Review: The William Faulkner Audio Collection

The William Faulkner Audio Collection by William Faulkner
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I know that I had read some of William Faulkner’s works in literature classes both in High School and in collage, but I honestly didn’t specifically remember any of them until I picked up this work. After listening to him read some of his own works, I strongly suspect that W.F. was the model for the writer character in Stranger In A Strange Land and has influenced several popular movies I have seen in recent history.

I honestly don’t know what I think of his work. There certainly is an ambiance of sincerity and depth to his writings which bring the reader into an emotional state of seeming to live and breath the environment about which he writes, but the content doesn’t contain much in my best opinion. Perhaps I simply know first hand the environment he writes about and so for me it’s more like reliving a small subset of my own memories more than some unique literary experience.

Nevertheless, I have very much enjoyed hearing the writer read his own works in his own voice. There is little doubt that Faulkner intimately understood his own material and wrote about the things closest to his heart.

This work receives 3 1/2 stars, with a bit of admonition to the compilers of these works for failing to re-master them. The audio in a few of the readings is very difficult to make out.

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