We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 September 2009
Robert E. McClure. “Books Worth Reading.” Santa Monica Evening Outlook, January 20, 1939, p. 10.
If the first mark of writing genius is power of creative imagination, William Faulkner of the Deep South is unquestionably such a genius and in the top flight of contemporary writers. Unfortunately for his popularity, his imagination is of a peculiarly morbid and tortured kind, and he delights in teasing and mystifying his readers before shocking them out of their senses and stunning them with nightmare horrors. So he is not for the tender-minded or for those who ask to be pleasantly entertained. Yet not to know Faulkner is to miss some of the most exciting writing of our time.
Moreover he is one of the most indigenous of our writers, who can tell us a great deal about certain parts of America and certain types of people and experience, without having to go to Loyalist Spain for inspiration. And he has matured. In his latest book, The Wild Palms, he no longer shocks for the sake of shocking, no longer reminds us of an over-imaginative youth too long exposed to the reptilian terrors and malarial fevers of a southern swamp, without benefit of sunshine and fresh air. He has taken, in this new book, two story themes that are as old as the Greek dramatists, and has adapted them to the American scene in a manner all his own, with brilliant artistry and a power of imagery not likely to be surpassed by any living writer.
The two stories are opposed to each other like contrapuntal themes in a musical composition.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.
