-date by emphasizing Faulkner's friendships with gay men and his fiction's homoerotic elements (unquestionably present, but hardly worth the amount of attention they receive here), as well as considering feminist assessments of the writer's female characters. His solid account makes it clear that once Faulkner established himself as a major American author, he basically did two things: write and drink. The clumsy prose ("It was with some relief, for her, that nothing came of her husband's efforts"), surprising from such a distinguished literary man as Parini, does not increase the book's readability. There's no question, however, about this biographer's admiration for his subject. Newcomers will find all the basic facts about a great American writer and his work, but Faulkner remains, as Parini acknowledges, a "mystery [that] cannot be 'solved.' "
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Booklist
A boy who loved solitary rambles and hanging around his father's livery stable, "the hub of daily life" in his hometown of Oxford, Mississippi, Faulkner became a poetry-writing dandy known first as the Count, then, given his feckless ways and taste for alcohol, Count No 'Count. But this seeming ne'er-do-well possessed an abiding love of the land, keen curiosity about southern history, and an unwavering devotion to literature. It takes a fellow artist to fully understand the vagaries of the creative process, and not only is Parini a poet and a novelist, he is also the author of two previous, uniquely enlightening biographies of John Steinbeck and Robert Frost. Here Parini--his prose crystalline, his interpretation proficient--brilliantly illuminates Faulkner's complex psyche, phenomenal literary innovations, and demanding life. As Parini tracks Faulkner from his chaotic incubation period to the "one matchless time" between 1928 and 1942 when he wrote one revolutionary masterpiece after another, his stints in Hollywood, efforts as a farmer and patriarch of a needy extended family, and winning of the Nobel Prize, Faulkner and his immeasurably influential work come into focus as never before. Engrossing and revelatory, this is a landmark biography. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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First Sentence
A sense of place was everything to William Faulkner, and more than any other American novelist in the twentieth century, he understood how to mine the details of place, including its human history, for literary effects. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
A sense of place was everything to William Faulkner, and more than any other American novelist in the twentieth century, he understood how to mine the details of place, including its human history, for literary effects. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4.3 out of 5 stars (9 customer reviews)
16 of 16 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Sad Life And One Filled With Integrity, Jan 15 2005
By Kevin Killian - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: One Matchless Time: A Life of William Faulkner (Hardcover)
Parini does his best work investigating the early days of Faulkner and putting them into a social, specifically Southern, context, but unlike Blotner he manages to enlarge that context into the whole space of American modernism. He makes you feel Faulkner's yearning to be accepted as part of an international avant-garde, and yet at the same time he didn't want that, he wanted, like his grandfather, to be a writer revered by his peers down home. Parini does enough with the "gay male friends" theme to warrant further scholarly investigation into gay modernist Southern art and literature, though such a topic doesn't necessarily depemd on the weight of Faulkner's name for it to be interesting in and of itself. And how about his friendship with Bil and Helen Baird and the whole puppeteering thing, I could read about this forever.About the women in Faulkner's life, Parini stumbles a little. I don't think he makes Estelle, Jill, Meta Carpenter, Jean Stein or Joan Williams as interesting as Blotner did. They all kind of converge into an foggy enemy figure, like Judy and Madeleine in Hitchcock's VERTIGO--maybe this was Parini's intention (to paint his hero as a victim of sexual obsession), but the truth is that all of these women were very different characters, and in my opinion still the best book written about Faulkner is the wonderful A LOVING GENTLEMAN, Meta Carpenter Wilde's very moving memoir of her love affair with W. Faulkner. That said, I admire Parini's book and the skill with which it comes together. It makes you want to re-read some of the neglected books, I especially like his defense of the cobbled-together 50s collection BIG WOODS. The truth is I could read a new Faulkner biography every year, they're all pretty good and this one, as the newest, deserves the attention of all of us.
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Well Done!, Mar 14 2005
By Ethan Cooper - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: One Matchless Time: A Life of William Faulkner (Hardcover)
What was William Faulkner doing when he wrote THE SOUND AND THE FURY, LIGHT IN AUGUST, THE HAMLET, ABSALOM, ABSALOM! and GO DOWN, MOSES? In this fascinating biography, Professor Parini tells you, as his narrative moves from Faulkner's life to his work and back again, describing this great writer`s personal and historical world while analyzing his demanding oeuvre.How did Faulkner acquire his estate, Rowan Oak, after only modest sales for his first books? How did his ultimately lucrative connection to Hollywood affect his work? The answers to such questions are in this thorough, but not long, book. On this level, this biography is a feast for Faulkner fans.
Even so, this biography has a maddening quality. In particular, this reader was blind-sided as Faulkner, without any preparation by the author, recited complete Shakespearean sonnets at a dinner party, acknowledged his love of French literature, or spoke French. These incidents obviously capture influences on Faulkner's artistic sensibility. Yet, they are never really built into the experience of the historical man and artist that Parini describes.
Faulkner, in addition, was obviously well-read. Yet Parini never discusses what Faulkner was reading, when he was reading it, and how the reading affected him. For an isolated and struggling writer, his reading-though hard to pin down-had to be an important influence and inspiration. In my opinion, occasional references to his reading would have been interesting. But as it is, this biography shows Faulkner in his most creative period without any such literary interests or precursors. In ONE MATCHLESS Time, he is either working madly or on an alcoholic binge.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Biography as spur, Jan 6 2005
By Reader 100 - Published on Amazon.com
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: One Matchless Time: A Life of William Faulkner (Hardcover)
It is a measure of the success of Jay Parini's William Faulkner biography, ONE MATCHLESS TIME, that the overwhelming desire on finishing it is to return to the works of the author and read, or reread, them from the beginning. It is particularly refreshing to find in the sections that analyze the books individually no descent into the obscurantism that pervades so much "professional" literary criticism. Parini's account is, however, marred, as a previous reviewer pointed out, by an unaccountable number of typographical and other mistakes that are no less maddening for their slightness. For example, "Jefferson County" appears several times when Lafayette is intended; there is the birthdate error; and about 20 other typographical glitches. These serve to break the spell that would otherwise propel most readers, I think, to finish this fine book in a gulp.
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