William Faulkner Reads

by William Faulkner

"Rendered by the author with a rich deep-south accent that gives uncanny realism to each of the selections undertaken.  His reading pace is neither slow nor fast and he conjures up many vivid, picturesque images for his listening audience . . . Strongly recommended." -- Roslyn News   This historic recording contains the first readings by William Faulkner of his work.  One hearing is hardly enough.  As in his books, penetration deepens with each new experience of the work.  Yield to Faulkner's serenity, the deep-south way with words, the unaffected ease with which he drifts into Yoknapatawpha dialect.  A recording ore important than this is not likely to be made soon. This audio reproduces the full sound spectrum of his historic recordings; it has been remastered using contemporary digital equipment.   Side 1: The Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech, As I Lay Dying (excerpts), Side 2: A Fable (excerpt), The Old Man (excerpt).

Genres: Fiction

Audio Cassette

First published February 14, 1992

About the author

William Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer. He is best known for his novels and short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, a stand-in for Lafayette County where he spent most of his life. A Nobel laureate, Faulkner is one of the most celebrated writers of American literature and often is considered the greatest writer of Southern literature.
Faulkner was born in New Albany, Mississippi, and raised in Oxford, Mississippi. During World War I, he joined the Royal Canadian Air Force, but did not serve in combat. Returning to Oxford, he attended the University of Mississippi for three semesters before dropping out. He moved to New Orleans, where he wrote his first novel Soldiers' Pay (1925). He went back to Oxford and wrote Sartoris (1927), his first work set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County. In 1929, he published The Sound and the Fury. The following year, he wrote As I Lay Dying. Later that decade, he wrote Light in August, Absalom, Absalom! and The Wild Palms. He also worked as a screenwriter, contributing to Howard Hawks's To Have and Have Not and The Big Sleep, adapted from Raymond Chandler's novel. The former film, adapted from Ernest Hemingway's novel, is the only film with contributions by two Nobel laureates.
Faulkner's reputation grew following publication of Malcolm Cowley's The Portable Faulkner, and he was awarded the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature for "his powerful and unique contribution to the modern American novel." He is the only Mississippi-born Nobel laureate. Two of his works, A Fable (1954) and The Reivers (1962), won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Faulkner died from a heart attack on July 6, 1962, following a fall from his horse the month before. Ralph Ellison called him "the greatest artist the South has produced".

Reviews

[Anne Blocker · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the summer of 1962, I was waiting for my Peace Corps assignment, toying with the idea of going back to school after a year of reading. I had a night job, training the first astronauts, the Rhesus monkeys. There were many opportunities for reading and I had taken to reading several books at the same time. With reading a self-indulgent joy, it seemed, writing was not a possibility.

I had taken to reading everything a writer had published as a way, perhaps, of knowing them. When I ran out of their works, it was hard to take.

Faulkner died that summer at 64 and I first heard him speak on television. They played portions of Faulkner's Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech and I think it is his most important work. As a writer, I take it to heart.

When I first lost my ability to read, this was the first recording I acquired.

[Chuck · Rating 3 out of 5]

Please forgive me for my pagan behavior because I was dissilusioned by this effort. There is no doubt that Faulkner was one of the most noteworty American authors of the 20th century. However this was an audio book and his shuffling of pages, his obvious reading of the manuscript without a sense of what was being read, made having sensitivity for the word difficult. It appeared to me to be similar to trying to read a telephone book to fast. If this comes out in paperback or other written form I will try again,

[Chess via Email · Rating 5 out of 5]

The speech is really good. Although I realized he was a lot more serious about some things than I originally suspected when I read Blotner. It's still good. I was introduced to this speech by the MCAS test I think. I'm pretty sure no author was listed. Guess those asstests are good for something.