Ağustos Işığı is, in my opinion, one of the author's most chaotic and unique books, as he avoids creating a stable roof. The answer to this lies in the first sentence. The book begins with Lena's words: "I came from Alabama: a fur piece." Because Faulkner starts this book after the pain of his daughter who was born in 1931 and died a week later in Alabama. As he himself states, he is writing in a trance while the Lena character is already in his mind. Indeed, the good and evil, the conflict between death and life in the book is represented by the brave and resilient Lena Grove character. Of course, this family tragedy also affects the book, resulting in a chaotic and difficult narrative with intertwined deep psychological analyses and inquiries.

Actually, it is very difficult to limit the main theme of the book. But generally, the first theme that comes to the fore is of course racism. In the town of Jefferson in Yoknapatawpha, it tells the endless struggle "between black and white" in both senses of the characters identified with certain racial and sexual clichés such as Hightower, Joe Christmas, and Durden. A rumor that Joe "carries negro blood", and after the transformation of this rumor into a delusion, the character's entry into an imaginary racial migration and the social and historical reasons underlying this identity crisis spread over a large part of the book. To this theme - at a point as a result of the lame exclusion from issues such as race - individual isolation is added. Because the book is full of lonely characters who cannot be socially accepted or are abandoned. In the midst of all this chaos, the story of Lena Grove, who is the symbol of goodness - and at a point, actually the concept of "light" in the name of the book - and who seems at first glance to be an absolute victim, flows in a straight line without being affected by any external event. You can also see in this book Faulkner's criticism that religion has a supporting effect in the transformation of the South and the spread of evil. There are actually quite a lot of Bible references in the book. The most prominent of these is Joe "Christmas", who gets lost while looking for his own identity, deteriorates despite not being born bad and falls into a high-level tragedy. In a way, it is an alternative Jesus story that came to the South in the 19th-20th centuries.

All these references, the great existential problems full of identity crises, the tragedies, the narrative technique and its chaotic world make it a very tiring book to read, and with the traces it contains about the dark history, it will make you feel bad about yourself. It is a dense book. I do not recommend it to everyone, but if you definitely want to read The Sound and the Fury and Absalom! Absalom!, it is beneficial to read The Unvanquished and Ağustos Işığı first.

"It was the dark temptation that dragged him beyond the help of all men, out of a dark forest and into that frenzy where life ended more breathlessly and death was the fulfillment of desire and longing."

4,5/5

Not sure where to commence with this review. I must admit, I found Light in August by William Faulkner to be an arduous experience. I vacillated between a 1-star and a 5-star experience at different times, depending on the chapter. My only other Faulkner read, As I Lay Dying, I found to be significantly more enjoyable. I found As I Lay Dying a bit more comprehensible and predictable than Light in August - I could get into a rhythm.

I achieved no such rhythm with this book.

There were moments when I relished this story, typically when I was fully engaged and completely immersed, when the writing seemed understandable and Faulkner wasn't being overly clever for my liking. However, there were numerous times when I became downright frustrated, where even re-reading passages proved futile, and it simply wasn't enjoyable.

Some of the significant themes as I perceive them are (Be Gentle):

Racism

I was astounded by how frequently the "N" word was employed. This isn't a criticism per se, but rather a confronting observation. It is indeed a sign of the times (from the Civil War to the early 1900s), and it did assist me in understanding how deeply ingrained some of the attitudes towards race must have been in the US. The early 1900s isn't that distant in reality. The fact that I am currently listening to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which has an equal dosage of the use of the "N" word, didn't help. Huckleberry Finn is even worse in some respects because the children, such as Huck, use the word freely.

Religion

There is a fair share of overly pious individuals in this story, such as the sadistic Joe Christmas' adoptive father, Mr McEachern, and the catatonically insane Mr Hines. Well, they all seem to be lunatics, horrible, distasteful, and violent people. I'm not certain if Faulkner is making a statement about religion and its hypocrisy. I suspect he might be.

Kindness

Kindness doesn't seem to be well recompensed - some of the characters who display kindness include Joe Christmas' adoptive mother, Mrs McEachern, and Mrs Burden, Joe's landlady and 'lover'. I'm not so sure their compassion and good intentions were reciprocated. I'm unsure if it's because they are kind, or women, or both. Probably both.

Characters

Joe Christmas must be one of the most loathsome characters I have 'encountered'. Totally misanthropic and equally sadistic. I truly felt sorry for anyone he crossed paths with - my view is that he was a product of the sadistic, cruel, and depraved upbringing he endured. Poor wretch.

Lena Grove was a delight, albeit a bit naïve. The book really begins and concludes with her, and I must say, considering this book was a miserable experience, I did like the way it ended, giving me some reason to be optimistic.

Bryon Bunch - for some reason, his name made me laugh as it was so close and easily confused with the name Lucas Burch. I did love that farcical confusion, and I found it highly amusing. Not sure if it was intended to be funny - but I found it so, and still do.

Mr and Mrs Hines, what a strange couple. Mr Hines (Uncle Doc) was a complete buffoon with no redeeming qualities whatsoever, whereas his long-suffering wife was truly attempting to be her best, and one could only feel for her regarding the cards she had been dealt in life - poor thing.

I wasn't sure what to make of Reverend Gail Hightower. I felt sorry for him peering through his window at the street all the time. He was so lonely - however, he wasn't the only lonely character in this story, that's for sure. I think he was a good man, but I did get lost in his backstory and his thoughts. I really did. But at this stage of the book, I was suffering from Stage 4 Faulkner Fatigue.

My Struggle

For me, this book was challenging. Particularly, as the author hopped between timelines, especially during the backstories of Joe Christmas and Rev Hightower, all while throwing in confusing stream-of-consciousness (I remember that from As I lay Dying) reflections. It was just plain confusing for me at times, and unenjoyable. I suppose this is what 'high-level' literature is all about; it separates the wheat from the chaff. I was on the verge of giving up the whole thing at around the three-quarter mark.

In some ways, this book reminded me of my experiences watching films by David Lynch. I'm still convinced that some of Lynch's work is not meant to make sense. Is that the case with Faulkner's work? Maybe someone who knows more than I do can help answer that.

Overall, it was bloody hard work, a real slog, but kind of worthwhile. I do feel like I've run a marathon and am glad I finished it.

3 Stars

Luz de agosto is an amazing novel. You know it, I know it, and almost everyone knows it. Yet, I have to tell Mr. Faulkner that although I have enjoyed it, there have also been moments when he has confused me. And in the end, I have to say, always humbly, that it didn't seem like a perfect novel to me. I will try to explain myself, because surely, like him, there is more than one person who has scratched their head.

I already knew, from my reading of "The Sound and the Fury", that sometimes you have to read him as if it were music, letting yourself be carried away by the rhythm without trying to understand everything. His is a music in which there are notes that one can only intuit, notes that are not fully understood or not understood at all, and even notes that one doesn't understand why they were put there. Fortunately, in all cases, soon after, the music resumes its melody and enjoyment becomes the norm again.

Among those notes I'm referring to are some of the characters' behaviors, certain accumulations of adjectives that instead of clarifying the concept end up distorting it for me, the combination of some words that I can only conceive together in indigestible dreams, that sensitivity that is so strange and incomprehensible to me and that alludes to smells that can be touched, lights that can be smelled, sounds that can be tasted and that take me out of the story, even if only temporarily. But above all, I haven't been able to find the reason that led him to combine the three stories that structure the novel and that have a significant disproportion among them. In my humble and surely wrong opinion, each one is unnecessary for the other two, and both Lena's and Hightower's, with an appropriate treatment, could have formed part of the glorious set of small stories that line and enrich the backbone of the novel that is Christmas, the indisputable protagonist of the story.

It was truly excellent

The light in Mississippi, during this charming late-summer month of August, is distinct. At least, one could reach such a conclusion after learning about the circumstances surrounding William Faulkner's choice of the title for his epic 1932 novel, Light in August. This somberly beautiful novel was initially supposed to have the more ordinary title of Dark House. However, Faulkner's wife Estelle allegedly once remarked on the unique quality of the light in August in their part of north Mississippi, and thus Light in August was born.

Light in August is a multi-faceted tragedy of life in the Jim Crow South. It simultaneously offers some unexpected glimmers of hope amidst its grimness. And above it all, Faulkner's supremely poetic voice soars, capturing the musicality of Southern U.S. English.

Notes of hope in Light in August emerge from characters like Lena Grove and Byron Bunch – simple, fundamentally decent individuals who would never dream of mistreating or deceiving others. As the novel commences, Lena, in an advanced stage of pregnancy, has journeyed alone all the way from Alabama to Faulkner's fictional home county of Yoknapatawpha and its county seat of Jefferson. When her lover, Lucas Burch, abandoned her and fled Alabama, he claimed to be going ahead to establish a home for the two of them and their unborn child.

The more one discovers about Lucas Burch, the more despicable he appears, and the less likely it seems that Lena's quest can have a happy ending. Yet, the integrity of Lena's pursuit – “I reckon a family ought to be all together when a chap comes. Specially the first one. I reckon the Lord will see to that” (p. 21) – earns the reader's respect. And when Lena meets Byron Bunch – an ordinary working man so conscientious that, even when working weekends alone at the mill, he marks off every single minute that he's not actually at his work – the reader begins to hope that the final outcome for Lena and her child may not be unhappy.

For the most part, however, Light in August is the story of Joe Christmas, a grim and mysterious man who, from the moment of his arrival, is a loner and an outsider in Jefferson, just as he has always been in all the many places where he has lived and worked throughout a restless life of wandering. It soon becomes evident that the reason for Joe Christmas's outsider status is the belief, held by Christmas himself and by many of the people in his life, that he is of mixed-race heritage. In Mississippi, historically a “one-drop” state where a single drop of black blood defined one as black and condemned one to second-class status, Christmas is well aware of what a mixed-race ancestry means in the South of his era. He broods over his ancestry and the mistreatment he has endured throughout his life.

In Jefferson, Christmas begins working at the planing mill and establishes a bootlegging business. In a fateful and unfortunate decision, he takes on Lucas Burch, Lena's unreliable ex-lover, as a business partner. His relationship with a prostitute who works in a brothel disguised as a restaurant ends unhappily. In a characteristic example of the cruelty that Christmas has experienced throughout his life, he is beaten by a mobster who says to his accomplices, “We’ll see if his blood is black” (p. 219).

Christmas lives on the estate of and eventually takes as a lover Joanna Burden, the descendant of Northern abolitionists and therefore a lifelong outcast to the white residents of Jefferson. Joe Christmas and Joanna Burden, both outsiders, embark on a passionate affair. However, the reader senses that this wild liaison between these two unstable and haunted individuals can only end tragically. And indeed, it does end tragically – in two violent deaths, one of which is described by Faulkner with an added touch of singular horror.

Also among the key characters in this novel is the Reverend Gail Hightower – a character through whom Faulkner has great fun satirizing the obsession of many white Southerners with the Civil War, the Confederacy, and the “Lost Cause.” Hightower's fixation on the death of his grandfather, a Confederate cavalryman, during a Civil War engagement in Jefferson, led him to pull every string and call in every favor to secure a Presbyterian parish in Jefferson. An outsider – like Joe Christmas and Joanna Burden – he failed as a preacher and as a husband, losing both his wife and his church. Yet he persists in Jefferson, forever desiring to retrace the path of his rebel grandfather – whose Civil War exploits, as the novel ultimately reveals, were far from heroic.

One final word about the title. As quoted in scholar Hugh Ruppersburg's book Reading Faulkner: Light in August, Faulkner apparently said that “. . .in August in Mississippi there’s a few days somewhere about the middle of the month when suddenly there’s a foretaste of fall, it’s cool, there’s a lambence, a soft, a luminous quality to the light, as though it came not from just today but from back in the old classic times. It might have fauns and satyrs and the gods and – from Greece, from Olympus in it somewhere. It lasts just for a day or two, then it’s gone. . .the title reminded me of that time, of a luminosity older than our Christian civilization.”

Maybe the light in August truly is special in north Mississippi. I have traveled quite extensively in the Magnolia State but have not yet been to Faulkner's hometown of Oxford. Perhaps, in some future year, I will have the opportunity to visit Oxford in August – to stroll the campus of the University of Mississippi, to sample the barbecue at the Rib Cage, to visit Faulkner's home at Rowan Oak (http://www.rowanoak.com) and see where he would tape pages from his manuscripts onto the walls as he worked to organize his astonishingly complex novels. That will be a wonderful way to spend some future August.

...The white blood abandoned him for a moment, a second, a blink. I took advantage of the black blood to rise up in the final moment and make him turn against that which he had entrusted his hope of salvation. It was the black blood that dragged him by his own will to where no one could help him, that dragged him to that ecstasy of the black jungle where life ceases before the heart stops and where death is desire and fullness. And the black blood failed him again, as it must have failed him in all the crises of his life...

He stood there, dazed, as if lost in a world of his own making. The contrast between the white and black blood was like a battle within him, a battle that he seemed to be losing. The white blood, once a symbol of purity and strength, had deserted him when he needed it most. And the black blood, which he had come to rely on, had also betrayed him. He wondered if there was any way out of this predicament, any way to regain control of his life and his destiny.

As he looked around, he saw only darkness and despair. The black jungle loomed before him, threatening to swallow him whole. But he refused to give up. He knew that he had to find a way to overcome the obstacles in his path and emerge victorious. With a deep breath, he gathered his remaining strength and began to walk forward, determined to face whatever lay ahead.

Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders.

\\n  

\\"Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders\\".

\\n

Are there many novels that can touch our souls deeply, making us suffer and weep? I believe there are, but not many can imprison us with their tidings and beauty, making escape impossible. Indeed, William Faulkner's "Light in August" is such a work. Set in the fictional Jefferson, it tells a tragedy comparable to the classic tale of Oedipus.

As I read each page, I was amazed by Faulkner's beautiful and sad words. I wanted to close the book at times, but his love for words and literature held me captive. The story of his damned characters hit me hard, and I felt used in a good way. I walked with him in the desolation of Yoknapatawpha County, facing a time of real racial prejudices and misogyny.

Joe Christmas' destiny was set from birth, or rather, from conception. With rumors of his black blood, he was labeled a "white nigger" or a "black with white skin" from his orphanage years. He couldn't escape his fate and seemed to have embraced it, incorporating his abhorrent mixed ancestry. His life encompassed the sufferings of both poor whites and disfavored blacks.

But Christmas is not alone in his pain. Lena Grove, the pregnant woman from Alabama, is also damned. She comes searching for the father of her unborn child, facing hardships along the way. Despite her ignorance, she perseveres. Then there is Byron Bunch, who falls in love with the wrong woman, and Reverend Gail Hightower, who survives by watching life pass him by. And finally, there is Miss Burden, the murdered lady involved with Christmas.

All these characters form a memorable group, painting a picture of hate, sin, suffering, fate, desperation, and injustice. Faulkner warns us about the darkness of the human heart and the dangers of racism and misogyny. If you haven't read "Light in August" yet, I highly recommend it. Prepare to struggle with his characters in their doomed world, but also be enthralled by his captivating prose and shed soulful tears.

Memory is a mysterious and powerful force. It believes before knowing remembers, and it believes longer than recollects, and even longer than when knowing wonders.

This is because so much happens in our lives. There is simply too much that occurs. It's a fact. Man performs and engenders so much more than he can or should have to bear. But that's precisely how he discovers that he can bear anything. That's the way it is. And that's what is so truly terrible. The fact that he can bear anything, no matter what.

Our memories hold onto these experiences, both the good and the bad, and they shape who we are. They allow us to believe in things before we fully understand them, and they keep those beliefs alive even when our recollections fade or our knowledge is called into question.

Memory is a testament to our resilience as human beings, but it can also be a source of great pain and suffering. It forces us to confront the things we would rather forget, and it reminds us of the things we have lost.

Nevertheless, it is through our memories that we learn and grow, and it is because of them that we are able to continue on, bearing whatever comes our way.

So I'm back in school now, and for the first time in a long while, I'm being compelled to read books.

I have no personal experience of desperately trying to conceive, but reading novels for school reminds me of that. There's this activity that I used to do solely for pleasure when I felt inclined, but now I'm doggedly plowing through on a rigidly imposed schedule, regardless of my mood, with such an intense sense of purpose that it seems to taint the entire experience.

The consequence is that I'm not truly enjoying any of the books I read these days. I feel so burdened by powering through 700 pages in a week under the threat of a syllabus that it's impossible for me to determine whether I'd like the books I'm reading in more natural circumstances. So I guess if my average star rating drops significantly, that would be the reason.

This is my first encounter with Faulkner, and I didn't loathe it or anything, but it might very well be my last. I'm glad I read it because never having read him was always a bit embarrassing. But now I understand the essence of what he's about, and it's basically more or less what I expected: beautiful and often astonishing language, hordes of poetically insane, religiously fanatical, and sexually voracious violent southerners, and a frequency of the n-word that would make a rap star turn green with envy.

I guess it was less formally innovative than I envision his other works to be, so perhaps I'll give one of those a try someday to find out. There were some excellent aspects in this book - mostly the language, and the evocation of mood, power dynamics, and place. But I thought it was overly long and disintegrated at the end into what seemed like sloppy bloat and a bit of a Hollywoodish something.

I read this for a class the same week that we also covered "The Power and the Glory" by Graham Greene, and this provided an interesting contrast with its fully realized and self-contained nightmare world of terrorism and fear (though I preferred the Graham Greene book a great deal more).

I don't know, it was okay, and it did have its moments, but I really struggled through the last 150 pages. Admittedly, this was because I had to finish it by the next day for class, but nevertheless, that was my experience, and it was rather harsh and unpleasant.

At the beginning of the 20th century, various people meet in Jefferson, Mississippi, and their lives have gone awry for different reasons. There is Lena, an orphan who has become pregnant out of wedlock and sets off from Alabama in search of the father of her child. Then there is Joe Christmas, who was found as a baby on Christmas in front of an orphanage and was adopted by a Calvinist couple at around five years old. Their upbringing consisted of work, violence, and religious dogmas. Even in the orphanage, the idea was implanted in him that he might have black blood, although it is not visible. This thought led him to a deeply felt sense of not belonging, neither to the whites nor to the blacks. The third main character is the former Reverend Hightower, who, after graduating from college, desperately wanted to be transferred to Jefferson because, partly unconsciously, he wanted to continue the life of his grandfather, which ended turbulently in the Civil War. In addition, there are a few interesting secondary characters, all of whom are not ordinary. They can be explained by their personal history as well as by the history with the Civil War and the resulting traumas, as well as by the omnipresent racism. These connections between personal fates, American history, and the social situation make up the charm of the book. Faulkner writes without any evaluation, racism and misogyny remain unchallenged, and yet the causes and effects can be clearly seen. Although I have wondered whether the book could be read differently with other views?

The style requires some getting used to. Often the narrator's perspective changes completely unexpectedly. The characters are strong, but partly stereotypical. Lena is always patient, unfoundedly confident, and calm within herself. Christmas always looks contemptuous, and Hightower sits idle at the window for many years. The dialogues or inner monologues are often long-winded. Sometimes I lost the thread. And suddenly, individual sentences appear that, in my opinion, do not fit the characters. Such interpolated explanations or teachings sometimes destroyed the text, I thought.

Overall, I was able to get a good picture of Mississippi at that time and understand how intertwined the social situation is with personal fates. The rejection of the black population or hatred of them, sometimes only unconsciously, the social position of women, the view of the unmarried pregnant woman, but also the view of the male hero result in a constellation that must produce corked characters, as described in the book. However, I was not always able to enjoy reading, and some things only became clear to me through the afterword. Maybe the text reveals itself better on a second reading or with more concentration. I could also imagine trying it again with another book by Faulkner.

A devastating and elliptical examination of race in America, Faulkner here absolutely dazzles with his approach.

At the end of the day, the narrative is entirely linear, yet he slices up the novel in a way that permits examination from every conceivable angle, with the sideways direction being the favored one. His CHOPCHOPCHOP cadence superbly mimics the frustratingly apathetic and inert resistance to racial enlightenment in the South after the Civil War. It reads with the deliberately arrogant pacing of a mule doing calculus, seemingly crafted to make the reader bang his or her head against the nearest wall in absolute disbelief at the deeply entrenched seed of self-appointed supremacy that these hillbillies harbor. And this doesn't even touch on the complexities of "Negro" self-identification and the self-loathing that can result.

I could continue, but what's the point? It's "Wild" Bill Faulkner. I believe his legacy is well-established without my armchair theatrics. So I'll say this: Read it and then talk to me about racial equality. I'll then talk to you about Christmas, and my first name is Joe.

Or, you know, it's almost baseball season.

«In my country, the light has a very particular quality; brilliant, clear, as if it came not from today but from the classical age». William Faulkner

Lighthouse of the (great) American novel with a “southern” imprint, "Light in August" enwraps in its dizzying and feverish prose about a dozen characters, if we limit ourselves to the main ones, obsessed and tormented by unquenchable passions and by a past, recent or distant, personal or family, with which they are in no way able to make peace.

Perhaps the only solid and determined figure in facing her own destiny is the one who appears to be the most fragile and defenseless: Lena, the country girl who opens the novel with her waddling gait due to her advanced pregnancy and closes it strengthened in her hope, determination and courage.

The men she will meet, and we with her, along her path instead appear as ghosts or interlocutors of ghosts present in their subconscious or in their lived experience, in a rural Mississippi where the echoes of the Civil War are still very present, although half a century away now, but still alive and painful in the minds of the characters as it certainly was in that of the author.

One would have to know more about Faulkner's work to attempt a deep analysis of this novel, beyond the patina of an extraordinarily variegated plot enriched by fascinating flashbacks, beyond the diaphragm, sometimes hard, resistant and even a bit obstructive, of the author's vortical and kaleidoscopic style. It is not my case: his writing tends to push me back in the past and only now (at long last!) does it begin to penetrate more deeply into my understanding; into the understanding that it is not necessary to grasp every passage, every start, every action of these tormented characters, prone to soliloquy, to self-awareness, to the pitiless evaluation of their own and others' choices, of the events that determine and condition the existence of an individual, of a community and of a people.