Absalom, Absalom!

Rating:
Summary: The Master
Review: There exists among humanity a small number of men who feel themselves born into the wrong circumstances. Smaller still are the number who ever articulate what the circumstances they wish to live in would be. The people who attempt to live out Rilke's dicta: "You must change you life," are utterly frightening in their ability to do anything that they please or feel necessary in the pursuit of their goal. Thomas Sutpen is one of these men. If there really are only two types of people on earth, masters and slaves, than he is so completely a master that all of us who do not consider ourselves the same should tremble at the fact that men and women like Thomas Sutpen still walk in the streets and on the farms and in the foot hills of America.

But Thomas Sutpen is only one aspect of what Faulkner is trying to tackle in "Absalom, Absalom!" Through the very frustrating, but ultimately rewarding, technique of having different characters in the story retell and retell and the story of Thomas Sutpen and the implosion of his family at the close of the Civil War, Faulkner is able to paint a picture of the south that is on par with the great classical tragedies and the old testament chronicles that gave this book its title.

For Thomas Sutpen and his family the great tragedy of his life are those all to American self-imposed problem of slavery and also of race. Especially race. The genius of Faulkner is that he is able to show just how warped the actions of his characters become when race is made a factor in their relationships--some are able to accept incest more readily than black men having sexual relations with white women. There is an overwhelmingly psychosis about race that underlies nearly every action taken by all the characters in this book; ultimately it annhilates all of them from the world and leaves them only in the realms of history, folklore and legend.

I have written only in the most vague generalities about this book and I do not apologize. The best part of the experience of reading this book comes with slowly piecing together one coherent story out of the several narratives. After reading the same things with only the slightest, but incredibly significant, variations over and over again I had more "eureka!" moments than I had reading a dozen mystery novels. Faulkner is able to give his readers a view of a fragmented world that is much more like our own than the more coherent story telling that is the usual province of fiction. What is gained by being forced to wrap your mind around vernacular, non-linear, and very often ungrammatical story telling, is beyond my powers of description. This is a story that is meant to be mulled over and thought about, so do not fear having to reread it.

Rating:
Summary: The Beauties of Excess (and an octoroon)
Review: As physical beings we exist in that spatial-temporal order designated as "nature." But as human beings we also exist in an exclusive realm of "consciousness," which might be described as a vast, collective energy field made up of the signs, i.e. "language," by which humans endeavor to make sense of their existence. This field is beyond the grasp of any single human being, not only its vast and oceanic proportions but its dynamic, protean, organic flow resisting ownership by a single instance of consciousness. Perhaps one individual has tapped into this immense reservoir more completely, more directly, more vitally than any other single member of the human race--William Shakespeare. Who else even comes close to harnessing the stream and containing the flood long enough to permit the rest of us some sense of its unlimited potential.

Despite the Bard's uniqueness as the fountainhead, the matrix, the mother of modern Western consciousness, a handful of succeeding language-bearers have proven capable of tapping into the same source. In American literature, and certainly literature of the 20th-century, Faulkner is the chosen one, the Promethean genius who affords the rest of us an opportunity to ride the stream.

As a preceding reviewer has suggested, there's no way to summarize "Absalom, Absalom!" without misrepresenting it. The "themes" are the mere toeholds Faulkner offers to readers who try to mount the surfboard and stay with the churning, changing syntax and shifting referents of his 500-word sentences long enough to reach the beachhead. Even getting thrown (which is inevitable on many of the more torrential tidal waves) is, to say the least, a heady if not visceral and energizing experience. Despite the unique achievements of "As I Lay Dying," "Sound and the Fury," "Light in August," and "Go Tell It to the Mountain," this is Faulkner's most impressive and most rewarding novel. It's likely to frustrate, but don't quit on it. It's capable of paying more dividends than any other American literary work. Compare Faulkner's story about Thomas Sutpen and his "Grand Design" to any similar stories about the "American Dream"--by Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Wolf, Steinbeck--or to any of the subsequent writers said to be "Faulknerian" in their style. The others are suddenly diminished, and the singular achievement of this Southern, uneducated, probably possessed, alcoholic becomes all the more remarkable.

Most of us would do well to write more simply and concisely ourselves and to bring suspicious minds to verbiage that seems disproportionate to its actual content and meaning. But there's no need to be suspicious of Faulkner's story or storytelling style. Simply trust it. The style and meaning are a match, a perfect fit. Faulkner's meanings about the tragedy of a "grand design" gone wrong become significant because of our underlying sense of one that is going right.

As for the novel's heart, it's as big as its creator's--compassionate, humble, loving of all creatures born equal under God. The novel's tough but key question--which regrettably, some readers fail even to ask--is: what is the difference between the "illegitimate" offspring of a white plantation owner/black slave relationship and the "despised" child of an octoroon? The answer to that question is the novel's great epiphany, the moment in which the reader recognizes his own place in the narrative and is one with Faulkner's world.

Rating:
Summary: He that cannot be summarized
Review: Everything is peculiar about Faulkner's writing, but I will mention this to save someone the pain. It is often difficult/impossible to figure out what is generally going on in a Faulkner book until you finish it and start over. However, lots and lots of people have written about him and will fill in the blanks for you. If you don't like reading things twice, bring along some criticism with you. It will make reading these books a pleasant experience without ruining much. Because, Faulkner cannot be summarized.

I'm rereading this book right now, and I'm stopped at every sentence and weep to think, there's no way a critic will ever bring attention to this thought, because in the very next sentence, there's something to top it. There is no way to retain everything that Faulkner has to say, so a good approach to life is to keep reading and rereading him. Fortunately or unfortunately (depending on your view) he's written so much that you can never master him, not even his classics, but you can hope to retain much of one, and this is a good one to try.

Plot summaries, feh, if you use them to get into Faulkner, by all means. Even if every spoiler is trotted out in front of you, you can't help but be surprised on every page of this book.

Rating:
Summary: American? Literature?
Review: The number of lists of "classic" literature on Amazon is rather silly. It is pretty clear to must people with a High School education that Steinbeck and Hemingway are pretty standard. Absalom, Absalom is not standard. That is because it is a searing, shocking and truly unsurpassed work of art.
At the heart of this novel is a struggle for identity. How do we understand our history. In these days of "evil-doers" and the axis of "evil", we are often deluged with a biased media's quest to simplify historical conflicts of identity. Likewise, Quentin Compson is intrigued and repulsed by the history of the South. Is the South "America"? Are the slaves actually free in their own minds?
Faulkner is also amazing in his grasp of the philosophical underpinnings of gender issues. Judith, Sutpen's daugther is a new Antigone who must bury one of her two brothers when they feud. Faulkner's Southern agrarian lifestyle, and gentle humility in the face of nature(and correspondingly, our natures) is somewhat lacking in the flippant Beat generation through the electronic generation. If Faulkner were alive today, we would be reading deconstructions of internet porn and corporate Caesars, not silly vain and impotent gestures such as "Sex in the City." Morality is not dead.

Rating:
Summary: The Most Faulknerian Faulkner Book
Review: This novel is a historical reconstruction by the fictional Quentin Compson (from "The Sound and the Fury") of the long ago rise of Thomas Sutpen out of a bog of obscurity to become a wealthy landowner in Mississippi, only to have it all destroyed again. It features all of the bugaboos one expects of Southern or Gothic literature--rumors of miscegenation, incest, murder, love, and betrayal. In the telling of the story, Faulkner also uses Sutpen's history as an allegory of the South itself.

Anyone can tell a story, especially a story that is essentially as old as the hills as this one. What makes this book, of course, is the style in which Faulkner narrates it. In terms of language, this is the most excessive, Baroque, verbose, garrulous and thick verbiage Faulkner has ever laid down at this length. It's like Section 4 of "The Bear" for 300 pages, and features at least one notorious 1.5 page long sentence. I strongly recommend you take a peek at the first page available here, and then imagine that going on ceaselessly until the end of the book. True, it can be very tiresome--Faulkner is a demanding author--but it also has a way of getting into your blood, if you let it, so that the text becomes unbearably effective and powerful.

The structure of the novel is equally elaborate. Faulkner spent his entire career as a writer discovering ways to project narrative into a character's voice, rather than directly narrating himself. As such, you get things like Bob and James talking about how Jane related the story of Rex witnessing Sue and Melanie talking about Larry murdering who he suspected his wife was sleeping with. [This example is illustrative, and bears no relation to the book.) In the final analysis, this means knowing exactly what happens becomes difficult to follow in general, and perhaps unknowable. Of course, part of Faulkner's point is precisely that only we, here and now, can reproduce or guess at the history of our pasts, and it is those reconstructed histories that we live by, rather than the actual historical reality (whatever it was).

This is a difficult book by one of the United States most difficult authors. It is also one of the best books by one of our best authors. The relationship between Sutpen's children and the half-brothers is one of the most effective he ever penned; not since "The Sound and the Fury" had a family been drawn so well. Also very memorable is the psychological portrait of Sutpen as a boy and young man.

Faulkner's narratives, unlike most modernists', do not require you to understand their allusions and so forth to make sense. They deepen the meaning of the novel if you know them, of course, but you can get the sense of the novel without them. In this case, the title is a reference to one of the Biblical David's sons, who launched an armed rebellion against David. In the course of this attempt, the son is killed, and it is at that point that King David cries out his son's name, "Absalom, Absalom!"

Rating:
Summary: Grad School Reading...
Review: Of all the novels I read during grad school, this is the novel that most inspired me. The prose is beautiful and of all of the Faulkner novels that I've read, this is his masterpiece in my opinion. If you really want to feel the consequences of the American civil war, READ this novel. It's priceless.

Rating:
Summary: One you Must Read (and re-read)
Review: There are a few books that I find myself reading over and over. This is one of them.

With some less well-constructed books, or less thoughtful books, you can read it once, know what you think, and know that if you read it again you will think the same thing. This is not one of those.

It is written to draw you in. It is written as if you were inside the mind of a twenty-year-old who (along with his friend) is trying to figure out the history of his town, his family, and his part of the country. Each time he gets something, it opens another path that must be explored. Just like it was for all of us when we were that age and just got a new bit of information about our parents, grandparents, or great-grandparents or their friends, or their enemies.

So, it is the story of many things. It's primarily the story of the Thomas Sutpen, his life in Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi (a name and place familiar to any reader of Faulkner), and of his effect on the future of the Coldfield's. It is also the story of the devil, of the South, of a culture that had to die, of fate, of destiny, and of our need to hold onto the past. It is also the story of all of us, our need to know more, and our recoil when we find out more than we want to know.

Read this novel like a poem. Read it first to get the general flow, read it again for details, then read it again to notice words and structure, the way you travel constantly through time (from 1910 to 1833 to 1861-65) and space (Harvard, Mississippi, Haiti). Each time you read it, you will be satisfied. The last time you read it will be as satisfying as the first. What more can you ask from a single work of art?

Rating:
Summary: A masterpiece by one of our masters
Review: When I was in college, wandering the aisles looking for a book for some other assignment, I would often find myself standing in front of Mr. Faulkner, and I would often find myself thereafter seated on the floor, flipping the pages of this book, marvelling at that first sentence that lasts for two pages. This book reads like Beethoven to me, and I'll admit that I'm in love with it.

First, it's not an easy or a light read. I've read this book three times all the way through (I've read chunks of it countless times), and I can't say that I understand everything. There are a few different narrators, and the narrators themselves will often slip into other voices - Quentin telling Shreve the story that he heard from his father of what Sutpen told the elder Compson twenty years ago - that sort of thing.

Let's talk about the basic plot. There's a chronology included in this edition (I believe) that helps. Yoknapatawpha County, of course, and a stranger moves into town named Thomas Sutpen. Brings a strange bunch of wild slaves, claims a hundred square miles, builds a house, and then tries to find a wife. Marries the daughter of a respected local man, has some children, and then the Civil War comes along. Eldest son rides off to war, happens to fall into communion with his abandoned half-brother, and chaos ensues. It turns out that Sutpen is himself not your average guy, and we hear some very interesting stories about his family, his history, and the lives of his children.

I wouldn't recommend this book to a first-time Faulkner reader. If you want a good Faulkner novel that isn't too dense, try Light in August, or maybe Sanctuary. Both are relatively straightforward. If you've read either of these, or if you just want to dive in, this one is probably his best.

What really "gets" me about this book is the way that we are made to admire, respect, even love the horrific creature that is Thomas Sutpen. He's a fascinating character, and the passages retelling his personal history are alive with tension. You can imagine this man barricaded in the home of a white planter, facing doom at the hands of a slave rebellion; you can see the weird light in his face when he puts down his rifle, opens the door, and steps out into the "darkness" to "subdue" the slave revolt. It's a kind of meditation on the nature of colonialism, tied into myths of patriarchy and gender, with a shot at Christianity stirred in for good measure. I suppose that sounds garbled - but believe me, the fact that Faulkner can effectively blend all of this into one story speaks to his genius. What a book.

Rating:
Summary: No. Just no.
Review: I did NOT like this book. I had to read it for an Honors English class during my freshman year of uni, and it was one of the worst ones I had to read. Yes, I understood it (for those who think that anybody who dislikes a book that they like just doesn't understand the material)--heck, I got an A on my essay and talked my way through the mandatory one-on-one tutorial. But that period was very, very trying.

The style is very hard to get into. AA is filled with the run-on sentences that ate New Jersey. Yes, I realize that that was Faulkner's style for this book, but it wasn't a particuarly wise choice to make.

The only reason that I am giving it two stars is because the storyline isn't half-bad. If only Faulkner had sped things up a little bit, and stopped with all the superfluous and extraneous junk, I might have actually liked this book.

Rating:
Summary: An Incredibly Rich Book
Review: I love this book. And if ever a novel was written to be reread from time to time, in part or in whole, this is it. You don't read it to get to the end and find out what happens as such although, to be certain, plenty does. And you will probably reread it to turn over yet more facets to the characters lives, or maybe simply to get lost one more time in the astounding tapestry of Faulkner's language.

The first time I attempted to read it, I read the first 100 pages, and then had to begin over again. In this way, I gained two unexpected bonuses. For one, I got right with the rhythm of the novel, and for another I gained a glimpse of a major Faulkner strategy. --Which is to refer to things in the early part of the book that do not happen or indeed become clear for another fifty pages or more. Faulkner writes about these later events as if we, the reader, know fully as much about them as he does. This isn't a simple foreshadowing, either, the kind you read in short story class. For first time readers --especially assigned readers-- it can be a perplexing read.

Absalom Absalom is, or can be, a lifelong relationship of sorts --complete with commitment, long-gestating revelations and things that mean very much more to you on third and fourth reading than they possibly could have at earlier points in your life.