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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

William Faulkner

12:14 / 03.06.05

I have just finished William Faulkner's novel, which I guess I should have read a long time ago - I was amazed at how well structured and well written it was, but also how much of its influence can be felt through a great deal of modern American fiction - Salinger, DeLillo, Frantzen, etc.
Taking obvious influence from Joyce, I think he has managed to put together a very human book, with more than a few convincing voices and a great flow to the writing. It reminded me of what I have read of Virginia Woolf - particularly The Waves.
Anyone read, or re-read, this novel lately? It must be one of the finest re-reads there is.
Any thoughts about the strange ending?

at the scarwash

20:45 / 03.06.05

christ, it's been two years, and it's still difficult to say anything about a novel that ran me truough so completely, but

The Soud and the Fury is one of the greatest novels I've ever read by an American. Like next to Moby Dick, my favorite.

Faulkner has an ear for the vernacular that is somehow more true than real life.

His families are more fucked-up than any I've ever seen, but still feel like mine.

I'll read it again and say more. thank you for making me realize that I need to return to it.

12:59 / 01.08.05

So, I'm re-reading 'Sound and the Fury' for the 1st time.
To explain, it was a prescribed text when i was at uni, but i only got through about 1/2 of it before exams and assignments loomed, and I gave the novel up.

So when i found my copy the other day (cleaning out car), i decided i wanted to try it again.

So, hints/comments? (no spoilers)

20:23 / 01.08.05

I think it's the best book ever written, and I don't mean to be hyperbolic. It's even better than Lanark.

But as a first read, it is Hard. Such a confident novel though - it cannot work except as a second (third...) read, but when it does it's astounding, just beautiful. You have to allow the first read to wash over you, and then when you come to read it again it is as if you are a distant character in the novel, reliving and chopping about the events of the book just as the boys of the story do. Good trick, as well - it's all about Caddy, but we only see her refracted through the men.

09:22 / 02.08.05

I've only read it once, but I loved it. Absolutely knocked me off my feet, and I still rate it as one of my top ten books. It really opened my eyes to the effects you can create by switching points of view, and particularly with the strong use of voice and sound.

I agree that you need to let it wash over you and not worry too much if you don't understand everything. I have always planned to re-read it to see how much more is in there once you know what's going on. My books arrive in the UK soon (after four years) so I may just do that.

09:34 / 02.08.05

Oh goody, I was just thinking 'must read this' and lo, it's about to turn up at my door. Internet shopping doesn't get better than that.

(The arrival of Loomis's books is going to be very exciting, till we realise we have to move out to make room for them)

12:43 / 02.08.05

Gah, irritatingly enough I was back at the parental domicile picking some of my library (similarly to Loomis, if all my books were in my current flat I think my flatmate would have to move out) to bring back north with me and I nearly picked this, but picked up a bunch of P.G Wodehouse instead. Having read this thread I am regretting my decision & will maybe pick it up from the library.

15:27 / 02.08.05

I'm going to have to give this another try - everyone speaks so highly of it, but it was the only book in College Prep English that I actually threw against a wall. The passage of time has obscured the details of what annoyed me so much, leaving only a vague but potent memory of extreme dislike (I do remember saying at one point that I'd rather read Melville's chapter on the taxonomy of whales over and over again for weeks than sit through Faulkner again).

Maybe a trip to the library, then.

17:01 / 02.08.05

Harsh words, L. Merely the memory of that chapter of Moby Dick can put me to sleep.

17:26 / 02.08.05

Y'know, I'm rereading Cetology right now, and I'm actually finding it rather charming, in a faux-stuffy academic way. Maybe I should reread Melville on my way to Faulkner.

"But [to draft a systemization of cetology] is a ponderous task; no ordinary letter-sorter in the Post-Office is equal to it. To grope down into the bottom of the sea after them; to have one's hands among the unspeakable foundations, ribs, and very pelvis of the world; this is a fearful thing. What am I that I should essay to hook the nose of this leviathan! The awful tauntings in Job might well appal me."

05:10 / 03.08.05

So, I'm taking my read slowly - but have read the first 70 pages, the 'difficult' Benjy section.

And yeh, there were moments that i found myself feeling very connected to the narrative. The last 20 pages are great, and any scenes with Caddy and Benjy were really powerful.

Will keep reading this tonight!

22:20 / 31.05.06

<Deep Magic from the Dawn of Time>

As I Lay Dying is fucking fabulous. I read that in January at the same time when I was reading State of Fear by Michael Crichton(!). Anyway, As I Lay Dying is a simple story of a family trying to take their dead mother to another county for burial. It's told in first person by twenty people. What's great about it is that the characters are saying extremely complex and sophisticated things using simple Southern dialect. Their thoughts on death are quite complex and well-articulated. Their mother is also a fish.

You mean she was a convivial fellow, or literally a fish? Well... don't spoil it for me...

I think I'll progress chronologically and see how far I get.. after Soldiers' Pay I'll skip onto The Sound and The Fury, then try As I Lay Dying, which sounds interesting.

Does anyone else have any other suggestions? I hadn't really heard of Faulkner before I read a memoir by Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza, a friend of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, where he compared them, which piqued my interest. Does anyone see the similarity? (I have to say I don't, yet)

22:41 / 31.05.06

[For those confused, ze's quoting me here]

10:27 / 01.06.06

Oops, yes. This came from the 'What are you Reading now 2006' thread, where I confessed I was reading Soldiers' Pay... Can I make this a general William Faulkner thread?

15:45 / 01.06.06

In terms of Faulkner, has anybody done a major dialogic study of his works? Disclaimer: I'm no expert on Bahktin, but wouldn't his idea of the polyphony work almost perfectly into Faulkner? I say almost because Bahktin was (maybe?) influenced by Marxism, and the different voices in a novel portrayed different socio-economic classes?

As I remember it, the "carnival" came to represent the different voices in Dostoevsky's works. Dostoevsky was merely the observer and never the moral compass; he let each character speak for themselves. Each character's voice was individual and symbiotic: every character's voice shaped the other characters and vice versa.

This could easily be transported to the realm of Faulkner. I'm thinking specifically of As I Lay Dying. When Vardaman calls his mother a fish, he's equating the corpse to the fish he found. It represents an inability to cope with his mother's death. AND, when he asks Darl about it, Darl tries to understand the death in terms of what his mother is and what his mother was, which are now mutually exclusive to Darl. Both these characters are shaped by this dialogue, as these two thoughts begin to dominate the major themes of the novel.

13:21 / 02.06.06

After pondering that for a while (and with a little help from Wikipedia), I am seeing this polyphony in Soldiers' Pay now. Each character has a quite clear and separate personality - here arrogant and pompous, there level-headed and down to earth, another flighty and self-absorbed, but all very identifiably human.

And yes, some characters are clear examples of particular social classes in their speech and motivations. But one or two are fascinating because you can't read a particular social class into them, and these characters seem not to care much for the ideas of social class or norms.

I find Faulkner's style amazing. I'm not sure if this is common to the other books also. The way he switches from character to character: from using the first person, to a focus on someone else using the third person, to the first person of the next character, and so one seamlessly as if following some continuous invisible line of narrative. I'm not sure if this links into the idea of a dialogism...? It certainly gives you (not explicity, I don't think) a sense of how these characters interact with each other.

16:46 / 02.06.06

The way he switches from character to character: from using the first person, to a focus on someone else using the third person, to the first person of the next character, and so one seamlessly as if following some continuous invisible line of narrative. I'm not sure if this links into the idea of a dialogism...?

Even if it doesn't relate to dialogic criticism, it definitely fits into one of the major themes of The Sound and the Fury, which is the failure of narrative and language. I'm just reading it for the first time right now, and the first section, the Benjy section, while extremely difficult, is manageable thanks to symbolic and auditory associations. So when Benjy passively observes the downfall of his family... it's like the Valis film in VALIS by Dick: you have to put the pieces together almost subconsciously. It seems to me (read: IMHO), that Faulkner is trying to say that he can't or shouldn't lay everything out for you. That novels can't possibly relate everything for these characters.

I also think the points of view differences and changes in tense relate to the modernist preoccupation with the fluidity of time, like Mrs. Dalloway and the clocks and Quentin's watch in Sound and Fury and Wandering Rocks in Ulysses.

Reading Faulkner right now is perfect for me. I just finished doing a year-long course on Ulysses, which definitely prepared me for the narrative shattering style of Sound and Fury.

I'm noticing a lot of overlap from Woolf to Joyce to Faulkner, to even Gaddis and Pynchon. To read one is to prepare you to read another. Well. I don't know how much preparation you could ever do to get ready for Pynchon!

Has anybody read Faulkner's trilogy starring the Snopes family? The Town, The Hamlet, or The Mansion?