Faulkner is astonishing. I wouldn't say he bewitches you but rather he elementalizes you. Just as in As I Lay Dying, I felt that the author's narration has more than one veil. You can distinguish the basic figures of the plot, you can see the actions of the characters, but you lack the details and the motives. At some points, you understand that something dark or dangerous is hidden beneath, but you hope it is something else and not what you imagine from the outline that is distinguishable in the veil.

The fact that you feel the danger beneath the veil/Faulkner's narration but you don't see it, elementalizes you and makes the reading of this book an astonishing experience.

**Sul canone “gentiano”**

There are writers of whom, once I finish a book, I immediately feel like reading another and then another. This does not hold true for Faulkner, at least not in my case. Because I do not find his books consoling nor even “pleasant”, rather they are demanding and bitter and often I have the need to interrupt their reading with something different.

“Absalom, Absalom!” is no exception to the rule, indeed it can be considered paradigmatic in this sense. Faulkner is a writer who requires the reader's attention, a great deal of attention, and he does so with an opening that makes things clear right away and seems more to repel than to invite the continuation of reading.

The first thing that strikes is that a single adjective to describe the afternoon is not sufficient to describe its atmosphere, to the extent that it is necessary to use as many as five. The second is that the narration seems to flow slowly, extremely slowly, but beneath the surface there is a “demonic” syntax that, within long or extremely long sentences, distributes commas and parentheses profusely, creating subordinate clauses and hypotaxes that weigh down the prose, making a story that seems never to reach the point chaotic. One tries to go forward, but is forced to go back, to reread, to look for the thread that allows one to untangle the mess. A futile task because there is not one thread, but many threads. Faulkner is not the type to take shortcuts, to make concessions to the reader. And he knows more than the devil: from one moment to the next, the narrative voice changes (without warning us, as we understand), the temporal sequence moves forward and backward in time and the reading from chaotic becomes irritating so that sooner or later the attention is lost in the folds of the discourse. With Faulkner, you cannot afford this and then you have to go back to look for a point of restoration (as we say today…) from which to start again.

So who makes you do it? Why do you have to go forward if the reading is so difficult? It is difficult to give an explanation. Perhaps you go forward precisely for this, for the pleasure of the challenge, to see where the author wants to take you. Or, more simply, you go forward because you know that this book is a masterpiece and the particularity of the style is one of the elements on which the enormous cathedral that is “Absalom, Absalom!” stands, a huge book that in the end is only the attempt not to forget, to keep alive the story of Thomas Sutpen.

Yes, the story of Thomas Sutpen, but not only, because “Absalom, Absalom!” is a saga, a great collective novel, in which the voices of the other characters do not limit themselves to providing a counterpoint but express as many characters and psychological aspects. A book in which men and women live and speak in close connection because.

In my idea of the literary canon, Faulkner occupies a prominent place. I place him on an ideal line that connects Dostoevsky to Foster Wallace. The first is linked to him by the choice of themes, because only personalities endowed with powerful means can afford to put Life, Death and Man at the center of their narration and above all to dig so deeply into each of these areas and then there is the polyphony, the ability to give voice to all the characters. Foster Wallace, instead, is a connection that came to my mind precisely for the style, for the courageous and anachronistic choice of both to reject the short path of a simple and logical narration, to climb along risky paths but that are the truest way to restore to the reader all the complexity of the human way of feeling and reasoning.

Faulkner's works are like a maze that challenges the reader, yet they offer a rich and rewarding experience for those who are willing to invest the time and effort. His unique style and profound exploration of human nature make him a significant figure in the literary canon.

Whether it is the slow and convoluted narration of “Absalom, Absalom!” or the complex themes he tackles, Faulkner demands the reader's full attention and engagement.

In conclusion, Faulkner's place in the literary canon is well-deserved, and his works continue to inspire and challenge readers today.

I have a dream that one day...


Thomas Sutpen, the protagonist of the book, is rightfully among the great literary characters of all time.

As a child, he descends from the mountains of Virginia (USA) with his impoverished family on a cart headed towards the Deep South. He is humiliated by a black slave of a rich landowner, and from this incident, he gives birth to his plan to become like that rich landowner, almost with a positive desire for social redemption. He departs for the West Indies (Haiti), works as a guard on a plantation, marries the daughter of the owner from whom he will have a first heir, Charles Bon. We see him again in Mississippi, in Jefferson, in the (imaginary) county of Yoknapatawpha. His arrival with his naked Haitian slave blacks is notable, as are the bare-chested battles he later engages in with them. He will realize his dream and succeed in building his great house and plantation where he will live with his second wife Ellen and their two children, Henry and Judith.

However, the dream is doomed to end badly because it has cursed foundations. It is built on the exploitation and subjugation of other human beings. He cheats the native Chickasaw tribe out of their land. Women are considered breeding mares, only functional for his sick purpose. And the "negroes," from whom he suffered that humiliation as a child, must be and remain slaves of the pure white race.

Then comes the North-South secession war, originated by the slavery issue, in which Sutpen participates and loses disastrously like all of the Confederate South. The beginning of the end.

This is the plot, in essence. To not spoil and ruin the pleasure of discovering the plot that emerges little by little from a very dense and vivid (and challenging, but we like these challenges) writing. Back and forth in time (about a century) and in space. Through a kaleidoscope of voices, stories, letters, streams of consciousness, mainly of: Rosa, Ellen's sister, Mr. Compson, his son Quentin, his Canadian university companion Shreve. The long stream of consciousness of Rosa in chapter 5 is remarkable. The exchange between Quentin and Shreve occupies the entire second part of the book: it seems as if we are there with them, in the Harvard dormitory, on a cold snowy night in the North.

We have overcome slavery, colonialism, segregation, women have made gains but the road to equality among all men and women in the world is still long. Faulkner addresses the theme without easy tear-jerking scenes but by questioning and showing us more deeply human nature and its abysses. As in "As I Lay Dying," it will be a misfit, here a mulatto, in the end, to give us hope: his senseless howl will lighten on our ruins and the world will hybridize and we will all descend from an African king.

I think every reader of Faulkner has a moment like this:

Reading

Reading

Reading

Wait … what?? Did I miss something?

(Goes back a couple of pages)

Read

Read

Read

What?? No, I didn’t miss anything but what in the hell is he talking about???

A more experienced reader will know to be patient, observant and what is immediately read as a mystery will make sense further along in the book.

Probably.

Considered by many scholars to be his masterpiece, Absalom, Absalom!, his 1936 publication, as does most of his best writing, challenges the reading skill of his reader. Telling the story of Thomas Sutpen, an early settlor in Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, the magic of the book is in the way the story is told. There are multiple chroniclers of Sutpen’s history and the various storytellers vary the story told and even comment upon each other’s narration.

Quentin Compson (who we met in Faulkner’s Sound and the Fury), Quentin’s father, his grandfather (a contemporary of Sutpen’s), Quentin’s aunt, and Quentin’s Harvard roommate Shreve, all join in on the tale of how Sutpen, born into poverty in Western Virginia in the 1820s, made his way from the West Indies to Jefferson, to found a sprawling plantation and a short lived dynasty.

Most notable here is Faulkner’s exploration of the relationship between truth and myth. Behind the several narrators to this tale of the Sutpen family is Faulkner himself, guiding the tales told and revealing to us, the readers, all the stories’ myriad and tangled streams of truth and speculation. There are first person accounts, secondhand news, hearsay and wild assumption. All this leads to the cold morning in Massachusetts where Quentin, himself not long for this world, struggles with his own feelings for the South he knows and the South in which he was made to believe. A careful reader will then, perhaps, re-examine his own rationale for belief and, in a more universal sense, reevaluate ideas about truth and the veracity of legend. There is the truth, the truth we can know and the truth someone wants us to believe. Faulkner’s revelation about miscegenation exposes the absurdity of racism.

Absolutely one of his best if not his finest work.

**"Absalom! Absalom!": A Literary Masterpiece**

Absalom! Absalom! ~ William Faulkner

William Cuthbert Faulkner's "Absalom! Absalom!" is a profound and complex work. In this novel, Faulkner takes the reader on a journey through the crucible of his unique brand of tedium. The story unfolds in the Yoknapatawpha swampland, where the soul is involuted and unequilibrated. The palatial mansion that is raised there holds within it curses, secrets of Indian origin, or perhaps hidden Spanish gold. The tale begins in the dark hot Coldfield house, with dustmotes scattering in the sunbeams and gathering into a maelstrom, taking form and assuming shapes as the wrinkled female flesh of an old virgin chatters on, invoking the ghosts of the antebellum era.

The book is initially a hard read, but it is undoubtedly a literary masterpiece. It is emotionally tough, like a Greek tragedy, yet closer to home as the characters are more relatable, set in 19th to early 20th century America. Published in the same year as "Gone with the Wind," "Absalom! Absalom!" may be less known, but Faulkner's Nobel Prize attests to its greatness.

What makes Faulkner hard, and what to do about it.

1. Faulkner switches narrators without warning, making it difficult to tell who is speaking. Pay close attention, especially at chapter breaks.
2. Figuring out which character is referred to by pronouns or unnamed references can be challenging. Learning the relationships between the characters as they emerge and referring to the "Genealogy" at the back of the book will help.
3. The modular design of the story, with events out of chronological sequence, creates suspense and a sense of impending doom. The "Chronology" at the back can be helpful, but it contains spoilers.
4. The long sentences with parentheticals, interrupted syntax, and uncommon diction are beautiful but not always easy to understand. Reading aloud and sometimes rushing through the sentences can make more sense.
5. The high register literary vocabulary is a delight for language students, but it may pose challenges for some readers.
6. Determining the part of speech, especially with words ending in "-ing," can be tricky.
7. Faulknerian sentences often conceal their meaning, requiring contemplation to reveal. This same quality is present in the story as a whole, with the meaning gradually emerging as one reads on.

The Modern Library edition of the book includes a beautifully written introduction by Harvey Breit, which prepares the reader to enjoy the book. Breit compares Faulkner's style to that of Dostoyevsky, noting that while Dostoyevsky's subject matter was more controversial, it was Faulkner's style and language that made him initially less accessible to the general reader. Breit also uses the metaphor of "the cage unlocked" and "the flight of the bird" to describe the moment when the meaning of a Faulknerian sentence is understood, and compares the texture of the novel to a symphony, with recurring motifs and melodies.

I love Harvey Breit's metaphors and his accurate description of the novel. It is truly a wonder that these books were once thrown into the garbage and that I was able to discover them. "Absalom! Absalom!" is a literary masterpiece that rewards careful reading and contemplation, and I highly recommend it to anyone who loves great literature.

William Faulkner's thesis, as presented through novels like Absalom! Absalom! and The Sound and the Fury, which share characters and setting, is profound.

He posits that the South fell because it was founded upon the blood and sweat of highly ambitious men who had no compassion for others. Their blatant disregard for fellow human beings led not only to their own downfall but also to the ultimate decline of the South.

In Absalom! Absalom!, we are introduced to Thomas Sutpen, perhaps one of the most despicable characters ever created. He commits acts upon relatives and close friends that are truly unimaginable, both throughout and often within the novel.

This thesis, along with its manifestation through Sutpen's saga, is already sufficient to make for an outstanding novel. However, it's important to remember that Faulkner writes in a stream of consciousness style, without a linear plot. This adds a layer of complexity as it delves into the study of memory, revealing just how warped and unreliable our memories can be.

The pièce de résistance of this novel is when Faulkner takes a meta-moment, having a character complain about how another character tells stories illogically and with a confusing nonlinear chronology.

Faulkner is a master for numerous reasons, and Absalom! Absalom! stands as one of the prime examples of his genius.

It's listed as 385 pages here but it ought to say twice that. What with all the backing up and re-reading I had to do, it felt like I was going through a much longer work.

5 stars. I simply can't do it justice. The story of "this man of whom it was said that he not only went out to meet his troubles, he sometimes went out and manufactured them" (105) is truly magnificent. It is a triumph of style that pushes the written word to new artistic heights. The author's use of language is so masterful that it creates a vivid and engaging world for the reader.

Moreover, it's an emotional powerhouse to boot. The story is filled with complex characters and their struggles, which tug at the heartstrings and make the reader truly invested in their fates. Serious readers in search of literature in peak form: this is an absolute must. It's a book that will stay with you long after you've turned the last page and is sure to be a classic for years to come.

There are so many intricate layers to this novel. It vividly recounts Thomas Sutpen's obsessive pursuit of establishing a prosperous family dynasty. In 1833, he seemingly emerges out of nowhere in Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi.

Faulkner provides appendices, including a chronology, genealogy, and map. These can assist the reader in piecing together the framework of this quest and its tragic consequences for Sutpen's extended family across generations, both before, during, and after the Civil War.

However, the true meaning is more deeply derived from the experience of sifting through several conflicting narratives. This includes the recollections of Quentin Compson, a Harvard freshman and the grandson of Sutpen's only friend. He has heard stories about the Sutpen family from his father and from Sutpen's sister-in-law, Rosa Coldfield. Years later, he analyzes these with his roommate, "Shreve" McCannon.

It is a rich exploration of themes such as pride, honor, family, race, memory, and truth. It delves deep into the human psyche and the complex web of relationships and events that shape our lives.

Well, one part of me is extremely happy about this book, while another part is not.

Firstly, this book is truly amazing and almost deserves a 5-star rating. It has an incredibly interesting plot, and in the writing style, one can clearly see Faulkner's genius. The way he weaves the story and creates a unique atmosphere is remarkable.

That being said, let's move on to the aspect of 'Absalom' that I have an issue with. The problem is that it seems to lack the true essence of Faulkner. Although there are the typical dark, almost morbid descriptions, the stream-of-consciousness style, and the murky atmosphere, it just doesn't have that true, deep Faulknerian quality. It feels like just one story told from the perspective of a few people, over and over again, within 300 pages.

Some might say that this is his best novel, but I strongly disagree. In fact, I would argue that it is one of his weakest novels, at least based on what I have read from him so far.

Now, I know that many of you might feel hatred towards me for saying this. You might want to comment that I didn't understand the book or that I didn't read enough of Faulkner. However, unfortunately, both of these statements would be untrue. I understood the book very well, but I simply didn't like it as much as I loved his other works.

Also, I have read enough of Faulkner to understand 'Absalom'. I have read 'The Sound and the Fury' (which I absolutely adored and is one of my all-time favorite novels), 'As I Lay Dying', 'Sanctuary', and 'A Rose for Emily and Other Stories'. I am a huge Faulkner fan, and in my opinion, he is the greatest American novelist. But for some reason, this book just didn't have the same impact on me as his other books did.

Maybe upon a re-read, my perspective might change, but as of now, I would rate it a comfortable 4 stars, hanging on to 5. I mean, come on, it's Faulkner!

Stay safe, everyone :)

There's a captivating story hidden beneath the weighty style. There are moments that are undeniably bleak and melodramatic, yet so much of the text is elaborated beyond what a reader's initial interest might warrant. I never lost faith in The Sound and the Fury, despite the continuous state of confusion. However, 'Absalom, Absalom!' quickly lost my confidence. I gave up and looked up the plot, but even with the Wikipedia synopsis, I finished the book still clueless about the significance of many, what seemed to be, major moments within it.

The two novels are closely connected thematically and stylistically - even existing in the same fictional universe. While 'The Sound and The Fury' is mostly told through a relentless flow of dialogue or interior monologue, 'Absalom, Absalom!' is related through a series of narrators. Each narrator provides long retrospective accounts of various aspects of a troubled family history.

The structure operates something like this:

  1). Quentin meets Miss Rosa who speaks at him for 30 pages.
2). Quentin listens to his father who lectures him about Miss Rosa's family for 40 pages.
3). Quentin (and the reader) reads a letter written by Miss Rosa decades ago, which lasts for 30 pages.
4). Quentin engages in long paragraphs of argument with his roommate, who is also intrigued by this family history. This goes on for about 40 pages.

Reading it places you in the role of a historian, with access to sources from which you must construct a fair account of the Sutpen saga. The purpose of switching from narrator to narrator in this manner is that we, the readers, receive several biased accounts of the bitter saga. The puzzle then is to piece together what truly happened and, simultaneously, understand the agendas of each narrator.

The problem lies in the fact that the characters (all of them) speak more or less like this throughout:

Surely it can harm no one to believe that perhaps she has escaped not at all the privilege of being outraged and amazed and of not forgiving but on the contrary has herself gained that place or bourne where the objects of the outrage and of the commiseration also are no longer ghosts but are actually people to be actual recipients of the hatred and the pity. It will do no harm to hope - You see I have written hope, not think. So let it be hope. -that the one cannot escape the censure which no doubt he deserves, that the other no longer lack the commiseration which lets us hope (while we are hoping) that they have longed for, if only for the reason that they are about to receive it whether they will or no. [page 310]

It's for this reason that people, in my opinion incorrectly, label the style of this novel as'stream of consciousness'. In reality - aside from rare glimpses into Quentin's mind - most of the book is either in the uninterrupted second-person speech of one of Quentin's sources, as in the quote above, or the language of a written document. As eloquent as Faulkner's prose can be in this novel, it's frustrating that he makes so little effort to give each character a unique voice; they all speak in the same erudite style as the excerpt.

The effect of confusion is similar to that in many Stream-of-Consciousness novels. Following the wild prose is not an enjoyable challenge. You will surely mix up your'she's, 'he's, 'it's and 'they's simply due to the intense concentration the text demands. If the language wasn't enough, the task of establishing the basics of who's who, what's what and where's where (and why) is never easy. Also, such unrelenting verbosity and literary wit in the mouths of every single character stretches the suspension of disbelief that is already required to believe that characters would actually talk or write at such obsessively detailed lengths in one go.

The most engaging parts of the novel are when we catch glimpses of actual conversations, with real back-and-forth dialogue. These are sometimes recalled by narrators in hindsight, and sometimes reconstructed in Quentin's imagination or verbally to his roommate, Shreve. I think the reason these moments are such a relief is because, in this book, there is so little warmth and so much one-sided bitterness. Before you even fully know what kind of character a name represents, you're told all about how doomed, tragic, evil, or irredeemable they are. You learn about a character's death (and what someone thinks about it) before you know they're born. If we were able to meet these characters a little more, then the story would truly stay with you, but there is little reader involvement in how the book's structure unfolds.

The distance that the reader stands from the real subjects of the novel is too clever for its own good. At an extreme point, we might be reading about Quentin relating to Shreve something he heard his father relate to him that his father confessed he had heard Thomas Sutpen say to him 50 years ago. The ambition is admirable, but I don't see it as resulting in something artistically valuable. I understand that there is something thematically important about having Quentin as a character who is constantly searching backwards in time, but this doesn't excuse the final product's shortcomings.

One character says, we are invited, but we cannot be sure. Whether it is invited or not, you cannot tell, but I know exactly that it cannot be confirmed.

Or maybe it cannot be invited and confirmed

Or it is invited and confirmed anyway

Or it is not invited at all

Or whatever, who knows

Perhaps, our entire life is so inconsistent and fragmented that nothing can be known exactly and determined

<3

I, the dreamer, still hold tightly to the dream, just as the patient clings to the last thin, unbearable, ecstatic instant of agony, in order to enhance the flavor of the pain's cessation. Waking into reality, into more than reality, not into the unchanged and unaltered old time, but into a time that has been altered to fit the dream. This dream, when combined with the dreamer, becomes sacrificed and deified.

A demigod arrives at the Mississippi on the back of his immortal horse, and with him, he brings misery and accursed people.

Yes, it's a tragedy. The language, narration, and story are absolutely perfect. The description of the dreamer's connection to the dream is both vivid and profound, creating a sense of a world where reality and dreams blend. The arrival of the demigod adds an element of mystery and foreboding, and the mention of the tragedy heightens the emotional impact. Overall, this piece of writing is a masterful work that engages the reader's imagination and emotions.