START HERE Write-In Giveaway Finalist #2
Tara of BookSexyReview was selected as a finalist in our Write-In Giveaway, in which we invited the Book Riot community to submit sample chapters for our book START HERE: Read Your Way Into 25 Amazing Authors. Check it out on Kickstarter and back it if you like it! The winner of the Write-In Giveaway will be the one whose entry reposted on BookRiot.com gets the most Facebook “likes” by 11:59PM EDT, Friday, August 17, 2012. The ONLY way to vote is to click the Facebook “Like” just above this text on BookRiot.com.
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Every reader has a favorite author – William Cuthbert Faulkner happens to be mine. Actually “obsession” would be more accurate. Good friends buy me copies of 1950′s pulps of his novels. I once spent the better part of a 5 hour ride to Pittsburgh debating his attitude towards race. I’ve had a surprising number of conversations in bars with complete strangers aboutAbsalom, Absalom! and Go Down Moses. I also own not one, but two copies of Cleanth Brooks: William Faulkner The Yoknapatawpha Country. AND lastly, I’ve the bad habit of judgingany author writing in the English language based on how he holds up against the Duke of Oxford, Mississippi.
Comparisons made over the years have included (but have by no means been limited to) –
- Cormac McCarthy – Faulkner pimped.
- John Steinbeck – Faulkner’s more cheerful drinking buddy.
- Jeanette Winterson – Literary love child of William Faulkner & Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
- Alan Heathcock – Faulkner meets the Mid-West.
- David Foster Wallace – Obviously never read Faulkner.
- Karen Russell – Obviously did.
I could do this all day (and have).
ANYWAY! Am I going to waste your time with plot summaries? Family trees? Discussions of stream-of-conscious writing? Hell no! (That’s what Wikipedia is for). Instead I drew you a pretty picture. Below is my map of the backroads into Mr. William Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County.
