Hear the name William Faulkner and you think of his work. Short stories like “Barn Burning” or long ones like “The Bear,” such novels as The Sound and the Fury or Absalom, Absalom! The tangled prose, ...

Now that William Faulkner has been given so many honors — the Nobel Prize among others — it seems as though we have been familiar with his talents for a long time. It is a deceptive notion. With the ...