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3.86 AVERAGE
3.86 AVERAGE
William Faulkner's "Absalom, Absalom!" is definitely one of those books I can appreciate the merits of, without particularly enjoying reading it. All of Faulkner's half-finished sentences, crazy italicizing and general wordiness drove me nuts.
The story takes place in the Deep South, where a poor named Thomas Sutpen sets out to establish his legacy. Varying people give pieces of his story, which unfolds slowly layer by layer.
The story itself is pretty interesting and Faulkner's slow unveiling is also good.... but it was just a struggle to get through his due to the style it was written in.
The story takes place in the Deep South, where a poor named Thomas Sutpen sets out to establish his legacy. Varying people give pieces of his story, which unfolds slowly layer by layer.
The story itself is pretty interesting and Faulkner's slow unveiling is also good.... but it was just a struggle to get through his due to the style it was written in.
So,
she (Miss Rosa Coldfield) rattled on circuitously, circling round and round, in a circle; and yet, not round always, but in memory, sometimes backward, before the enemy thrashed her father and destroyed the Old South, destroying it in a destructive manner, while he watched the dust motes and wondered why she repeated herself endlessly without ever actually saying anything to the point, endlessly repeating the story of her sister, long dead, and Sutpen, repeatedly telling him (Quentin) about his (Sutpen's) beard that was the only thing that differentiated him from the wild black men he brought with him when he came to destroy the honour of his or possibly her family, or possibly their families, or possibly not, for as she would undoubtedly come to say “It is important that this story never dies, so I'm going to reveal it to you in a code so obscure it will take, not just the rest of your life, but the lives of many academics, paid for by the taxes not just of ourselves but of those who conquered us and tamed the wild men, destroying something precious but perhaps a little immoral along the way, for some strange people in the North, you know, think that to chain wild men to a post is nearly as wicked as to beat horses for no reason other than to show how wicked the beater is, to decipher it or at least to convince themselves that they had deciphered it because otherwise would be to admit that yet again the Nobel Prize had been given to someone who fundamentally can't write intelligibly, though of course in the wondrous worlds of academe and literary prizes intelligibility ranks low on the list of things a writer should achieve, which is not how it was...” and she broke off as her voice retreated not into silence exactly, but into silence nevertheless, a silence forced upon her and all her race by the men who conquered her or them or him and his family and their honour, and he said “Yessum” which was, one has to admit, as good an answer as any from one of the broken ghosts that inhabit this broken land, broken by conquerors who destroyed the honour of those whose only fault, if indeed fault it were, and who is to decide that question is still to be decided, was to tie wild men to posts and impregnate wild women, hardly a fault at all; though some may say that then naming the offspring with silly names like Clytemnestra may have been the most wicked thing of all and may even have been some small justification for the destruction of these once proud people, now wandering ghost-like through the past and present with no calendar, dammit, to tell them where they might be supposed to be, which is to assume anyone cares, which brings me back to the point which I have unfortunately forgotten since my braincells began deteriorating at page 5 and the deterioration deteriorated so rapidly that by page 48 I had turned into a brainless mumbling mono-celled organism condemned to spend eternity going round in an endless circle of rambling, barely punctuated, incomprehensibly-structured prose, an endless circle of destruction, leaving me feeling like a ghost inhabiting a land which unfortunately the destroyers didn't destroy thoroughly enough or they would have wiped out Miss Coldfield, Mr Compson, Mr Sutpen and all their pesky descendants and left Mr Faulkner with nothing to go round in endless circles about, so that when at some time in the future or perhaps the past FF asked for recommendations for the Great American Novel Quest, no-one, not one person, not even a ghost, would have suggested torturing herself half to death reading a pretentious, repetitive, repetitive book, which is to literature much as WWE is to sport, with its major claim to fame being that it contains the longest grammatically correct sentence in the English language, thus getting into the Guinness Book of Records, surely more illustrious than the broken Nobel, though that record doesn't specify intelligible, nor does it take account of the fact that Michael Chabon created a much longer, better constructed, and rather beautiful one in Telegraph Avenue, thus making this work even more redundant than it once was, this being the problem with all records, for who now remembers who held the record for the fastest mile before Roger Bannister broke the four-minute mark, itself a record now broken, but one that was at least exciting at the time, which I suggest this one wasn't; and if they did, if some ghost drifting in the motes of dust circling round the room of the woman who is doing a particularly bad Miss 'Avisham impersonation, in her room where she lives with the blinds drawn, angsting about a 50-year-old jilting, had whispered “Read Absalom! Absalom!”, then FF would have known to say “No'm!” - but too late, alas, too late!
Abandoned with a feeling of joyous glee at page 92. The 1-star rating is merely because Goodreads doesn't have a "Yeuch" rating.
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she (Miss Rosa Coldfield) rattled on circuitously, circling round and round, in a circle; and yet, not round always, but in memory, sometimes backward, before the enemy thrashed her father and destroyed the Old South, destroying it in a destructive manner, while he watched the dust motes and wondered why she repeated herself endlessly without ever actually saying anything to the point, endlessly repeating the story of her sister, long dead, and Sutpen, repeatedly telling him (Quentin) about his (Sutpen's) beard that was the only thing that differentiated him from the wild black men he brought with him when he came to destroy the honour of his or possibly her family, or possibly their families, or possibly not, for as she would undoubtedly come to say “It is important that this story never dies, so I'm going to reveal it to you in a code so obscure it will take, not just the rest of your life, but the lives of many academics, paid for by the taxes not just of ourselves but of those who conquered us and tamed the wild men, destroying something precious but perhaps a little immoral along the way, for some strange people in the North, you know, think that to chain wild men to a post is nearly as wicked as to beat horses for no reason other than to show how wicked the beater is, to decipher it or at least to convince themselves that they had deciphered it because otherwise would be to admit that yet again the Nobel Prize had been given to someone who fundamentally can't write intelligibly, though of course in the wondrous worlds of academe and literary prizes intelligibility ranks low on the list of things a writer should achieve, which is not how it was...” and she broke off as her voice retreated not into silence exactly, but into silence nevertheless, a silence forced upon her and all her race by the men who conquered her or them or him and his family and their honour, and he said “Yessum” which was, one has to admit, as good an answer as any from one of the broken ghosts that inhabit this broken land, broken by conquerors who destroyed the honour of those whose only fault, if indeed fault it were, and who is to decide that question is still to be decided, was to tie wild men to posts and impregnate wild women, hardly a fault at all; though some may say that then naming the offspring with silly names like Clytemnestra may have been the most wicked thing of all and may even have been some small justification for the destruction of these once proud people, now wandering ghost-like through the past and present with no calendar, dammit, to tell them where they might be supposed to be, which is to assume anyone cares, which brings me back to the point which I have unfortunately forgotten since my braincells began deteriorating at page 5 and the deterioration deteriorated so rapidly that by page 48 I had turned into a brainless mumbling mono-celled organism condemned to spend eternity going round in an endless circle of rambling, barely punctuated, incomprehensibly-structured prose, an endless circle of destruction, leaving me feeling like a ghost inhabiting a land which unfortunately the destroyers didn't destroy thoroughly enough or they would have wiped out Miss Coldfield, Mr Compson, Mr Sutpen and all their pesky descendants and left Mr Faulkner with nothing to go round in endless circles about, so that when at some time in the future or perhaps the past FF asked for recommendations for the Great American Novel Quest, no-one, not one person, not even a ghost, would have suggested torturing herself half to death reading a pretentious, repetitive, repetitive book, which is to literature much as WWE is to sport, with its major claim to fame being that it contains the longest grammatically correct sentence in the English language, thus getting into the Guinness Book of Records, surely more illustrious than the broken Nobel, though that record doesn't specify intelligible, nor does it take account of the fact that Michael Chabon created a much longer, better constructed, and rather beautiful one in Telegraph Avenue, thus making this work even more redundant than it once was, this being the problem with all records, for who now remembers who held the record for the fastest mile before Roger Bannister broke the four-minute mark, itself a record now broken, but one that was at least exciting at the time, which I suggest this one wasn't; and if they did, if some ghost drifting in the motes of dust circling round the room of the woman who is doing a particularly bad Miss 'Avisham impersonation, in her room where she lives with the blinds drawn, angsting about a 50-year-old jilting, had whispered “Read Absalom! Absalom!”, then FF would have known to say “No'm!” - but too late, alas, too late!
Abandoned with a feeling of joyous glee at page 92. The 1-star rating is merely because Goodreads doesn't have a "Yeuch" rating.
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Faulkner is in desperate need of an editor. It’s one long paragraph and hard to follow.
I gave up after three disks (of 10). It took about 5 starts to even get a clear picture of what was going on, and frankly, that is just too much effort for me right now. I listen to books for enjoyment, not for work, and with all the other distractions in my life right now, I just had to table this one. Maybe another time, but I doubt it.
Oh boy. This is a tough book but Faulkner has a way with words. His words need to be read slowly.
challenging
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Anybody complaining about racism just completely missed the entire point of the book.
The copy I read has marginalia written by a previous owner who I have to conclude was completely out of their depth. The fact that it lasted all the way through the book implies that this person technically read the entire thing, but from every single note it's apparent they just didn't understand what was happening in it. It feels like many reviewers here had the same problem.
Yes, the use of the n-word is problematic, and so was the behavior of plantation owners in the south. It seems stupid (or even malicious) to bowdlerize the language these pseudo-Gothic cretins and monsters used to justify themselves and Faulkner does not. The language, like the rest of his prose, was purposeful and artful.
It would be problematic if this behavior was in any way attached to heroism, or if any positive things happened to the people who were portrayed as doing it, but good luck trying to find a hero in this book, or in any instance of Yoknapatawpha County, except in the Greek tragic sense. Any author self insert character (spread, in this case, over a couple characters) is certainly not exemplifying his most positive traits either. It's a damning critical examination of a dark and backwards place.
Nothing else to say here that hasn't been said before, except maybe this is Faulkner's best example of using point of view to stretch and drag a story longer, both to engage and frustrate the reader. Excellent.
The copy I read has marginalia written by a previous owner who I have to conclude was completely out of their depth. The fact that it lasted all the way through the book implies that this person technically read the entire thing, but from every single note it's apparent they just didn't understand what was happening in it. It feels like many reviewers here had the same problem.
Yes, the use of the n-word is problematic, and so was the behavior of plantation owners in the south. It seems stupid (or even malicious) to bowdlerize the language these pseudo-Gothic cretins and monsters used to justify themselves and Faulkner does not. The language, like the rest of his prose, was purposeful and artful.
It would be problematic if this behavior was in any way attached to heroism, or if any positive things happened to the people who were portrayed as doing it, but good luck trying to find a hero in this book, or in any instance of Yoknapatawpha County, except in the Greek tragic sense. Any author self insert character (spread, in this case, over a couple characters) is certainly not exemplifying his most positive traits either. It's a damning critical examination of a dark and backwards place.
Nothing else to say here that hasn't been said before, except maybe this is Faulkner's best example of using point of view to stretch and drag a story longer, both to engage and frustrate the reader. Excellent.
challenging
dark
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
i wouldn't start here, with faulkner, but this is probably as good as it gets, and arguably his great american novel
reading was more like seeing, and once done, it was like i'd experienced it all myself
reading was more like seeing, and once done, it was like i'd experienced it all myself
I don't think that I can say anything meaningful about Faulkner or Absalom, Absalom! that hasn't already been said.
His prose is dense, convoluted, repetitive and demands that one pay close attention.
I very much appreciate the structure which reveals plot in bits and pieces, fits and starts, toing and froing in a kind of jumbled order.
Themes are familiar to Faulkner readers: irrational attitudes (feelings, beliefs) on race, the doom effected by the actions taken as a result of those attitudes, stoic endurance, futility. It reads as Southern Gothic, in some ways a pro-longed retelling of Poe's Fall of the House of Usher.
Highly recommended, but it's not the place I'd start with a dive into Faulkner. I'd suggest that a body start with The Unvanquished, follow that up with Intruder in the Dust (to get acclimated to the prose style), then begin to take on more of the novels, perhaps in order of publication.
His prose is dense, convoluted, repetitive and demands that one pay close attention.
I very much appreciate the structure which reveals plot in bits and pieces, fits and starts, toing and froing in a kind of jumbled order.
Themes are familiar to Faulkner readers: irrational attitudes (feelings, beliefs) on race, the doom effected by the actions taken as a result of those attitudes, stoic endurance, futility. It reads as Southern Gothic, in some ways a pro-longed retelling of Poe's Fall of the House of Usher.
Highly recommended, but it's not the place I'd start with a dive into Faulkner. I'd suggest that a body start with The Unvanquished, follow that up with Intruder in the Dust (to get acclimated to the prose style), then begin to take on more of the novels, perhaps in order of publication.
Possibly the worst book I've ever been subjected to in my life. It was assigned as part of my high school literature curriculum and every page was a chore. I detest stream of consciousness writing even in the modern era, so reading it laden down with Southern Gothic fripperies was even worse. Essentially this is the story of a dysfunctional family that has come on hard times because slavery is over. In addition to the rampant racism, the family is a cesspool of misogyny and incest too for triple the revulsion. Recommend only if you need a reminder of how disgusting and deeply set in racist attitudes are for many Americans.