304 pages / 6.00 x 9.00 inches / 1 halftone
Literary Criticism / American - Regional | Social Studies / Popular Culture | Social Studies / Gender Studies
Faulknerista collects more than twenty years of critically influential scholarship by Catherine Gunther Kodat on the writings of one of the most important American authors of the twentieth century, William Faulkner. Initially composed as freestanding essays and now updated and revised, the book’s nine chapters place Faulkner’s work in the context of current debates concerning the politics of white authors who write about race, queer sexualities, and the use of the N-word in literature and popular culture. The Faulknerista of the title is a critic who tackles these debates without fear or favor, balancing admiration with skepticism in a manner that establishes a new model for single-author scholarship that is both historically grounded (for women have been writing about Faulkner, and talking back to him, since the beginning of his career) and urgently contemporary.
Beginning with an introduction that argues for the critical importance of women’s engagement with Faulkner’s fiction, through comparative discussions pairing it with works by Toni Morrison, Jean-Luc Godard, Quentin Tarantino, and David Simon, Faulknerista offers a valuable resource for students, scholars, and general readers, written in an accessible style and aimed at stimulating discussions of Faulkner’s work and the rich interpretive challenges it continues to present.
Catherine Gunther Kodat is the author of Don’t Act, Just Dance: The Metapolitics of Cold War Culture. A member of the faculty at Hamilton College for nearly twenty years, she has held senior administrative posts at the University of the Arts, Lewis & Clark College, and Lawrence University of Wisconsin.
“Opening with a stirring introduction that acknowledges the central role and legacy of women scholars in the field of Faulkner studies, Faulknerista is essential reading for anyone interested in the twentieth-century intellectual and cultural scene.”—Sarah Gleeson-White, editor of William Faulkner at Twentieth-Century Fox: The Annotated Screenplays
“Catherine Gunther Kodat stakes out a position that is a part of and yet apart from the traditions of single-author scholarship. Her Faulknerista reads the Nobel Laureate’s dense and difficult prose for the way it enables engagements with modernist and contemporary culture, as well as the culture industry.”—John N. Duvall, author of Race and White Identity in Southern Fiction: From Faulkner to Morrison
“Kodat’s stunning volume, collecting twenty-five years of writing and thinking about Faulkner, retrieves from the sidelines of author studies the Faulknerista, a feminine figure who steals bits of time and refuses the capital 'A' author to relish in the partial, marginal, and ill-fated. Kodat begins with the 'earnest young woman' who courageously posed to Faulkner the first question after his famous lectures at the University of Virginia, only to be erased from the publication by its male editors. Moving from this scene in all of its historical potential to Jean Seberg reciting Faulkner aloud in Godard’s Breathless and into contemporary television, Kodat cautions against seamless completism. The seams, it turns out, are what it’s all about. Faulknerista teaches that the author never stands alone and is only as good as his pairings.”—Julie Beth Napolin, co-President of the William Faulkner Society
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