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    One Matchless Time: A Life of William Faulkner
    Unavailable
    One Matchless Time: A Life of William Faulkner
    Unavailable
    One Matchless Time: A Life of William Faulkner
    Ebook776 pages12 hours

    One Matchless Time: A Life of William Faulkner

    By Jay Parini

    4.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    “Nothing less than spellbinding . . . It’s an eye-opener. Anecdotal without being tawdry, analytical without being academic, it captures the essence of Faulkner’s life with the narrative drive of a novel.” — Houston Chronicle

    “A splendid life of William Faulkner . . . Not only readable but downright enthralling.” — Seattle Times

    William Faulkner was a literary genius, and one of America's most important and influential writers. Drawing on previously unavailable sources--including letters, memoirs, and interviews with Faulkner's daughter and lovers--Jay Parini has crafted a biography that delves into the mystery of this gifted and troubled writer. His Faulkner is an extremely talented, obsessive artist plagued by alcoholism and a bad marriage who somehow transcends his limitations. Parini weaves the tragedies and triumphs of Faulkner's life in with his novels, serving up a biography that's as engaging as it is insightful.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateMar 17, 2009
    ISBN9780061751233
    Unavailable
    One Matchless Time: A Life of William Faulkner
    Author

    Jay Parini

    Michael Hoffman is a filmmaker known for creating complex and layered stories with great attention to detail and character. A skilled writer and director, he has worked on both feature films and documentaries, including A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Emperor's Club, Game of Six, and the ESPN documentary Out of the Blue. The Last Station is his most recent film. Jay Parini is a professor of English & Creative Writing at Middlebury College in Vermont. A writer and academic, he is best known for his novels and poetry. He is the author of the novel The Last Station, which is now a major motion picture from Sony Classics.

    Read more from Jay Parini

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    Reviews for One Matchless Time

    4.5/5

    28 ratings5 reviews

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    • 5/5
      The name William Faulkner evokes a great deal of respect (and perhaps fear) from readers. He is known for long sentences that span more than one page. He is inescapably deep – an abyss. He sees into the Southern American male experience as no other and draws out truths that apply to all of humanity. His allure extends from the South into New England, across the Atlantic to France and down the isthmus to Latin America.

      To be successful, a biographer of Faulkner has to be utterly in-touch with himself/herself. Parini seems up to the task, though even he self-consciously doubts his portrait in the conclusion. He tries to tie together Faulkner’s life and writings into one coherent unit. He succeeds in my measure even though I still get lost in the depthlessness of the characters in Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi.

      Parini delineates with relative objectivity “Bill” Faulkner’s failed marriage, his affairs, the adoration of his daughter Jill, and Bill’s ever-expanding mastery of his financial and economic situation. Parini tackles Faulkner’s brilliant speech in Stockholm to accept the Nobel Prize with an equanimity worth of the moment. As with any good biography, I leave with the feeling that I have known Faulkner and that I have known the author.

    • 5/5
      “I discovered that my own little postage stamp of native soil was worth writing about and that I would never live long enough to exhaust it, and that by sublimating the actual into the apocryphal I would have the complete liberty to use whatever talent I might have to its absolute top.”“It is my ambition to be, as a private individual, abolished and voided from history, leaving it markless, no refuse save the printed books.” “In Faulkner, the grotesque typically emerges in terms of the horrific. He presents a wide array of twisted old spinsters, compulsive sadists, eccentric lovers of beasts, incestuous brothers and fathers, unfeeling mothers, and toothless wonders who revel in the base forms of human behavior.”In this outstanding biography, the author mentions that one does not read Faulkner, but rereads him. I think that is an excellent observation and it is one that highlights my failing, in regards to this difficult southern author. Yes, I have read and enjoyed several of his classic novels, but I have only taken a peek, a mere glimpse at what, this writer is trying to convey, so my appreciation is limited. I better get busy, catching up with his "must-read" books, plus the inevitable "rereading". I knew very little about Faulkner's life, which was the reason I wanted to read this bio and I can't imagine another biographer doing a better job, casting an intense spotlight on this man's history, which is endlessly fascinating. Parini is also an excellent writer, in his own right, so the narrative hums along like a song:“In the end, however, William Faulkner stands alone, a master of tragic farce, a wild-eyed comedian, a raconteur of the highest order, still sitting around the campfire in the Big Woods, still talking in the thousands of pages that remain his legacy.”
    • 4/5
      Not as detailed as the Blotner but more accessible. Not as good as Parini's bio of Frost, though. Made me want to reread The Sound and the Fury.
    • 4/5
      Having read Blottner's biography of Faulkner many years ago I was curious to get an update by reading Parini's One Matchless Time: A Life of William Faulkner. It offered a thorough discussion and analyses of all Faulkner's works as well as a good look at his life. He was sadly a womanizer and a drunk even if he was one of America's greatest writers though he wasn't always well received by the critics. I thoroughly enjoyed this biography and it incited me to tackle some of Faulkner's novels even though I find them daunting. If you are interested in writers' lives as I am I encourage you to pick up this book.
    • 5/5
      Here is a terrific, accessible biography about Faulkner. His faults are drawn out here, I guess because they make for interesting writing. It's still impressive how he overcame them in order to put together the insanely good novels and stories that make him maybe the greatest American writer.