William Faulkner occupied a unique position as a modern writer. Although famous for his modernist novels and their notorious difficulty, he also wrote extensively for the -culture industry, - and the works he produced for it--including short stories, adaptations, and screenplays--bore many of the hallmarks of consumer art. His experiences as a Hollywood screenwriter influenced him in a number of ways, many of them negative, while the films turned out by the -dream factories- in which he labored sporadically inspired both his interest and his contempt. Faulkner also disparaged the popular...

Considering that he worked a stint as a screen writer, it will come as little surprise that Faulkner has often been called the most cinematic of novelists. Faulkner's novels were produced in the same high period as the films of classical Hollywood, a reason itself for considering his work alongside this dominant form. Beyond their era, though, Faulkner's novels--or the ways in which they ask readers to see as well as feel his world--have much in common with film. That Faulkner was aware of film and that his novels' own -thinking- betrays his profound sense of the medium and its effects...