Marking time with Faulkner

**Marking time with Faulkner: A study of the symbolic importance of the mark and of related actions** "is a youthful book (not because it would be a student's thesis, a researcher's work - it's that too - but because its author thinks she has the eye to see the truth of what she reads (and she has too the spirit to tell exactly what she sees). And seeing that truth, the lady who wrote it did something very valuable for the Faulkner studiosus (who, anyway, has a hard time, with such bibliographies in front of him or her): For Margaret Harrell makes us see and feel what it would be like to be Faulkner. Of course, one could guess what that would be like, the more so because the Master himself has said it: 'An artist is a creature driven by demons . . . and he doesn't know why they should choose him, and he's usually too busy to wonder why.' Now, Margaret Harrell, herself an artist (for she is a very delicate, and at the same time, very thoughtful, serious, meditative poet, the author of that wonder, a many-volumed poem, Love in Transition), wisely imitated the Master, not trying to write about why Faulkner was who he was but how he did that. So that her slender but brilliantly intelligent book looks for that alone which in the many sounds and deep furies of Faulkner's world (where, of course, it is not very easy to live and to endure) make up that instant 'of timeless beatitude,' that instant in which all that it takes to make a life, 'take on a splendid and timeless beauty.' And, of course, being a poet herself, Ms. Harrell finds that moment and that beauty and, what is more and, I think this is the point of her book, she finds the mark Faulkner made, in creating and recreating his world. For, as Margaret Harrell tells us in her book, man leaves behind and after him what he does. And being, as she says, an heir to Faulkner's birthday, chances are she is right." Mircea Ivanescu, poet, translator, medaille d'or life achievement award, Romania - back, jacket copy

Product Description
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This book of literary criticism is a good introduction to Faulkner. It follows motifs of recurring actions, such as unlikely as it sounds - "moving, burning, squatting, eating and ultimately marking." That is, the uses Faulkner makes of imagistic language to leave "milestones" and "deathless footnotes." Through a close look at the recurring language, the author detects clusters of revelation about style, message, and how a symbol itself evolves.

Some chapter titles are: "Thematics," "Movement," "Marks," "Malevolence," "Impermanence." Suffuse with lively quotations from the books, the language is easily accessible yet closely researched. It has been recommended reading in university classes in Romania.