Collected Stories, William Faulkner
Collected Stories, William Faulkner
6 Rating(s)
List: $32.50 | Sale: $22.75
Club: $16.25

Collected Stories

Author: William Faulkner

Narrator: Various

Unabridged: 31 hr 14 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 12/04/2007


Synopsis

“I’m a failed poet. Maybe every novelist wants to write poetry first, finds he can’t and then tries the short story which is the most demanding form after poetry. And failing that, only then does he take up novel writing.” —William Faulkner
 
Winner of the National Book Award

Forty-two stories make up this magisterial collection by the writer who stands at the pinnacle of modern American fiction. Compressing an epic expanse of vision into hard and wounding narratives, Faulkner’s stories evoke the intimate textures of place, the deep strata of history and legend, and all the fear, brutality, and tenderness of the human condition. These tales are set not only in Yoknapatawpha County, but in Beverly Hills and in France during World War I. They are populated by such characters as the Faulknerian archetypes Flem Snopes and Quentin Compson, as well as by ordinary men and women who emerge so sharply and indelibly in these pages that they dwarf the protagonists of most novels.

About William Faulkner

William Faulkner (1897–1962) is a celebrated twentieth-century American author. Much of his work is set in the fictional county of Yoknapatawpha, based on Lafayette County, Mississippi, where he spent much of his life. In 1949, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature. He is best known for his novels The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, and Light in August.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Vit on October 12, 2023

So many dissimilar subjects… So many divergent themes… The spectrum of William Faulkner’s short stories is incredible… Many stories have an odd flavour of jocular anecdotes as in Shingles for the Lord… A simple job of replacing the shingles on the church ends up in an unbelievable pandemonium…   They......more

Goodreads review by Owen on October 27, 2013

In my experience, one does not become a reader of William Faulkner so much as a student of William Faulkner. Reading his work is, well, a lot of work. I’m reminded of a person who is forced to attend an opera which is performed in a foreign language, in a historical setting, without the benefit of s......more

Goodreads review by Dave on August 23, 2009

My opinion (for whatever it is worth) is that Faulkner was a much better short story writer than novelist. The form put limits on his stream of consciousness techniques and forced him to keep the narratives moving, which he seems to struggle with in the longer form. Stories like "That Evening Sun",......more

Goodreads review by Scott on November 22, 2010

"The Tall Men" moved me to tears. "The Bear Hunt" is hilarious, the combination "Carcassone" and "The Black Music" destroyed my every conception of what is artistically possible with the pen. read them in this order and "Carcassonne" will befuddle you as an abstract matter created purely for artisti......more

Goodreads review by Elizabeth (Alaska) on November 19, 2022

I read these stories over a period of months interspersed with other reading. Several times I thought "Faulkner doesn't tell us what to think, he just reflects life as he sees it." His characters are varied as in life - rich and poor, upstanding citizens and rapscallions. Faulkner has a reputation fo......more


Quotes

“No man ever put more of his heart and soul into the written word than did William Faulkner. If you want to know all you can about that heart and soul, the fiction where he put it is still right there.” —Eudora Welty
 
“For all his concern with the South, Faulkner was actually seeking out the nature of man. Thus we must turn to him for that continuity of moral purpose which made for greatness of our classics.” —Ralph Ellison


Awards

  • National Book Awards