Where to begin with Faulkner?

Where to begin with Faulkner?

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kek

faulkner is shit btw, typical 'we must declare something american great so we'll pick this mediocre shit and try to meme the world into believing us' core

stick to melville lads

I enjoyed both Faulkner and Melville, they are both quite good in my opinion. I agree that Melville is better though.

As I Lay Dying is his entry level book. I'm kind of surprised it wasn't part of your school curriculum (assuming you're American). After that probably The Sound and the Fury.

I'm kind of half and half on him. His whole gimmick is stream of consciousness, if you don't buy into it you're gonna hate his work. He has some great imagery though.

I hate this board

Am I the only person who just starts with their first published book? It keeps things simple and you can see their progression as a writer

im reading flags in the dust

I for one like the corn-cobby chronicles

When's his Bataille movie coming out?

Collected stories. Pick out his popular ones if you only want to dip your toes. If you like em, move on to Absalom Absalom and The Sound and the Fury

I don't get Nabokov's criticism of Faulkner. He dislikes him because he wrote about poor and rural people?

Faulkner has been coming up a lot on people's favorite writer lists. It only follows that the contrarians will shit on him with no basis for a couple months, at least until it becomes contrarian to like him again.

I hate these where to begin threads, if only because they inevitably refer one to an entry level work, when often one would so better to just dive right in:case in point, people often say to "start with TCoL49" about Pynchon, but I found that boom underwhelming and unsubtle, while Gravity's Rainbow is probably among my favorite books now.

Yeah just start with The Sound and the Fury

Okay but tcol49 is easily and quickly read and gives you a clear image of what youre in for rather than dnfing a 1000 page book or worse yet sticking through to the end and regretting a month wasted. (and tcol49 is just as good)

sound and fury by comparison is short and digestible so yes in this instance you might as well. whereas gravity's on the other hand is not either of these things.

Sound & Fury or As I Lay Dying

>but I found that boom underwhelming and unsubtle
90% of it went over your head

If you want to dive in, Sound and the Fury or Absalom Absalom. If you want to dip your toe, the collected stories, The Hamlet or Sanctuary. If you're somewhere in the middle, Light in August or As I Lay Dying.

the way cliff describes it makes it sound like there will be blood

>Collected stories.

This.

Or read the long story "Old Man." Not sure if it's in Collected Stories; I don't think it is; I read it in a volume titled "Three Famous Short Novels" by Faulkner.

"Old Man" tells the story of a prisoner sent to rescue a woman during the 1927 Mississippi flood.

The descriptions of the flood, and moving a boat through and over the flood, are simply awesome. What Jack London does for cold in To Build a Fire, Faulkner does water in "Old Man," but Faulkner is far more extravagant and exuberant than London.

It's not his greatest work, but it's accessible, and a "good read," with a lot to chew on narratively and thematically. Most significantly, it displays Faulkner's sheer force-of-nature power as a writer.

Go Sound and the Fury and then As I Lay Dying, then his short stories are good and the rest of his books aren't as good

I like cliff and his gobbo nose.

Nabokov is a piece of shit desu

Start off with As I Lay Dying. Or, alternatively, if you want a shorter read, you can check out his best short story, The Bear.

What do you think went over my head? I'm more than willing to give Pynchon the benefit of the doubt, I don't think the book would be so revered if it were shit. It's just hard for me to really say the novel is all that great when gravitys rainbow makes it more or less obsolet. The prose is good, stellar at times, but the general plotline is boring and feels pointless. I didn't feel anywhere near as connected to any of the characters. I've read the book twice now, with maybe a few perusals in between, and I honestly want to like it -- what is it that I am missing?

This. Nabo also shat on Dosto.

As I Lay Dying is still pretty difficult though, even Bloom agrees. Even if you think it's an easy read, you can't know immediately what the author is doing with it. The man knew what he was doing, and he did it better than any other author I know. People compare him to Joyce and say the latter is better, but they're really two completely different authors. The Sound and the Fury, though, is definitely much more difficult, but it's rewarding and deserve several rereads.

(By the way, what I mean by "difficult" is not that his prose is dense and that he is particularly hard to read; I mean that he is complex in structure and form, also in subtext. The plot is barely what's important.)

I do this with short story authors. It's much easier to see growth that way, I think. Alice Munro is one of them.
As for Faulker, an old professor of mine loved Faulkner more than anyone I could imagine, but she said his first few novels were garbage.

chapter 2 wasn't just about oedipa playing strip poker with metzger. see pic related. the book is filled with things like this. it's more a history lesson about political power and the individual's futile attempt to separate himself from said power

nabokov is basically a literary shitposter with less of a filter than other writers regarding some of his opinions. if you placed his sentiments side by side with some found around here they'd fit right in

The Greeks, otherwise everything will go over your head.