Reading Faulkner with Oprah. By Meghan O'Rourke

Reading Faulkner with Oprah. By Meghan O'Rourke: "For all his brilliant obscurity, Faulkner was obsessed with speaking in a language of mythic essentialism. His religious vision was an austere version of relic-worship, attached to place and to objects." In writing about the South he knew, he was trying to articulate a story of doomed consciousness, of pain, of being hyper-cognizant of the demise of not only family but of an entire culture established in bad moral faith. Out of these pressures are forged the self-made flaws of characters who collide with their families (and their culture) as violently as wrecking balls.