A couple of days ago I finished a re-read of William Faulkner's "Light in August" from my Easton Press Faulkner set. I initially read this back in high school and didn't recall anything about it...so it felt very much like a first read. The book I read was gorgeous and am looking forward to reading through the rest of the set. Across from the title page was an image of the original cover from the first edition, which was a nice thing to include in my opinion.
There are several major characters in "Light in August" and their stories are told with care and woven into beautiful prose. It starts with Lena Grove who spends weeks walking from Alabama to Jefferson, Mississippi in search of her prior paramour, Lucas Burch, with whom she had gotten pregnant. He had left and promised to send word for her but hadn't and, as the birth of their child was rapidly approaching, Lena opted to look for him.
Lucas had changed his name upon his arrival in Jefferson in an attempt to remain anonymous. Some folks that Lena passed by on the way thought he may be found in Jefferson, which led that to being her destination, but they were misremembering the name of Byron Bunch. Byron was a coworker of Lucas at the planing mill along with Joe Christmas, a man that has his own tale of ostracism and rejection due largely to his having both white and black heritage.
Lucas ends up moving into a cabin with Joe and they bootleg on the side. They both eventually quit their jobs, and Joe ends up becoming entangled in a toxic relationship with Joanna Burden, the homeowner of the house that the cabin was a mother-in-law suite to. Ultimately it results in Joanna's murder and the burning down of her house.
Byron had fallen in love with Lena at first sight when she showed up at the planing mill and goes to tremendous lengths to help her despite his resistance to telling her everything about Lucas, who had renamed himself Joe Brown. He does this in part to postpone her knowledge of the bad news related to her paramour but also to preserve some level of interaction with her as he was ready and willing to step in and be her husband.
"Light in August" is a powerful book and I had a great time going through it again. There's a lot of character development and background stories and it is overall very moving as Faulkner tends to be. I highly recommend this book to anyone who loves good literature.
I'll close this out with a quote from the book:
"'No,' Byron says. 'I aint going to stay that long.' He stands, sober, contained, with that air compassionate still, but decisive without being assured, confident without being assertive: that air of a man about to do something which someone dear to him will not understand and approve, yet which he himself knows to be right just as he knows that the friend will never see it so. He says: 'You aint going to like it. But there aint anything else to do. I wish you could see it so. But I reckon you cant. And I reckon that's all there is to it.'
"Across the desk, seated again, Hightower watches him gravely. 'What have you done, Byron?"'
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