Being a classic is a dubious distinction. Never mind the thorny issue of exactly what a classic is, who decides it, and why it deserves a place on the syllabus. The so-called classic is repackaged, reformatted, and, in effect, removed from everyday circulation for permanent display on the shelves of posterity. But as with anything on display, an air of sterility surrounds its presumed excellence. Like the forgotten entrŽe at the back of the freezer, we're glad to have it around, but it's not the first thing we reach for when we're hungry.

One of the Library of America's latest volumes gives us a fresh look at the early work of William Faulkner, the acknowledged master and bane of American high school students. A staple of literature classesÑfor short stories like "Barn Burning" and "A Rose for Emily," and novels like The Sound and the Fury and Light in AugustÑFaulkner is typically endured rather than enjoyed these days. Few would choose Novels 1926-1929 as their summer beach reading; if you do, I suggest hiding this compact reissue inside a hardcover of The Da Vinci Code to avoid any quizzical stares.

Of course, if you can get beyond the packaging, Faulkner offers readers a much richer experience than his academic reputation suggests. In particular, this volume shows the author's incipient style developing over his first four novels: Soldier's Pay, Mosquitoes, Flags in the Dust, and The Sound and the Fury. Always associated with dense lyricism, titanic sentences, and disorienting points of view, Faulkner reveals himself as an experimental writer even in his earliest narratives. And far from being merely a clever ploy to spice up the realism, Faulkner's experimentation was central to his disturbing, sardonic, and ultimately generous view of human nature. Donald Mahon, the central character of Soldier's Pay returns from World War I scarred physically and emotionally. His friends and fiancŽe wrestle with the aftermath of his war wounds, only to reveal that a soldier's homecoming is not always a triumph and, in some ways, a disappointment when compared to the relatively simpler exigencies of combat. The point of view rotates between primary and secondary characters, and even the voice of an entire town. But Faulkner grounds this play with vivid characterization and setting. Late in the novel, the nervous fiancŽe is visited by her husband-to-be's friend, Mrs. Powers:

How like her this room is! thought the caller observing pale maple and triple mirrored dressing table bearing a collection of fragile crystal, and careless delicate clothing about on chairs, on the floor. On a chest of drawers was a small camera picture, framed.

The pictureÑshowing Mahon before the warÑshows him "bareheaded, in a shabby unbuttoned tunic standing before a corrugated iron wall, carrying a small resigned dog casually by the scruff of the neck, like a hand-bag."

The editor Rust Hills once warned that writers should not try to experiment in their fiction until, like James Joyce in Dubliners, they have demonstrated mastery of realism. The Faulkner of Novels 1926-1929 ably demonstrates the latter while giving a foretaste of his accomplishments in the former.