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Barn Burning (2007)

by William Faulkner(Favorite Author)

3.61 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

0895986825 (ISBN13: 9780895986825)

languge

English

genre

Historical Fiction

publisher

Perfection Learning

review 1: Somewhere in me there's a jealous boy who loves the opportunity to bash literary classics. As I experiment more as a writer, it becomes a little harder to do and a little easier, each time, to appreciate the difficulty of what an author attempted. It is with great pleasure I bash "Barn Burning".This is one of the longest short stories I've ever read. "Barn Burning" is like Norm MacDonald's moth joke with less punchline and no animation. The plot and dialogue lack engagement. The underlying messages, both confronted by the narrator and surrounding him, are uninspired, overdone (and better-done) by stories with higher word counts, and involve a point of personal contention for me; trying to cherry-pick that orphaned Romantic notion, of purity in the child's soul, for a newer... more idealism that doesn't otherwise fit it.I'm actually not holding the last point against this story on the chance that, based on what little I know of Faulkner, he may be trying to make that very point, if only above my vision.Aside from brilliant vocabulary and symbolism, there are two redeeming exercises I found in "Barn Burning". First, its continuity to the culture of its time and to its young narrator are superb. Second, the style commonly known as "stream-of-consciousness" is well-used here. However, these are all found in so many (better) Faulkner stories that I still wouldn't recommend "Barn Burning".
review 2: Barn Burning is a short and straightforward read. The reader gets a great sense of the time period (post civil war) and gets a sense of the culture of the times. The protagonist, Sarty Snopes has to deal with an internal conflict of agreeing with his family or listening to his ethical and moral inclinations. In the end, Sarty decides to do what is right, and disobeys his father and his family. As a writer, I learned that the main character's thoughts do not always need to be the explicitly written. Only twice did Faulkner express Sarty's thoughts, the rest of the time he used Sarty's actions to show his thoughts. less

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