A Reader’s Guide to William Faulkner: The Short Stories

This R eader’s Guide is a companion to Edmond L. Volpe’s Reader’s Guide to William The Novels, the most complete guide to the novels of Faulkner and hailed by critics as “a book to be read, studied, and returned to The new Guide—the first comprehensive book of its kind—offers analyses of all Faulkner’s short stories, published and unpublished, that were not incorporated into novels or turned into chapters of a novel. Each of the seventy-one stories receives separate and detailed appraisal. This exacting approach helps establish the relationship of the stories to the novels and underscores Faulkner’s formidable skill as a writer of short fiction. Although Faulkner often spoke disparagingly of the short story form and claimed that he wrote stories for money—which he did—Edmond L. Volpe’s study reveals that Faulkner could not resist the application of his incomparable creative imagination or his mastery of narrative structure and technique to this genre.