William Faulkner—The Sound and the Fury: Vintage and Modern Library. As I Lay Dying: Vintage. Viking has The Portable Faulkner, splendidly edited by Malcolm Cowley. Vintage issues Collected Stories. Бbsalom, Absalom!: Penguin, Vintage. The Library of Amйricas three-volume set includes ali of the major novйis.
Further reading: The authorized life is J. L. Blotners William Faulkner: A Biography (2 vols.). Faulkner may end by having more commentators than readers. Here are a few excellent studies: Michael Millgate, The Achievement of William Faulkner; Cleanth Brooks's three-volume work: William Faulkner: First Encounters; William Faulkner: The Yoknapatawpha Country and William Faulkner: Toward Yoknapatawpha and Beyond; F.J. Hoffman, William Faulkner; Irving Howe, William Faulkner: A Criticai Study. Perhaps the finest short estimate remains Malcolm Cowley's classic introduction to The Portable Faulkner.
Ernest Hemingway—Ali of Hemingway is published by Scribners; they offer an omnibus Short Stories and also a Hemingway Reader. The recent Complete Stories of Ernest Hemingway (the so-called Finca Vigia edition) includes stories previously uncollected and is the one to read.
Further reading: The standard biography is Carlos Baker's Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story. See also: Philip Young, Ernest Hemingway: A Reconsideration; Carlos Baker, Hemingway: The Writer as Artist; Scott Donaldson, By Force of Will; Peter Griffin, Along with Youth: Hemingway, The Early Years; Jeffrey Meyer, Hemingway; Michael Reynolds. The Young Hemingway and Hemingway: The 1930S; K.S. Lynn, Hemingway: The Life and Work. This last stresses his early years, and treats Hemingway's darker side. For other insights, see Alfred Kazin, On Native Grounds; F.J. Hoffman, The Modern Novel in America; Edmund Wilsons essay in Eight Essays; Denis Brian, The True Gen: An Intimate Portrait of Hemingway by Those Who Knew Him.
Kawabata Yasunari—Beauty and Sadness, Snow Country, The House of the Sleeping Beauties, A Thousand Cranes, The Master of Gх, and other works, mostly translated by Edward Seidensticker, are available from Knopf.
Further reading: Kawabata reflects on his own work in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Japan, The Beautiful, and Myself tr. by Edward Seidensticker. See also Van C. Gessel, Three Modern Novelists: Soseki, Tanizaki, Kawabata; Gwenn Boardman Peterson's essay in The Moon in the Water: Understanding Tanizakiy Kawabata, and Mishima.
Jorge Luнs Borges—Labyrinths'. New Directions; Dreamtigers: U. of Texas Press. Dutton issues The Aleph ir Other Stories, The Book of Imaginary Beings, and The Book of Sand. Evergreen has A Personal Anthology. The University of Texas Press offers Other Inquisitions. For his poetry, see Jorge Luis Borges: Selected Poems, tr. Di Giovanni (Dell).
Ana Maria Barrenechea, Borges: The Labyrinth Maker; Ronald Christ, The Narrow Act: Borges' Art of Illusion; Emir Rodriguez Monegal, Jorge Luis Borges: A Literary Biography; G.H. Bell- Villada, Borges and His Fiction: A Guide to His Mind and Art; M.S. Stabb,/orge Luis Borges.
Vladimir Nabokov—Lolita is in Medallion Books, and you may find it in the Capricorn series. McGraw-Hill has an annotated Lolita. Medallion Books offers Pale Fire. Speak, Memory is published by Pyramid. Penguin issues a useful Portable Nabokov. The Library of America has the major prose works in three volumes.
Further reading: Two interesting works by Andrew Field sup- plement each other: Nabokov: His Life in Art and Nabokov: His Life in Part. See also: Peter Quennell, ed., Nabokov: A Tribute; D.E. Morton, Vladimir Nabokov; J. Moynihan, Vladimir Nabokov.
George Orwell—Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four are both in New American Library, among others. Burmese Days is published by Harvest, which also offers five volumes of his Collected Essays, Journalism т- Letters, as well as an Orwell Reader with an introduction by R.H. Rovere.
Further reading: A good authorized biography is Bernard Crick's George Orwelclass="underline" A Life. Perhaps the most penetrating short study is Lionel Trillings "George Orwell and the Politics of Truth," in his The Opposing Self Nine Essays in Criticism. An excellent two-volume treatment is by Peter Stansky and William Abrahams: The Unknown Orwell and Orwelclass="underline" The Transformation. Various
points of view are represented in George Orwelclass="underline" A Collection of Criticai Essays, ed. Raymond Williams.
R.K. Narayan—The English Teacher is published by U. Chicago Press. Most of his other Malgudi novйis and stories are available singly in Penguin.
Further reading: Narayans autobiography, My Days; and his essays, Criticai Perspectives, ed. A. L. McLeod. See also Mary Beatina, Narayan: A Study in Transcendence.
Samuel Beckett—Grove publishes ali of Beckett. His Collected Works so far extend to more than twenty-five volumes, which include of course the three recommended plays. Endgame also includes Act Without Words, and Krapp's Last Tape includes four shorter plays and "mimes." Three of Beckett's best-known novйis (Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable) are assembled in one volume.
Further reading: The recent authorized biography by James Knowlson, Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett contains a great deal of genuinely new material. See also: On Beckett: Essays and Criticism, edited and introduced by S.E. Gontarski; Hugh Kenner, Samuel Beckett. A Criticai Study; Charles Lyons, Samuel Beckett; J. Fletcher and J. Spurling, Beckett: A Study of His Plays; Vivian Mercier, Beckett/Beckett. For a more general approach, see Martin Esslin's excellent The Theatre of the Absurd.
W.H. Auden—The Complete Poetry is published by Random House, which also has a Selected Poems. See also Auden's Forewords and Afterwords from Random; Edward Mendelson, ed., The English Auden: Poems, Essays, and Dramatic Writings, 1927-39 (Faber and Faber).
Further reading: A.L. Rowse, The Poet Auden: A Personal Memoir; Humphrey Carpenter, W.H. Auden: A Biography; Richard Davenport-Hines, Auden; Anthony Hecht, The Hidden Law: The Poetry ofW.H. Auden.