Faulkner: A Collection of Critical Essays

I am a great fan of the 'Prentice- Hall' critical essays series. And this is one of the better volumes. Robert Penn Warren one of the great twentieth- century literary figures has gathered together essays by a critical 'Who's Who' of his time :George Marion O'Donnell, Malcolm Cowley, Conrad Aiken, Warren Beck, Claude Edmonde Maguy, Jean Pouillon, Michael Millgate, Lawrence Thompson, Gunter Blocker, Olga Vickery, Lawrence S.Kubie, Alfred Kazin, John L. Longley, Jr. Hyatt Waggoner , Cleanth Brooks, R.W.B. Wilson,Elisabeth Hardwick, Andrew Lylie, V.S. Pritchett, Norman Podhoretz. There are also comments by Andre Malraux , Allen Tate, Graham Greene, F.R. Leavis, Maxwell Geismar, Irving Howe, Leslie Fiedler, Clifton Fadiman, Carvel Collins,Pierre Emanuel, Eudora Welty, R.W. Flint, Marcel Ayme, John Crowe Ransom, Albert Camus. Penn Warren opens with the story of Faulkner's relatively small critical reception at the beginning , and how it was only after the war with the publication of Malcolm Cowley's 'Viking Portable Anthology' that Faulkner's reputation soared. As Penn Warren understands it Faulkner spoke to the more complex and contradictory, the deeper sense of life which emerged after the war, when many battle- hardened veterans returned home. Penn Warren also commends Faulkner for having been the first writer who truly wrote of the South in a way which the people who lived there, knew it. He also makes much of Faulkner's creation of his own mythic world , and how that world was first understood in critical terms by George Marion O'Donnell and later Cowley. Penn Warren also surveys the strong criticism Faulkner was given at times for his having seemingly written with carelessness and neglect- and for his according to critics like Alfred Kazin not having really formulated philosophically a concept of his own work and world. What is however revealed in reading through the Anthology's essays is how rich Faulkner's writing is in the creation of characters in conflict with themselves and how he did succeed in the words of his famous Nobel speech in writing of the eternal verities- sacrifice,and truth, compassion, and courage- The theme of conflict between the Sartoris world and its traditional values and that of the Snopes usurpers is outlined in O'Donnell's essay. The great breakthrough in the 'Sound and the Fury' is discussed in a number of essays as is the remarkable Faulkner style with all its vast poetic mythic searching. The whole epic character of Faulkner's world in which the individual novels and stories are understood as parts of something greater than themselves , is also discussed. Today the general critical opinion is that Faulkner was the great American novelist of the century- and that his work has and will have an enduring place in the canon of world literature. These essays give insight into his vast work of genius- though since their time of publication the whole world of Faulkner criticism has expanded greatly.