As I Lay Dying (Norton Critical Edition): 0 (Norton Critical Editions) - Softcover

Faulkner, William; Gorra, Michael

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0393931382 ISBN 13: 9780393931389

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2010

Synopsis

This Norton Critical Edition is based on the 1985 corrected text and is accompanied by detailed explanatory annotations. "Backgrounds and Contexts" is divided into three sections, each of which includes a concise introduction by Michael Gorra that carefully frames the issues presented, with particular attention to As I Lay Dying's place in Faulkner's literary life. "Contemporary Reception" reprints American, English, and French reviews by Clifton Fadiman, Henry Nash Smith, Edwin Muir, and Maurice Coindreau, among others, along with Valery Larbaud's never-before-translated preface to the first French edition of the novel. "The Writer and His Work" examines Faulkner's claim to have written the novel in six weeks without changing a word. It includes his comments on the book's composition along with his later thoughts on and changing opinions of it, sample pages from the manuscript, his Nobel Prize address, and the little-known short story in which he first used the title. "Cultural Context" reprints an essay by Carson McCullers and an excerpt from James Agee's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men along with other materials that address questions of Southern Agrarianism and the Southern grotesque. "Criticism" begins with the editor's introduction to As I Lay Dying's critical history and scholarly reception. Eleven major essays are provided by Olga W. Vickery, Cleanth Brooks, Calvin Bedient, Andre Bleikasten, Eric Sundquist, Stephen M. Ross, Doreen Fowler, Patrick O'Donnell, Richard Gray, John Limon, and Donald M. Kartiganer. A Chronology and a Selected Bibliography are also included.

About this title

Review:

"For range of effect, philosophical weight, originality of style, variety of characterization, humor, and tragic intensity, [Faulkner's works] are without equal in our time and country."
--Robert Penn Warren

"From the Hardcover edition."

Book Description:

'Brilliant and compelling - one is constrained to follow to the end' Spectator

About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0393931382
• ISBN 13: 9780393931389
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 400