Discussion - Week One - Absalom, Absalom! - Chapter 1 - 3

[Jim]

This discussion covers Chapter 1, 2, & 3, pp. 1 – 69


In James Michener’s The Novel, the protagonist Lukas Yoder is a best-selling novelist who created a fictional rural community called “The Grenzler Region” based on the real-world Pennsylvania Dutch Country west of Philadelphia. Through hard work, clean living, and the endless support of his wife, editor, and agent, Yoder writes flop after flop until finally, his fifth novel becomes a best-seller and his star ascends.

Likewise, William Faulkner created his own fictional Yoknapatawpha County based on his life near Oxford, Mississippi. And like Yoder, his first four novels met with limited success. Eventually, however, Faulkner’s mixture of Southern Gothic motifs and Modernist stream-of-consciousness technique was recognized and embraced as some of the best American fiction of the mid-20th century.

In these first three chapters, we meet Quentin Compson a few months before he heads off to Harvard (remember him from The Sound and The Fury?). Quentin has been summoned by elderly Miss Rosa Coldfield to hear the story of her family’s infamous past before she dies. She tells a jumbled, intensely chilling account of what happened when Thomas Sutpen appeared in town in 1833, and how he helped to create chaos, pain and confusion in all who came in contact with him.

For those of you who are reading Faulkner for the first time, you will notice right away the complexity of his prose and the voluminous number of adjectives filling up his very long sentences. Faulkner was a modernist and an admirer of James Joyce whose influence can be felt in much of his writing. Read slowly and remember that these stories are the recollections of an old woman unfurling the poisonous memories that have been fermenting in her mind for decades…

To avoid spoilers, please limit your comments to Chapter 1, 2, & 3, pp. 1 – 69

[Rick]

Hey Jim, I'm not a part of the larger discussion but I picked this up recently in a local book store and I am suitably intrigued. I haven't read Faulkner in years.

One doesn't have to be a part of the larger discussion to participate?

[Jim]

Rick wrote: "Hey Jim, I'm not a part of the larger discussion but I picked this up recently in a local book store and I am suitably intrigued. I haven't read Faulkner in years.

One doesn't have to be a part of the larger discussion to participate? ..."

Not at all! Choose the books you want to discuss and jump in any time.

What did think of the opening paragraphs?

[Rick]

I've had a couple of false starts with it already. His writing style definitely comes across as a little clunky and needlessly overwritten. I'm hoping to be engaged by it very shortly though...

[Jim]

Rick wrote: "I've had a couple of false starts with it already. His writing style definitely comes across as a little clunky and needlessly overwritten. I'm hoping to be engaged by it very shortly though..."

Faulkner was much impressed by James Joyce and modernist writers. His experiments with stream-of-consciousness techniques very much feel like overwriting. One question to ask is how does this style work with the subject matter? We have an old spinster telling her tales of a lost life from a lost world to a young man who may one day tell her story to others. She is transmitting ancient, painful memories verbally in a hot dusty room. She is obsessed with these stories and has been reliving them for nearly 50 years. Does the excessive detail and wave-like repetition work for the material? This is not an adventure story, but a dusty, moldy gothic tale told by a woman nearing death.

[Machiba]

Jim wrote: "This discussion covers Chapter 1, 2, & 3, pp. 1 – 69


Reading slowly is the key until you get into a rhythm. The first 20 pages, I had to read and reread several paragraphs/sentences to understand what topic he was discussing. It is like reading Plato where you have to break down the sentence to ensure you are applying descriptive words to the correct subject or noun. After you get going, though, it definitely smooths out and the broadening of the storyline eases the pain too.

[Jim]

Machiba wrote: "Reading slowly is the key until you get into a rhythm. The first 20 pages, I had to read and reread several paragraphs/sentences t..."

It's true, it takes some time to get a feel for the hows and whys of Faulkner's writing. As you say, once you get a feel for how it works, his writing is fantastic and worth the effort to understand.

[Jim]

J Frederick wrote: "What in the world does Quentin's grandfather mean when he says "a man who, in a country such as Mississippi was then, would restrict dishonesty to the selling of straw hats and hame strings and sal..."

I suppose he's suggesting that in a time of war and the lawlessness that tends to accompany war, a family would expect the head of the household to engage in whatever "dishonesty" was necessary for survival, and that if he limited the dishonesty only to "close trading" of straw hats, etc., they would lock him up for petty theft (kleptomania) because his honesty (or honest "dishonesty") would be a kind of stealing from the family. Or more succinctly, if everyone's doing it to survive, then he should too.

A strange passage, but then all of Faulkner's work has complex meaning wrapped in complex language.

[Jim]

J Frederick wrote: "Mmm...I actually emailed a Faulkner scholar and delightfully got a reply. His response was very close to yours, but he added that if one limited his dishonesty so much, one would gain nothing and t..."

What fascinates me about Faulkner is his poking and probing and digging deep into the twisted psyches of post civil war southerners and their ancestors. Absalom, Absalom! is a particularly twisted tale in that respect. When you finish, you might consider rereading the Quentin section of The Sound and the Fury, just to see if any of the A,A! psychosis comes to bear in Quentin's breakdown.