Faulkner's Place (Paperback)

Celebrating the centenary of William Faulkner's birthThis volume brings together for the first time eight masterful essays on William Faulkner by one of his most eloquent and influential critics. Michael Millgate established himself as a leading authority on Faulkner with the publication of The Achievement of William Faulkner more than thirty years ago. Since then, in pieces such as Faulkner and History and Faulkner's Masters, he has continued to reflect upon the legendary southern writer, his unique sense of physical place, and his place in literary history.Written with humor and insight, Faulkner's Place is lively, readable, and extremely accessible both to longtime Faulkner enthusiasts and to those who are new to his work. Taken together, the essays represent an impressive contribution to the understanding and appreciation of Faulkner's richly varied career.Backward and past-obsessed though it might seem and be, even Yoknapatawpha, even northern Mississipi, could not remain motionless and unchanging. This was something Faulkner came to understand very clearly in later years, when the concept of life as motion became central to his thought and his work, and that understanding was no doubt sharpened and confirmed, within his own creative experience, by the way in which Yoknapatawpha itself had so rapidly and so radically burst the bonds of its initial time- and map-bound conception. -- from 'A Cosmos of My Own': The Evolution of YoknapatawphaThese essays represent the thinking of one of the most important of Faulkner scholars. -- Hugh Ruppersburg