**"Absalom, Absalom!" - A Complex and Captivating Southern Tale**

The story of Thomas Sutpen is a fascinating and tragic one. Born poor in West Virginia, he arrives in north Mississippi in 1830 with a few slaves and a French architect. He purchases 100 square miles of land from a Native American tribe, names it the "Sutpen Hundred," and builds an ostentatious mansion. His plan is to amass wealth and create a family dynasty. By the early 1860s, he has a son Henry and a daughter Judith. Henry befriends Charles Bon at the University of Mississippi, and upon bringing him home, a complex web of relationships unfolds.

Sutpen discovers a shocking secret about Charles, which has far-reaching consequences for the family. The novel details the sordid rise and fall of the Sutpen family, allegorically representing the South. The complex, fractured narrative makes it a challenging read, told through flashbacks and multiple narrators. Each narrator has their own biases and attitudes, adding to the mystery and depth of the story. The non-chronological order forces the reader to piece together the truth.

Despite the difficulties, "Absalom, Absalom!" is widely regarded as one of the greatest Southern novels of all time. A panel of Southern lit scholars and writers voted it as such. While I had a hard time understanding it initially, I look forward to reading it again to fully appreciate its beauty and complexity.

Absalom, Absalom! is one of those books that is difficult to write about without the fear of falling into the banal. Especially when it is followed by a postface like that of Mircea Mihăieș, so exhaustive that anything you might say in addition would seem at least redundant. I will therefore content myself with quoting only its conclusion, with no other comments except that I too have made that banal statement, of course:

“In the mornings, for three or four hours, he works furiously on the novel, then he goes to the studio, where, although he writes, on some days, up to thirty-five pages of screenplay, he cannot take his eyes off Meta. The amorous fascination, intersected by drinks, by regrets, by the images of his daughter, Jill, in the care of an alcoholic mother, does not prevent him from coming, at the beginning of January 1936, to the studio and waving in front of the screenwriters there the completed manuscript of the novel. Raising it above his head, like a trophy, he murmured proudly: “I believe it is the best novel ever written by an American!”

Words that, in context, sounded both pitiful and paranoid, but that today are nothing but a banal statement, at the disposal of any reader.”

Gluttony and poverty, personal passions stronger than fratricidal strife within the womb, the conflict of the sexes, blatant worthlessness for slaves, and truths scattered in the shadow of the American South, all these elements compose Faulkner's masterpiece.

The rhythm of the writing is often exaggerated, almost gasping for breath due to its own rapidity. However, it does not actually break off. It changes perspectives, assimilates polyphonic narratives until it reaches a harsh, almost amoral but not without irony finale.

It is worth reading, but it is doubtful whether it will be liked by everyone. Faulkner's work is complex and profound, filled with vivid descriptions and deep insights into human nature and society. It challenges the reader's understanding and perception, and requires careful reading and reflection to fully appreciate its beauty and significance.

Of course the title is the second book of Samuel, but I am going to guess Faulkner, given his other naming conventions, was thinking Sacred Harp as well when he came upon Absalom. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVriG... Now to the review proper:

As I delved into this novel, it brought to mind several different genres and stories. I view this book not as a sequel, but rather a "mid-quel" to The Sound and the Fury. I highly recommend reading S&F first as it will better prepare you for this "complex" work. This novel takes place in part 2 of S&F and recounts events spanning from 70 years to just a few months before Absalom, Absalom! begins.

Most people read Light in August and/or As I Lay Dying as their first two Faulkner reads. However, I wanted to experience some continuity before exploring more of Faulkner's Jefferson, Miss. I will do my best not to spoil too much of 'Absalom' or S&F, but I will assume that most people have read S&F or will do so before picking up this book.

As a work of modernism, it's evident that this won't be an easy afternoon read and there's an overarching "gimmick" at play. I wouldn't go so far as to call it a gimmick, but one standard trope of modernism is repetitive narrative from multiple perspectives, which is present here. Faulkner has already employed multiple narrations in his work, but the use of multiple accounts of the same story reminded me of a work I had seen on the screen before reading, In a Grove (1922) by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa.

Like in the Japanese story, we learn the plot of the novel (which is told entirely in flashbacks, like Phaedo) by the end of the first part. What follows is that the story is retold by different narrators for the rest of the book, and we are filled in with more detail, most of which is speculative or unreliable, and we must try to discern the truths on our own. As each narrator reflects on a particular part of the Sutpen saga, we learn a little more or unlearn a little more.

When it comes to the characters, I'll start with the main character, Quentin Compson. Yes, for those who have read this book before, the main character is the crazy, time-obsessed, guilt-ridden Quentin with daddy issues. Thomas Sutpen and his crazy family serve as a case study used to reflect back on Quentin and his crazy family, which is why you need to read S&F first. By the time Quentin is telling this story to Shreve, his smart-ass Canadian roommate at Harvard University, he is on the verge of total psychosis. We are reminded and given subtle clues about Quentin's destined fate.

For me, I think Quentin is the perfect American analogue of James Joyce's Stephen Dedalus. Just as Stephen is haunted by Roman Catholicism and Irish history/culture, Quentin is haunted by the mythology and customs of the "Old South" and the specter of time as embodied by his ultra-cynic father. I must say that although I expected Quentin to be off the deep end, his narration style was more tolerable than Rosa Coldfield, the one character who came close to convincing me to stop reading this book (she is intolerable in action and as a narrator).

In the reading of American Gothic literature, most people begin with Edgar Allen Poe, a southerner himself. But I have to say that in this story, Faulkner really gives Poe a run for his money. My favorite Poe story is The Fall of the House of Usher, which I used to read every Halloween for several years. However, the The Fall of Sutpen's Hundred may be better. I hate to admit that, but you have everything you want in a Gothic novel here (still comparing it with 'Usher'): a strange family (Ushers/Sutpens/Compsons), an outsider coming in to observe the weirdness (nameless in Poe's work/Shreve the Canadian in Faulkner's), townspeople keeping their distance in both works, supernatural references (the house of Usher is a possible poltergeist magnet/Thomas Sutpen being referenced by more than one person as a demon, outright), and in both stories, the place where the events occur is destroyed (House of Usher/Sutpen's Hundred/Quentin's mind).

The only difference is that in 'Usher' this particular family is cursed (as is typical in Gothic literature where a family or house is cursed), while in Faulkner's view, the whole South is cursed by Slavery. So the fate of the Sutpens or Compsons is not unique, but rather par for the course of any family that lived in the South and was involved in the institution of Slavery or the Confederacy in any way. My favorite part of this book is Shreve's short monologue in Part IX. In all, the only real frustrating part of this book is perhaps Faulkner himself. While he seems to be able to see the problems of the South, he is unable to deduce the correct solution or any solution. He knows the old system needs to be changed, but his "ideas" would only reaffirm white supremacy. And in a sense, he knows that. He is unable to criticize or change the culture he was born into, though he knows it is wrong. Faulkner says in this book that one day all Americans will be some sort of ambiguously Brown race, but African-Americans are already this group (most of us contain ancestry that is 70%-30% West Africa and Northern Europe)! We see, IN THIS STORY, that this is the case and it changed nothing. So much for all that.

I originally started reading William Faulkner on the advice of Ralph Ellison in Shadow and Act, who states that Faulkner was, at that point in time, the Novelist who came relatively close to honoring Mark Twain's legacy in the essay Twentieth-Century Fiction. Shadow and Act was the book that helped point me in the direction of good literature, and I'm thankful that I was smart enough to pick it up when I did. I've come across a lot of great books simply because Ellison mentioned the name of a writer or novel.

Shreve: "...now I want you to tell me just one thing more. Why do you hate the South?"
Quentin: "I dont hate it," Quentin said, quickly, at once, immediately; "I dont hate it," he said. 'I dont hate it' he thought, panting in the cold air, the iron New England dark; 'I dont. I dont! I dont hate it! I dont hate it!'

\\n  My son Absalom! My son, my son Absalom!\\n (2 Samuel, 18:33)

Absalom, Absalom! tells a story that is almost impossible to believe and, at the same time, impossible to tell. It is related by Miss Rosa Coldfield, Quentin Compson, and his father. In this story, characters drawn from the Old Testament and burdened with the curse of a damned South (Thomas Sutpen as a fallen David, Henry as a tragic Absalom, Charles Bon as a damned Ammon, and Judith as a condemned Tamar) create a dark backdrop typical of the Yoknapatawpha County. Here, Thomas Sutpen, "this Faust sold to the devil who had unexpectedly appeared on a Sunday with only two pistols and twenty servant demons and had cheated an helpless, ignorant Indian out of a hundred square miles of land and built there the largest house ever seen in that part of the country... this creature who hid horns and a tail beneath human clothing", is consumed by an obsessive impulse. The core of this impulse draws its strength from an episode in his childhood, justified by Sutpen to Quentin's grandfather. This episode, in the light of time, has acquired an almost mythical significance and has determined him to build a new Jerusalem - Sutpen's Hundred (I couldn't help but think of Pedro Páramo and the subtle similarities between Páramo and Sutpen, as well as between Comala and Sutpen's Hundred. Both places are haunted by the shadows of a destructive ambition that marks their destiny). Sutpen's Hundred becomes a dark and desolate place, raised on ambition and deception, where the apparent greatness hides a foundation built on violence, illusion, and fatality. And once his dream unravels, only a ruin remains, haunted by the ghosts of the past and the echo of a doomed destiny.

**Absalom, Absalom!--William Faulkner's Novel of the Death of the Old South**

Considered by many Faulkner scholars to be his masterpiece, *Absalom, Absalom!* was read by the Goodreads group "On the Southern Literary Trail" in April, 2012. This novel explores the complex story of Thomas Sutpen and his family.

Faulkner originally titled the novel "Dark House" but later adopted the story of King David and his son Absalom. The story is told through multiple perspectives, much like a jury listening to the testimony of various witnesses. Faulkner struggled with writing the novel, facing false starts, interruptions due to his work as a screenwriter, and the death of his younger brother.
The character of Thomas Sutpen appears in Jefferson, Mississippi, in 1833, a mystery man with no past or lineage. He purchases land and builds a big house with the help of a French architect and a band of wild negro slaves. Through the eyes of characters like Rosa Colfield, General Compson, and Quentin Compson, we learn about Sutpen's past, including his rejection at a Tidewater Virginian's door and his actions in Haiti.
The novel also delves into themes such as race, class, and the downfall of the Old South. Sutpen's desire to create a patriarchal dynasty is ultimately thwarted by the events of the Civil War and the secrets of his past. The relationship between Charles Bon and Henry Sutpen adds another layer of complexity, with homoerotic undertones.
Faulkner's opinion of the novel was high, and Random House was excited about its release. However, it received mixed reviews from critics at the time. Some found it boring and unreadable, while others recognized its modernist techniques. Today, it is considered one of the greatest American novels, competing with works by Dreiser and Fitzgerald.
In conclusion, *Absalom, Absalom!* is a complex and challenging novel that offers a deep exploration of the South's past and the human condition. Its structure and themes make it a masterpiece of American literature, and its enduring popularity is a testament to Faulkner's genius.

Second Samuel, 18:33, King James Version

Interestingly enough, *Absalom, Absalom!* and *Gone with the Wind* were both published in 1936. While Margaret Mitchell chose to romanticize the Old South, Faulkner removed any element of fanciful romance from his story.

Faulkner's structure in the novel is like eating an artichoke or peeling an onion, layer by layer, until we reach the heart of the story. The character of Quentin Compson emerges as the central thread, through whom we learn the "evidence" of the case of Thomas Sutpen. His Harvard roommate, Shreve McCannon, provides an outsider's perspective and adds to the complexity of the story.

The novel raises many questions, such as whether Charles Bon is the son of Thomas Sutpen and how Henry will resolve the issue of Bon's marriage to Judith. It also leaves the reader wondering about the fate of Sutpen's One Hundred and the secrets that his house still holds.

Overall, *Absalom, Absalom!* is a powerful and thought-provoking novel that continues to be studied and admired today. It is a must-read for anyone interested in American literature and the history of the South.

Absalom, Absalom! is a captivating and eerie ghost story that is filled to the brim with dark secrets and murky mysteries. The ghosts of the past seem to rise up and haunt everyone, following them everywhere they go. It delves deep into the complex web of human vices, which all seem to rotate around the powerful procreative instinct. And within this, the male instinct of procreation specifically rotates around woman. As the text describes, the other sex is divided into three distinct and sharp divisions. There are the ladies, the women, and the females. The virgins whom gentlemen someday marry, the courtesans to whom they turn during their sabbaticals in the cities, and the slave girls and women upon whom that first caste depends and to whom, in certain cases, it perhaps owes its very virginity. However, if man constructs his "economic edifice not on the solid rock of stern morality but on the shifting sands of opportunism and moral brigandage," then inevitably, a day of reckoning will arrive. This story serves as a powerful reminder of the consequences that can come when we stray from the path of morality and integrity.

Around the middle of the book, with my patience completely worn out, I decided to flip through the book. And at the end, I found a chronology of the main events and a genealogy of the main characters. I just stood there, staring at those things. So, in order to understand the narrative, I'm supposed to compare what I've read with those lists. Otherwise, everything will just be a big blur.

Faulkner writes beautifully, but his anti-structure is not for everyone. They might even say that this book is a successor of "The Sound and the Fury", but there the deconstruction of the narrative is done with a purpose. Here I wonder why it is done? Why should I continue to read? What do I expect to find at the end? I didn't get any answers, so I stopped.

Probably, I'm also more tired. Reading this type of text requires a state of mind that I don't have in myself. I count on coming back again one day.

“Quizás sea muy necesario conocer a la gente para quererla, pero cuando se ha odiado a alguien por espacio de cuarenta y tres años, también se le conoce perfectamente; y tal vez sea mejor así, ya que, transcurridos cuarenta y tres años, nadie puede sorprenderle ya a uno, ni causarle mucha alegría ni mucha rabia.” This profound statement sets the tone for “Absalón, Absalón!”, a novel that embodies all the hallmarks of Faulknerian narrative. It features interior monologues, multiple narrators or points of view, and jumps in time within the narration, all set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County in Mississippi created by the author.

Moreover, the complex relationships among the main characters throughout the story add another layer of depth. The perspectives of Thomas Sutpen, Quentin Compson (who also appears in “The Sound and the Fury”), Elena, and Rosa Coldfield, along with numerous secondary characters, form the backbone of the plot. These relationships include love, hate, jealousy, incest, homosexuality, and death, and the emotions of each character surface through their respective interior monologues interspersed throughout the novel.

The Sutpen-Compson relationship is the most prominent and problematic in the novel, and everything that occurs between them is steeped in the sordid atmosphere of the 1930s American South, including violence and racism (though perhaps not as extreme as in “Light in August”). I must admit that of the four Faulkner novels I have read, namely “The Sound and the Fury” (which is unrivaled), the excellent “As I Lay Dying”, and the unforgettable “Light in August”, this one is the least to my liking.

Perhaps this is due to the length of the novel, which makes the reading seem interminable, and the constant redundancy of situations and character descriptions that eventually become tiresome, especially in the last quarter of the novel. In fact, in my humble opinion, “Absalón, Absalón!” lacks the dynamism and fails to engage my interest to the same extent as the other novels I have read. However, what I must emphasize is William Faulkner's prose, which is so unique and original that it earned him the Nobel Prize in 1949 and continues to be a favorite among readers worldwide even after his death. This is something that should be continuously recognized in one of the greatest writers in American history.

A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses a moment of experience from which to look ahead. Graham Greene’s opening line for his book The End of the Affair kept circling around in my head as I read Absalom, Absalom!

Not just the arbitrary selection of a point along the linear momentum of a story, but also the arbitrary selection of point of view. Point of view, which may make or break a narrative, depending on the reader’s willingness to buy in. Absalom, Absalom! has point of view in abundance. I don’t believe any are inherently wrong. I am certain that none are entirely right.

Throughout this book walks a devilish driving force – a spinning, gyrating ball of mass and energy. This is Thomas Sutpen, the main character of the story. He has his own gravitational pull. He is (very much by design) right out of the Old Testament. He carries about him an aura of mystery and exclusivity so grand that wanting to know his entire life story is a natural, almost immediate response. Is he the eligible bachelor? Or is he the intruder upon the bucolic ways of the South? He comes, bringing with him very little by way of clothes and money. He has his sight set on something, and that may be a marriage, some property, a reputation, some vague idea of posterity, who knows. Well, I say who knows, but the answer to that is given differently by those who speak throughout the book. There it is, point of view. We hear about Sutpen from Rosa Coldfield, Shreve (my fellow compatriot, a child of snow and blizzards), Jason Compson, and Quentin Thompson. The latter two here are the very same characters we have come to know intimately from The Sound and the Fury. Everyone seems to have something to say, something that adds to the grand narrative of what Sutpen was about as a man, as we are recollecting his life in the past. Oh, and the omniscient voice drops in here and there to guide us along the way.

It would be very easy to read the Books of Samuel and come back, trying to place the characters of David, Tamar, Amnon, and Absalom in the characters on display in Absalom, Absalom! If you, like me, have nothing more than a passing familiarity with most of the books in the Bible, I would keep it that way for the first read of Absalom, Absalom! Reading the Books later and thinking about the story, potentially even coming back for a second read (I will be doing this a few times in the future), will only make you more awe-struck at the sheer magnitude of Faulkner’s accomplishments. He has managed to construct a 2x2 grid, framing a very particular tragedy around a very particular family, but in doing so, he has pored over every possible angle, every square inch, every detail, until that tragedy has thoroughly seeped through your skin and your soul, until you have become one with it and realized that it is alive in us all.

Allow me to set the picture before I rattle off some thoughts, and there are very many of them as one reads a book like this – one without many nods to punctuation. It is almost impossible to get the image of a plantation out of your head – this is what Sutpen’s Hundred is: a gargantuan, bigger-than-life estate built on the backs of slaves.

It is here that Sutpen thinks – or maybe doesn’t think – to himself that he is beginning to understand the provincial nature of those he knows around him – those who may or may not accept him, those who hold him as an outsider at times and an insider at others, those who share that stare when he comes across – he thinks about the provincial nature of what makes him Thomas Sutpen, because by God, he feels himself responsible for taking a look at his views on determinism versus fatalism (that battle that may not seem like a battle but the young’uns will call the battle nonetheless, the battle that is more gossamer than hemp to the ones who have had the chance to look into it, have had the willpower to want to look into it, to spend time with it, to pry it apart, to become one with it, all the while questioning the integrity of their philosophical thoughts and the constructions of the structures around their lives, thinking about whether it is a set path when you come out of the womb, when you learn how to talk, walk, laugh, cry, run, play, grow, fall in love, live, endure, maintain, die, whether it is determined that one action leads to another in a pre-destined fashion, based on the rungs of the ladder of time that stretch into the past, but without a fate, without what you would call destiny, or whether it is known that you will talk when your mother smiles at you, walk when you decide you want to get to the toy that you threw across the room and crawling just won’t cut it anymore, laugh when you see your brother slip and fall, and you are laughing before you realize it and he is laughing at you laughing and the scene is beautiful because it is a scene paralyzed and suspended in time and maybe you will look back on it in the future when he has passed and all you have are the memories, but before then you are crying because you have stubbed a toe, you are running because that is what it feels like to have the wind play its harmonies across your eardrums, you play with whatever you are given, transcending the mere moving and throwing from the crib of times past, you grow and fall in love with it being practically known that you will have 3 kids, 2 of whom you will love with more than every single cell of your body, but the third will rebel, the third will be against you, the third will threaten to destroy the very thing you have called your life in front of your very eyes, so that love becomes a concept you fight over and fight about with and without yourself, and one day when you are starting to realize that you have got a hang of this circus and know its ultimate destination you drop – this is fatalism); fatalism is something Sutpen does not believe, perhaps, but he knows that determinism is a thing he has to believe.

Agamemnon and Clytemnestra and a thousand other such characters from the mind of Aeschylus fly figure-eights around the scene, as it is apparent that antiquity drips down the walls and pillars of Sutpen’s Hundred or a thousand other such plantations across the deep South, the same South that built what it had off the back of racism and slavery, with many that opposed but many that were on the extreme opposite side of opposition, and just as many but doubled, tripled, for the number of those that showed a passive (if not entirely nonexistent) resistance toward that vile idea of owning another human being, reasoning to themselves that they were at least against it, they were at least willing to free their slaves if they worked for it, they were at least willing to forgo every third handing out of a beating, because they knew what it meant for them to experience pain, or so they thought. As Absalom discovers the deeds of David, he takes actions that those in the South may not have, because those in the South felt the weight of a moment and repeated it in a set of cycles, the progeny of which ended up who-knows-where, but still part of a greater repeating of a set of cycles that are doomed to be repeated until time stops and we are six feet under. And Sutpen knows that all of this may happen with the look of a woman, and it can be doomed with the look of a man.

Read this book.

Am I going to have to hear it all again? he thought. I am going to have to hear it all over again. I am already hearing it all over again. I am listening to it all over again. I shall never have to listen to anything else but this again forever. So apparently not only a man never outlives his father but not even his friends and acquaintances do.

Yes, he could vividly envision it all in his mind as if he were physically present in front of the grave plots. The tombstone pillars rose up from the misty ground, evoking thoughts of the self-fulfilling prophecy: if you build it, the future will arrive. He recalled who had bought and paid for them and who had seemingly bled water from stone. It was Judith. He could see it all with astonishing clarity in his mind, and yes, he was there, reading the epithets. Here lies one who didn't hate the south. Here lies another who had to have been born here. Here lies yet another who was born here. Everyone he met seemed to sound just like his father. He thought they all did. In fact, he thought they all sounded just like William Faulkner. It was as if they were speaking a language newly learned, yet unable to lose its own accent. What would it look like if one could see it all in their mind and purchase the land and the carvings in the stone? What you can give another person tastes like bending the spoons of rusted silver born in your mouth. What do you sound like when you practice for speech class with tombstone marbles in your mouth and only bend good silverware in company? Do you stand up tall and intone your words about the meaning of love from within?


I have met Quentin Compson. I know that he doesn't. If we were to meet in the next life, I have bones to pick with him. I have long known that he doesn't, and I have contorted myself in various ways, wishing it could have been any other way. It could have been different. I've seen him and been there as he fails to give his sister Caddy what he could have given her. Father, it was incest, and father, I have fallen too, so cast me out, make us together again on the outside. He could have been her brother, and he could have been her family. He could have seen what one should know about someone they love and who loves them.


Quentin Compson speaks back over refrigerated years to his nineteen-year-old university roommate. They could be sitting at a kitchen table, sipping insomniac coffee, or their voices could be in the bedside dark, like two kids whispering secrets before they've moved out of the family home. The kind of voices that prematurely sense we've grown up and started new lives, and here we meet as before, temporarily, to discuss this shared past. They could envision it all in the voice of Quentin's father, and this young man from another time takes on the voices of handed-down stories from his father's father. It wasn't our past, and yet here we stretch out our hands past lights out, and this is what happened, the storytelling voice. I loved how Faulkner describes the bulk of a boy who looks thirteen in his overgrown body, contrasted with another build that appears older than their years, standing in flesh time and moving incalculable years into the future of unlived time. Shreve speaks his nineteen years that belong to him. He tries to say that the lonely old demon man who had no other friends than the original storytelling voice, Quentin's grandfather, because he chose lechery. He tries to say maybe it was love, maybe things are the way they are because that's how they used to be. I loved how Faulkner described this because I could see it too, could hear the storytelling voice. But Quentin says he doesn't know, he doesn't know what love is, and you had to have been from the south. He says his years don't belong to him, he says he is twenty and was born old. He is from the south. In his childhood, he would reenact family stories that happened before he was ever born. A favorite was the tale of his then fifteen-year-old aunt running away from home after a home abortion by his grandmother. The reenactment was chosen for the screaming of "THAT'S MY DOUCHE BAG!" when his aunt tried to pack her mother's douche bag that did not belong to her. He was terrified of his grandmother, and he knew exactly how she looked and sounded in this scene despite the fact of his nonexistence. He must have already known how it felt to be the one running away and the daughter, his mother, left behind. He believes in years that are not yours and doesn't believe in speaking for others without listening to the part that is new. He thinks if it is too easy, it isn't alive, and Quentin walks the too easy when he owns the years as if they were clothes and not ghosts. I see when he chooses not to move out of the ideals in The Sound and the Fury. What he could see, what they reenact together, is a choice. It is as interesting to me what you choose to see as what you are born knowing. You only don't remember how it got there.


When I'm not reading Faulkner, I long to read him. I desire his character descriptions. They possess a power, and without stopping to think the words out loud, I still thought, "I know exactly what he's talking about" when Quentin sees those grave stones as if he is there. He has too much power, or maybe it is the part of the story that is how the story is told. I can think it was special to tell the story this way, revealing what could have happened every time the story is retold from what someone else adds to it. Bon was their brother. Maybe Bon never lived up to a word of promise to Judith, and maybe he never lifted a finger to wrap siblings Judith and Henry around his. I already knew that he hadn't, and when I already know it, I am told it again like pretty words that are never spoken louder than words with action. I know that they never truly knew Bon, and their not knowing wasn't as important to me as knowing why they chose something they invented rather than something or someone they could know. Absalom made me writhe in what I already know and the pretty finger-crooking words. I know this was how the story was told, and the story is what you are given by how someone else chooses to see you. Knowing the shape of the book is not the same as living inside of it, and I was frustrated with this device of ghosts reappearing. Or the story is what is taken from you by how they choose to see you, if that's how you choose to see it. That something could be taken from you. I miss Faulkner when I'm not reading him, for not connecting all of the dots on my eyes that are made from staring too long at real or artificial light. And when I was reading him, I wished that I could, for once, see Henry and Judith's relationship as it was, that he didn't paint such vivid pictures that they seemed really happening now. I wanted the bright, hot Faulkner descriptions of my memory rather than the reality of the killer descriptions of life. I'm probably a pain in the ass when reading a book and wishing it was real. That's probably an insane confession and not a legitimate complaint. I wanted to give them something of my own. I am told that they grew up together out of the funeral fires of their father, their mausoleum house, and the cold womb of their mother that cocoons in the kind of life that is made up of "I got married, and then my daughter gets married. She dies." If you want to take their word for it....


A voice chooses to put Aunt-Miss-Rosa in, moving in and spicing the food to her flavor. What's the loneliest way you can choose to be another person? The judgmental aunt, the spinster aunt, the one with the shocked face running back to her dead house. Shreve and Quentin speak of demonizing, and I wanted to talk to Rosa about her unchildhood. What did it look like when she takes the photograph of the Bon that none of them knew for her dreams? I am haunted by the sight of her in my mind. How did she manage to stealthily take the food to her father in the attic for four years? As a little girl during war time? Miss Rosa stealing for the trousseau of strangers. Never loved, no real family. She's the Aunt-Miss-Rosa, not related to anyone, and she lies in her bed for forty-five years, asking, "Why? Why? Why?" Voices choose to give pull to the leash she heeds like a dog when the demon says, "Come." I wished that she had ever had a life. I wish I could give her a life, and I wonder how it is her face that is the creep behind time's formaldehyde. What did Henry and Judith own other than a mutual obsession? I loved it when I could peek behind the storytelling curtain and wonder for myself if they were not more disturbed that Bon had a photograph of the octoroon woman and their baby. A sign that their vision did not belong to them roused me more than anyone talking and talking about what happened when their mutual dreams fell (who fed them to whom did not matter as much to me as I never got to see them making them, nor learn their brother-sister language). No, if Aunt-Miss-Rosa saw a demon in old Thomas Sutpen, I wasn't moved by his Sutpen's Hundred plantation in the sky. If the blood and guts felt real when the fists flew, the unsettlement in my belly came from the slaves who could not choose to be there rather than where he chose to lie.


When a voice says that the white women rested on where the white prostitutes and where the black women could not choose to lie, it was not the white woman's flesh I saw, for how often the white woman's flesh was glimpsed on their breath. No, if a white man goes to the fields and says send me this one and that one, and they have to come lie down with him, I wouldn't say that the position of "I have two days to live my wedding and my daughter's wedding" rested on that. What I wanted to give them was a life to live, for anyone to have a life to live, that was not that. When I see the photograph of the octoroon woman and her baby, I don't live a mysterious life of moving through the world out of place. It shouldn't be mine to give them or to anyone else. But I want to see them and not go to the fastest course to "I know you" without having to know you. I want to see them to know them, to know something important. That's what I felt when I read The Sound and the Fury. I didn't have to know Caddy, to tell her how to live her life or what she should do with the pull in her arms to wrap around someone else. I knew without even having to see her that she loved and had a heart, and that was important. I know this when reading Faulkner, and I wish that it was something that people could just know and give to each other so much that I can taste it. When I'm reading him, I want so much that I can hardly sit still, that they speak for themselves. I feel Quentin's discomfort, and he's a disappointment to me. When Shreve talks about love, I don't know that it is love either. Judith and Henry do not love Bon. I don't know what it is they love, and it isn't his mystery that I know or love. I'm stuck on wondering what it is anyone wants or knows about anyone else in the first place. Shouldn't it be for something better than an angry dream that ends in blood? I'm haunted by the fifteen-year-old girl seduced by stale candy. What did she think her life was going to be? What was her dream? When Aunt-Miss-Rosa receives charity baskets of food left on her porch in the we-can't-be-people-together face-to-face night. When Clytie sleeps on the floor and calls white people "Marster" and never leaves and never lives without them, only so close to anyone to mark distance from someone else. Tears stillborn in Judith's eyes when confirming Bon's death. If they were never meant or if they needed permission, someone else would tell you. They are haunted by not living. I don't know if I'd call that growing old.

Because he was not articulated in this world. He was a walking shadow. He was the light-blinded bat-like image of his own torment cast by the fierce demoniac lantern up from beneath the earth's crust and hence in retrograde, reverse; from abysmal and chaotic dark to eternal and abysmal dark, completing his descending (do you mark the gradation?) ellipsis, clinging, trying to cling with vain unsubstantial hands to what would hold him, save him, arrest him - Ellen (do you mark them?), myself, then last of all that fatherless daughter of Wash Jones' only child who, so I heard once, died in a Memphis brothel - to find severance (even if not rest and peace) at last in the stroke of a rusty scythe.

The 109th book of 2022 is a remarkable read.

I have often reevaluated many modernist books after periods of reflection, such as those by Woolf and Joyce. I believe that's the nature of the movement; it takes time to truly sink in. Some consider this particular work to be Faulkner's masterpiece, while others hail it as "The Sound and the Fury." For now, I'm inclined towards the latter, but this book is still so vivid in my mind that I can't say for sure yet.

Before opening this novel, I only knew two things about it: that Quentin Compson is a character, and it famously (or perhaps infamously) has a 1,288-word sentence.

Faulkner's works can be quite demanding. On a sentence level, this one isn't overly difficult, despite the length of some sentences. The challenge lies in the fact that the entire novel and its focus are held at a distance. As readers, we are hearing everything secondhand or even fourth-hand. For example, one of the most crucial chapters that reveals the most about some of the characters is told to us through a chain of characters. "Absalom Absalom!" is like a literary game of Chinese whispers.

The control Faulkner has over his narrative is truly astonishing, as expected from one of America's great writers, and perhaps one of the world's. I am constantly amazed by his power. The structure of this novel is circular, constantly coming back around, taking steps forward and then backward. This makes it a difficult book to get into. For the first 100 pages, I was a bit concerned as I wasn't loving it as much as "The Sound and the Fury" or "As I Lay Dying." However, once it gains momentum, it becomes impossible to put down. The final paragraph alone is easily worth 5 stars, with its chilling, dramatic, and poignant nature. As a novel, it contains all of Faulkner's old tropes and themes, making it a brilliant and challenging read, exactly what I look for in a novel.