Light In August

Long way to waddle
indulge in self delusion
keep selling the lie.

“Man knows so little about his fellows. In his eyes all men or women act upon what he believes would motivate him if he were mad enough to do what that other man or woman is doing.”

William Faulkner's Light in August is a sobering, yet beautiful, story surrounding the complexities of human nature and human identity. The novel captures glimpses within the lives of Lena Grove, Byron Bunch, Joe Christmas, and Rev. Gail Hightower as they navigate their unique, yet somehow universal, struggles. Faulkner masterfully highlights the complexity of human nature—the pull of the self-possessed and calm, pitted against the frantic, delirious, and uncontrolled. The constant battle of both, and the hopefulness that springs from the one overcoming the other, flows through every page.

Revered as one of the greatest authors in all literature, Faulkner's work alone in these 500-some-odd pages clearly sets him apart. The turn of the last page will have you wishing for the first, again and again.


Favorite passage:
[Chapter 20]

“In the lambent suspension of August into which night is about to fully come, it seems to engender and surround itself with a faint glow like a halo. The halo is full of faces. The faces are not shaped with suffering, not shaped with anything; not horror, pain, not even reproach. They are peaceful, as though they have escaped into an apotheosis; his own is among them. In fact, they all look a little alike, composite of all the faces which he has ever seen. But he can distinguish them one from another: his wife's; townspeople, members of that congregation which denied him, which had met him at the station that day with eagerness and hunger; Byron Bunch's; the woman with the child; and that of the man called Christmas.”
~ Rev. Gail Hightower