William Faulkner very recently became one of my favorite Southern writers.  I somehow managed to complete all of high school and three years of college in Mississippi without encountering Faulkner. My first taste of his writing finally came during my senior year of college in a survey of contemporary American literature.  It came in the form of The Sound and the Fury, easily one of the most difficult texts I’ve studied because of the stream of consciousness technique used in the first three parts.  Needless to say I had to make detailed notes of character names, which events happened in which years, which of Benjy’s caretakers were present for different events in his life, etc.  It amounted to the most tedious note-taking of my college career.

But you know what?  At the end of the class I chose The Sound and the Fury as the novel for my final research paper. I loved it.  For me, Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury is a beautifully tragic story in which the Compson family clings to the deteriorating aristocracy of the Old South, and their daughter Caddy’s boldness, sexual awakening and self –sufficiency collide with her family’s languishing Southern ideals.

What’s your favorite piece of Faulkner writing?

Click here to see all of “Lemuria Reads Mississippians.”

Editor Neil White will be signing at Lemuria on  Thursday, October 28th.

Reserve your copy online or call the bookstore 601/800.366.7619.

-Kaycie

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The Fall of the House of Zeus by Curtis Wilkie (Crown, October 19, 2010)

“Scruggs’ relentless stalking of the insurance companies brought him into conflict with two statewide elected officials he once supported: Insurance Commissioner George Dale and Attorney General Jim Hood. Both men were running for reelection in 2007, and each felt his political career had been threatened by Scruggs. The trouble with Dale was predictable. The commissioner had long been too cozy with the industry he oversaw.” (page 165)

“He felt that Dale took a laissez-faire approach toward the insurance industry, and Scruggs wanted an activist in the office. So he decided to try to drive Dale from the post he had held for eight terms. Before the 2007 campaign was finished, Scruggs committed hundreds of thousands of dollars to the effort. He retained a public relations firm to conduct an all-out assault on Dale that reached its peak in the full-page newspaper advertisement titled ‘Lipstick on a Pig.’ In a cartoon, George Dale’s bespectacled face, painted with pink lipstick and given porcine ears, appeared on a pig’s body with cloven feet. The beast, labeled, ‘Georgie Dale,’ lounged in a tub, pampered by attendants at a ‘State Farm Beauty Salon.'” (page 165-166)

“Scruggs approved of the ‘Lipstick on a Pig’ idea and paid for the ad, but did not see it before it ran. He thought the pig would symbolize State Farm and didn’t realize that Dale’s likeness would be used in the caricature. But he laughed anyway when he saw the finished product in the Sunday morning paper.”

“Diane Scruggs was not amused. She thought the ad in poor taste, and she wondered about her husband’s decision to underwrite the anti-Dale campaign. She felt Dick had been unduly impressed by his PR team from Washington. He had bragged of their talents. Some of his advisors were sophisticated practitioners of ‘black ops,’ he said, with experience overseas, working on contract for the U.S. government to destroy the credibility of foreign opponents. One of Scruggs’s contacts appealed to him precisely because of the whispers about his agency’s operations. The head of the group, John Rendon, had been profiled in Rolling Stone in 2005 as ‘The Man Who Sold the War’ on Iraq. The article described Rendon as ‘a secretive and mysterious creature of the Washington establishment’ who was ‘in charge of marketing’ the war for the CIA and the Pentagon. Scruggs was intrigued by such credentials.” (page 166)

The Fall of the House of Zeus by Curtis Wilkie goes on sale October 19th.

We hope to see you at the signing/reading event with Curtis Wilkie on Thursday, October 21st, but if you cannot attend, you can reserve a signed copy online.

Click here to open an account on our website and we can save your information for future visits to LemuriaBooks.com.

You can also call the bookstore at 601/800.366.7619 and we can put your name on our reserve list.

Read other excerpts from The Fall of the House of Zeus.

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The Fall of the House of Zeus by Curtis Wilkie (Crown, October 19, 2010)

“Another significant change took place in Scruggs’s life, but few knew of it. In May 2000 he underwent back surgery for a herniated disk. A second operation followed in June. To deal with the pain, he was a given a prescription for Fioricet. Scruggs found that the drug not only relieved his discomfort but, infused him with an extraordinary sense of well-being.”

“To satisfy his craving, he asked his employees to obtain prescriptions in their names. The drug would be ordered impersonally, online through bulk distributors, and turned over to Scruggs.”

“When the drug took hold, Scruggs’s cares receded. After the turmoil of asbestos and tobacco, Fioricet delivered a feeling that all was well.” (page 99)

Reserve a signed copy online or call the store at 800/601.366.7619.

Curtis Wilkie will be signing at Lemuria on Thursday, Oct. 21^st.

Click here to see other excerpts from The Fall of the House of Zeus.

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