Both are drawn to the town by some unknown force, and both meet with misfortune in the town. By contrast, both Hightower’s and Christmas’s stories begin and end in Jefferson. The novel begins and ends on a journey, and though Lena Grove is not the focus of the story, her traveling is an impetus for much of the plot. We also get a sense of the transience of some of the characters their stories are recounted by strangers in the towns they pass through. Reverend Hightower and Joe Christmas are arguably the two main characters, though we hear their stories and those of other characters through many minor characters, including several that go unnamed the effect being that much of this story is told on what feels like hearsay. The narrative structure in particular drew my attention the story is told from many different viewpoints. There was, however, something compelling about the story and its characters that encouraged me to continue reading despite the difficulties of the style. At just over 500 pages, the novel was dense and the writing often obtuse, difficult to follow, and overly embellished.

As I told that story I had to get more and more into it, but that was mainly the story of Lena Grove.” That women in general captured Faulkner's imagination and that specific women, real or imaginary, inspired some of his strongest writing can hardly be doubted, but what does remain in question is how to assess the fictional portraits of women that result.Having never read Faulkner before now (I know, sacrilege for a southern writer), I began with his “most accessible work”, Light in August.

It was - that was out of my admiration for women, for the courage and endurance of women. On other occasions, however, he revealed that some of his novels, now among those regarded as his finest, had their inception in visions of individual women: The Sound and the Fury, for example, was inspired by the mental picture of a little girl climbing a pear tree in her muddy drawers to look in at the window of the room where her grandmother lies dead, and Light in August “began with Lena Grove, the idea of the young girl with nothing, pregnant, determined to find her sweetheart.

ASKED whether he found it easier to create male or female characters, Faulkner told a student at the University of Virginia, “It's much more fun to try to write about women because I think women are marvelous, they're wonderful, and I know very little about them, and so I just - it's much more fun to try to write about women than about men - more difficult, yes.” The mingling of veneration and mystification in Faulkner's response seems to reflect an attitude in which enthusiastic interest is grounded in bemusement.

Light in august book