William Faulkner and the Materials of Writing

This book examines materials of writing in William Faulkner's novels and stories from parchment to typewriters, letters to telegrams.

Jonathan Berliner (Author)

9781009222327, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 5 January 2023

280 pages
23.5 x 15.9 x 1.8 cm, 0.46 kg

'Jonathan Berliner's comprehensive and wonderfully ambitious examination of a range of writing technologies-paper, parchment, comics, telegrams, Bibles, an ivory tablet-across Faulkner's opus, including the relatively neglected early and late works, is sure to provoke new conversations and insights into what Faulkner called 'the lumber room of literature' not only in Faulkner studies but too in adjacent fields of media studies and book history. William Faulkner and the Materials of Writing reminds us, if we needed reminding, Faulkner has much yet to offer attentive readers and scholars alike.' Sarah Gleeson-White, The University of Sydney

William Faulkner and the Materials of Writing examines the many physical texts in Faulkner's novels and stories from letters and telegrams to Bibles, billboards, and even the alphabetic shape of airport runways. Current investigations in print culture, book history, and media studies often emphasize the controlling power of technological form; instead, this book demonstrates how media should be understood in the context of its use. Throughout Faulkner's oeuvre, various kinds of writing become central to characters forming a sense of the self as well as bonds of intimacy, while ideologies of race and gender connect to the body through the vehicle of writing. This book combines close reading analysis of Faulkner's fiction with the publication history of his works that together offer a case study about what it means to live in a world permeated by media.

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1. Not Even Past: Media, History, and Repurposing the Text
Chapter 2. Parchment Bodies: Race and Writing Materials
Chapter 3. Inkwell Eyes: Writing, Gender, and the Body
Chapter 4. Circuits of Media: Airplanes, Newspapers, and the Afterlife of Novels
Chapter 5. On Carpentry: Religion and the Question of Literature
Chapter 6. From Ivory to Foolscap: Writing and Intimacy
Works Cited
Index.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers [DSK], Literary studies: from c 1900 - [DSBH], Literature: history & criticism [DS], Literature & literary studies [D]