Reading William Faulkner’s Light in August

Abstract

Sometimes William Faulkner’s fiction conjures up for me images akin to those found in, say, the paintings of Edvard Munch. Both painter and writer share a particular kind of cold and cold-blooded angst. Munch’s 1901 lithograph “Dead Lovers,” which depicts a man and a woman lying dead on a stark bed, blood running down from the mattress to the floor, might have served as a jacket illustration for ...