Faulkner on the Color Line: The Later NovelsPaperback, 1 May 2000

A study of William Faulkner's final phase as a period in which he faced up to America's rigid protocols of racial ideology

This study argues that Faulkner's writings about racial matters interrogated rather than validated his racial beliefs and that, in the process of questioning his own ideology, his fictional forms extended his reach as an artist.

After winning the Nobel Prize in 1950, Faulkner wrote what critics term "his later novels." These have been almost uniformly dismissed, with the prevailing view being that as he became a more public figure, his fiction became a platform rather than a canvas.

Within this context Faulkner on the Color Line redeems the novels in the final phase of his career by interpreting them as Faulkner's way of addressing the problem of race in America. They are seen as a series of formal experiments Faulkner deliberately attempted as he examined the various cultural functions of narrative, most particularly those narratives that enforce Amer