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The Saddest Words
William Faulkner's Civil War
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The Saddest Words
$5699
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Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?
Ideal for readers interested in American literature, cultural history, and critical examinations of race and memory in the South. Scholars, students, and fans of William Faulkner will find Gorra’s study both challenging and illuminating.
Michael Gorra, one of America’s most preeminent literary critics, asks how we read William Faulkner in the twenty-first century.
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Description
Should we still read William Faulkner in this new century? What can his works tell us about the legacy of slavery and the Civil War, that central quarrel in our nation's history? These are the provocative questions that Michael Gorra asks in this historic portrait of the novelist and his world.
Born in 1897 in Mississippi, Faulkner wrote such iconic novels as Absalom, Absalom! and The Sound and the Fury, creating in Yoknapatawpha County the richest gallery of characters in American fiction, his achievements culminating in the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature.
But given his works' echo of “Lost Cause” romanticism, his depiction of black characters and black speech, and his rendering of race relations in a largely unreconstructed South, Faulkner demands a sobering reevaluation.
Interweaving biography, absorbing literary criticism, and rich travelogue, The Saddest Words recontextualizes Faulkner, revealing a civil war within him, while examining the most plangent cultural issues facing American literature today.
Book Hero Magic summarised reviews for this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! HOW HAS THIS BEEN REVIEWED?
John Banville praises Gorra as "one of the finest critical minds" and calls this reassessment "momentous and thrilling," noting its timeliness and unflinching questioning. The New York Times Book Review selected it as one of 2020’s 100 Notable Books, highlighting its "complex and thought-provoking" insight into Faulkner’s literary and historical significance as a chronicler of slavery’s aftermath.
Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9781631491702
Publisher: W W Norton & Co Ltd
Format: Hardback
Date Published: 25 August 2020
Country: United States
Imprint: Liveright Publishing Corporation
Illustration: 10 black-and-white illustrations
Audience: General / adult
DIMENSIONS
Spine width: 38.0mm
Width: 163.0mm
Height: 244.0mm
Weight: 686g
Pages: 448
About the Author
Michael Gorra is the Mary Augusta Jordan Professor of English at Smith College, where he has taught since 1985. He is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Guggenheim Foundation and, for his work as a reviewer, of the Balakian Award from the National Book Critics Circle. His books include The Saddest Words: William Faulkner’s Civil War; Portrait of a Novel: Henry James and the Making of on American Masterpiece, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Biography; The Bells in Their Silence: Travels through Germany; After Empire: Scott, Naipaul, Rushdie; The English Novel at Mid-Century; and, as editor, The Portable Conrad and the Norton Critical Editions of The Sound and the Fury and The Portrait of a Lady.
Also by Michael Gorra
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