"Light in August" by William Faulkner: Response to Excerpt from Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech

Excerpt: "The problems of the human heart in conflict with itself alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat." William Faulkner argued convincingly, in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, that human struggle makes for good writing. "Light in August" is a perfect example of this theory. In this novel, all the characters are affected by and involved in very basic and human conflicts: race, sexuality, …

…on internal tension and isolation, his success was overwhelming, and if that was not his goal, then thank goodness for happy accidents. With a thorough reading, it is easy to get a sense of the meaning of the novel, which can be summed up by Faulkner himself, "The problems of the human heart in conflict with itself alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat."