Review: William Faulkner, Light in August

Light in August was published in 1932, just twenty years before Harper Lee began writing. In comparison to her books, it's a heavyweight work of literature, initially striking me for its wordplay linguistic inventiveness and its piledup evocative paragraphs. It also struck me for its sexual frankness. It's a slow read because Faulkner is in no hurry and does not maintain a single (or even a dual) narrative line. I found this unsatisfactory only at the end when the introduction of a completely new character, the State Captain Grimm - Joe Christmas's eventual killer - delays the work which is then delayed again by the historical musings of Hightower.

On those Lists which are everywhere, it ranks in the Top 100 American novels of the 20th century and no doubt even higher among novels which treat of the American South and the legacy of the Civil War, whites and negroes, Confederates and Yankee abolitionists. But its themes are in many respects more personal than sociological, focussing on a set of lives early damaged and badly so and intersecting in ways which bring out that damagedness. There is only the merest hint of the possibility of redemption, in the short final chapter.

It's 380 pages in my edition; I doubt I will read it again, even though it is the kind of richly-textured book which would repay a second reading.

Review: Harper Lee, Go Set a Watchman

Basically,No. It’s a pity that Harper Lee was prevailed upon to release this novel written half a century ago and before she wrote To Kill a Mockingbird.

The book is poorly structured and paced - it doesn’t have either the narrative drive or the emotional drive that you get in Mockingbird. The dialogue is – to use an appropriate cliché – wooden: it’s not so much dialogue as a collection of set-piece speeches. Some things are embarrassingly bad: notably when Uncle Jack morphs into Dr Freud in One Easy Lesson in order to make things at least half-right again between Jean-Louise and Atticus.

As for the content, my guess is that it does not stand the test of time and won’t be helpful in addressing America’s contemporary race issues which now are just as much a Northern as a Southern question.

At worst, there are going to be Reading Groups where someone will suggest that if it’s OK for Atticus Finch to be some kind of qualified racist then it must be OK for all of us.

The book has the overall sentimental feel of the work which followed it.But it would have been best for To Kill a Mockingbird to have remained the one-off, stand-alone achievement which it has been since it was published.