Collected Stories

I might have gotten this too far back to show as a verified purchaser. I have the Kindle version and I'm really with it, not to mention the stories.This is a great to have on Kindle. I had owned the print version at one time but the electronic version is very convenient for short stories. It helps that the Kindle version includes page numbers and, a dynamic table of contents. Very nicely put together.The stories are, for the most part, fantastic. Barn Burning and A Rose for Emily are stories I've read dozens of times and still enjoy. Bear Hunt is superb, told by Ratliff after an introduction by an unnamed narrator. This story in particular has stuck with me as it is both humorous and poignant. It's also one that lends itself to retelling as I did just the other day.Very much worth having this on Kindle.

I love a good short story and Faulkner hit the spot for me with this collection of various tales from the Country to Beyond. My favorite story was The Bear Hunt, but there were so many that were good in an creepy way like the story Wash. I had to re-read that ending a couple of times and afterwards, I read the whole story over again to put the pieces of the puzzle in place.Every section has good stories in them and some better than other. Reading Faulkner ain't no walk in the park though. In the Beyond section of the book the stories are a little more difficult to read and understand. That section alone is the reason I gave the book four stars and not five. Carcassonne may be poetic and beautiful to some but it's...I don't know read it for yourself. Faulkner kind of puts you in your place and says, "I know poetry, you know nothing". I'll keep reading until I do understand though.I've been reading Faulkner's works for about 5 months straight and I think this collection of stories is what I should have started with first. I hope that if you decide to take on Faulkner to start here and save The Sound and the Fury for later...but not too much later.Enjoy.

How can I rate Faulkner? Only by saying that he is one of the really great ones [up there with Steinbeck, Harper Lee, Tennesee Williams, Arthur Miller and Philip Roth, and that is as good as it ever gets]. He describes the Southern zeitgeist of his time better than anyone. His stories [and novels] breathe a life of their own: they are funny, compassionate, macabre, tragic, touching, sometimes violent but always totally on target - in your mind's eye you can actually not only see but almost smell and touch the Deep South. Ever since my first introduction to Faulkner [in high school] I've been an ardent fan, and I have almost all of his books! Pity Amazon allows me only five stars!

Faulkner was one of the greatest writers in literary history. Universal and at the same time so peculiarly southerner. His characters English is the best description of themselves. The unique way of triple adjectivacions for poetic and accuracy reasons as well as his tenderness for even the most despicable of his creatures are some of his trademarks. At the end of the day a Snopes deserves our sympathy as much as Gavin Stevens. As a reader I have the feeling that Faulkner never put himself over me. And these are just some of the outstanding virtues of his writing be it a novel or a short story. At the end,and beeing a spanish speaker, I would like to tell that to translate Faulkner is actually impossible.

Some good stories; not all

These comments apply only to the Kindle version, and please read the book regardless. The stories of course are classics. However, they deserve better treatment than the Kindle version gives. This is a collection of stories, not a single novel. However, there is no link to jump from the table of contents to a particular story, which means you have to do a manual search for any particular story. True, a bit of a first world complaint, but I think it could be done with greater respect for the collection.

In my opinion a handful of these stories are among the best in the English language. However, the majority of them are pointless – they have no conclusions and appear to be the beginnings of longer stories. Some of them are random stream-of-conscious lines of nonsensical words. I know that there are Faulkner scholars who pretend to find profound meaning in their symbology. I don’t see it and think the average reader won’t nor the above-average reader either.Faulkner creates memorable characters and paints vivid scenes to stage their actions but then has them do inexplicable things to no avail. There are good reasons that the author was not able to make a living with his stories before winning the Nobel Prize in 1949. He had the support of fellow writers of esoterica in winning that award. The publicity sold his novels and short stories and made him successful. He was a literary giant but his work is of variable quality. Some of the best and a lot of the worst is included in this collection.My comments will be sacrilege to the eyes of his many ardent admirers.

It is so hard to believe Amazon thought this could be releases as a paid-for book. It is a cheap and nasty scan of the pages of a printed version, so it formats badly on a Kindle or Kindle app on iPad, and all pages are at 90deg to portrait. Lines at the end of a page are cut off as they did not fit. If I wanted to read a pirated version (which is what this version looks like), I would not come to the Kindle store.Amazon tip: if you are going to scan original print books, please run it through an OCR as well. I would rather get a plain text dump of Faulkner's short stories than 900 pages of TIFF files that this "e-book" comprises.

so depressing that I did not finish the short stories. Most of them are extremely grim.

This comprehensive collection of Faulkner's short fiction showcases his mastery of the short form and is essential for any reader interested in modern fiction. Brilliant.

Interesting stories.

Just fantastic