One Matchless Time

A Life of William Faulkner

By Jay Parini
(Harper Perennial, Paperback, 9780060935559, 528pp.)

Publication Date: June 2005

Other Editions of This Title: Google eBook

Categories: General

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Jay Parini was raised in Scranton, Pennsylvania. He attended Lafayette College and the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, from which he received a Ph.D. in 1975. He has taught at Dartmouth College, Oxford University, and Middlebury College, where he is currently Axinn Professor of English. Parini is a poet and novelist as well as a biographer. He has published six novels, four books of poetry, and critical and biographical studies of Theodore Roethke and Robert Frost. His selected essays, Some Necessary Angels, were published by Columbia University Press. He has edited numerous works, including The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature. He lives in Vermont with his wife, Devon Jersild, and their three sons.

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“[Parini] has a fellow writer’s appreciation for Faulkner’s language, and expresses that appreciation vividly...His book pays eloquent tribute.”
-J. M. Coetzee, New York Review of Books

“Nothing less than spellbinding . . . It captures the essence of Faulkner’s life with the narrative drive of a novel.”
-Houston Chronicle

“Told with literary grace, pacing, and narrative drive... Jay Parini’s biography of William Faulkner easily tops all others.”
-Frank Lentricchia, Duke University

“No living literary biographer, and few dead ones, surpass Jay Parini’s skill...[He] renders a formidable giant of letters accessible.
-Ron Powers, Pulitzer Prize-winning critic and biographer of Mark Twain

“Does everything a good literary biography should do…ONE MATCHLESS TIME is…a Faulkner biography for our time.”
-Joseph Blotner, Sewanee Review

“A matchless look at the writer... With his characteristic elegance, Parini captures splendidly Faulkner’s... inestimable literary achievement.”
-Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“Fine biography... Parini maintains a good balance of the man and his art. [His] analyses ring true.”
-Tennessean

“The heroic Parini hurries us directly back to THE SOUND AND THE FURY, LIGHT IN AUGUST, and ABSALOM, ABSALOM!”
-John Leonard, Harper's Magazine

“An accomplished novelist and biographer, Parini . . . provides a brisk, engrossing account of Faulkner’s life.”
-Oregonian

“A splendid life of William Faulkner . . . Not only readable but downright enthralling.”
-Seattle Times

“Irresistible...A new understanding of how [Faulkner] connected his violent, inchoate past with literature’s perdurable future...Reads like a novel.”
-Christian Science Monitor

“A worthy contribution to Faulkner scholarship . . . [Parini’s] deft handling of biographical fact forms a riveting narrative.”
-Victor Strandberg, Chicago Tribune

Parini––his prose crystalline, his interpretation proficient––brilliantly illuminates Faulkner’s complex psyche... Engrossing and revelatory, this is a landmark biography.
-Booklist (starred review)

“The time is right for a biography like Jay Parini’s ONE MATCHLESS TIME.”
-Wall Street Journal

“Parini’s candid, personal, and extremely readable book is the place to send readers looking for an overview of [Faulkner’s] career.”
-William H. Pritchard, Commonweal