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Sep 25, 2007

Lucas rated it:

I was nearly stammering when I finished it. It is a text so thick, so full of beauty that to describe it at all is daunting.

first of all, Faulkner is always doing things like this:
“He was a barracks filled with stubborn back-looking ghosts still recovering, even forty-three years afterward, from the fever which had cured the disease, waking from the fever without even knowing that it had been the fever itself which they had fought against and not the sickness, looking with stu More...

5 comments like (33 people liked it)

May 25, 2007

Jill rated it:

i feel like i'm supposed to give this a higher rating, and maybe the next time i read it i will. it was a dense and thorny thicket, and i flogged myself through it with the conviction that it must be good for me, since it's faulkner, and faulkner is good for us -- and while i still believe that it was good for me i can't claim that i loved it. i read more out of a sense of obligation than desire, which is not usually the most productive motivation to read a novel. sentence for sentence, it is More...

5 comments like (10 people liked it)

Feb 04, 2012

Eric rated it:

Oh, Faulkner. I read this at 16, was staggered. I read it twice during one summer. I loved--a still admiringly recall--its lugubrious, fatalistic antiquarianism; its fetid Suth'un feel. It touched something deep. But when I look into it now I can't help but cackle. This is a joke, right? However much a visionary stylist, Faulkner is a laughably bad writer. Once I got to college, Joyce and Nabokov easily shouldered him aside. Still, I can't shake the suspicion that the clumsy, longwinded, usually More...

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Sep 21, 2008

Trevor rated it:

Look, I can't say I disliked it - it was beautifully well written - but so terribly difficult. So difficult to follow and to know just where one is. I kept forgetting who was talking and who they were talking about. There is so much back story - it seems to be all back story. So many characters all more or less the same. Everything is so complex and detailed. I became lost and then I gave up, I'm afraid.

I can see it is probably worth the effort - but also know it requires more More...

4 comments like (12 people liked it)

Sep 09, 2011

matt rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Feb 16, 2008

Kim rated it:

I say this based entirely on my own free will, I think this could be the best book ever.

3 comments like (18 people liked it)

May 23, 2010

Peter added it

The dominant characteristic of this novel is its stream of consciousness prose. It wrestles you into submission, and your choice is either to fight back (and it’s a fight) and sort your way through it or to put the book back on the shelf.

Out of a sense of obligation, I pressed on. But I don’t think I’m likely to do so again.

To give Faulkner his due, Absalom, Absalom! is heralded for championing all kinds of new ground, but before engaging the novelty of out-of-order s More...

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Feb 03, 2009

Tom rated it:

I like to think that Faulkner, were he alive, would've broken an empty bourbon bottle over the head of JRR Tolkien, and spit some tobacco juice on JK Rowling for their candy-ass prose and their contributions to increasing the laziness of readers everywhere. I further like to think that after he wrote,

". . . and opposite Quentin, Miss Coldfield in the eternal black which she had worn for forty-three years now, whether for sister, father, or nothusband none knew, sitting so bolt More...

2 comments like (30 people liked it)

Feb 27, 2008

Jeffrey rated it:

William Faulkner's thesis through Absalom! Absalom! and The Sound and the Fury (novels that share characters and setting) goes something like this: The South fell because it was built on the blood and sweat (no tears from these men) of extremely ambitious men who lacked any compassion for others. Their utter disregard for others leads to theirs and ultimately the South's fall. Enter Thomas Sutpen in Absalom! Absalom!, the lowest of low characters ever created. He happily does things to relatives More...

0 comments like (11 people liked it)

Oct 06, 2011

Julia rated it:

Um dos romances mais fortes de Faulkner. Impressionante.
Vários narradores contam a história da família de Thomas Sutpen, cujo declínio espelha o declínio do sul. Um dos narradores é Quentin Compson, personagem de O Som e a Fúria. O modo como Faulkner escreve é perfeito.

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jun 28, 2011

Michael rated it:

Faulkner famously described himself as "a failed poet," and this profound novel often feels like a tale told in verse-- one can, I think, even hear occasionally the influence of Swinburne and Housman, two poets whose work influenced Faulkner in his youth.

In any case, this is an epic story, on one level rather simple, but on another massively complex. The sentences seem to grow like kudzu, wrapping themselves around and through the pages, the narrative, and, most of all, the More...

2 comments like (2 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Nathan rated it:

I would marry this book if our proud nation didn't define marriage as being only between a man and a woman.

0 comments like (19 people liked it)

Aug 05, 2011

Kristel rated it:

A southern Gothic novel by William Faulkner, written in 1936. The story is set just before, during and after the Civil War. Thomas Sutpen, born poor, decides he will have what it takes to tell someone to use the back door and he does accomplish his goal 'sort of' only much of his past is still a part of his present person and it ends up destroying him and all he hoped to achieve. The story is told mostly through the Quentin, a grandson of the man who was a friend of Thomas Sutpen. There is also More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 25, 2011

Jack rated it:

One of my all time favorite novels, probably because I enjoy bragging about its difficulty. Absalom, Absalom! is a great baptism by fire if you want to get into Faulkner. Of his major works (As I Lay Dying, The Sound and the Fury, Go Down Moses, Light in August, and a few others), Absalom! has to be the most difficult, but if you start here and can get through it, even the most difficult passages of The Sound and the Fury will be a breeze. Think Ulysses in terms of how confused you're going to b More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Dec 22, 2007

Brian rated it:

The first sentence just kills it for me. And I quote:

"From a little after two oclock until almost sundown of the long still hot weary dead September afternoon they sat in what Miss Coldfield still called the office beacause her father had called it that — a dim hot airless room with the blinds all closed and fastened for forty-three summers because when she was a girl someone had believed that light and moving air carried heat and that dark was always cooler, and which (as the More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

May 08, 2007

علی rated it:

تاماس ساتپن که همه ی تلاشش را می کند تا زندگی کند اما همیشه چیزی در جایی ناجور از کار در می آید. ساتپن مدام از خود می پرسد کجای کار لنگ بود، مگر چه کردم یا چه شد؟
اگرچه این رمان در فارسی به ابسالوم ابسالوم هم مشهور بوده اما ترجمه ی صالح حسینی با نام "ابشالوم، ابشالوم" به نظر صحیح تر می رسد. این ترجمه در 1378 توسط اتشارات نیلوفر چاپ و منتشر شده است.
در همین اثر است که فالکنر برای اولین بار به یوکناپاتوفا، سرزمین خیالی اش در می سی سی پی اشاره می کند و مساحت و جمعیت و مرکز این More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Sep 27, 2007

Blythe rated it:

So one semester in college I was forced to take a Faulkner class - as an elective, mind you - because all the other classes I needed were taken and I had to have a certain number of credits to keep my scholarship.

I don't hate everything Faulkner wrote. I even enjoy some of it. This book made me detest him for the week or two it took to suffer through it.

Apparently one of the notes Faulkner's editor sent him after reading this was something to the effect of, "This i More...

2 comments like (5 people liked it)

Jul 31, 2009

David rated it:

I have been intellectually bullied into giving this book another shot. You know who you are.

________________________________________________________________________
I am done with Faulkner. I simply cannot stand his writing style. How is it that Tolstoy can make Russian aristocrats from the late 1800 more relatable and interesting than the southerners Faulkner depicts in his novels? I don’t know why I find Dimitri Karamazov more interesting than Tom Sutpen, but I do.
More...

5 comments like (2 people liked it)

Apr 02, 2009

Jonathan rated it:

Although Faulkner has produced more than a few works considered to have achieved masterpiece status, to my mind Absalom, Absalom stands out among the rest. As usual, Faulkner's deft grasp of human nature is spot on, but it is his brilliant layering of the narrative which elevates this book into truly rarefied air.

Faulkner presents for us the story of Thomas Sutpen, who, born into poverty and spurned by the wealthy, sets about through hard work and an iron will to establish himse More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Dec 31, 2011

Ian rated it:

This was my first taste of Faulkner.

It was certainly difficult to read at times - you're expected to do a fair amount of work as the reader. Instead of a book that you stay up until 3am to finish in the first sitting, Absalom, Absalom! requires some digestion. Which isn't a bad thing. Maybe we should be reading more slowly and thoughtfully.

Undoubtably, the language is incredible. Faulkner's long sentences and dangling clauses are filled with easter eggs of detail and imagina More...

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Oct 28, 2011

Shirley rated it:

At 32 years, Absalom Abasalom! is my first encounter with Faulkner. At first I thought his style was distinctly Southern, as though someone from Seattle (to pick a place out of the air) could never write like this. I don't know that that is precisely true. However this stream of consciousness thing is reminiscent of long conversations taking place in the hot sun on a summer's afternoon. It rambles, it circles, it makes strange leaps of association. Sometimes reading it is revelatory, sometimes i More...

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Sep 14, 2011

Tim rated it:

For me, this is about as good as literature gets. The best novels draw on the author’s personal experience and share it with a reader in a way which makes it their experience as well. Faulkner, in “Absalom, Absalom” deals with his own dilemma of being a southerner, aware of the sins of the south, and attempting to reconcile history with his need to understand. Thomas Sutpen is the old south and Quentin Compson (at Harvard) is the new south confronting the past. Sutpen never recognized the er More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 20, 2011

Liam rated it:

There's a good story here underneath the cumbersome style and misjudged structure. There are moments that are enjoyably bleak and melodramatic, but much more of the word count seemed unnaturally melodramatic and detailed beyond any real interest the words provoked. I never lost faith in The Sound and the Fury, despite all the confusion and mystery, but 'Absalom, Absalom!' lost my confidence by about page 70 out of 300. I gave up, sick of reading words that made no sense to be, and looked the plo More...

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

Jun 19, 2011

Stephen rated it:

"Stream of Consciousness" narrative and the ever-shifting perspective makes this a difficult read. But the effort is worthwhile. As the title indicates, "Absalom, Absalom" plays off of the Biblical story of David and his family. Themes such as fratricide, incest, a son's rebellion against his father, and the rise and fall of a "kingdom" are part of the story of Thomas Sutpen and his "Mississippi" dynasty as they are of King David and his short-lived kin More...

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Jan 31, 2011

Martin rated it:

Suggestion: get the audiobook and consult Cliff Notes or Max Notes, it made the novel really easy (though not painless). The reader of the audiobook restores the concept of punctuation in order to make it listenable. Certain Faulkner novels like this or “The Sound and the Fury” give me a headache when I see how they look written on the page. I never could have read this book in the traditional way. I feel like so many authors I have loved (Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, Proust, Dostoyevsky, a More...

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Oct 29, 2010

Rachelterry rated it:

Reading this book was like sitting on a train in an unfamiliar city, watching the scenery go by at breakneck speed. Occasionally your eyes light on something and you can make out a post office or a lady with a stroller or a cop on a motorcycle. But mostly you just get a feel for the town. For most of the book I felt like I was getting a feel of Mississippi but couldn't grasp a single character or a thread of a plot. The book spans more than 70 years, always looking back or forward to the Civil W More...

5 comments like (2 people liked it)

Aug 20, 2010

Keegan rated it:

This family history is told in the way we all uncover our own family histories, through incomplete and contradictory accounts and our own extrapolations. Bits and pieces of story lines are jumbled together, hinted at and unfinished, from different narrators who stress different points and sub-plots, and are laden with different emotional responses. After hearing the hint of an intriguing plot, one must listen to many tangents and explications to get details. Emotions are shared first, then the More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jul 29, 2010

Lostinanovel rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

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Jun 24, 2010

Rick rated it:

I am intrigued by the notion that the story of Thomas Sutpen parallels the Old South in that he had a "design" that was built on sham and hypocrisy, bondage and racism, and a skewed sense of morality that eventually led to a tragic downfall. This was my second reading of this book, and I started to understand how Sutpen used people to build his kingdom, and when "mistakes" were made he simply cast those people aside callously, as he did with his first wife and son. Then he More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Apr 28, 2010

Rick rated it:

In the end, I must confess, I was just glad to be done with this highly regarded novel by America’s best novelist of the 20th Century. A powerful story of a family’s self-destruction in the crucible of personal ambition and segregation’s insane logic is narrated in an ornately modernist manner with lots of labyrinthine sentences that bend and twist in a highly formalized way. For me, the telling got too much in the way of the story and left me frequently in a state of impatience—like Ralph Kramd More...

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