Essays by Susan V. Donaldson, Lael Gold, Adam Gussow, Martin Kreiswirth, Jay Parini, Noel Polk, Judith L. Sensibar, Jon Smith, and Priscilla Wald William Faulkner once said that the writer “collects his material all his life from everything he reads, from everything he listens to, everything he sees, and he stores that away in sort of a filing cabinet . . . in my case it's not anything near as neat as a filing case; it's more like a junk box.” Faulkner tended to be quite casual about his influences. For example, he referred to the South as “not very important to me. I just happen to know it, and don't have time in one life to learn another one and write at the same time.” His Christian background, according to him, was simply another tool he might pick up on one of his visits to “the lumber room” that would help him tell a story. Sometimes he claimed he never read James Joyce's Ulysses or had never heard of Thomas Mann—writers he would elsewhere declare as “the two great men in my time.” Sometimes he expressed annoyance at readers who found esoteric theory in his fiction, when all he wanted them to find was Faulkner: “I have never read [Freud]. Neither did Shakespeare. I doubt if Melville did either, and I'm sure Moby-Dick didn't.” Nevertheless, Faulkner's life was rich in what he did, saw, and read, and he seems to have remembered all of it and put it to use in his fiction. Faulkner's Inheritance is a collection of essays that examines the influences on Faulkner's fiction, including his own family history, Jim Crow laws, contemporary fashion, popular culture, and literature.

"The thrill ... will keep readers flipping pages well past the point where they probably should have gone to bed." - Stephani Hren for IndieReader Laurence Riley might be able to see the future, but he can't see a way to fix his messed-up life. He can't control anything—not his supernatural talents, not his drug addiction, and not his violent ex-boyfriend. Laurence needs help and he knows it. A lifelong pagan, he turns to his god... and he gets Jack. Jack can help Laurence tame his powers and take control of his life. But it comes at a price: Laurence will need to keep him fed with regular offerings of sex. For the old Laurence, that would've been a pleasure. Problem is, Laurence has met Quentin. Quentin is devastatingly handsome, way out of Laurence's league (like British nobility levels of out-of-his-league), and unbearably chaste. If that weren’t enough to keep Laurence away, Quentin's wild telekinesis is even more uncontrollable than Laurence's precognition. But Laurence doesn't want anyone else, and Jack is getting hungry. Then Laurence foresees a glimpse of Jack's true plan. It will leave a trail of death across San Diego--and Laurence has been helping him do it. The past has taught him that the future can't be changed. But if Laurence and Quentin can't stop Jack, there won't be any future at all. Jack of Thorns is the first book in a dark urban fantasy series where X-Men meets The Magicians. "Striking prose and characters make this opening fantasy installment worthwhile." - Kirkus Reviews "AK Faulkner thrusts together two deliciously flawed main characters ... then weaves an empowering plot of destiny, inheritance, and self-improvement—all while letting the reader languor in the glow of a glorious slow burn romance." - Indie Reader "Mixing the paranormal with the deeply personal, A.K. Faulkner has delivered a bold debut novel with Jack of Thorns in what stacks up to be a thrilling new series." - Self Publishing Review

A New York Times Notable Book of 2020 How do we read William Faulkner in the twenty-first century? asks Michael Gorra, in this reconsideration of Faulkner's life and legacy. William Faulkner, one of America’s most iconic writers, is an author who defies easy interpretation. Born in 1897 in Mississippi, Faulkner wrote such classic novels as Absolom, Absolom! and The Sound and The Fury, creating in Yoknapatawpha county one of the most memorable gallery of characters ever assembled in American literature. Yet, as acclaimed literary critic Michael Gorra explains, Faulkner has sustained justified criticism for his failures of racial nuance—his ventriloquism of black characters and his rendering of race relations in a largely unreconstructed South—demanding that we reevaluate the Nobel laureate’s life and legacy in the twenty-first century, as we reexamine the junctures of race and literature in works that once rested firmly in the American canon. Interweaving biography, literary criticism, and rich travelogue, The Saddest Words argues that even despite these contradictions—and perhaps because of them—William Faulkner still needs to be read, and even more, remains central to understanding the contradictions inherent in the American experience itself. Evoking Faulkner’s biography and his literary characters, Gorra illuminates what Faulkner maintained was “the South’s curse and its separate destiny,” a class and racial system built on slavery that was devastated during the Civil War and was reimagined thereafter through the South’s revanchism. Driven by currents of violence, a “Lost Cause” romanticism not only defined Faulkner’s twentieth century but now even our own age. Through Gorra’s critical lens, Faulkner’s mythic Yoknapatawpha County comes alive as his imagined land finds itself entwined in America’s history, the characters wrestling with the ghosts of a past that refuses to stay buried, stuck in an unending cycle between those two saddest words, “was” and “again.” Upending previous critical traditions, The Saddest Words returns Faulkner to his sociopolitical context, revealing the civil war within him and proving that “the real war lies not only in the physical combat, but also in the war after the war, the war over its memory and meaning.” Filled with vignettes of Civil War battles and generals, vivid scenes from Gorra’s travels through the South—including Faulkner’s Oxford, Mississippi—and commentaries on Faulkner’s fiction, The Saddest Words is a mesmerizing work of literary thought that recontextualizes Faulkner in light of the most plangent cultural issues facing America today.

Contributions by Ted Atkinson, Thadious M. Davis, Matthew Dischinger, Dotty Dye, Chiyuma Elliott, Doreen Fowler, Joseph Fruscione, T. Austin Graham, Rachel Eliza Griffiths, Derrick Harriell, Lisa Hinrichsen, Randall Horton, George Hutchinson, Andrew B. Leiter, John Wharton Lowe, Jamaal May, Ben Robbins, Tim A. Ryan, Sharon Eve Sarthou, Jenna Sciuto, James Smethurst, and Jay Watson At the turn of the millennium, the Martinican novelist Édouard Glissant offered the bold prediction that “Faulkner’s oeuvre will be made complete when it is revisited and made vital by African Americans,” a goal that “will be achieved by a radically ‘other’ reading.” In the spirit of Glissant’s prediction, this collection places William Faulkner’s literary oeuvre in dialogue with a hemispheric canon of black writing from the United States and the Caribbean. The volume’s seventeen essays and poetry selections chart lines of engagement, dialogue, and reciprocal resonance between Faulkner and his black precursors, contemporaries, and successors in the Americas. Contributors place Faulkner’s work in illuminating conversation with writings by Paul Laurence Dunbar, W. E. B. Du Bois, James Weldon Johnson, Jean Toomer, Nella Larsen, Claude McKay, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Ernest J. Gaines, Marie Vieux-Chauvet, Toni Morrison, Edwidge Danticat, Randall Kenan, Edward P. Jones, and Natasha Trethewey, along with the musical artistry of Mississippi bluesman Charley Patton. In addition, five contemporary African American poets offer their own creative responses to Faulkner’s writings, characters, verbal art, and historical example. In these ways, the volume develops a comparative approach to the Faulkner oeuvre that goes beyond the compelling but limiting question of influence—who read whom, whose works draw from whose—to explore the confluences between Faulkner and black writing in the hemisphere.

This comprehensive Companion to William Faulkner reflects the current dynamic state of Faulkner studies. Explores the contexts, criticism, genres and interpretations of Nobel Prize-winning writer William Faulkner, arguably the greatest American novelist Comprises newly-commissioned essays written by an international contributor team of leading scholars Guides readers through the plethora of critical approaches to Faulkner over the past few decades Draws upon current Faulkner scholarship, as well as critically reflecting on previous interpretations

Considered one of the great American authors of the 20th century, William Faulkner (1897-1962) produced such enduring novels as The Sound and the Fury, Light in August, and As I Lay Dying, as well as many short stories. His works continue to be a source of interest to scholars and students of literature, and the immense amount of criticism about the Nobel-prize winner continues to grow. Following his book Faulkner in the Eighties (Scarecrow, 1991) and two previous volumes published in 1972 and 1983, John E. Bassett provides a comprehensive, annotated listing of commentary in English on William Faulkner since the late 1980s. This volume dedicates its sections to book-length studies of Faulkner, commentaries on individual novels and short works, criticism covering multiple works, biographical and bibliographical sources, and other materials such as book reviews, doctoral dissertations, and brief commentaries. This bibliography provides an organized and accessible list of all significant recent commentary on Faulkner, and the annotations direct readers to those materials of most interest to them. The information contained in this volume is beneficial for scholars and students of this author but also general readers of fiction who have a special interest in Faulkner.

William Faulkner wrote during a tumultuous period in southern racial consciousness, between the years of the enactment of Jim Crow and the beginnings of the civil rights movement in the South. Throughout the writer's career, racial paradigms were in flux, and these shifting notions are reflected in Faulkner's prose. Faulkner's fiction contains frequent questions about the ways in which white Americans view themselves with regard to race along with challenges to the racial codes and standards of the region, and complex portrayals of the interactions between blacks and whites. Throughout his work, Faulkner contests white identity—its performance by whites and those passing for white, its role in shaping the South, and its assumption of normative identity in opposition to non-white “Others.” This is true even in novels without a strong visible African American presence, such as As I Lay Dying, The Hamlet, The Town, and The Mansion. Faulkner and Whiteness explores the ways in which Faulkner's fiction addresses and destabilizes the concept of whiteness in American culture. Collectively, the essays argue that whiteness, as part of the Nobel Laureate's consistent querying of racial dynamics, is a central element. This anthology places Faulkner's oeuvre—and scholarly views of it—in the contexts of its contemporary literature and academic trends exploring race and texts.