Absalom, Absalom by William Faulkner

When I was in college I was given Light in August to read and thought it was incomprehensible. Of course at nineteen in college my interests when I was reading were more along the lines of Stephen King. And those were great books.

Even a couple of years ago when I decided to read some Faulkner, starting with his short stories I struggled to find his writing much more than the vegetables that we have to eat. Then I tackled the three classics in the Summer of Faulkner set. These were very challenging but somewhere along the way I started to understand the rhythm's of Faulkner's writing. The run on sentences, the punctuation from hell, and the having to keep a mental note of who is actually speaking at one time. When you get through the first two sections of The Sound and the Fury and feel like you understand the thoughts of the heavily autistic Benjy, and the suicidal Quentin you feel like you deserve a medal. The funny thing for me was that as I read, backtracking often to understand, it became less like work and more anticipation of what was going to happen. In that book when we get to section three and read the more straight forward account of Jason one feels nostalgic for Benjy and Quentin.

Reading some reviews on Goodreads of this book it is clear to see that Faulkner will always be controversial. Some cannot get by this writing style. I certainly understand that. Others will always be uncomfortable with the handling of race in his books and the frequent misogynistic viewpoints of the characters, they cannot be hidden, often they make up a large part of the story. For me though Faulkner is stunning in his use of the language. It is clear that he is telling tales that try to relate what he has seen, grown up in, and felt growing up in a Southern culture in which a great deal of the populace were veterans of the Civil War and or one generation removed. Growing up with the bitterness of defeat, the loss of a way of life, with the racial tensions that created is something those in the North could not understand than and factually none of us here seventy five years later.

So with this backstory in my mind and my growing respect for the work of Faulkner I kept seeing lists that showed Absalom as his greatest novel, the greatest Southern novel of all time, and in some lists as the best book of the twentieth century. Certainly armed with my understanding of Faulkner's rhythms I was ready. I was not quite as ready as I thought. If one reading those previous books feels challenged they pick up Absalom and suddenly realize there is one more level of Faulkner.

This is the Faulkner of legend. This is the Faulkner with a twelve hundred word sentence. This is the Faulkner with several different narrators telling the same story, each adding a little, peeling the onion of the story as it were a little deeper. Still even with the additional challenge in the reading one sees quickly, if they will be open to it, that this book in a perfect specimen.

The book tells an overview of the life of Thomas Sutpen and his descendants. Certainly not told in a linear fashion, this is Faulkner after all, we learn how Sutpen came to Mississippi, swindled 100 acres of land and built his castle and then his life. Over the course of the book we learn Sutpen's pre Mississippi backstory, what motivates him and how one story in his youth changed his whole life. We meet his son Henry and daughter Judith the children he built his whole life for and we see how even in the world of a man like Thomas Sutpen, a man with more ambition than any ten men, life does not move in the expected way.

The book features, as one of the narrators Quentin Compson. Quentin who will commit suicide just two years later ( than the time frame of his existence in this book) in The Sound and the Fury tells his roommate at Harvard one cold winter night how he came to know the story of Thomas Sutpen and Quentin's aunt Rosa and her sister Ellen and how sometimes we find out things in our family tree that might have been better left unknown.

Perhaps I was naive, as revaluations of Sutpen come to the fore in the book I still did not see the left hook that was coming. When finally the truth was known, the reason for the conflict that eventually burns so hot that it destroys nearly everyone, I felt like I should have seen it coming. It is after all a Faulkner book. I confess I did not see it all coming. As my wife said maybe I was so in love with the sentence structure, the sentences that I just could not digest the full meaning of the words.

She was not wrong about my love of the writing. Often at night as she was fading to sleep I would make her listen to a certain sentence, one that went on for three quarters of a page, and ask her to enjoy the luxuriousness of his writing. Safe to say that while my wife respects and supports my love of literature she does not get a chill in her spine at eleven at night from any writer.

Still it does make me feel like at least my teachers were trying to expose me to the greats when I was younger, I do worry that in today's society with the need to be politically correct ( by today's standards) Faulkner in another thirty years will be unread by anyone under 50. Perhaps all great literature fades away but to me if Dickens tells us about London in the first half of the 1800's, if Hemingway takes us to Spain in the thirties, then Faulkner is our best chronicler of the South in the first half of the last century. Just because we do not like what he puts in the mirror for us to see does not mean that we should not see the value in looking at the reflection.

I cannot speak enough praise for the works of Faulkner. Absalom is an incredible book, and if your lucky you, like me, will not see it coming until it hits you in the face.

Huck Finn by Mark Twain

This book is called The Great American Novel by many literary critics. It is a very good book. Still in reading this book, as good as it was, there is no way it can be called a great novel. Twain to me was as much as a satirist as a literary writer.

Huck Finn is often at the top of the list of books banned by libraries and schools across the country. Why? Well like Faulkner in the early twentieth century Twain in the nineteenth used some very racially colorful language. Other concerns were about references to Huck and the Slave Jim going naked on the raft.

These complaints are silly to us in the modern world. The story of Huck Finn is very strong. Still this material is dated. Dated in a way that does not mean it should be controversial but that simply the story is a bit contrived. To me, when Tom appears and he and Huck are making efforts to free Jim the repeated efforts to make the plot more complicated and dangerous do not age well. It is understood that Tom was raised on adventure stories and wants to live out his imagination but the plot and things they have Jim do seem a bit silly and unrealistic.

Of course Twain was writing about a time when Black people were kept in bondage and slavery so perhaps this was just one more layer of ridiculousness he was trying to exhibit to prove the point of how a society could claim to be all beneovelent and gracious as the Southern culture claimed and yet keep slaves. Huck struggles with this too. When he comments on how he thinks less of Tom for Tom saying he would help him free a slave and when he admits he will be going straight to Hell if helps Jim escapes he shows the conflict of the South.

This is a good book. I am glad I read it. Perhaps like much literature it is a matter of style, taste, and personal preference but to me putting Twain in the echelon of writers such as Hemingway, Faulkner and Steinbeck is something that requires a stretch of the nature of the whoppers told by Tom Sawyer.

Read it. Enjoy it. It is, however, overrated.

Light in August by William Faulkner

Finishing Oprah's series of three Faulkner's books that were packaged as a Summer of Faulkner I have just finished Light in August.

After reading As I Lay Dying and The Sound and the Fury this book was much easier. Still told with flashbacks and wraparounds it could never be called an easy read.

After reading three books and his short stories I have to advise that I have an affection for his writing. Because it is much centered on a Southern life and portrays race relations as they existed at that time Faulkner's work is disapparing as expected reading. This is a shame.

Light in August centers on Joe Christmas. A young man of mixed race adopted by a pious couple we learn in the course of the book Joe's story both back in time and to its conclusion. Reading an article about the book after the fact I was surprised to see all the Christian imagary in both this character and in the book itself. Especially comparing some details of the chapters of John and this book. Sometimes I wonder if the correlation is on purpose by Faulkner or if someone just had too much time on their hands to see it. Sort of like the whole Pink Floyd/ Wizard of Oz. Still it seem that Faulkner must have known what he was doing.

We also meet Lena a young unmarried pregnant woman from Alabama who is chasing down the man who impregnated her with both baby and promises. She is like a tortoise steadily moving, depending on the kindness of strangers to get where and what she wants.

66 characters in all float through the book, equal to the number of books in the Bible for those who believe Faulkner mapped the whole book out with that sort of imagary. The book is a marvel. Certainly more accessilbe than some others but nothing you can breeze through in an afternoon.

I am glad I read the others first. This book is like dessert after a tough but filling steak.

The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

I am told that Faulkner is one of the great writers of the modernist period. I am a Hemingway fan and he is as far from modernism as one can get. Still this book is challenging and if one sticks with it a novel to behold.

The first chapter is told through the eyes of Benny a 33 year old man who is autistic, although in those days is defined more as a dummy. The chapter from Benny's point of view is very hard to read. Told in Faulkner's often used stream of consciousness writing style we learn about Benny in three different ages. We are told that we can define what age Benny is speaking by his caretaker at the time. The second chapter focuses on Quentin the older brother who...struggling with his relationship with his sister and her troubles...commits suicide.

The first chapter is difficult, the second chapter is in parts lose to impossible. Later we follow the last brother, Jason, as he deals with life is manipulative, mean spirited, vengeful and petty. This book is hard and very easy to give up on. Eventually it all comes in focus, the lives of Jason, Quentin, Caddy, Benjy and the mother Caroline. Caroline and Jason are two very unlikable characters but Caddy is exceptional. Her love for Benjy is later compromised by her issues with men. This becomes the nexus of all the brothers troubles. Benjy needs her as his only truly caring person, Quentin struggles with her impurities, and Jason hates her for a loss he felt her responsible for to his future.

Also in the book is the long history of the Compson family attendants, namely a negro family led by Dilsey and three generations of her family.

I have read so many great books it is hard to say this is the best, thiis is the top ten. Faulkner is never easy. He is always worth the effort.

Junebug

My wife picked this movie up from Netflix based on a reccomendation. It was different. Embeth Davidcz plays Madeline the owner of an independent art gallery who has recently married George Johnsten a Chicago transplant from North Carolina.

When taking a trip to North Carolina to woo an eccentric artists who speaks in biblical rants they decide to take a trip to see his family. His family is not like him, his Mom takes an instant dislike to Madeline, his brother is sullen, and his brothers pregnant wife played by Amy Adams is captivated by both George and his new wife.

Amy Adams makes this movie shine, her character is naive, sweet and too, too, talkative but she bonds with Madeline.

The movie is odd. There are many scenes, sort of intermissions, that show the scenery, or the houses or the empty rooms in between scenes. The movie at times seems to me Faulkner like, with it's Southern themes and clash between the city folks and those from home.

An interesting movie and the ending in a way seems tacked on and some relationships such as between George and his brother remain unresolved and leave us filling in the blanks.

Amy Adams was nominated for Best Supporting Actress and this was well deserved. the rest of the cast, and the movie it itself is just odd enough to be interesting for that.

Winesburg Ohio by Sherwood Anderson

Having heard quiet a few references to this book with most of them containing adjectives such as superb, classic, and influential in describing these stories of small town life in the late eighteen hundreds I picked this up from the library.

Further pleased to find out it was originally published in the year of my father's birth, that is 1919, there were no superlatives for me to use to describe this. I confess freely that I did not read the whole book. I read the first six stories and do admit there is in theory a chance that the stories get better deeper into the book. On the assumption that they do not I can only describe stories that are odd, often out of sequence and context and with characters that apparently have no value whatsoever.

Hearing these stories described as a precursor to some of the great American writers to follow left me in the dark. I found Faulkner to be dense and Cheever is self absorbed in his own world. Perhaps most authors are but these stories were just bad. I can say nothing positive about this work.

As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner

This book, considered one of the greats of the twentieth century, is a challenge. Told in stream of conciousness each chapter is told by one of the characters in the book. We meet Anse, his children Cash, Darl, Dewey Dell, Vardaman and Jewel all telling parts of the story of the death of their mother and her their subsequent traveling with her body to bury her in a distant town ( by wagon) of Jefferson where she was born.

The dialect as with much Faulkner can be difficult and the use of pronouns left me, especially early in the book, grasping at which he, she and they were being spoken of. Still with dilligence the book does grow to be something of great value. The characters are well drawn and by the end you do have ownership in the plot.

It is not an easy book to describe and it is one many would be threatened to give up on. I was. Still I am very glad I did not. I was up until 2 last night reading the last 100 pages after midnight as I wanted to see how it ended.

Subject matter such as race, abortion, religion, adultery, and a nascent feminism are brought to the fore in this book from 1930 making it clearly controversial in it's time. As always Faulkner is a challenge but one well worth taking.

The Stories of John Cheever

I enjoy short stories. I think that they are a prelude into an author's vision and have used these stories as my entry into the works of Hemingway, Faulkner and now Cheever. An appreciation for a good short story appears to be a lost art. In the mid nineteen hundreds each week many literary magazines were published many with stories by some of the great authors of the time on a regular basis. I suspect that in today's marketplace short stories are considered not worth the effort, certainly the financial rewards are meager compared to the riches from a bestselling novel.

I occasionally will show a favorite story to a friend but more often than not after humoring me with a reading, if at all, they do not enjoy it as I did. What is the point of it or I do not understand will be the response. As a short story is often a glimpse of a moment in time in the life of a character and not often a beginning, middle and end our current entertainment culture has spoiled them.

As we now watch Mad Men every season and celebrate the New York driven culture of the mid sixties the stories of John Cheever become even more relevant again. When published in 1978 this collection of stories earned Cheever the Pulitzer Prize.

I read several books at a time and have over the last couple of months made it a practice to read one Cheever story each night before bed. It is hard to describe why these stories are so good. Often they are just lonely people in a busy world. A sense of loss and optimism haunts these people. Cheever has an ability to allow his characters to move from real to imagined storylines and occasionally it is a challenge to follow along.

This collection is full. I enjoyed each one. A few such as Christmas is a Sad Season for the Poor, The Swimmer, The World of Apples and Artemis the Honest Well Digger are reknown but these stories are wonderful.

This is a top ten collection of stories. Highest recommendation.

The Collected Stories of William Faulkner

William Faulkner is not one of our easiest writers to appreciate. I was given a Faulkner book, Light in August I believe it was, to read in college as an assignment. I am sure I did not read it. I think Cliff helped me on that one. I think today kids use some free resource called perhaps " Sparknotes" to help them in similar situations.

However, my reading list shows I am going back and reading them all. I hope that Ms. Bruer appreciates it.

Faulkner is dense. Whereas Hemingway declares and makes clear Faulkner is shady and ambiguous. Many times in these collections of stories of Faulkner's you will read well into a story assuming an assumed fact from the narrator and then find your assumption was wrong and you will have to reinterpret the whole story based off this new information.

I will confess that some of these stories found me going back and rereading after this new information came to light. Faulkner is not easy.

Faulkner is however worthwhile. Some of the stories are so dense in dialect and fuzziness and first person versus second and third that they do not stand out for me. Perhaps the fact that much of my reading is done last at night is not the best time for them. Some of the stories however are to be treasured.

For me the stories The Tall Men, Two Soldiers and it's conclusion Shall Not Perish are three standouts which measure against anything I have read. Hair, Uncle Willy, The Brooch, Beyond, and There Was a Queen stand out.

I must confess the section of the stories called The Wilderness was told in such a dialect and improbable way that I still struggle to gain any pleasure from it.

Faulkner was not easy. He was however masterful in what he did. His work I assume because of it's depiction of the South in the times he wrote is not in anyway shape or from politically correct today. It does not have merit because of some of the implied racism of the speech and culture presented but it also does not not have merit because of these issues either. If that makes sense.

The recent censoring of Twain made sense in that some said that without he would not be taught at all. If that is the case so be it. Are we really so sensitive however that we cannot read history and fiction from a historical time period and appreciate it's merits without endorsing all of its views.

It is a subject that rankles. If you find Faulkner dense, written in a way you do not like and do not wish to wade in that is a legitimate thought and decision. Some of the easy criticism that is lodged his way due to how and what he wrote would make almost any authentic writing of a time period unable to be appreciated a century later were it to be the rule.


These stories are classics.

The Reivers

This 1969 movie based on William Faulkner's last novel was a pleasant surprise. I saw it on TCM late one night, decided to Tivo it and watched it in a couple of parts recently.

Steve McQueen who in his time was one of the most popular actors. He was the epitome of cool. In this movie the role was a little off from his normal range but it fit him.

He plays Boone Higgenbottom a family friend of a well to do family in turn of the century Mississippi. The patriarch grandfather played by Will Geer has a new car delivered, a Wintom Flyer. Boone convinces the young grandson to allow him to borrow the car and they go to Memphis.

The plot takes them to a bordello and involves a horcerace. Lessons are learned and all comes out well. Mcqueen is wonderful and Will Geer is perfect in his role. Can Will Geer not play a role you want to have for a grandfather figure in your life?