This book has floored me. I've never had such a strong urge to reread a book immediately after finishing it.
I have been wondering though often people say that McCarthy is sort of Faulkner's successor, who came before Faulkner or who were his influences?
I have read that Faulkner is only worth reading for As i lay dying, absalom and the sound and the fury. I have only read Sanctuary and it didn't do much for me so is the idea true that there is not much more to him?
Absalom, Absalom! is his best novel. It's not as popular as his other works, but it is his best work.
The Snopes Trilogy is also a great work of his. Avoid the novels outside Yoknapatawpha, because he isn't as good a writer when he goes outside his Southern county.
The Unvanquished is also a great work of his.
Faulkner is the primeval Southern gothic writer. I don't think there's anyone before him, aside from Joyce, but they use stream-of-consciousness very differently.
Joyce influenced Faulkner without a doubt.
Since you seem to know a lot about him can I ask you a question about the end of absalom?
When Quentin is telling himself I don't hate it I don't hate it, I got the impression that it was kind of like a realization and that despite all of the South's secrets being revealed Quentin realized that it was his home and that he was actually kind of proud so he's saying it because he finally believes it - I don't hate it!
But then when I read an analysis of it it spoke about this moment and said that Quentin was hopelessly denying it, trying to convince himself that he didnt hate his home and his family.
I've only read it once so I obviously do not have an entire understanding of how Quentin feels about the story but is it undeniable that Quentin is denying it?
Faulkner owes a shit load to Conrad.
I guess people still jerk off about "stream of consciousness" for whatever reason
He and Mccarthy are of a tree that goes to Melville
Old testament, shakespeare
most of his books are worth reading desu you'll know which to skip when you get into it. A Fable for example
No. Most of his work is good. Light in August is a masterpice, my favorite Faulkner. Sartoris and The Wild Palms (If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem) are also great.
t.bh. even though he is a modernist, I think Faulkner is very traditional in the sense of storytelling, character construction and plot. Everything is resolved in the end of his books.
Did my thesis on it at uni. God what a masterpiece. Though, Sound and the Fury is my persona fav. Light in August, Go Down Moses, and As I Lay Dying are worth a wag of you have the time. And the short story Barn Burning is among my favorite.
why did it floor you?
why is it his best novel?
I'm confused by this because I really, really enjoyed Sound and Fury and As I Lay Dying-- so I was ready to be completely blown away by AA!-- but it was just sort of empty.
The subject matter did not seem dark or Freudian enough to justify the novel's heavy-gothic style. It wasn't disturbing like AILD or SATF. What did I miss?
>What did I miss
seriously? seems like you missed everything.
Not the guy you're asking but when I finished it (around ten minutes ago actually) I felt like as the analysis said he was trying to deny his hatred, this may though be the conscious denial of conscious hatred and on some level he may love or have nostalgia for the South.
Quentin is also a major character in The Sound and the Fury so without giving anything away maybe reading that will give you a better indication of his psyche.
What's a good reading order for Faulkner if I'd like to stay in his darker and deeper works?
I went As I Lay Dying, Sound and the Fury then Absalom Absalom and it was great, but those are the only ones I've read so far so can't speak for more.
Dude, read Light in August NOW
I honestly don't understand how you enjoy AILD and SAF and feel that AA is empty. It ties in all the themes and literary devices that he's famous for into one work.
I took it to be a part of the cognitive dissonance that tormented Quentin that ultimately caused him to drown himself. Both that he hated a lot of the Amercan South, but was equally a part of it, and it a part of him.
This revelation that Quentin, as much as he is an outsider to the Southern culture, but it is still ingrained in it, is brilliantly brought out by making Shreve a Canadian. Darl and Quentin were both cast as alien to the South, until Faulkner introduces somebody who really is outside of it all.
That's what I was thinking, thanks
Aside from perhaps As I Lay Dying, how are any of Faulkner's plots resolved by the end of the book?
>I have read that Faulkner is only worth reading for As i lay dying, absalom and the sound and the fury
I'm reading Go Down Moses and it's great. So... no.
Mosquitoes
I share your feeling. Not sure if 'empty' is the word, but it felt kind of... short of content, I guess. It just kept circling the same events over and over. Would have made sense if the different narrators had very different voices / perspectives on events, but they didn't really seem to.
I'll give it another go at some point. Really looking forward to rereading tSatF, that was amazing.
Those two both have a bunch of narrators with different voices, though. A,A! didn't really feel like that- everybody seemed to talk in the same epically long Faulkner sentences. Seems more limited.
>It wasn't disturbing like AILD or SATF
This, just remember the scenes AILD had, like Dewie being tricked into getting fucked, thinking she will get an abortion afterwards (which she won't because the guy is pretending to be a doctor), or the scenes in SATF which I don't even have to name.
There's bad stuff happening to people in Absalom, Absalom, but I am just not feeling it.
Wonderful prose though, really dense, but really rewarding too.
Also forgot to mention, I don't like the part where Quentin is narrating, he's too much in the spotlight (he does it for three chapters, I think?), also the chapter where Quentin's dad is talking is rendered pointless because it turns out he understood the story wrongly (maybe there was a point Faulkner was trying to make, but I still didn't like it)
Also is it just me, or have I seen the sentences beginning with "and he could see them" used so many times in the book?
I can definitely understand that. However, I feel that Faulkner was trying to go for that apocalyptic/evangelical style with the prose found within AA, to help flesh out the fact that the book is about the apocryphal story founding of a Southern plantation. To have multiple prose styles would have robbed the book of that atmosphere.
There are more ways to convey different characters and their perspectives than just arbitrarily changing up you're style.
Yeah wow that makes a lot of sense thanks m8
nice blog faggot
OP shamelessly samefagging to keep his thread alive
its the best thread on Veeky Forums atm so may as well
why did Henry come home
Because he didn't want to accept that a half A press exists
The Bear is absolutely the best thing he's written.
Faulkner has said himself that he's inspired most the Old Testament, Dickens, Conrad, Cervantes, Flaubert, Balzac, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Shakespeare, Melville, Marlowe, Campion, Jonson, Herrick, Donne, Keats, and Shelley. He said he's never read Freud.
Sanctuary is the only mediocre thing he's ever written. Don't let it discourage you.