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As you lay trying ...

... to decipher Oprah's summer book-club assignment of three Faulkner novels, we offer a cheat sheet.

By COLETTE BANCROFT
Published June 21, 2005

No summer break for Oprah's book club.

Forget the beach books, the chick lit, the breezy thrillers. In her earnest effort to upgrade the reading habits of America, or at least the half-million members of her book club, Oprah Winfrey gave a whopper of an assignment for June, July and August: three novels by William Faulkner.

First up is As I Lay Dying, the tragicomic saga of the Bundren family's journey to bury its matriarch, Addie. It's told in 59 monologues by 15 characters.

The July book is The Sound and the Fury, about the doomed Compson family, with only four narrative voices, including a severely retarded man and a man about to commit suicide, but a far more complex timeline.

The topper is Light in August, which has a fairly straightforward structure but tells a story built around murder, racism, religious fanaticism, sexual confusion and family betrayal.

Faulkner is arguably the greatest American novelist of the 20th century, but no one ever said he was easy.

His plot structures and narrative techniques were wildly experimental, his incredibly complex sentences could roll on for pages, and he loved nothing more than swan-diving from high-flown philosophy in one paragraph to a dirty joke in the next.

But readers seem undaunted. On , the three-volume Oprah's book club box set was ranked No. on Amazon.com. Members of the club can log onto the Web site (www2.oprah.com/books/books_landing.jhtml) for study guides, a reading calendar and videos of lectures by Faulkner scholars.

There are even flash cards to help readers keep track of all the characters in As I Lay Dying.

If that seems like just a little too much homework, here's our not-quite-reverent study guide.

Faulkner fundamentals

Faulkner, a stupendously prolific writer, wrote As I Lay Dying during:

a) six days on the road;

b) six weeks on the night shift; or

c) six months in rehab.

Answer: b

Seventeen of Faulkner's novels, including the three on Oprah's list, are set in a fictional county in his native Mississippi. He called it:

a) Rowan Oak

b) Yoknapatawpha

c) Yeehaw Junction

Answer: b, and a bonus point if you can pronounce it: YAWK-nuh-puh-TAW-fuh. Answer a, Rowan Oak, is the name of Faulkner's home in Oxford, Miss.

As I Lay Dying (1930)

Remember in English 101 when the teacher told you that characters' names sometimes give the reader a clue to their natures? Faulkner just flat adored this device. Anse and Addie Bundren's only daughter is a pregnant 17-year-old who inspires lust in every man who lays eyes on her. Her name is Dewey Dell. "Dell" means a "small secluded hollow," "dewy" means . . . well, you do the math.

At the end of the novel, after delivering his wife's highly aromatic corpse to the family graveyard, which one of the following does Anse Bundren NOT bring back from town?

a) a new set of teeth

b) a new gramophone

c) a new wife

d) a new air freshener for the wagon.

Answer: d

The Sound and the Fury (1929)

In those basic lit classes, you also probably learned about unreliable narrators, first-person voices who are either naive or devious. The Sound and the Fury is a case study in unreliable narrators, first among them Benjy, the Compson family's youngest son, whose mental age never develops beyond babyhood. When Benjy describes an event he witnesses from outside the Compson home, is it:

a) his father's funeral in 1912;

b) his sister's wedding in 1910; or

c) his grandmother's funeral in 1898?

Answer: All three, sometimes all on the same page.

Benjy's brother Quentin has something that his father describes as "the mausoleum of all hope and desire." Is it:

a) Quentin's scholarship to Harvard;

b) a watch that belonged to Quentin's great-grandfather; or

c) the odds of Oprah's book club members hanging out at the beach with a thermos of margaritas this summer?

Answer: b

Light in August (1932)

One of this book's main characters is Joe Christmas, a man of mysterious background who, although violent, is himself a lifelong victim of cruelty. He is eventually tortured and murdered at the age of 33. His initials are a clue to another person Faulkner wants the reader to compare him to. Is it:

a) Joseph Conrad;

b) Joan Crawford; or

c) Jesus Christ?

Answer: c

The symbolic name game gets a workout in Light in August. Match these names to their characters:

a) Gail Hightower

b) Percy Grimm

c) Lena Grove

1) A racist military man who kills Joe Christmas

2) Another one of Faulkner's beloved young, pregnant fertility symbols

3) An idealistic minister who tries to shut out the real world

Answers: a: 3; b: 1; c: 2

Bonus question

An interviewer once asked Faulkner what readers should do if they couldn't figure out one of his books even after reading it two or three times. Faulkner said they should:

a) get a refund;

b) endure;

c) read it four times.

Answer: c

-- Colette Bancroft is a recovering former English professor. She can be reached at 727 893-8435 or bancroft@sptimes.com

[Last modified June 20, 2005, 19:43:03]