Faulkner's second novel is a high-spirited satiric romp set on an ill-fated pleasure cruise out of New Orleans.
Wealthy Mrs. Maurier, the widowed heiress of an old New Orleans family, likes to collect "artistic types." When she plans a multi-day outing on her yacht and manages to corral aboard a group that includes a melancholic poet, a brooding sculptor, a self-important writer, her unconventional young niece, and assorted other odd characters, the results are both disastrous and hilarious. When the ship runs aground near an overheated swamp, the pretensions and frustrations of its various passengers reach a fever pitch. Faulkner's lyrical descriptions, witty dialogue, and forays into fluid stream-of-consciousness demonstrate in lighter form the literary techniques that the young author later came to be so celebrated for.
"Swift and lusty writing. . . . A brilliance that you can rightfully expect only in the writings of a few." —Lillian Hellman, New York Herald Tribune
“Faulkner has a sense of character; he has a sense of humor; he has a sense of style." —Conrad Aiken, New York Evening Post
"Wistful and poetic as well as sophisticatedly cynical." —Saturday Review
William Faulkner, one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century, was born in New Albany, Mississippi, on September 25, 1897. He published his first book, The Marble Faun, in 1924, but it is as a literary chronicler of life in the Deep South—particularly in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, the setting for several of his novels—that he is most highly regarded. In such novels as The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, Light in August, and Absalom, Absalom! he explored the full range of post–Civil War Southern life, focusing both on the personal histories of his characters and on the moral uncertainties of an increasingly dissolute society. In combining the use of symbolism with a stream-of-consciousness technique, he created a new approach to fiction writing. In 1949 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. William Faulkner died in Byhalia, Mississippi, on July 6, 1962.
View titles by William Faulkner
Faulkner's second novel is a high-spirited satiric romp set on an ill-fated pleasure cruise out of New Orleans.
Wealthy Mrs. Maurier, the widowed heiress of an old New Orleans family, likes to collect "artistic types." When she plans a multi-day outing on her yacht and manages to corral aboard a group that includes a melancholic poet, a brooding sculptor, a self-important writer, her unconventional young niece, and assorted other odd characters, the results are both disastrous and hilarious. When the ship runs aground near an overheated swamp, the pretensions and frustrations of its various passengers reach a fever pitch. Faulkner's lyrical descriptions, witty dialogue, and forays into fluid stream-of-consciousness demonstrate in lighter form the literary techniques that the young author later came to be so celebrated for.
Reviews
"Swift and lusty writing. . . . A brilliance that you can rightfully expect only in the writings of a few." —Lillian Hellman, New York Herald Tribune
“Faulkner has a sense of character; he has a sense of humor; he has a sense of style." —Conrad Aiken, New York Evening Post
"Wistful and poetic as well as sophisticatedly cynical." —Saturday Review
Author
William Faulkner, one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century, was born in New Albany, Mississippi, on September 25, 1897. He published his first book, The Marble Faun, in 1924, but it is as a literary chronicler of life in the Deep South—particularly in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, the setting for several of his novels—that he is most highly regarded. In such novels as The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, Light in August, and Absalom, Absalom! he explored the full range of post–Civil War Southern life, focusing both on the personal histories of his characters and on the moral uncertainties of an increasingly dissolute society. In combining the use of symbolism with a stream-of-consciousness technique, he created a new approach to fiction writing. In 1949 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. William Faulkner died in Byhalia, Mississippi, on July 6, 1962.
View titles by William Faulkner
