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.

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).