Absalom, Absalom!

by William Faulkner

book data

5,540 ratings, 3.93 average rating, 458 reviews (more data...)

rating	frequency	%
5		39%
4		29%
3		19%
2		6%
1		4%

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published

June 1st 1964 by Random House, Inc. (first published 1936)

details

Paperback, 378 pages

setting

United States

isbn

0394309782

description

The story of Thomas Sutpen, an enigmatic stranger who came to Jefferson in the early 1830s to wrest his mansion out of the muddy bottoms of the north …more

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Dec 09, 2007

Jarvis Slacks rated it:

(review of isbn 0679732187)

So I was hanging out with this girl one time when she asked me, what is this? And I said, I'm reading it. And she said, what for? And I said, to glean knowledge. And then she said, what does glean mean? And then we broke up.

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8 comments

Sep 23, 2007

Lucas rated it:

(review of isbn 0679732187)

Read in January, 2007

recommends it for: anyone who has prepared themselves with at least 3 other faulkner books

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 s...more 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 stubborn recalcitrance backward beyond the fever and into the disease with actual regret, weak from the fever yet free of the disease and not even aware that the freedom was that of impotence.”

He keeps doing THAT. It isn't even a great example, as I don't have the book (borrowed to read) on hand to find a really knock-you-down passage.

Alright, review, gather your facilities!

This narrative is relentless, it is a constantly roiling spiral, one that keeps picking up and dropping off details and elements as it grows wider. There is a submission to the narrative that must occur, similar, but much more difficult, to the submission required to get through the opening 50-60 pages of As I Lay Dying, except that this one takes about 200 pages to settle in fully, and instead of confusion, every moment of the reading is stunning and engaging up until that point, then after crossing into the rhythm and cadence and gaining fuller comprehension you are suddenly frightfully stuck with Quentin in the devastating heart of the South and Sutpen and Quentin and Caddy and the war and so many other pieces of this mosaic, this vast terrible mosaic Faulkner is finally able to fully articulate.

Sutpen is the disease, he holds himself up as a mirror to his contemporaries without conscience, they in turn are disgusted by him, his nudity, his wild niggers, his windowless mansion, yet they are fascinated by him, Sutpen is kept close, nearly from the start in one capacity or another to his southern gentlemen counterparts.

Yet, this is a love story, as Salinger wrote in Franny and Zooey "pure and complicated" And in a sense I think that is the most important part, that these multi-page sentences, the spiraling plot, the description and re-description and re-description again of the very air surrounding the events of the story are the closest I have ever seen to being wholly purely, truly, complicated. It's as if his layering and re-layering and re-re-layering and his endlessly unfolding and stacking metaphors are the ONLY way for Quentin, and for us, the readers, to understand the South, and to understand Quentin's desperate self-loathing and destructiveness, and Caddy, and Henry and Bon and Judith and etc...

Then elements of the story that connect with the lineage of Agamemnon are also fascinating and incredible, and I don't really understand most of them, so I recommend coming in better prepared then I was.

I would only recommend this to someone who has read at least 3 other faulkners - I did As I lay Dying, Sound and the Fury Unvanquished then this one. I think Sound and the Fury is necessary BEFORE Absalom. I will be going on to read the rest now...god help me.(less)

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4 comments

May 25, 2007

Jill rated it:

(review of isbn 0679732187)

Read in June, 2007

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

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Sep 21, 2008

Trevor rated it:

(review of isbn 0679732187)

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

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3 comments

Feb 15, 2008

Kimberly Serene Anderson rated it:

(review of isbn 0679732187)

Read in June, 2007

recommended to Kimberly Serene by: Ivy
recommends it for: All people

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

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2 comments

Feb 03, 2009

Tom rated it:

(review of isbn 0679600728)

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

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Jul 17, 2007

Jeffrey rated it:

(review of isbn 0679732187)

Read in February, 2008

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

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Feb 12, 2009

Peter added it (review of isbn 0679732187)

Read in December, 2008

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-o...more 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 storytelling (the Pulp Fiction of its day?), before considering allegories between the novel and the American South, before recognizing Faulkner’s recognition of the fallibility of narrators and memory—before all of that, we have to engage the prose.

And while I happen to enjoy long sentences with complex ideas, I think there’s a difference between being complex and being convoluted. Complex: Milton. Convoluted: Faulkner. Given Faulkner’s out-of-order storytelling, given his allegorical landscapes, and given his incomplete or biased narratives—given all of this cobbled together in stream of consciousness prose, it’s not hard to hard to see why. For a reminder, just read the first sentence.

Certainly, he was on to new and different styles and structures—the same way 20th century composers broke ground with serial and atonal music. It took serious discipline for those composers to write those pieces, just as it took serious discipline for Faulkner to assemble Absalom, Absalom!, but whether our respect for the process counterbalances the discomfort of listening to and reading the finished product is another question.

Brave the prose, however, stomach through the (aptly portrayed) incoherence of the human mind, and Faulkner opens us up to some marvels. Behind the scrim of run-ons lies a play of ambition, nerve, and intolerance confronting compassion, familial love, and moral sensibility. We discover the South as it was and as it would be. And we understand the inconstancy of our nature.

If we can just get through it.

Do I recommend it? Mmm… no. Maybe to fans of beat poetry—people who love those long sentences.
Would I teach it? No. High school kids are already incoherent enough.
Lasting impressions: Maybe not the best first Faulkner. The prose is the greatest hurdle, and one I’m ok with not jumping again.
(less)

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Jul 07, 2007

Nathan rated it:

(review of isbn 0075536579)

Read in May, 2007

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

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Feb 17, 2008

matt rated it:

(review of isbn 0679732187)

bookshelves: fictions-of-the-big-it, shattering, top-shelf

Read in October, 2002

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

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Dec 22, 2007

Brian rated it:

(review of isbn 0679732187)

bookshelves: stalled

recommends it for: no one who wants a casual read

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 th...more

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Feb 20, 2007

علی rated it:

(review of isbn 0375508724)

bookshelves: novels

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 ن�...more

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Dec 15, 2009

Michael Cogdill rated it:

(review of isbn 0679732187)

bookshelves: currently-reading

Read in December, 2009

Some of the only Faulkner I've never read. I find it a sampling of his usual abstruse brilliance. So often I lose my grasp on the story's thread, yet read on for the tale's next revelation of Faulkner's X-ray vision into the heart of the old South and the timeless ways of humankind. The man could build the walls of a home out of prose and yet tear them down with a few poetical words. So oddly brilliant I would have stood in awe of merely scuffing my feet across the front porch of his Mississ...more

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Sep 27, 2007

Blythe rated it:

(review of isbn 0679732187)

recommends it for: masochists

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

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Apr 03, 2008

Eric rated it:

(review of isbn 0679600728)

bookshelves: childhood, shouldreread

Oh, Faulkner, what do I think of you? I read this at 16 and it staggered me. I read it twice during one summer. I loved--a still admiringly recall--its lugubrious, fatalistic antiquarianism. 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, 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 hu...more

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Aug 14, 2008

David Johnson rated it:

(review of isbn 0679732187)

Read in November, 2009

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

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Apr 02, 2009

Jonathan rated it:

(review of isbn 0679732187)

bookshelves: classics

Read in October, 2004

recommends it for: serious readers

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 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 himself at the head of his own dynasty. Foremost among Sutpen's desires is the siring of an heir, and it is this relentless pursuit, not of a son but of a legacy, that proves to undo all of his designs. Sutpen's indomitable character towers over those around him, but their combined, often passive resistance eventually becomes overwhelming. The story is Faulknerian tragedy at its most iconic; the unraveling of Sutpen's machinations is fraught with irony yet ultimately inevitable.

As bleakly austere as the plot itself is, however, Faulkner's revolutionary narration provides the perfect atmosphere for its gloom. Most of the story is not observed first-hand, but rather related by characters who were in turn told the events by others. The main narrator is Quentin Compson (see The Sound and the Fury), who was originally told the story by his grandfather and others who knew Thomas Sutpen, now some decades dead, personally. Quentin is now recounting the tale for his college roommate, while adding his own conjectures as well. And this is the brilliance of Faulkner's narrative structure: by changing viewpoints and retelling the same scene from several angles, the subtle nuances of the various characters, both storytellers and subjects, are allowed to develop. Faulkner's adroit criticism of humanity is revealed just as fully in his characters' reaction to his story as in the story itself. The dense, sometimes stream-of-consciousness narration can sometimes make comprehension difficult, but the masterful prose deserves the extra attention.

Simply put, this is one of the best books I have ever read. The challenging, haunting combination of story and storytelling yield an artistry seldom to be found in literature, even among the great masters. Faulkner truly understood humanity, and the tragedy it so often comes to. Here, in this memorable tale, he helps us understand as well.(less)

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Dec 02, 2009

Aastha rated it:

(review of isbn 0679732187)

Read in November, 2009

I really think Faulkner was a genius. His writing style feels so intuitive and natural. Had he taken the time to think about every word and paragraph that he wrote, this book would have taken him close to a decade to finish. But it's clear that this prolific author just kind of wrote pages and pages on end in a stream of consciousness. The run-on sentences and 2 page long sentences can be rather difficult to follow (though easier than The Sound and the Fury), but the writing style is so vivid an...more

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Sep 10, 2009

Surreysmum rated it:

(review of isbn 0679732187)

bookshelves: 1983, classics-american

Read in November, 1983

I resisted this book strenuously for about the first two-thirds of it. It's the first full-length Faulkner I've read, and I couldn't see why my ear was being abused by those godawful long, breatless, endlessly parenthetical sentences. Nor could I see why I should have to go to the considerable trouble of reconstrucitng his story for him. But, to my astonishment, I found it began to grow on me. Even the fact that the narrators all speak in one voice ceased to irk me after a while, as the investme...more

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Aug 02, 2009

Dan rated it:

(review of isbn 0679732187)

Read in August, 2009

A Few Notes on Faulkner and "Absalom, Absalom!"

1. If this is the first time you've read Faulkner and you're finding it impossible, STOP! If you want to enjoy a plot you can follow I highly recommend picking up "Light in August" instead. The style is much easier to understand, and it is still one of his best novels, maybe even his most complete treatment of race. If you like the complex style but want something shorter, "As I Lay Dying" is another goo...more A Few Notes on Faulkner and "Absalom, Absalom!"

1. If this is the first time you've read Faulkner and you're finding it impossible, STOP! If you want to enjoy a plot you can follow I highly recommend picking up "Light in August" instead. The style is much easier to understand, and it is still one of his best novels, maybe even his most complete treatment of race. If you like the complex style but want something shorter, "As I Lay Dying" is another good place to start. You'll get a taste of Faulkner's range but without the sustained confusion of "Absalom, Absalom!" or "The Sound and the Fury."

2. So you're finding this book to be impossible. Rather than lord over you the joys of Faulkner's challenging prose, let me be the first to assure you, you're not the only one who's lost. Everyone reading this book for the first time becomes lost, and indeed, you should be lost! You should be able to grasp the basic scenario at the beginning: the elderly Miss Rosa Coldfield is relating to Quentin Compson (also of "The Sound and the Fury") the saga of Thomas Sutpen. The difficulty of the style arises from Faulkner channelling an old southern woman who is herself channelling a variety of people and events that she isn't really explaining. In other words, if you were expecting clear exposition, you're not going to find it. Instead, you are immediately immersed in a series of mingled accounts from the mind of a woman who has outlived herself. Later in the book the scenario shifts to Quentin relating developments in the saga to his Harvard roommate Shreve. By now, the book has incorporated Rosa Coldfield's second-hand and third-hand accounts, letters from family members, and other sources besides. I consider it a strength of the book that it overwhelms you with these many perspectives, the flotsam and jetsam of the past, the bitter myth that surrounds Sutpen and his self-defeating trajectory. Quentin himself is immersed in this effluvium, and in the book's final line, his contentious relationship to his roots is clear.

3. This isn't a book you can get your head around in one reading. I've only read it once, but I'm sure I can go back and get more from it. Faulkner is often compared to Joyce stylistically, but I think this is a very shallow comparison. Both seem to use a stream of consciousness style, but in "Absalom, Absalom!" it is more often stream of rambling. Faulkner isn't getting inside his character's heads so much as overhearing them, Rosa Coldfield rambling about the past, registering the rambling letters of other characters. This is an important distinction because the writing becomes more of a document, more of an artifact of its characters and their culture than an imagining of their thoughts. Thematically, Faulkner seems closest to Shakespeare. This may not be obvious at first, but Shakespeare is rich with an obsession for family, blood relations, incest, gender, myth, value, and power. To a lesser extent, they also share interest in colonialism and race.
(less)

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