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A review by adrianasturalvarez
Soldiers' Pay by William Faulkner
3.0
Though not as accomplished as his later novels, Soldiers' Pay still has moments of revelation, which reveal Faulkner willing to bend language to get at a feeling.
"They greeted him with the effusiveness of people who are brought together by invitation yet are not quite certain of themselves and of the spirit of the invitation; in this case the eternal country boys of one national mental state, lost in the comparative metropolitan atmosphere of one diametrically opposed to it. To feel provincial: finding that a certain conventional state of behavior has become inexplicably obsolete over night."
Like a rough house Proust. The vocabulary he pulls from doesn't suck either. At times, I couldn't tell if I wasn't getting a phrase because I was intellectually inferior or just not Southern. At other times, his stylistic daring worked better than others. He seems to be going along with the whole "make it new" dictum of the postwar period yet not fully buying into it.
There are amateur moments in the book as well. A lot of gorgeous descriptions of sunset... but like, a LOT of them. Many characters who don't fully flesh out and so become intellectual exercises, instead of insights into the human experience. The more moments like this I read, however, the better I felt. He's human, this Faulkner, and perhaps writing a novel can be learned after all.
I only recommend this book to Faulkner fans and those horrified at how paltry their first novel has turned out.
"They greeted him with the effusiveness of people who are brought together by invitation yet are not quite certain of themselves and of the spirit of the invitation; in this case the eternal country boys of one national mental state, lost in the comparative metropolitan atmosphere of one diametrically opposed to it. To feel provincial: finding that a certain conventional state of behavior has become inexplicably obsolete over night."
Like a rough house Proust. The vocabulary he pulls from doesn't suck either. At times, I couldn't tell if I wasn't getting a phrase because I was intellectually inferior or just not Southern. At other times, his stylistic daring worked better than others. He seems to be going along with the whole "make it new" dictum of the postwar period yet not fully buying into it.
There are amateur moments in the book as well. A lot of gorgeous descriptions of sunset... but like, a LOT of them. Many characters who don't fully flesh out and so become intellectual exercises, instead of insights into the human experience. The more moments like this I read, however, the better I felt. He's human, this Faulkner, and perhaps writing a novel can be learned after all.
I only recommend this book to Faulkner fans and those horrified at how paltry their first novel has turned out.