William Faulkner and the Materials of Writing examines the many physical texts in Faulkner's novels and stories from letters and telegrams to Bibles, billboards, and even the alphabetic shape of airport runways. Current investigations in print culture, book history, and media studies often emphasize the controlling power of technological form; instead, this book demonstrates how media should be understood in the context of its use. Throughout Faulkner's oeuvre, various kinds of writing become central to characters forming a sense of the self as well as bonds of intimacy, while ideologies of race and gender connect to the body through the vehicle of writing. This book combines close reading analysis of Faulkner's fiction with the publication history of his works that together offer a case study about what it means to live in a world permeated by media.

‘Jonathan Berliner’s comprehensive and wonderfully ambitious examination of a range of writing technologies-paper, parchment, comics, telegrams, Bibles, an ivory tablet-across Faulkner’s opus, including the relatively neglected early and late works, is sure to provoke new conversations and insights into what Faulkner called ‘the lumber room of literature’ not only in Faulkner studies but too in adjacent fields of media studies and book history. William Faulkner and the Materials of Writing reminds us, if we needed reminding, Faulkner has much yet to offer attentive readers and scholars alike.’

Sarah Gleeson-White - The University of Sydney