I m a failed poet. Maybe every novelist wants to write poetry first finds he can t and then tries the short story which is the most demanding form after poetry. And failing that only then does he take up novel writing. --William Faulkner Winner of the National Book Award Forty-two stories make up this magisterial collection by the writer who stands at the pinnacle of modern American fiction. Compressing an epic expanse of vision into hard and wounding narratives Faulkner s stories evoke the intimate textures of place the deep strata of history and legend and all the fear brutality and tenderness of the human condition. These tales are set not only in Yoknapatawpha County but in Beverly Hills and in France during World War I. They are populated by such characters as the Faulknerian archetypes Flem Snopes and Quentin Compson as well as by ordinary men and women who emerge so sharply and indelibly in these pages that they dwarf the protagonists of most novels.