Absalom, Absalom!

Rating:
Summary: Friggin' brilliant
Review: The trouble many people seem to have with this book is that it doesn't just jump out at you with some quote-of-the-day morality slogan; you have to find it yourself. And, unfortunantly, maybe there is no moral to the story. Maybe there is no universal purpose that the lives of the Sutphens were meant to bestow on us. But guess what: this is life! This is real! Faulkner chooses to tell this story in a way that suggests that the story is the story. The ACT of telling the story. If you'll notice as you go along, the characters relaying the story are getting further and further away from the actual events, until you get to Shreve and Quinten at Harvard, basically making things up. Yet Faulkner portrays this in such a way as that the reader must realize on his own that maybe what they are saying is not entirely accurate, with no help from the author. This can certainly be a shock to some readers, who expect everything they read to be gospel truth. But, like I said, this is life! How do you know exactly what happened in all the stories you have heard third, forth, fifthand? Or if they even happened at all? This is one of the many aspects of human nature Faulkner explores. There are many others (race, regional identity, family ties, the list goes on).It's simply some of the most brilliant stuff ever written. But, yes, it does take some work. I'm sorry. Everything worth knowing does. As Faulkner says "It simply does not explain." Even that phrase is brilliant; what is he saying? It does not explain itself, or it can't be explained? Easily? But these are the things you run up against in life everyday, whether you know it or not. Vagaries of language. Alright I'll stop rambling on, but this book is really, really, really good. On a side note, after you read this, read "The Sound and The Fury" to catch up with Quinten. It is also brilliant, complex, and difficult. I'm sorry to say that if you like Cat in the Hat type morality fables you will be sorely dissapointed in both of them.

Rating:
Summary: el mejor de los libros de faulkner
Review: quien ha dicho que lo que es realmente bueno es facil? este libro es extremadamente dificil de leer,mucho mas si se lee en ingles como debe de ser y no una traduccion al espanol, porque nunca es lo mismo. para leer a faulkner necesitas vivir la historia, sentoir que eres parte de esas oraciones interminables que sobrepasan la pagina. es un libro intenso y extenso, sus personajes ya vienen cargados del lastre de pertenecer a otras historias suyas donde vivieron o donde viviran el final de sus vidas. las vidas se entrecruzan y el pueblo imaginario de faulkner hace pensar en su contraparte macondo , de garcia marquez. en ese pequeno pueblo faulkner retrata la vida del sur, sus penas y sus derrotas a causa de su orgullo. es muy buen libro, pero no se queden en este lean toda la secuela mientras agonizo santuario el ruido y la furia y todas las historias que tengan como centro ese pueblo imaginario, asi podran tener una idea de la grandeza de este escritor que nos muestra el mundo a traves de un pequeno lugar en que el es el unico dueno el unico dios

LUIS MENDEZ [e-mail]

Rating:
Summary: My favourite book - EVER!
Review: This is an amazing reading experience. A book that simply cannot be read only once. I have read it five times and each time is a totally different experience. The greater the familiarity with the characters, style and rather convoluted narrative, the greater the rewards. Your first time is without a doubt going to be difficult, but then with each re-reading the material becomes clearer, until you suddenly wonder why you ever found it hard in the first place. Huge in scope, yet intimate. It tackles great themes and succeeds. This material in lesser hands would have been a blood and guts piece of ante-bellum grand guignol. In the hands of Faulkner it is a true masterpiece of twentieth century literature.

Rating:
Summary: The Greatest American Novel
Review: It surpasses Moby-Dick and The Golden Bowl, shoulders past Gatsby, and leaves Faulkner's other achievements in the "myriad and defunctive dust." In this one book, Faulkner's portentousness becomes portent, his grandiloquence resolves into grandeur, and his story attains a simplicity and power that can only be termed biblical.

Rating:
Summary: Not for a procrastinated author study project
Review: Although my first choice was Steinbeck, I ended up with Faulkner for my eighth grade author study project. Yes, I am in eighth grade. People, listen when they tell you not to judge a book by its cover. I did this. Absalom, Absalom! had such a pretty cover. And I chose to read this before the other Faulkners. Bad idea. The sentences are so long (on average seventeen lines), confusing, and dreched with SAT words you have to stop at and to think about for five seconds to figure out what the meaning is - then lose track of the sentence. By the way, I used to pause at commas and breathe only after periods. William Faulkner changed this habit of mine. Although a difficult read, the storyline I think is really good. And you get the hang of the long sentences after a while - and "while" ranges greatly. For me, "while" was twenty pages. And "while" came back again after this interesting bit that lasted ten pages. By the way, this edition has a list of characters at the back. I noticed that after I was fourty pages away from the ending. If you are an amateur Faulkner-reader, the list may help. And if you've procrastinated your author study project, there are people online who can help. This is, most importantly, not a book to be read over the course of three weeks - or you'd just get lost (I did this for the first fifty pages) - nor a book to be read in bed from ten PM to four AM (as I tried one Saturday night) - you'd fall asleep at eleven, whether you're used to sleeping late or not. Also, I hate Thomas Sutpen. I've been rambling pointlessly, but to summarize the points hidden here and there in this review, Absalom, Absalom! is a rather difficult read, especially if it's your first Faulkner. But once you get the hang of Faulkner's style, the you finally begin to see what's going on - and when you do, Absalom, Absalom! lives up to its pretty cover. A beautiful book, inside-out.

Rating:
Summary: Faulkner at his best
Review: I am a big Faulkner fan, and have read many of his novels and short stories. I can still remember reading Absalom, Absalom! for the first time, and how much I was moved by this epic story and Faulkner's prose. Even today, 10 years later, I can still vividly recall where I was when I finished reading Absalom, Absalom! for the first time. I envy those who haven't yet experienced this book, but soon will. Like most of Faulkner's novels, this is not an easy read, but well worth the time and effort. I think this book and Light in August are two of the greatest American novels of the 20th century. Enjoy.

Rating:
Summary: The Nobel Prize winner at his best
Review: Be warned: The first 100 pages of Absalom, Absalom! are some of the most confusing narration ever written in English. No matter how literate you consider yourself to be, you will have a difficult time in this novel until you get your bearings. There are multiple narrators, and the narrative shifts from one to the other, with little or no warning. However, by the end of the novel my jaw hung open in appreciation for how incredibly well crafted this novel is. In fact, it is almost perfect.

The story concerns the rise and fall of Thomas Sutpen, an outsider with a shady past who attempts to build a family dynasty in antebellum Mississippi. The events of his life and those of his children are told in a fascinating style where each narrator gives his or her take on each of the different events. Seeing a scene a third or fourth time from a different perspective, with a new twist of information, evokes an eerie feeling of inevitability. If you have ever seen CITIZEN KANE or PULP FICTION you know what I am referring to. Faulkner was brilliant for his deep-lunged prose style, for his fascinating plots, but most especially for his ability to understand the events he creted to such a degree that he can keep his trump cards hidden and dance around THE TRUTH for 250 pages and then drop the A-Bomb on his audience and leave them floored, slapping their heads for their failure to recognize where the story was going all along. This is a masterpiece of style. I can't give it a stronger recommendation.

Rating:
Summary: The best American book.
Review: If you know the South, at first or second hand, you'll simply love this book. If the South is a foreign country to you, that's okay: you like Homer, don't you?

Faulkner's novels show him to have been a materialist and reprobate, but they are still wonderful stuff. You have to try them to know what I mean. Reading this one is at once a kind of mental gymnastics, a way of meeting a certain kind of 20th-century intellectual, and a way of looking through a window on the South (leaving aside that the South was never purely material). My argument with Faulkner is, of course, the kind only _great_ art can provoke. Make no mistake: this is a great novel.

Rating:
Summary: beyond incredible....
Review: My favorite book used to be The Sound and the Fury, but Absalom! Absalom! simply blew that away! A novel of themes dating back to the Bible and Greek tragedies--love, hubris, fratricide, incest--juxtaposed with the most peculiarly American of settings. Despite what many readers might say (my one friend said this was the first and last book she's started reading that she could simply not finish), it's not that diffiuclt once you get in the rhythm--reading aloud to yourself helps as well. While I would place this at the top of my "greatest books ever written" list, I would not recommend it to a first-time Faulkner reader. I'd read (in this order) The Unvanquished, As I Lay Dying, The Sound and the Fury, Go Down Moses, and Light in August before tackling Absalom! The Unvanquished is probably your best bet to start out on--its stream of consciousness style is not nearly as extreme as in Sound, Absalom, or even As I Lay. This book is worth all the page-long sentences and multiple voices...It's the finest work of not just Faulkner but of American writers as a whole.

Rating:
Summary: Am I my brother's keeper ?
Review: The rich tapestry Faulkner has weaved in "Absalom" is a delight in reading experience. Personally, not being an American ( let alone Southerner ), and living in an European "racially pure" ( more or less ) state, I nevertheless find this novel astonishingly universal, touching and powerful.

The story on miscegenation, fratricide, struggle for recognition and "respectability", divided loyalties and above and behind everything, fatality cannot fail to impress anyone susceptible to "eternal verities" of the heart.

Apart from being a master of the craft ( the torrent of words hypnotizes & swamps even a cautious reader ), Faulkner clearly possessed a rare quality of temper, mind, disposition- whatever. It is a sense of fatality, destiny- something that places him a bit apart from the 19/20th cent. writers & puts him in company of ancient Egyptian, Hebrew, and, most likely, Hellenic authors. The intonation of "Absalom, Absalom!" is curiously similar to that of the Hebrew Bible ( the title is not the only signifier ) & Aeschylus or Euripides. Heimarmene/destiny that squashes the Sutpen family, hubris of old Tom, incestual hamartia/sin...all this reveals mythic mindset.

While Joyce and Thomas Mann deliberately tried to construct elaborate mythically inspired narrative structures, Faulkner's archetypal story, redressed in antebellum South ( horse carriages, parasols & all that jazz ), directly leapt from mythic times of ancient Greece and Middle East to commune with ethical core of our beings those timeless verities of heart in conflict with itself.