William Faulkner: Classec o' Dud

Joe, by the way, your translation is wrong (or at the very least seriously incomplete). Ringo and the Bayard are NOT in Vicksburg. They have built a model of the town where Bayard's father is fighting and are acting out the siege/battle and CARRYING water from the well wasn't the bitch, the bitch was that they had to continually carry the water because their miniature river kept EVAPORATING.

Top reads:

As I Lay Dying Absalom, Absalom! The Sound and the Fury Light in August

Most people would add Sanctuary, which I'm a bit hmmmmm [wobbles hand in air] about personally.

For humour: the story where they're working for the WPA on the shingles (of the church roof), or more to the point not working because they're waiting for the last man-unit to arrive, and two guys each own part of a dog (cf. Pudd'nhead Wilson). According to Howard Hunter, of course, if you read the entire canon in order you better appreciate the humour.

Right now, I am reading "Sanctuary", which I like quite a lot.

Sanctuary is my least favourite of the Big Four. But re-reading may change that...

Oprah's Book Club: A Summer of Faulkner

Actually, I think I am going to do this.

was she in a goth phase?

pocketwatch!

Surely no more difficult than thousands of middle Americans attempting to get through Tolstoy, which was one of her last books.

I didn't know she did Anna Karenina! does it seem that people actually read it? (I think the Sound and the Fury is harder to read than Anna Karenina, just because of the experimental writing and narrative. Although that 60 pages of people cutting wheat in AK might be considered experimental torture)

it took me awhile to find one w/out the oprah tag too. i think i ended up getting a used copy.

i am glad to hear this cuz i'm planning on reading faulkner later this summer (late july/august makes the most sense). dude should be read in conditions of blazing, stagnant heat. ups the masochism ante a bit, in addition to the atmospheric suitability.

I've only read S&F, and that was in 1989 on a lark. I'm looking forward to re-reading it, especially the way Oprah has it laid out on her website i.e. with smart people pointing out how fucking stupid I am for missing, say, all the important shit.

He's really, really good and I will probably never read him for pleasure ever again. that about sums it up i guess.

I did like S&F. As I Lay Dying is my favorite: short, funny, and profound.

i'd argue that novels as a form of writing are pretty overrated anyway.

crosspost

My collegiate copy of Light in August is still among my books; I need to actually read it. I tried Pylon last year and had been away too long ... hadda quit after 20 pages!

"My mother is a fish."
(entire chapter -Vardaman- of As I Lay Dying)

Pretty classic for that.

I read somewhere that when Chandler saw The Big Sleep he called Faulkner and asked "WTF have you done to my book?" "Character studies," was WF's (drunken) answer.

"beyond twain and steinbeck . . ." Moby Dick is better than anything from either of them.

quick note about the quentin section of S&F being funny.

most of the humor is at the expense of fellow Southerner Gerald Bland and his unbelievably devoted mother. Funniest line in S&F (Quentin recalling the stories Gerald's mother would tell about him):

I will wait until the day for the one about the sawmill husband came to the door with a shotgun Gerald went down and bit the gun in two and handed it back and wiped his hands on a silk handkerchief threw the handkerchief in the stove I've only heard that one twice

(Sorry about lack of punctuation; this IS stream-of-consciousness after all. I'm kind of surprised there's an apostrophe in the "I've" towards the end.)

I'm reading the Snopes trilogy right now (got bogged a bit at the end of the Hamlet though, but I am pushing through--the first two chapters/stories are fantastic.)

I just recently got The Hamlet, but I've yet to read it...I just started Evelyn Waugh's Handful of Dust

My favorite writer ever, and the only writer that got me close to considering grad studies in English. Absalom is the best with Light in August coming it right behind it....shit, Sanctuary too. All brilliant.

Thanks to the new search, I finally found a thread on Faulkner!

I just read S&F and I must say it was a tough read - especially Benjy's part. I felt like I was stuck in a fog that didnt seem to clear in the second part. And then, the last two parts shed light on all that I couldnt understand. They really should print the version Faulkner wanted with 4 different colors of writing. Also, starting with Benjy's part and having no clue that there are in fact 2 Jasons, 2 Quentins and 2 Maurys is a great way to confuse me. But I have to say it was a good read (thanks to the last 2 parts making it clearer).

However, I have to disagree with whoever it was that said upthread that Anna Karenina was as difficult a read as this. AK, as I remember it, is a rather straightforward read. It may be a long book but there is punctuation, no stream of conciousness writing. And yes, it may have a rather boring part on cutting wheat, but at least it's not like you read the thoughts of the guy cutting the wheat interspersed with those of the wheat being cut, with no indication as to which is which.

Started my first Faulkner early this Summer (The Sound & the Fury) and have yet to finish it. I'm about halfway through Jason's chapter. It's undoubtedly great but it requires work that I'm not always ready to afford on the leisure hours. WILL FINISH.

The Bear is a fave.

S&F was conceived by Falkner to be read many times in order to understand it.

Falkner is classic.

Light in August, peeps.

^^^Alfred knows whats up
thats my favorite. absolom absolom i need to get to yet tho

The Bear (and really all of Go Down, Moses) seconded. As I Lay Dying, as well.

If I start the putting the time in, he's likely to become one of my favorite ever. So classic.

I read the Wild Palms recently after not reading any Faulkner in years (Sound and the Fury and Absalom are two of my favorite novels though); it is really pretty excellent, I think it's overlooked and misunderstood.

Good Faulkner: As I Lay Dying, Sound and The Fury, Absalom, Absalom!, Old Man, Light In August, The Bear (except for that weird section about the history of the family).

Bad Faulkner: The Unvanquished

Old Man is totally overlooked, I think

I tell everyone who asks that starting with S&F is questionable and Light In August is the go-to for readability + profundity. I'm amused by the second post in this thread about rehashing the same moral issues over and over--that is the point!

Read The Hamlet when you've finished with the major novels. Some of its sequences are a SCREAM.

The whole Snopes trilogy is a beautiful hammer to the head.

I tell everyone who asks that starting with S&F is questionable and Light In August is the go-to for readability + profundity.

that's funny, I always tell people the way in to Faulkner is As I Lay Dying.

I read the Hamlet but couldn't get any further in the Snopes Trilogy. Anyone else read The Town and or The Mansion?

xpost. Wow. You got all the way through it

I did. I think that was the peak of my ability to focus on a text. I can barely make it through "Humor in Uniform" or "Laughter, the Best Medicine" now.

My starting point was the Viking Portable Faulkner.

Light in August was the first Faulkner I ever read, as a freshman in college. I was blown away by it, I remember reading for something like 13 hours straight at some point near the end.

S&F gets easier as the reading gows forward - every chpater is easier than the previous one, and the scatterd threads and details becomes (in yr head) a more or less stable building of story and ideas when you finish the book.(and in 2nd reading everything obv. looks much easier and understandable).
just trust Faulkner's talent and read it till the end.
it's rewarding and amazing.
Absalom! is even more difficult cause it's hard to read all the way through.
Light in August is the realistic Faulkner so it's the easiest, though not the greatest because the lack of a unique technique.
i still think S&F is the Falukner book ill take to a desert island.

here is a link to a great analysis to S&F (and other books):

http://www.gradesaver.com/classicnotes/titles/fury/

I think that was the peak of my ability to focus on a text.

That's how I felt with Absalom, Absalom! That book is hard as shit but once I got rolling I basically didn't want to do anything but read it.

I desperately want to get that focus back, but I think I'd have to give up the internet, and her siren song is strong.

Damnit, I love hard books. They make the rest of a crappy day/week/life just melt the fuck away.

I'm going to pick up Absalom tonight - I had a copy, but have lost it.

I love Faulkner SO much!

Flags in the Dust - this is a favourite: very vivid, very atmospheric, very well-written. Hasn't dated that well: it's Faulkner at his least progressive. But the prose dazzles.

The Sound and The Fury - my entry into Faulkner (read AILD first, but was kinda confused). Really good, but tends to diminish over time (in my experience anyway): it's like the 20-C modernist novel version of Romeo & Juliet--breathtaking lyricism, but the concerns seem a bit immature to warrant such a performance. R&J is just this side of classic, and so is S&F I suppose.

Absalom, Absalom! - most hauntological novel ever, spellbinding in many places (both AA and S&F have hypnotic, addictive qualities) but definitely Faulkner at his most daunting.

Faulkner's best (imho) - As I Lay Dying (much better 2nd-time-around), Sanctuary, Light in August, and if you can find a copy of These 13, his first collection of stories, go with that too.

The Sound and The Fury - my entry into Faulkner (read AILD first, but was kinda confused).

you were more confused by AILD than TS&TF???

Wow, I just got home from the library with a copy of Sanctuary. Freaky timing.

Definite classic.

Took a class on Faulkner in college, so I've read a good portion of his books.

My favorite is Light In August with Absalom, Absalom! a close second.

I'm pleasantly surprised by how much love Sanctuary gets in this thread. I always thought that it was looked upon as one of his lesser novels, but I quite enjoyed it.

I'm not as much a fan of his more fractured p.o.v. ones like The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying. The latter was particularly confusing for me. I prefer it when he sticks to a slightly more conventional narrative structure. Not so into books where I have to figure out what the hell is going on.

you were more confused by AILD than TS&TF???

yeah but with As I Lay Dying it was more "wtf is the point of all of this?" type of confusion than anything else, whereas with The Sound and the Fury it suited my adolescent-romantic temperament well enough, and I had done some research at the ole miss website beforehand (mostly bcz at that time, my school library didn't have a copy of the book and I rly wanted to read it and that was pretty much the next best thing) so when I did get a copy for Christmas when I was 16 I already had a good idea of what to expect, and could enjoy it for the overwhelming rush of syllables that it was.

(notice that that was all one sentence--hee hee)

Go Down, Moses should be on this more. Go Down, Moses. Great great book, good intro

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/24/faulkner-on-tape_n_658138.html

"He hopes the recordings will lead people to rediscover Faulkner's books."

Are his books really obscure at this point?

I'm reading that quote as an acceptance that books/lit are an obscure thing at this point? As in one entertainment choice among many.

Or maybe that certain writers of the early part of the 20th century are just an obscurity: tough to see someone who liked Calvino or Auster going for Faulkner or Thomas Mann? (though I'm sure many rounds these parts would think nothing of it)

i'd argue that novels as a form of writing are pretty overrated anyway.

hahaha jesus what a statement

i read 10 pages of the sound and the fury and got bored

"Or maybe that certain writers of the early part of the 20th century are just an obscurity"

I'd bet that Faulkner is still heavily represented on lit syllabi in the US anyway. Far more than any of the other three you mention.

smh @ mittens

i cant help it if i could write a better story than faulkner encompassing hardcore drugs, fireworks and rollercoasters

wotta sad revive :(

mittens is a Hubert Selby Jr. wannabe then?

finally started Sanctuary last night. I also have The Original Text, which I've had for years. Has anyone read both? I think the original text edition is out of print now for some reason.

Should I try The Reivers?

Steve McQueen was in the movie of it iirc

yep!

What solid minor Faulkner novels should I try?

I consider Sanctuary minor but it feels like that's one that everybody reads so maybe it's not? I know F. didn't think much of it. They gave him the Pulitzer & the National Book Award for A Fable, which I've never read, but I think the going line on that is they felt it was just time & picked his most recent as the occasion. Always curious about that one.

I've read Sanctuary and yeah it's minor.

lol "madam, i was the corncob"

Man, I love Sanctuary.

I have heard BAD things about A Fable. You can always try Flags in the Dust, which got cut down into Sartoris. It's a little more socially retrograde than his more famous novelsn but there are some amazing scenes and some amazing writing in it. Probably wouldn't be a bad chaser after Moby Dick tbf...

I got Go Down, Moses, those interconnected stories.

That's v good too

Seriously thought about buying the reissues that Random House is bringing out later this year to mark the 50th anniversary of Faulkner's death, but...I have enough stuff.

So much beautiful writing in "Delta Autumn" and the beginning of the title story.

The second half of "The Bear" was a slog though.

he's one of those writers, with John Berryman, who, for me, stand as a symbol of how different the world is now from when I was a teenage would-be intellectual. In high school, if you'd told me there was a place 100 miles away that'd be showing footage of Faulkner in two weeks, I'd have run away from home and started thumbing rides that day. Now there's YouTube. One of the bridges that's too long for me to see clear to the other side is the one between me & people who need never see images of the writers they revere as quasi-icons, pictures that reoccur here and there and become single images whose movement can only be imagined.

awesome post imho

I need to re-read 'The Bear' soon. Not to muck up the vibe of this current revive w/ lit-crit, but my favorite take on The Bear (and GDM) in general is from this book here. I'm not sure about FL but up here in MI it's p easily accessible via interlibrary loan. I wouldn't be surprised if your college library didn't have a copy, Alfred.

Minor faulkner is where it's at! Knight's Gambit is the last one I read. Thinking about trying Pylon. Chester Himes read Sanctuary about a hundred times. Said it taught him how to write better or something like that.

I was kind of thinking about reading Pylon tbh

my favorite take on The Bear (and GDM) in general is from this book here. I'm not sure about FL but up here in MI it's p easily accessible via interlibrary loan.

Let me see if the uni library carries it. Thanks!

Will rep for Pylon, Sanctuary, and The Wild Palms as entertaining examples of Faulkner in something like hardboiled noir mode (if a narrative can be hardboiled with sentences that go on for half a page). Sanctuary in particular is a direct response to Cain and the Black Mask school, except nastier.

aero so otm; as ridiculously quaint as it must seem now, I remember in high school hearing (vinyl) recordings of Faulkner, Eliot, Joyce, etc. for the first time and being amazed that such things existed and overwhelmed by the recognition that those writers were not marble statues but humans who had to breathe.

worth reading:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/01/magazine/how-william-faulkner-tackled-race-and-freed-the-south-from-itself.html?ref=books

William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury to be published in colored ink

Over 80 years after The Sound and the Fury made its debut on the literary stage, the novel which would go on to become one of the classics of 20th-century American literature is finally being published the way William Faulkner intended.

The four sections of the book, which tells of the disintegration of a southern family, move back and forth through time. Faulkner had hoped to use different colours of ink to mark the sometimes-confusing chronological shifts, writing on its publication in 1929: "I wish publishing was advanced enough to use colored ink ... I'll just have to save the idea until publishing grows up."

Instead, the Nobel prize-winning author had to be content with using italics to convey different periods in time, and what he called the "unbroken-surfaced confusion" of Benjy's narrative, the first section of the novel which is told from the perspective of an adult with the mind of a child. "If I could only get it printed the way it ought to be with different color types for the different times in Benjy's section recording the flow of events for him, it would make it simpler, probably. I don't reckon, though, it'll ever be printed that way, and this'll have to be the best, with the italics indicating the changes of events," said Faulkner.

Now, following a suggestion from a member, the Folio Society has worked with two Faulkner scholars, Stephen Ross and Noel Polk, for the past year to pin down the different time periods in the novel, and is publishing the first ever coloured-ink edition of The Sound and the Fury on Friday 6 July, to mark the 50th anniversary of the author's death.

The book was described by Faulkner himself as "a real son-of-a-bitch ... the greatest I'll ever write". Although attempts have been made in the past to pin down its shifting chronology – Faulkner himself recalled eight time-levels at a moment's notice – this is the first ever printed edition, according to The Folio Society.

to go along with that nytimes article, here's an interview with shelby foote talking about various aspects of southern culture at the time, including the story about meeting and getting to know faulkner

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j00x9wBuw98

i thought parts of that nyt thing were really good:

All Henry has to do is repeat himself. Say it again, the reader thinks. Say, “No, you are my brother.” ... There is nothing to keep Henry from saying it, to keep him from reaching out his hand to his black brother, nothing except the weight of the past, the fear of ridicule, his own weakness. Instead of his hand, Henry brings forth the pistol.

i tell people AA is my favorite faulkner that i've read but 1) i've only read three or four of his novels and 2) i was 18. article made me take it off the shelf tho.

Shelby Foote just talked me into reading "The Hamlet." Haven't read any of the Snopes trilogy.

I haven't read AA yet: I always save one.

"The Hamlet" is awesome, especially when the bestiality gets lyrical.

tons i haven't read. i was high a lot during my school years. i'll get to them all eventually.

I totally need to read The Hamlet

The Unvanquished was OK for being a series of stitched short stories, although it explains why it doesn't quite build; Bayard's refusing to kill the guy who killed his own dad doesn't strike me with the moral force Faulkner might've intended.

As I Lay Dying is simultaneously the funniest and most depressing shaggy dog story in American literature with a hell of a punchline. The names of the characters are so on the nose, but great: Dewey Dell! Jewel! Cash! This would make an amazing one-season HBO show.

Absalom, Absalom is my favorite. Greek tragedy in Mississippi doled out ounce by ounce until you are crushed by the weight of America’s sin.

Faulkner’s humor is so savage: in TSatF, Jason refers to the family’s failure to send Benjy to an asylum as, “robbing the sanitarium of their star freshman.”

Light in August and The Sound and the Fury are both prime as well.

I’m reading this guy for the first and last time and all I can think of is how much it sounds like Ashley Schaefer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKM3pyktIXw

He’s doing a bit, right?

Started Absalom, Absalom! last night. I read one for his every few years and my experiences have gotten progressively better.

I think Sound and The Fury was a struggle, Light in August less so but its still an ordeal, As I lay Dying was excellent but for some reason it took much longer to get through a short book.

But with AA I am feeling like yes, its all come together, what was the problem?

The answer is: probably me.

Absolom, Absolom! is the best. So dramatic, like Greek mythology, and with added weight due to the ties to Sound and the Fury. It is sort of a mystery and a page turner.

I took a Faulkner class in college and Absalom, Absalom was one of the highlights. Greek mythology is a good comparison; I often find myself thinking of the Sutpen story as a kind of foundational American myth, and then I remember how relatively little read this book is compared to other Faulkner.

Reminds me of Thomas Bernhard in the way the story is told to one person.

I often find myself thinking of the Sutpen story as a kind of foundational American myth

Absolutely, plus it tackles race AND class at the same time. The race stuff is obviously a little dated in the 21st C., but honestly not that much.

Shit, you guys are starting to sell me on this book

Absalom, Absalom is probably the best Faulkner novel.

I'm still waiting to hear from someone who has actually read A Fable.

Light in August is still my favorite. I'd love to teach an American Studies course in which I could teach include Douglas Sirk's Imitation of Life and Light in August side by side.

(The only one I’ve read so far is “As I Lay Dying” in a college class.)

I do love As I Lay Dying. It's so petty, vicious, and low stakes compared to big ones, and much, much funnier (though all Faulkner is funny when you aren't being horrified).