[lbo-talk] Faulkne, Absalom Absalomr

[Albert Sonntag]

'Absalom' is my favorite Faulkner, Carrol, and I have read it many times 
and heard it discussed endlessly last year at the Faulkner Conference in 
Oxford.  But in the end, after all the talk, the thing about this book 
that has most stayed with me over the years is the relentlessly erotic 
narrative in the relentless heat, and that 'tragic' looking back.  It is 
also Faulkner's most 'Caribbean' book, with the entire racial element 
that defined that region since Toussaint L'Overture. And there are great 
issues of incest and of the hatred in the quotidian.  The story of 
Thomas Sutpen, and his frustration and murder, seems to me to be the key 
to the book, but you only see it through the hatred of Rosa Coldfield 
and the nostalgia of Quentin Compson.

Albert

On 8/21/2012 8:30 PM, Carrol Cox wrote:
> I've been listening to a recording of Absalom, Absalom. Listening is not the
> same as reading prose of this quality; one does need to see it on the page.
> But even in this form, the book is bowling me over! I reread As I Lay Dying
> and The Sound and the Fury the year before I went blind. They are powerful
> texts, but Absalom, Absalom must be one of the most 'densely packed' novels
> in English. I've never read any criticism of Faulkner and all my reading of
> his books was in the '40s&  '50s. I'm having some trouble in getting hold of
> this novel. Can anyone on this list give me some help?
>
> Tentatively, it seems to dramatize the fragmentation of historical
> understanding, the way it comes to us in bits&  pieces and we struggle to
> put it together. With all due respect to a very great novel, War and Peace,
> Faulkner understands historical knowledge better than Tolstoi did -- he (or
> his narrator) was much too confident that he had grasped "history" as it
> "really was." Faulkner sees the flimsiness of that.
>
> Any other readers of the book here?
>
> Carrol
>
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