Posts Tagged ‘literature’
March 3rd, 2010
It’s cold and wet outside, so there aren’t many options for entertaining activities. Oh sure, you could turn on your television and sit on your butt for the next several hours, but there is only so much time you can spend watching daytime soap operas or court TV. Instead of just staring at a screen, letting your mind go sedentary, there are some exciting books to read that are just perfect for those stuck-in-the-house rainy days. One or two suggestions may be educational, but they are too fun to read to even notice that you’re brain is keeping active.
Whale Talk by Chris Crutcher
Do not let the name fool, there isn’t anything about marine life in the book. The main character, T.J. Jones, is an adopted teenager who is smart, funny, and an all-around cool guy, who is incredibly humorous to read about. The story deals with a team of underdog swimmers, and T.J. just happens to be the only popular guy on the team. Acting as the wise-butt hero at times, this book had me stifling my own laughter because I was afraid someone would hear me guffaw too loudly.
Darwin Awards Books
For those who are not familiar with the Darwin Awards, they are a comical competition that relay the odd, stupid, and funny things people do in life, as well as the interesting outcomes of these actions. There are at least seven of these books by now, so the options are wide and the hilarity of man’s stupidity just continues to entertain readers. If for some reason you cannot finish one of the books, there is no harm in putting it aside to come back to it on another rainy day. The chapters do not have a sequence of events, so there is no plot to keep up with. You can read one funny story after another. Or, if you somehow finish one book in a day, there are more to read out of the series.
A Bad Beginning, A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snickett
Yes, it is part of a series, but what better day is there to try out a new series of books than on a rainy day? And, there is never a dull moment in A Bad Beginning, not to mention it is a relatively shorter book, which also makes it a quick read. Funny, exciting, and sometimes creepy, the Series of Unfortunate Events relays the story of the cruel Count Olaf, who is trying to take the inheritance of three incredibly talented orphaned children. Don’t knock it just because it’s in the young adult section; this book even has adults enthralled to read the whole series.
Short Stories by Nikolay Gogol
For those who want a fun, yet slightly more sophisticated read, the short stories by Nikolay Gogol never seem to disappoint. Although most short stories are a good pick for rainy days, Gogol’s are both deep and amusing at the same time. Stories like “The Nose” is so incredulous to have a nose as the supporting role, while “The Diary of a Madman” is so funny, I almost felt guilty as I laughed at the poor narrator. Gogol’s short stories are a bit longer than others, but you can still several with a day’s time. And, with a collection of shorts, it is easy to just put the rest of the book aside once you have finished a particular story. There is no commitment to reading all of the short stories if you do not have time.
Psych – A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Read by William Rabkin
If you are a fan of the show, you are going to love the books, particularly this one. Although many popular shows are providing a series of books alongside their show, Psych is one of those shows that is both smart and funny at the same time, which is exactly what the books are like, too. A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Read happens to be only 273 pages, which makes for a quick read with all of the dialogue and humorous activities.
January 26th, 2010
by Julia H. Jackson
Last fall, Death Cab for Cutie musician Ben Gibbard and Son of Volt’s Jay Farrar released an album entitled “One Fast Move or I’m Gone: Music From Jack Kerouac’s Big Sur.” The duo wrote 12 songs inspired by Kerouac’s 1962 novel after creating the soundtrack for an accompanying documentary. The two musicians gave new life to Kerouac’s celebrated stream-of-consciousness storytelling by creating a new sound from his Beat rhythm. The album and film have gotten good press, in part because Gibbard and Farrar are skilled composers, and also because they are continuing the tradition of recreating stories in song. Perhaps, when a story is shared in one medium, and then reinvented in another a generation later, perhaps that is when the story becomes legend. Just what do we mean? Take a look at Artists for Literacy, a nonprofit that promotes literacy through artistic learning tools, and also happens to host an entire catalog of songs inspired from books. Today we bring you 5 Songs Inspired by Literature, and you’d be surprised by how many you’d recognize.
Book: Ghost World, by Daniel Clowes, which later became the 2001 film of the same name
Daniel Clowes’ 2000 graphic novel follows the story of Enid and Rebecca, inseparable high school graduates who don’t know how to approach impending adulthood. Instead, they first mock and then befriend an older man, who slowly pushes them further apart. Aimee Mann’s album Bachelor No.2 came out the same year, and her song of the same name captures the listlessness of shared adolescence: “So, I’m bailing this town, or– / tearing it down, or — / probably more / like hanging around.”
Book: Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley
Mary Shelley’s 1818 breakthrough novel Frankenstein is a cult classic; its blend of gothic and romantic tones, combined with its epistolary format and chilling humanity, give it a weight that few books have. It has been reincarnated many times, in many ways, but perhaps none quite so unique as Bob Dylan’s 1967 recording of “All Along the Watchtower.” The song, which like many of Dylan’s most famous, is usually attributed to parables from the Bible, but according to the Artists for Literacy project, there is a link between the song and the famous monster novel. Think about it: a cold 
winter evening, and two lost souls consider a dark horizon: “There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke. / But you and I, we’ve been through that, and this is not our fate, / So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late.” And, just as the evening is coming to a close, “two riders were approaching, and the wind began to howl.” Creepy…
Book: The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck
Bruce Springsteen earned the name “Boss” for a reason; not only is he heralded as the epitome of an American rock star, but his literary influences are just as American. Steinbeck’s 1939 novel follows the Joads, a family of sharecroppers from Oklahoma who go searching for a new life in California. Springsteen’s style is fitting for this archetypal American dream story; his interpretation of the working class struggle is almost as powerful as the journey of Joads: “Got a one-way ticket to the promised land /You got a hole in your belly and gun in your hand.”
The Ghost of Tom Joad, by Bruce Springsteen
2) “1984,” David Bowie
1984, George Orwell
Few things speak to the dystopian world of George Orwell’s Oceania in 1984 than the unnerving style of a young David Bowie. The 1949 novel is ruled by the totalitarian regime of The Party, which uses mind control and public surveillance to slowly destroy human civil liberties. What better way to recognize the book’s horror, and perhaps dark truth, than with Bowie’s macabre lyrics: “They’ll split your pretty cranium, and fill it full of air / And tell that you’re eighty, but brother, you won’t care.”
Hamlet, Shakespeare
Fiona Apple has taken one of Shakespeare’s most famous monologues from one of his most famous plays, and given it a throaty twentieth century twist. Hamlet, the Danish prince, asks the question “To sleep–perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub, / For in that sleep of death what dreams may come / When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, / Must give us pause.” And while Apple is not contemplating murder, she does conjure up the emotion and power of a timeless moment: “I got my feet on the ground and I don’t go to sleep to dream. / You got your head in the clouds and you’re not at all what you seem. / This mind, this body, and this voice cannot be stifled by your deviant ways. / So don’t forget what I told you, don’t come around, I got my own hell to raise.”
Sleep to Dream, Fiona Apple
The relationship between music and books goes back a long way, perhaps even to the days before printing presses and publishing houses, when the act of storytelling was a vocal enterprise. Once you start to dissect popular music, you’ll see how many popular songs, and even albums, are based on great novels or devoted to well-known writers. Remember Green Day’s cult hit, “Basket Case?” Doesn’t that sound a bit like J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye? How about The Roots’ “Act Won: Things Fall Apart,” which is clearly a reference to Chinua Achebe’s most famous work? And for you rock fans—the Iron Maiden repertoire is replete with literary references: “The Lord of the Flies,” “Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” “Brave New World,” “Seventh Son of a Seventh Son.”
What do you think about this link between books and music? What’s missing from our list? Let us know what you think!
December 21st, 2009
by Julia H. Jackson
Given the number of books published in the United States every year, it can be hard to keep up. This week, we bring you 2009: Book by Book, a literary review with one book for each month. Whether you’re in the mood for memoir, fiction, or graphic novels, we’ve got a little something for everyone.
January: Things I’ve Been Silent About – Memories, by Azar Nafisi
This memoir comes fresh from Azar Nafisi, the author of Reading Lolita in Tehran. Nafisi reveals her journey from Iran to the United States, from writing to educating, from childhood to adulthood. An expert on Western literature, Nafisi recognized that the very act of open expression was dangerous in Iran during the Islamic Revolution. She breaks the literary silence by answering lingering questions from her first book, probing into the nature of her father’s extramarital affairs, and exploring her life as a mother, wife, and teacher.
February: The Women by T.C. Boyle
The life of famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright has been depicted in various ways, but none so creatively as this most recent fictionalized novel by Irish writer T.C. Boyle. The Women reveals another side to Wright’s darker nature by focusing on the important female characters in his life. The featured romances include Wright’s three wives, Olgivanna, Maude Miriam Noel, and Kitty, and his lover Mamah, who was murdered by one of Wright’s servants. Boyle’s creation is the narrator Tadashi Sato, an imagined apprentice to Wright, who undertakes the task of writing his mentor’s biography. Boyle’s mixture of fiction, gossip, and legend provides an original perspective on a talented, if not highly controversial, man.
March: How We Decide, by Jonah Lehrer
Twenty-seven-year-old author Jonah Lehrer examines the human capacity for decision-making in this, his second science book for left-brainers. Lehrer, who is a contributing editor at Wired magazine and a frequent resource on the WYNC program Radio Lab, breaks down neuroscience by punctuating it with manageable, understandable anecdotes. He links the way our brains function to the decisions we make, and the effects that has on, say, the current economic crisis. An excellent introduction to the world of science writing for the left- and right-brained.
April: The Beats: A Graphic History by Harvey Pekar, edited by Paul Buhle, art by Ed Piskor and others
Perhaps Jack Kerouac’s most famous quote is his affinity for “the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved.” American Splendor writer Harvey Pekar and editor Paul Buhle approach the world of Beat writers and artists by delving into the realm of underground comics. The history includes stories of Keroauc, William S. Burroughs, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s City Lights Bookstore, as well as unsung heroes such as “hobohemian” Slim Brundage of Chicago’s College of Complexes café. Although some of the stories’ facts are contested, the book itself is a testament to the unruly and revolutionary nature of an artistic generation.
May: Sag Harbor, by Colson Whitehead
Colson Whitehead’s fifth novel follows Benji, an African-American teenager who represents the “black boys with beach houses” by spending his summers at Sag Harbor. The characters challenge what it means to be “post-black” by resisting the urge to give into racial stereotype. Benji and his friends have BB gun wars, lust after hip-hop star Lisa Lisa, and confront the message behind “turning the other cheek.” Whitehead’s story is fiction, but follows the nuance of memoir, and offers a fresh voice not only for African-Americans, but for citizens of the Obama generation.
June: The Heyday of Insensitive Bastards: Stories, by Robert Boswell
Every word in this book packs a punch, as evidenced by the original title. Boswell’s thirteen stories feature the lost, wayward souls whose desires compete with their limited environs: addicts, cleaning ladies, fortune tellers, priests, all teetering on the edge of their own specific “heyday.” Boswell’s work goes beyond the short form; previous books include Century’s Son and What Men Call Treasure: The Search for Gold at Victorio Peak. This latest short story collection is a great glimpse into his Southwestern world.
July: In the Heart of the Canyon, by Elisabeth Hyde
If you’re looking for an adventure, look no further than Hyde’s latest novel, whose diverse cast of characters are forced to examine their neuroses whilst navigating the rapids of the Grand Canyon. Hyde takes on it all: a quarrelsome husband and wife with their two teenage sons, a divorcee and her obese daughter, an elderly couple on their last trip, an arrogant college grad, a middle-aged Harvard professor and, of course, a dog named Blender. The river guides wade through both water and conflict as they attempt their 125th trip down the canyon. This is a warm, well-written summer read that will inspire the adventurer in everyone.
August: Zeitoun, by Dave Eggers
Dave Eggers has done it again: he has combined sleek prose with real characters to prove a point without sounding preachy. Zeitoun follows the odyssey of a Muslim man and his family before, during, and after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005. Our hero chooses to stay behind while his wife and children flee to safety, preferring to navigate the murky waters of the city streets to rescue his fellow citizens. Complications arise when his good intentions are mistaken as something more sinister, a plot choice that mirrors the confusion and chaos of FEMA politics and America post-9/11. Eggers skirts political criticism by couching it in a carefully written, beautifully handled novel.
September: Juliet, Naked ,by Nick Hornby
Hornby welcomes us to the world of fandom with his latest novel, which revolves around a bizarre social triangle: Annie, her distant partner Duncan, and musician Tucker Crowe, Duncan’s hero. The plot thickens when Annie posts a review of Crowe’s latest album, “Juliet, Naked,” before Duncan does, sparking an unexpected correspondence between her and her husband’s idol. Hornby confronts the hidden side to popular icons, exploring the sincerity of fans and their adoration; a concept he himself might have some experience with, after publishing wildly successful High Fidelity and About a Boy.
October: Manhood for Amateurs, by Michael Chabon
Michael Chabon’s memoir gives a modern portrait of manhood from the perspective of a successful author (The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, The Yiddish Policeman’s Union), husband, and, above all, father. His story is told in a series of linked essays that follows his childhood, his parents’ marriage and divorce, and the comedy of errors that is the transition to adulthood.
November: The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver
Kingsolver’s ambitious new novel follows the lives of Mexican artists Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera through the eyes of Harrison Shepherd, who has a Forrest-Gump-like ability to participate in a series of notable historic events. Shepherd works for Lev Trotsky, a lost political revolutionary, and returns to the United States in time for the chaos of World War II. Kingsolver, who brought us Prodigal Summer and The Poisonwood Bible, merges history with fiction to shed light on an exciting era of the twentieth century.
December: Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat and Obsession by Julie Powell
A surprising, humbling diary brought to you by the Julie of Julie & Julia fame, Powell’s latest book follows the grisly details of an extramarital affair that forces to examine her intentions. Her intimacy is not limited only to her lover; Powell is suddenly struck with a desire to learn how to butcher meat, a process that feels familiar as she painstakingly dissects her own love life. A private, yet modestly open meditation on what it means to redefine love, if not for her husband, than for the pursuit of challenge.
Are we missing something? What was your favorite book of 2009? Let us know!
December 15th, 2009
By Julia H. Jackson
A 16-year-old African American girl stands atop a staircase, looking down as her mother hurls insults and frying pans up at her. A South African rugby team seeks to unite whites and blacks with one anticlimactic game. A middle-aged man makes his life out of the skies, reinventing himself every time his plane lands. The ghost of a murdered girl peers down on the world below, wondering how to protect her family. And perhaps most fantastically, a family of foxes and their woodland friends fight back against a tyrannical trio of farmers.
Where do these stories come from? And why do they seem so familiar?
This year’s Academy Award season features a whole cache of films based on popular novels. These adaptations take risks by modifying subtleties in plot or character, and, sometimes, adding entirely new meaning. These changes reflect the transition from one media to another, which means that the director, screenwriter, and producer make creative decisions. The implied risk when adapting a book to a movie is that the director might anger fans of the original by changing the story or character to make it more appropriate for cinema. Just what is that line between adaptation and revision? We’ve compiled a list of 5 Films Adapted From Books that you can see during the winter holidays. Judge for yourself how closely each film mirrors the original book, and let us know what you think.
5. Precious
Inspired by the novel Push: A Novel by Sapphire (1996)
Claireece Precious Jones is a 16-year-old African-American girl growing up in Harlem during the 1980s whose journey begins from the darkest of places. Impregnated by her father for the second time, Precious endures the verbal and emotional abuse of her mother while struggling through school, all the while harboring a secret: she is illiterate. Her story begins to turn around when she discovers the Each One / Teach One alternative school, where she meets a classroom full of young women who, like her, are creating resources for themselves where there were none. The 1996 novel was adapted by screenwriter Geoffrey Fletcher and directed and produced by Lee Daniels, who discovered Gabourey Sidibe, the New York native whose performance as Precious has already earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress.
4. Invictus
Inspired by the book Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game that Made a Nation by John Carlin (2008)
Nelson Mandela was released from 27 years in South African prison in 1990. His work to end apartheid earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993, and in 1995, he decided to link South African unity to its most popular sport: rugby. Carlin’s book examined Mandela’s efforts to bring blacks and whites together in the critical 1995 Rugby World Cup against the New Zealand All Blacks. The film, directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon, weaves the traditional sports story with the themes of racial integration and social movement.
3. Up in the Air
based on a book of the same title by Walter Kirn (2001)
Walter Kirn met a passenger on an airplane who reportedly traveled 300 days out of the year, and spent more time with flight crews on planes than he did with his own family. This later inspired the character Ryan Bingham, a 35-year-old man whose job it is to fire people for large companies. Bingham (played by Oscar winner George Clooney) lives a seemingly relationship-free life, until he falls for a fellow traveler, and his employer’s efficiency expert (played by Anna Kendrick) starts questioning him about his lifestyle. The film is directed and produced by Jason Reitman, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Sheldon Turner. Given the current economic climate and the film’s central theme, Reitman and his crew decided to cast non-actors who had recently lost their jobs for 22 of the extra roles.
2. The Lovely Bones
adapted from the novel of the same name by Alice Sebold (2002)
Susie Salmon is this story’s chilling heroine, a teenage girl who is murdered by her next-door neighbor. She finds herself in a Heaven-like limbo where she peers into the lives of her grieving family and the killer as he prepares to kill again. Director Peter Jackson is best known for his blockbuster book-to-film hits, such as the Lord of the Rings trilogy and King Kong. The cast includes Saoirse Ronan as Susie Salmon, Rachel Weisz as her mother Abigail, Mark Wahlberg as her father Jack, and Stanley Tucci as George Harvey, the killer. Jackson is known for his visual effects, and so it will be i
nteresting to see how he interprets Sebold’s vision of “heaven.”
1. The Fantastic Mr. Fox
Adapted from the story of the same name by Roald Dahl (1970)
Roald Dahl was famous for creating magical worlds for children to lose themselves in, many of which were transformed into movies (Charlie Chocolate and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda, James and the Giant Peach, to name a few). In this most recent Dahl adaptation, director Wes Anderson (The Royal Tenenbaums, The Darjeeling Limited) employed a team to recreate the family foxhole using stop-motion animation. Jason Schwartzman, George Clooney, Meryl Streep, and Bill Murray were among the actors to embody the voices of foxes, badgers, rats, and, yes, people. Anderson reportedly added a first and third act the original story.
This list reflects a tiny percentage of the amount of books-to-movies in Hollywood. Think Harry Potter, Twilight, The Chronicles of Narnia…and that’s just fiction. The argument could be made that there are only so many stories to tell, but many ways to tell them. What do you think? Does a book lose something when it becomes a movie? And what about the conversation that happens between an author and a screenwriter? How might that affect which direction a film goes?
Let us know what your favorite film adaptations are before the awards season starts!
December 14th, 2009
by Adam Krause
With his recent acceptance in Oslo, President Barack Obama becomes one of a few individuals, along with Al Gore and Jimmy Carter, to have won both the Nobel Peace Prize and the Grammy. (Watch out, gentlemen: Bono is on your tail.) However, what he does not yet have, and the following five writers do, is the coveted Nobel Prize in Literature. These writers are not necessarily strange choices for the prize, since each of them received it after a long and distinguished contribution to the literature of their country. But their work itself, which combines the macabre and the sublime, black comedy and original philosophy, pulses with all the vital strangeness of writing that deserves to be read decades later. Genius breaks all the rules.
1) Heinrich Boll (1972) 
German critics have called his work “Trummerliteratur”: the literature of the rubble. It deals with the traumatic, bombed-out aftermath of World War II in Germany. He was strongly rooted in his working-class Catholic town of Cologne, and was horrified to see it taken over by the Nazis and then nearly destroyed in Allied bombing raids. His distaste for anyone who misused their power, from fascist governments to hypocritical religious leaders, manifested itself in the acid wit of his books.
Sample work: The Clown
The Clown surely has one of the most depressing covers of all time, and in this case you can judge a book by its cover. The hero is a failed traveling clown who has real artistic ambitions but is often too drunk to attend his own performances, and hardly has the money for cigarettes. He is trying to win back his old lover, Maria, who has married a pious Catholic businessman. But the clown can see with more clarity from the gutter than from the church window: as he tells us, “The children of this world are not only smarter, they are also more humane and more generous than the children of light.”
2) Par Lagerkvist (1951)
Swedish author Par Lagerkvist, by contrast, said that he “had had the good fortune to grow up in a home where the only books known were the Bible and the Book of Hymns.” Religious parables are a prominent part of his work, and his restrained prose style has been compared by one Swedish critic to John the Evangelist: they are “both masters at expressing profound things with a highly restricted choice of words.”
Sample work: Barabbas
This short novel follows Barabbas, the thief who was pardoned by Jesus on the day of the crucifixion. He goes back to his thieves’ lair and wanders about in a sort of daze. His friends worry that he has lost interest in crime (though he does sneak up behind a man in a crowd who has called for the stoning of an innocent woman, and stabs him in the back.) Eventually he becomes a slave working in a mine, and is interrogated by a powerful Roman who learns that he personally met Jesus. Barabbas, who has not become a Christian from the experience but still has a dim inkling that there is something more to life, can only answer: “I want to believe.”
3) Yasunari Kawabata (1968) 
Kawabata was the first Japanese writer to receive the Nobel Prize. He was orphaned at four and was raised by his grandparents, who both passed away by the time he was fifteen. Without any family to return to, he threw himself into boarding-school life and soon gained fame for both his literary writing and his reporting for the Mainichi Shinbun, still Japan’s biggest newspaper. The public suicide of his friend and fellow writer Yukio Mishima, who did not want to live in a Japan humbled by its World War II defeat (see the film Mishima for a terrific rendering of Mishima’s life and his death by seppuku, which involved plunging a dagger into his own heart while a friend beheaded him) affected Kawabata greatly. He had recurring dreams of Mishima for nearly a year before committing suicide himself, through gas, in 1972.
Sample work: The Master of Go
This was Kawabata’s favorite of his novels, based on his reporting experience as a young man. The aging Go master, Honinbo Shusai, is playing a last match with his reputation at stake against the young challenger Otake. The match, which takes six months due to various stalling techniques by Shusai as he sees with dismay that the younger man has what it takes to defeat him, is a media event that transfixes the nation. Some critics have read it as an allegory of the contest between Japan and America in World War II.
4) Jean-Paul Sartre (1964)
Sartre was one of the last philosophers to be considered a celebrity in his own time: when he was arrested at a student protest in 1968, the French president intervened, telling the police, “You don’t arrest Voltaire.” In his most famous work, Being and Nothingness, he put forth the existentialist philosophy that the possibilities of consciousness are infinite, but the practical constraints that life puts on us due to the need to be physical actors in the world are limiting, causing a constant dichotomy and anguish. He is the first Nobel Prize recipient to turn down the prize: he was, by that time, dismissive of literature, which he saw as a way to avoid real political commitment. However, multiple accounts claim that he tried to ask for just the cash part of the prize.
Sample work: No Exit
This play about purgatory, written shortly after Sartre’s experience being confined in a German prisoner-of-war camp, is a demonstration of one of his key ideas: that the gaze of others is what keeps us confined in our societal roles. Three sinners end up in a room together, and instead of the torments of fire and brimstone, they torture each other with probing conversation that exposes their worst anxieties. When the door is finally opened at the end of the play, none of the characters will leave for fear of what the others will think of them. Sartre’s most quotable aphorism appeared in this play: “Hell is other people.”
5) William Faulkner (1949)
This most distinguished of Southern writers was not widely read in America until he won the prize, owing perhaps to the difficulty of his novels, which employ stream of consciousness, radical shifts in point of view and sometimes-obscure regional dialect. His acceptance speech, which can be listened to on YouTube though it is nearly unintelligible, is regarded as the best Nobel Prize acceptance speech ever given in any category. He called upon writers to concern themselves with “the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed – love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice.”
Sample work: As I Lay Dying
This unusual novel, with most chapters just a page or two long and one as short as five words – “My mother is a fish” – concerns the odyssey of the Bundren family through rural Mississippi to bury their mother in her home town. Fifteen characters, including the corpse, narrate the novel. Faulkner wrote this book in a period of four weeks while working the night shift at a powerhouse, so don’t complain that you have no time to write!
