le disappointment.
Faulkner knew that his financial security and artistic reputation were at stake with Light in August. This helps to explain the particular care with which the novel was constructed. A passage from Joseph Blotner's 1984 biography reveals this concern:
The marginal inserts, the cancellations, the interpolations, the discarded sheets and the paste ons salvaged from others, all showed the combination of meticulousness and energy, the craftman's care and the determination to make the work match the dream. (282)
Some of Faulkner's early critics were averse to his method of narrating out of sequence. His technique of withholding essential information about one plot line, only to shift to another, was considered sloppy. For example, at the end of chapter five of Light in August, Faulkner places Joe Christmas just outside of Joanna Burden's house. In another moment he will mount the stairs that lead to her bedroom. Some 140 pages later, we actually watch Joe climb the stairs, but in the intervening pages we have learned so much more about him that we can understand why he believes that he must kill her (Brooks 180). Some of the early critics still saw Faulkner's out of sequence narration as a drawback but were willing to concede the power of his prose. Henry Seidel Canby, who had called the novel sloppy, also granted that it had "extraordinary force and insight" (Karl 490). In addition, he had praise for its lyricism:
It was incredibly rich in character studies, intensely vivid, rising sometimes to poetry, and filled with the spirit of compassion which saves those who look at life too closely from hardness and dispair. (Karl 490)
Today, Light in August is interpreted as a triumph of theme and characterization. Its stylistic and technical achievements are worthy of careful study by themselves. Light in August is a good place to start a study of Faulkner's style and technique because it is actually...