|
The ostensible subject of The Sound and the Fury is the
dissolution of the Compsons, one of those august old Mississippi
families that fell on hard times and wild eccentricity after the
Civil War. But in fact what William Faulkner is really after in
his legendary novel is the kaleidoscope of consciousness--the
overwrought mind caught in the act of thought. His rich, dark,
scandal-ridden story of squandered fortune, incest (in thought if
not in deed), madness, congenital brain damage, theft,
illegitimacy, and stoic endurance is told in the interior voices
of three Compson brothers: first Benjy, the "idiot" man-child who
blurs together three decades of inchoate sensations as he stalks
the fringes of the family's former pasture; next Quentin,
torturing himself brilliantly, obsessively over Caddy's lost
virginity and his own failure to recover the family's honor as he
wanders around the seedy fringes of Boston; and finally Jason,
heartless, shrewd, sneaking, nursing a perpetual sense of injury
and outrage against his outrageous family.
If Benjy's section is the most daringly experimental, Jason's
is the most harrowing. "Once a bitch always a bitch, what I say,"
he begins, lacing into Caddy's illegitimate daughter, and then
proceeds to hurl mud at blacks, Jews, his sacred Compson
ancestors, his glamorous, promiscuous sister, his doomed brother
Quentin, his ailing mother, and the long-suffering black servant
Dilsey who holds the family together by sheer force of character.
Notoriously "difficult," The Sound and the Fury is
actually one of Faulkner's more accessible works once you get past
the abrupt, unannounced time shifts--and certainly the most
powerful emotionally. Everything is here: the complex equilibrium
of pre-civil rights race relations; the conflict between Yankee
capitalism and Southern agrarian values; a meditation on time,
consciousness, and Western philosophy. And all of it is rendered
in prose so gorgeous it can take your breath away. Here, for
instance, Quentin recalls an autumnal encounter back home with the
old black possum hunter Uncle Louis:
And we'd sit in the dry leaves that whispered a little with the
slow respiration of our waiting and with the slow breathing of the
earth and the windless October, the rank smell of the lantern
fouling the brittle air, listening to the dogs and to the echo of
Louis' voice dying away. He never raised it, yet on a still night
we have heard it from our front porch. When he called the dogs in
he sounded just like the horn he carried slung on his shoulder and
never used, but clearer, mellower, as though his voice were a part
of darkness and silence, coiling out of it, coiling into it again.
WhoOoooo. WhoOoooo. WhoOooooooooooooooo.
What Faulkner has created is a modernist epic in which
characters assume the stature of gods and the primal family events
resonate like myths. It is The Sound and the Fury that
secures his place in what Edmund Wilson called "the full-dressed
post-Flaubert group of Conrad, Joyce, and Proust." --David Laskin
|
[Prodigy discussion, June 1996]
WebBoard discussion, February 2002
Topic:
The Sound and the Fury; Wm. Faulkner (1 of 46), Read 92
times
Conf:
Constant Reader
From:
Beej Connor connorva@mindspring.com
Date:
Thursday, January 31, 2002 08:24 AM
I've finally gotten to this one, having put it off through
pure intimidation. I know it has been discussed before,
and I'll get to the archived discussion when I'm done
reading it.
I read the first Benjy section, tossed the book aside and
went to the library to get cliff notes. That helped a lot,
because there was just no way to understand who was
who, much less what was going on, without help!
I'm going to read through this book, and when I'm done,
I'm going to immediately go back to page one and read it
through again. I don't think this is a novel that can be
understood or fully appreciated with only one reading. To
be honest, I have a feeling that even two readings might
not be enough. We'll see..
Anne Wilfong...I sincerely hope you join me in this. I think
I'm going to need your help with this one.
Beej
Topic:
The Sound and the Fury; Wm. Faulkner (2 of 46), Read 61
times
Conf:
Constant Reader
From:
Steve Warbasse swarbasse@iowabar.org
Date:
Thursday, January 31, 2002 10:52 AM
Just keep driving right on through it, Beej. I will never,
ever forget my first reading. It was an assigned text in
college, and I had read no Faulkner previously. I was
desperate because I had no idea what was going on.
I find it so interesting that Faulkner's most admirable and
appealing characters are black women. We mentioned this
once before in connection with Sanctuary. In that regard
Dilsey in The Sound and Fury takes the cake. I have a very
mixed reaction to every character in this book except
her--and Benjy of course.
Well, come to think of it, I am also quite taken with the
little black kid who has to baby sit Benjy. He is a little, tiny,
bright guy who accompanies this large idiot around. The
image of those two together amuses me for some sick
reason.
Steve
Topic:
The Sound and the Fury; Wm. Faulkner (3 of 46), Read 58
times
Conf:
Constant Reader
From:
R Bavetta rbavetta@prodigy.net
Date:
Thursday, January 31, 2002 11:37 AM
This was my first Faulkner, too. Just like Steve, I had to
read it in college. I plowed thru, just taking it like a bath.
But I really enjoyed it on my 2nd reading whenever it was
that we had our Faulknerfest here.
However, I still recommend taking the Benjy section like a
bath - just let those words wash over you. Pure poetry.
Ruth
"Writing is like prostitution. First you do it for the love of it,
then you do it for a few friends, then you do it for money."
Moliere
Topic:
The Sound and the Fury; Wm. Faulkner (4 of 46), Read 61
times
Conf:
Constant Reader
From:
Robert Armstrong rla@nac.net
Date:
Thursday, January 31, 2002 11:45 AM
THE SOUND AND THE FURY was also my first Faulkner and
still my favorite.
Robt
Topic:
The Sound and the Fury; Wm. Faulkner (5 of 46), Read 62
times
Conf:
Constant Reader
From:
Steve Warbasse swarbasse@iowabar.org
Date:
Thursday, January 31, 2002 11:59 AM
We had lotsa fun discussing this one, Robert. I wish you
had been around then.
Steve
Topic:
The Sound and the Fury; Wm. Faulkner (6 of 46), Read 68
times
Conf:
Constant Reader
From:
Beej Connor connorva@mindspring.com
Date:
Thursday, January 31, 2002 12:10 PM
Boy, I wish I had been around then, too. I'm sure glad to
get encouragement from y'all. Thanks.
Ruth said:
'However, I still recommend taking the Benjy section like a
bath - just let those words wash over you. Pure poetry.'
Benjy:
'I could hear the clock, and I could hear Caddy standing
behind me, and I could hear the roof. It's still raining, Caddy
said. I hate rain. I hate everything. And then her head came
into my lap and she was crying, holding me, and I began to
cry. Then I looked at the fire again and the bright, smooth
shapes went again. I could hear the clock and the roof and
Caddy.'
I ate some cake.
Beej
Topic:
The Sound and the Fury; Wm. Faulkner (7 of 46), Read 63
times
Conf:
Constant Reader
From:
Martin Zook mlzii@aol.com
Date:
Thursday, January 31, 2002 12:24 PM
>I still recommend taking the Benjy section like a bath -
just let those words wash over you.
Truer words were never written. My wife always compared
reading Faulkner's stream of consciousness to letting a
stream take the reader away. And it's only when you do
that that you can experience the full value of the text.
Stream of consciousness. It's how the mind works. And
Faulkner does a masterful job of portraying what can't be
portrayed because it's beyond words by writing about
those flickering points of contact right before
consciousness submerges into the subconsciousness.
Speaking of idjits, isn't it interesting that this story begins
in the mind of an idjit and, in Absalom, Absalom!, the story
ends with the reader witnessing an idjit howling in the
ashes of the great house?
Topic:
The Sound and the Fury; Wm. Faulkner (8 of 46), Read 65
times
Conf:
Constant Reader
From:
Steve Warbasse swarbasse@iowabar.org
Date:
Thursday, January 31, 2002 12:28 PM
We got a little punchy after awhile in that discussion. I did
at least. Beej, you can help me with some confusion about
a character named Nancy in The Sound and the Fury, a
character of the same name in a short story featuring
Quentin, Jason, and Caddy called "That Evening Sun," and
a statement about this character by Malcolm Cowley in his
essay. So please keep track of Nancy references as you
read, wouldja?
In order to pose the problem that gave rise to my
confusion, let me simply repost what I wrote on July 1 in
some year of Our Lord:
Well, dis sho nuf is a pretty mess I have made heah!
I look in da big book, and it say, lets see if you can
still see Nancys bones I havent thought to look in a long
time have you. Den I look in da little book (Mistah
Cowley), and he say . . . and we discover from an
incidental reference in The Sound and Fury that the
Negro woman whose terror of death was portrayed in "That
Evening Sun" had indeed been murdered and her body left in
a ditch for the vultures. Den I look furrer in de little
book and sho nuf, that gal's name wuz Nancy. So I sez,
"Dis mus be de spot." Well, den I look back in de big
book. It say heah "Dogs are dead." Caddy said. "And
when Nancy fell in the ditch and Roskus shot her and the
buzzards came and undressed her." But den I axe myself,
"What wuz de name a' dat young man in de little story?"
De
man wid the straight razor wuz a name a Jesus. Twarn't
Roskus. Whas mo', and mo' partickly, back in dees times
when de mule fall in da ditch and break hisself, we mos
likely shoot 'im. But when de woman fall in de ditch, we
mos likely try to pull her outta deah. So I's concludin'
that Mistah Cowley don't know a damned thing he talkin'
bout.
Steve
Topic:
The Sound and the Fury; Wm. Faulkner (9 of 46), Read 68
times
Conf:
Constant Reader
From:
Beej Connor connorva@mindspring.com
Date:
Thursday, January 31, 2002 12:40 PM
Steve, that particular reference to Nancy is in the very
beginning of The Sound and the Fury, and when I first
read about the vultures picking Nancy's flesh to the bone,
I hoped to God that Nancy was a dog. But, I knew she
wasn't. When the name of 'Jesus' was mentioned, I sat up
and took notice, because the first thing I thought of when
I read that Benjy was thirty three, was that Jesus was the
same age when he was crucified.
I think Benjy is also threatened with a reminder of Nancy's
bones in the gutter, and I'll look for that section later
today and post it..and I sure will keep an eye out for any
other reference to Nancy.
Beej
Topic:
The Sound and the Fury; Wm. Faulkner (10 of 46), Read 71
times
Conf:
Constant Reader
From:
Steve Warbasse swarbasse@iowabar.org
Date:
Thursday, January 31, 2002 12:47 PM
You're a sport, Beej. Thanks. I remain fixated on this
problem of whether Nancy is a mule or a woman, and I
think it may be intentionally created by Faulkner as
confusion in these children's minds--or Benjy's--but most
certainly in mine.
If you get a chance--and I know you have a lot of reading
on your plate right now--take a look at the short story
"That Evening Sun." It is a very famous Faulkner story and
a perfect companion piece to this book.
Also, congratulations on noticing Benjy's age and the
significance thereof.
Steve
Topic:
The Sound and the Fury; Wm. Faulkner (11 of 46), Read 68
times
Conf:
Constant Reader
From:
Candy Minx candyminx@hotmail.com
Date:
Thursday, January 31, 2002 01:05 PM
Oh boy. I just rummaged through bags of my books trying
to find my copy of this one. Its the first Faulkner I read too,
and I loved it. I would love to read this right now. May
have to run out and pick up a copy.
I am always taken by how many books have owed to
Faulkner, but especially this one. Trainspotting, Beloved,
Blood Meridian, True History of the Kelly Gang, Junkie. If
only they owe because of style...
Candy
Topic:
The Sound and the Fury; Wm. Faulkner (12 of 46), Read 72
times
Conf:
Constant Reader
From:
Beej Connor connorva@mindspring.com
Date:
Thursday, January 31, 2002 01:09 PM
Well, I've spent the last half hour searching for 'That
Evening Sun' online. I can't find it, but I'll pick it up from the
library when I'm done with this book.
I loved that piece I quoted where Caddy is devastated
and Benjy is frightened and its raining hard. He cries but
then eats his birthday cake. He really is, as one of the kids
in the book says, "three years old for thirty years."
Beej
Topic:
The Sound and the Fury; Wm. Faulkner (13 of 46), Read 64
times
Conf:
Constant Reader
From:
Steve Warbasse swarbasse@iowabar.org
Date:
Thursday, January 31, 2002 02:30 PM
Oh, Beej, "That Evening Sun" would still be copyright
protected. Just pick up Collected Stories the next time
you're at the library.
Steve
Topic:
The Sound and the Fury; Wm. Faulkner (14 of 46), Read 64
times
Conf:
Constant Reader
From:
Martin Zook mlzii@aol.com
Date:
Thursday, January 31, 2002 02:34 PM
Steve,
That was funny.
It also reminds me of Blotner's admonition against
expecting cross-story references to be air tight.
The Nancy quandry is new to me. From reading the posts
here, I couldn't help but wonder if Faulkner wasn't driving
at the sentient being common denominator; so made it
impossible to determine whether Nancy was four legged
beast, or two legged; instead chosing to emphasize that
Nancy suffered.
Topic:
The Sound and the Fury; Wm. Faulkner (15 of 46), Read 68
times
Conf:
Constant Reader
From:
Steve Warbasse swarbasse@iowabar.org
Date:
Thursday, January 31, 2002 02:40 PM
Thanks, Martin. I worked my butt off on it way back then.
Those were the days, for example, when Haggart would
post thousand-word notes at a crack. Great discussion.
And then we got into an exchange about the use of dialect
and Langston Hughes' views on that and James Baldwin.
The good old days.
Steve
Topic:
The Sound and the Fury; Wm. Faulkner (16 of 46), Read 58
times
Conf:
Constant Reader
From:
Anne Wilfong anne.wilfong@gte.net
Date:
Thursday, January 31, 2002 07:50 PM
Beej,
I'm a jump ahead of you! I finished this last week! What
saved me during the Benjy section was the Faulkner web
site for the synopsis of each narration.
Also, check out The Portable Faulkner when you finish.
There's an appendix in the back that summarizes the
characters and what became of them.
I thought Nancy was a cow! I'd better reread that. I did
buy his short story collection, so I'll browse this tonight or
tomorrow. I'll most more when I can.
Anne
Topic:
The Sound and the Fury; Wm. Faulkner (17 of 46), Read 58
times
Conf:
Constant Reader
From:
R Bavetta rbavetta@prodigy.net
Date:
Thursday, January 31, 2002 07:55 PM
And I thought Nancy was a ol' blue-tick hound!
Ruth
"Writing is like prostitution. First you do it for the love of it,
then you do it for a few friends, then you do it for money."
Moliere
Topic:
The Sound and the Fury; Wm. Faulkner (18 of 46), Read 63
times
Conf:
Constant Reader
From:
Beej Connor connorva@mindspring.com
Date:
Thursday, January 31, 2002 08:10 PM
Anne, I'm so delighted you and I get to discuss another
Faulkner!
I just now got my copy of 'The Portable Faulkner' out of my
bookcase. I thought I had read it all, but apparently I
stopped after 'The Bear.' I hadn't seen the appendix and
you're right! Most of the characters are summarized.
Thanks..
AND! I just saw 'That Evening Sun' is in here, too. So, I'm
all set.
Beej
Topic:
The Sound and the Fury; Wm. Faulkner (19 of 46), Read 67
times
Conf:
Constant Reader
From:
Beej Connor connorva@mindspring.com
Date:
Thursday, January 31, 2002 10:27 PM
The old light bulb in my brain went on tonight as I was
going over Benjy's section again...
It's not in chronological order! (I don't know how I could
have missed that, but I did.)
And, when a section is in italics, it means another 'time
switch,' usually a flashback for Benjy, brought about by
some sort of association to something happening in the
present. Like fire. (Faulkner sure seemed to love fire. I
think there's fire in each of his books I've read so far.)
Am I right?
I went back and re-read. NOW it makes more sense.
Beej
Topic:
The Sound and the Fury; Wm. Faulkner (20 of 46), Read 60
times
Conf:
Constant Reader
From:
Anne Wilfong anne.wilfong@gte.net
Date:
Friday, February 01, 2002 10:43 AM
Beej,
As you read, take note of the dates used as chapter
headings. Things bounce around a bit, but it all comes
clearer in the end.
Before I understood the time sequence and Benjy's
narration, I was really confused by all the different
caretakers he had. From Versh to TP to Luster, it was as
much a jumble in my mind as it must have been in poor
Ben's.
Anne
Topic:
The Sound and the Fury; Wm. Faulkner (21 of 46), Read 61
times
Conf:
Constant Reader
From:
Steve Warbasse swarbasse@iowabar.org
Date:
Friday, February 01, 2002 10:53 AM
. . .it was as much a jumble in my mind as it must have been
in poor Ben's.
I think that's exactly the point, Anne. Benjy himself has no
concept of time, and therefore we jump around in time just
as he does in his poor addled brain.
Steve
Topic:
The Sound and the Fury; Wm. Faulkner (22 of 46), Read 64
times
Conf:
Constant Reader
From:
Beej Connor connorva@mindspring.com
Date:
Friday, February 01, 2002 10:55 AM
Hey, Anne! Well, once I figured out this chronology
business, those various caretakers helped me sort out
where Benjy was, time wise...I knew Luster was Dilcey's
grandson, so when he was the caretaker, Benjy must
have been an adult.
By the same token, Versh and TP were Dilcey's sons, so
when they were with Benjy, I knew he was a child.
Beej
Topic:
The Sound and the Fury; Wm. Faulkner (23 of 46), Read 63
times
Conf:
Constant Reader
From:
Beej Connor connorva@mindspring.com
Date:
Friday, February 01, 2002 11:38 AM
(Ruth, I read your directions to William on how to post a
jpg..let's see if I get it right.)
'William Faulkner A to Z is the first comprehensive reference
to his life, including writings, characters, people, events, and
ideas that influenced him as a person and a writer.
More than 1,500 cross-referenced entries include synopses of
Faulkner's fiction, poetry, and nonfiction; descriptions of
characters in Faulkner's fiction; details about his family,
friends, colleagues, and critics; real and fictional places
important to Faulkner's life and literary development; and
ideas and events that influenced his life and works.'
I was reading thru the Faulkner site, and saw this became
available in paperback last month! I'm off to Barnes and
Noble to pick it up.
(I am sooo darned proud of myself for getting that pix to
post!..And they say you can't teach an old dog new tricks..
Thanks, Ruth!)
Beej
Topic:
The Sound and the Fury; Wm. Faulkner (24 of 46), Read 57
times
Conf:
Constant Reader
From:
Martin Zook mlzii@aol.com
Date:
Friday, February 01, 2002 01:03 PM
>first comprehensive reference to his life, including
writings, characters, people, events, and ideas that
influenced him as a person and a writer.
I'm going to take a look at it, too. But, "first"? Ha. How
unread do they think we are?
Topic:
The Sound and the Fury; Wm. Faulkner (25 of 46), Read 65
times
Conf:
Constant Reader
From:
Beej Connor connorva@mindspring.com
Date:
Friday, February 01, 2002 02:59 PM
I'm about half way through Quentin's section, now..I'm
taking this novel nice and slow..and the references to
'shadows' is INCREDIBLE. In my mind, I see these
shadows referring to time, past and future. Shadows from
the past effecting the present, and as they do so, casting
more shadows for the future, almost like a pre-destination.
Quentin suffers so over Caddie, and tries as he walks, to
step on his shadow and shatter it.
But, no matter where he goes, there's his shadow right
ahead of him.
Anyway, that's my take on all these references to
shadows, in both the Benjy and Quentin sections.
Beej
Topic:
The Sound and the Fury; Wm. Faulkner (26 of 46), Read 53
times
Conf:
Constant Reader
From:
Beej Connor connorva@mindspring.com
Date:
Friday, February 01, 2002 08:29 PM
Water seems to have quite a bit of symbolic meaning, too,
I think.
Reading Quentin's section feels like slogging through mud,
its just so difficult to witness his self-battering. Here's
someone who seems to need everything lined up neatly in
life, and all around him is chaos and disorder. Even little
details out-of-order in life agitate his senses..like the
broken feather on the hat of a woman on the bus (I knew
when I read that, it would bother Quentin,and it did; he
thinks of it later.) If only he could call out "mother,
mother!".. Mother, in this case, would never have
answered. She was too busy listening to herself. She
screwed up these kids, more than anything else. The only
real mother in this book was Dilcey.
Beej
Topic:
The Sound and the Fury; Wm. Faulkner (27 of 46), Read 49
times
Conf:
Constant Reader
From:
Beej Connor connorva@mindspring.com
Date:
Friday, February 01, 2002 09:21 PM
I know I'm 'over-posting,' but I was reading thru the
thread and had a thought.
Martin, you wrote:
. From reading the posts here, I couldn't help but wonder if
Faulkner wasn't driving at the sentient being common
denominator; so made it impossible to determine whether
Nancy was four legged beast, or two legged; instead choosing
to emphasize that Nancy suffered.
I think you're right, but maybe it goes beyond that. Maybe
Faulkner is driving at the idea that, yes, Nancy suffered,
but suffer terribly or not, in the end all that will be left of
any of us, is a bunch of dried out, undressed bones.
Even in Quentin's section we are reminded of Nancy's
bones. (I haven't read Jason's section yet, but I have a
feeling they'll be mentioned there, too.) Faulkner kept the
thought of those bones throughout this book for a reason,
I'm sure.
Beej
Topic:
The Sound and the Fury; Wm. Faulkner (28 of 46), Read 38
times
Conf:
Constant Reader
From:
Anne Wilfong anne.wilfong@gte.net
Date:
Saturday, February 02, 2002 08:53 PM
Beej,
While you're in the Quentin section...what do you make of
his discussions with his Dad about women and virginity?
And his own "confession" of incest with Caddy? (I hope I'm
not spoiling anything here for you. But one thing I've found
about reading Faulkner--Someone may mention a
pertinent point on the board, and I'll either forget it or it
won't mean anything till I actually read the part.)
Anne
Topic:
The Sound and the Fury; Wm. Faulkner (29 of 46), Read 39
times
Conf:
Constant Reader
From:
Beej Connor connorva@mindspring.com
Date:
Saturday, February 02, 2002 10:01 PM
You're not spoiling anything for me, Anne. I've only about
14 pages left to read. When I finish, I'm going to go back
and read all the Benjy section again.
Wow. That false confession of incest was something else. I
think Quentin might have been trying to ease Caddy's sin
of promiscuity. There was something that went on the line
of..if he said it was incest, it would become true in his
mind, and if it became true in his mind, it would become
truth. And if his confession of incest with Caddy became
the truth, she would again be pure. In a way, Quentin was
also a Christ figure.
His father believed woman were inferior to men and a
natural evil. I think he didn't consider a woman's virginity
important, because he didn't really think women were
important. I think, since he felt women were by nature evil,
it didn't surprise him, or even bother him, that Quentin and
Caddy may have had an incestuous relationship. I think,
tho he might not have considered it a normal thing, he
thought it was a natural thing; simply, that any man can
fall prey to the evil of any woman. In fact, he laughed.
Are these anywhere near the same takes you had? I'm
curious to hear what those here who are more
knowledgeable about this book have to say about these
two subjects.
Quentin was obsessed with Caddy's promiscuity; she was
the object of what seemed to be a 'Madonna complex.'
And, when he seeks help for his anguish from his father,
the elder Compson laughs and considers the entire thing a
folly. Can you just imagine how that reaction sent Quentin
over the emotional brink?
The writing in TSATF is simply exquisite. I love this
description, in the beginning of the fourth section, of
Dilcey:
'She wore a stiff black straw hat perched upon her turban,
and a maroon velvet cape with a border of mangy and
anonymous fur above a dress of purple silk, and she stood in
the door for awhile with her myriad and sunken face lifted to
the weather, and one gaunt hand flac-soled as the belly of a
fish, then she moved the cape aside and examined the
bosom of her gown.
The gown fell gauntly from her shoulders, across her fallen
breasts, then tightened upon her paunch and fell again,
ballooning a little above the nether garments which she
would remove layer by layer as the spring accomplished and
the warm days, in color regal and moribund. She had been a
big woman once but now her skeleton rose, draped loosely in
unpadded skin that tightened again upon a paunch almost
dropsical, as though muscle and tissue had been courage or
fortitude which the days or the years had consumed until
only the indomitable skeleton was left rising like a ruin or a
landmark above the somnolent and impervious guts, and
above that the collapsed face that gave the impression of the
bones themselves being outside the flesh, lifted into the
driving day with an expression at once fatalistic and of a
child's astonished disappointment, until she turned and
entered the house again and closed the door.
God, that's absolutely perfect.
Beej
Topic:
The Sound and the Fury; Wm. Faulkner (30 of 46), Read 39
times
Conf:
Constant Reader
From:
Beej Connor connorva@mindspring.com
Date:
Saturday, February 02, 2002 10:25 PM
What I really wonder about is why there wasn't a Caddy
section. We heard about each of her siblings, but not her.
I especially would love to know her thoughts about her
mother.
That mother did more damage to this family than any other
character, I think.
Beej
Topic:
The Sound and the Fury; Wm. Faulkner (31 of 46), Read 32
times
Conf:
Constant Reader
From:
Anne Wilfong anne.wilfong@gte.net
Date:
Sunday, February 03, 2002 04:25 PM
Beej,
You hit the nail on the head with the above passages
about the incest and the Father's lack of concern for his
daughter's (or any woman's) virginity.
The Mom was a classic martyred Southern woman.
Reminded me of my own Grandmother in her concern for
only herself and her ability to manipulate a child to win him
over to her side, so to speak. How could that horrible
Jason ever have a chance?
Did you read THE EVENING SUN yet? You'll get another
glimpse into how pitiful she wants you to think she is.
Faulkner must've patterned her after someone quite close
to him--I'll probably need to read his biography to figure it
out!
I agree, I really wanted to hear Caddy's voice and her side
of the story. She's the centerpiece of this work and we're
left with everyone else's' take on her. Which is what WF
had in mind, I'm sure--to make us hungry to know and
understand.
Anne
Topic:
The Sound and the Fury; Wm. Faulkner (32 of 46), Read 31
times
Conf:
Constant Reader
From:
Janet Mego vsjego@cs.com
Date:
Sunday, February 03, 2002 06:13 PM
Hi--I told Beej I'd throw in my two-cent's worth on this
novel some time ago and haven't had a chance, but maybe
this is a good place. I've always been so in awe of this
novel that I almost can't stand to comment--it seems like
the spell might be broken by attempts at analysis. I don't
know if that makes sense or not. But ironically, the last
points about Caddy's point of view being a missing piece
and the idea that Faulkner WANTED us to feel that way,
Yes, yes yes, exactly, I think.
It's like she is the eternal mysterious enigmatic/tragic
woman-force in this novel, and we get Benjy's reverence
and two-dimensional love of her and Quentin's intricate
and almost indecipherable love/hate-related incestuous (?)
attraction to her, but she is not allowed to speak for
herself, and it's not fair. But that is LIFE. She is to remain a
mystery, a tragic one.
In a thread some months ago, I THINK it was a thread on
punctuation and the lack thereof to enhance an author's
style (like in Joyce and Faulkner), I posted the section
where Quentin and Caddy are arguing by the brook, about
her promiscuity. I think the essence of Caddy might be
there. Quentin is angry, desperate, accusing, threatening;
she is gentle, sadly philosophical, resigned, almost
apathetic. As a woman, she is locked into society's
expectations vs her own persona and physiology. She is
doomed to be torn and shredded by circumstance, and I
think she knows it. What a crapshoot life, love and
sexuality are. What a genius is this writer.
Janet
Topic:
The Sound and the Fury; Wm. Faulkner (33 of 46), Read 31
times
Conf:
Constant Reader
From:
Anne Wilfong anne.wilfong@gte.net
Date:
Sunday, February 03, 2002 07:30 PM
Janet,
You can throw your two cents' worth in any time, okay? I
love hearing your thoughts on this complex man and his
complex, confounding works. What a master and genius,
indeed!
I agree with the feeling that you just can't analyze this.
The words were meant to wash over you. The story and
characters are felt deep, to your marrow. It's an imprint
that you aren't consciously aware of, yet there it is when
you come up for air.
I'm in awe...
Anne
Topic:
The Sound and the Fury; Wm. Faulkner (34 of 46), Read 40
times
Conf:
Constant Reader
From:
Beej Connor connorva@mindspring.com
Date:
Sunday, February 03, 2002 08:16 PM
I'm in awe, too, Anne. When I finished the book, I had
shivers running down my spine. My senses were
overloaded, I think, trying to sort it out. It's just too big to
fully comprehend. But, like Quentin, we want it all in order,
and I don't think we can do that, anymore than Quentin
could.
Each of these sections, except the last, is the story of how
one woman, Caddy, affected each brother's life. All suffer
because of her, in their own ways. And yet, Caddie seems
so gentle, vulnerable and hurting. At least for these
brothers, Mr. Compson was correct, that 'man experiences
tragedy only through someone else.'
Poor, poor dear Benjy..waiting at that gate for Caddy to
come home. God, what a deeply sorrowful thing when they
had him castrated. My heart hurt for this manchild.
Beej
Topic:
The Sound and the Fury; Wm. Faulkner (35 of 46), Read 27
times
Conf:
Constant Reader
From:
Felix Miller felix3rd@bellsouth.net
Date:
Tuesday, February 05, 2002 08:06 PM
I am coming late to this discussion, but I am enjoying
every post. (Beej, there is no such thing as "overposting"
on TSATF.)
I remember Steve's inspired dialect rendition of the
Mystery Of Nancy in the Ditch. Laughed hard then, harder
now. I think my take on this question was that somewhere
there was a reference to a draft animal (mule? horse?)
named Nancy, and it was she that the birds "undressed"
in the ditch.
The floating time scheme in Benjy's section becomes much
simpler once you realize the significance of the italicized
passages. I believe that at one point Faulkner had
convinced his publisher to print the sections in differing
colored inks. I don't think that the colored ink idea lasted,
though. In 1929 publishers had plenty of ways to go
broke, they didn't need to mix ink colors in uncommercial
novels.
As mentioned above, the Appendix that Faulkner did for
The Portable Faulkner helps immensely to clarify characters
and time frames. It also has some fine scenes, especially
the one between the librarian and the old Dilsey in
Memphis, where the librarian has taken a wartime clipping
of Caddy riding in a Nazi staff car.
I expect that now my journey with all the Compsons will
begin anew. I keep re-reading books lately, rather than
take up new ones. I just finished the trilogy of The Lord of
the Rings, which I last read in the late '60s.
Some days you win. Some days you lose. Some days it
rains.-Baseball Manager-maybe Earl Weaver.
Felix Miller
Topic:
The Sound and the Fury; Wm. Faulkner (36 of 46), Read 40
times
Conf:
Constant Reader
From:
Beej Connor connorva@mindspring.com
Date:
Tuesday, February 05, 2002 08:54 PM
Felix, Gosh, I'm glad there's no such thing as over posting
on this book because it has just about knocked me for a
loop. The more Faulkner I read, the more I hunger to read!
Steve, despite the fact that you had said you wrote that
dialect post, I didn't realize you meant you WROTE it (for
some reason I had thought you meant you had posted a
quote) until you told Martin how hard you had worked on
it. THEN I went back and re-read it..funny stuff! Brilliantly
funny!
I did go on to read That Evening Sun, but, nowhere did it
mention that Jesus actually killed Nancy. There, were,
however, many, many references to the ditch. Tho I do
tend to believe Nancy in TSATF was a mule, and I do know
comparisons between Faulkner's works turn up
inconsistencies, I have a niggling feeling about this
business. Who knows for sure whose bones they were. I
think the death of Nancy in TSATF was before the
grandmother's death, and in fact was the first experience
of death any of these kids had. So, maybe Malcolm Cowley
was right. The children might have been confused,
reasoning, to take the liberty of quoting Steve: 'when de
mule fall in da ditch and break hisself, we mos
likely shoot 'im. But when de woman fall in de ditch, we
mos likely try to pull her outta deah.
Maybe the kids reasoned that it wasn't pulled out, so
therefore, it HAD to be a mule...
(Had any adults seen the bones? I don't think so...)
Another question..did Jason murder Roskus?
I've begun reading 'Absalom, Absalom!' and was delighted
to meet up with young Quentin, again! (sorry, Anne. I
know I told you I'd wait, but I couldn't help myself! But, I
promise I won't post on it until you're ready!)
Beej
Topic:
The Sound and the Fury; Wm. Faulkner (37 of 46), Read 28
times
Conf:
Constant Reader
From:
Beej Connor connorva@mindspring.com
Date:
Tuesday, February 05, 2002 09:09 PM
Oh. One other thing; I did go back and read the Benjy
section after I finished the novel, and beginning to end, it
was as clear as a bell.
Beej
Topic:
The Sound and the Fury; Wm. Faulkner (38 of 46), Read 21
times
Conf:
Constant Reader
From:
Anne Wilfong anne.wilfong@gte.net
Date:
Wednesday, February 06, 2002 11:11 AM
Beej,
That's okay, read on and post as you need to before you
forget things! I'm feeling pressure from library books and
the new CR selection, but I'll be darned if AA won't end up
in my hands sooner than I planned.
I'll be there soon, I promise!
Anne
Topic:
The Sound and the Fury; Wm. Faulkner (39 of 46), Read 21
times
Conf:
Constant Reader
From:
Steve Warbasse swarbasse@iowabar.org
Date:
Wednesday, February 06, 2002 12:43 PM
I agree that the Nancy in The Sound and the Fury is clearly
a mule. The mystery lies in Malcolm Cowley's remarks
about the book:
. . . and we discover from an incidental reference in The
Sound and the Fury that the Negro woman whose terror of
death was portrayed in "That Evening Sun" had indeed been
murdered and her body left in a ditch for the vultures.
And a little later he says this woman's name was Nancy. I
think he was mistaken.
I know I seem fixated on this issue, but I can't help it.
Steve
This is a simple game; you throw the ball, you hit the ball,
you catch the ball; sometimes you win, sometimes you lose,
and sometimes it rains. --Crash Davis, Catcher, Durham
Bulls, 1989.
Topic:
The Sound and the Fury; Wm. Faulkner (40 of 46), Read 18
times
Conf:
Constant Reader
From:
Beej Connor connorva@mindspring.com
Date:
Wednesday, February 06, 2002 03:02 PM
it's just so difficult for me to believe someone like Cowley
would make that sort of mistake!
But, it looks like that's exactly what happened.
Beej
Topic:
The Sound and the Fury; Wm. Faulkner (41 of 46), Read 20
times
Conf:
Constant Reader
From:
Steve Warbasse swarbasse@iowabar.org
Date:
Wednesday, February 06, 2002 03:16 PM
Particularly when, as I understand it, he submitted his
introduction to The Portable Faulkner to William Faulkner
himself to read before publishing it.
Steve
Topic:
The Sound and the Fury; Wm. Faulkner (42 of 46), Read 15
times
Conf:
Constant Reader
From:
Felix Miller felix3rd@bellsouth.net
Date:
Wednesday, February 06, 2002 08:02 PM
QUOTE:>>>he submitted his introduction to The Portable
Faulkner to William Faulkner himself to read before
publishing it.-Steve
And what makes you think that Ol' Bill took time out from
his whiskey to carefully proof (no pun intended) Ol'
Malcolm's book? It has always seemed to me that what
happened after he finished a book was more an
opportunity for sardonic amusement for Mr. Faulkner than
anything else.
And, as WF said in a preface to (I think) The Town, he felt
that his characters had changed in the interval between
appearances in books, and that the reader would allow for
this. This may apply to things like multiple references in
different ways to names and incidents from earlier books.
Of course, I could be all wet on this. Time for another
Bushmill's. Heh.
Some days you win. Some days you lose. Some days it
rains.-Baseball Manager-maybe Earl Weaver.
Felix Miller
Topic:
The Sound and the Fury; Wm. Faulkner (43 of 46), Read 14
times
Conf:
Constant Reader
From:
Steve Warbasse swarbasse@iowabar.org
Date:
Thursday, February 07, 2002 10:05 AM
Point well taken, Felix. Let me join you at the bar, and try
to forget about this.
Steve
Topic:
The Sound and the Fury; Wm. Faulkner (44 of 46), Read 24
times
Conf:
Constant Reader
From:
Beej Connor connorva@mindspring.com
Date:
Thursday, February 07, 2002 10:34 AM
Oh, great! You guys get me all hung up on this issue and
then bail out and head for the bar!
I was reading thru Malcolm's intro to 'The Portable
Faulkner, and came upon a different reference to a 'Nancy.'
I don't know if it's in 'Sanctuary' or 'Requiem For A Nun'..I
tend to think it's the latter, tho...Cowley writes that
Temple Drake calls a woman named Nancy Mannigoe "a
n***** dopefiend whore."
(Wasn't Nancy in 'That Evening Sun' an addict and a
prostitute?)
If this is the same Nancy, then Cowley has contradicted
himself, especially if Temple said this in RFAN, which was
written in 1951, long after those bones were written
about in TSATF.
Beej
Topic:
The Sound and the Fury; Wm. Faulkner (45 of 46), Read 19
times
Conf:
Constant Reader
From:
Steve Warbasse swarbasse@iowabar.org
Date:
Thursday, February 07, 2002 10:46 AM
If I've said it once, I've said it a million times. That Temple
Drake ought to be ashamed of herself.
Steve
Topic:
The Sound and the Fury; Wm. Faulkner (46 of 46), Read 25
times
Conf:
Constant Reader
From:
Beej Connor connorva@mindspring.com
Date:
Thursday, February 07, 2002 10:48 AM
(I don't think Temple Drake liked Nancy Mannigoe very
much.)
I'm going to step upstairs to that post and clean up her
nasty language a bit.
Beej
Topic:
The Sound and the Fury; Wm. Faulkner (47 of 59), Read 36
times
Conf:
Constant Reader
From:
Beej Connor connorva@mindspring.com
Date:
Thursday, February 07, 2002 08:59 PM
I just picked up a copy of 'William Faulkner A to Z',and
looked up 'Nancy.' It referred me to 'Mannigoe, Nancy.'
There it says 'A character critical to 'That Evening Sun' and
'Requeim for a Nun.' In fact, this book quotes Faulkner as
saying Nancy IS the nun.
So there solves the mystery. Cowley was mistaken, just
as y'all thought.
Btw, this is a HUGE reference book! I'm really glad to have
it. I would have expected it to be a whole lot more than
$17.95.
Beej
Topic:
The Sound and the Fury; Wm. Faulkner (48 of 59), Read 24
times
Conf:
Constant Reader
From:
S.F. Strahan
Date:
Friday, February 08, 2002 04:56 PM
I just finished this one and after reading the posts here I
think I'm more confused. ;-) I thought the whole Quentin
incest confession was true, not false. I mean the whole
book sets up such an unbelievably close relationship
between the two of them. Remember when her "beau"
meets Quentin for the first time he says something to the
effect that she'd talked so much about Quentin--and in
such terms--that he was jealous and didn't realize until
she actually introduced him that Quentin was her brother
not an old boyfriend! (Or words to that effect.) I thought
the reason Quentin was so tortured about the direction
Caddie's life went was that he was in love with her (and
I'm not talking brotherly love) and he was her "first", so it
was agony for him to see that she had moved on to
someone else. He badgers her with the question "Do you
love him?" like he's afraid that she will say yes. I got the
impression that as bad as it was that she had slept with
someone else it would've been worse if she'd said that
she loved the other guy, too.
Of course, given how confusing and muddled the narrative
is I could be mistaken about the incest being real. Maybe it
only happened in his mind, maybe he lusted after her so
badly that after a while he forgot that they didn't actually
do it. Biblically, it would amount to the same thing...in
God's eyes if you commit evil in your heart it's a sin as
much as if you had actually committed evil.
On an unrelated aside...was I the only one to notice how
often the sense of smell was evoked in this book? It
began with Benjy and a reference to him being able to
smell things, as if his sense of smell was heightened in
compensation for "sense" he lacked, but the references to
smelling and to strong odors continues through all the
narratives...with the three most prominent being
honeysuckle, gasoline and camphor. It's an interesting
leitmotif, but I can't really figure out what the significance
of it is in the book as a whole.
~~Susan~~
"Then would you read a Sustaining Book, such as would
help and comfort a Wedged Bear in Great Tightness?"
---Winnie The Pooh
Topic:
The Sound and the Fury; Wm. Faulkner (49 of 59), Read 34
times
Conf:
Constant Reader
From:
Beej Connor connorva@mindspring.com
Date:
Friday, February 08, 2002 07:41 PM
Susan, Quentin approached Caddy with the idea of having
sex (and/or a double suicide?). My take was that she
agreed, and then at the last moment, it was Quentin who
backed out. For what it's worth, I also saw the knife in
that scene as a phallic symbol. When he dropped it, he
was dropping any idea he had of incest. (I think the
inclusion of that knife in this scene was loaded with TONS
of symbolism.)
I thought he was hoping she would say she loved these
men she slept with. I thought Quentin figured if there was
love involved, it would redeem Caddy, at least somewhat.
I did notice the constant references to Benjy's heightened
sense of smell, and thought maybe it was a tool to show
just how severely mentally challenged Benjy really
was...like an animal who uses its sense of smell as a
primary means of identifying people, places, things, as well
as emotions and death...sort of an anthropomorphism in
reverse.
By the same token, maybe this continuation regarding the
sense of smell into the other sections is symbolic of these
characters acting on pure animal instinct, the basic instinct
of survival; for example, Jason and the smell of gasoline
and camphor in the auto when he was chasing his niece
after she stole 'his' money,...he was going on pure animal
instinct.
Beej
Topic:
The Sound and the Fury; Wm. Faulkner (50 of 59), Read 26
times
Conf:
Constant Reader
From:
Steve Warbasse swarbasse@iowabar.org
Date:
Saturday, February 09, 2002 12:11 AM
Susan, Beej's note on this incest question is very good.
For my own part, I remain convinced that the incest took
place only in his mind. [See archived discussion of the
book.] But that remains a matter of opinion.
However. . . .
Biblically, it would amount to the same thing...in God's eyes if
you commit evil in your heart it's a sin as much as if you had
actually committed evil.
You don't really believe this New Testament thing, do you?
Is there really no difference between deeds and
thoughts? By way of caveat, I have big issues with St.
Paul. In fact I think it was St. Paul that screwed up the
religion.
Steve
Topic:
The Sound and the Fury; Wm. Faulkner (51 of 59), Read 24
times
Conf:
Constant Reader
From:
S.F. Strahan
Date:
Saturday, February 09, 2002 09:38 AM
There are a lot of Biblical references in Faulkner and at
least some of his characters are religious. Then, more so
than now, most of the people would have been aware of
the bit of theology I presented which is why I brought it
up. It is something that would have surely been a part of
Quentin's consciousness, part of the general zeitgeist.
Regarding Quentin, incest, and the knife scene...incest
was alluded to before this happened. I am now wondering
if that whole scene wasn't about Quentin maybe realizing
that he had corrupted her and started her down the path
she was on and the only way he could see to right it and
wipe out what they had done was to wipe out
themselves. Am I right that Quentin (later) was a suicide?
That's the impression I picked up somewhere in the last
section. This book was really confusing and I'm going to
have to read it again to sort if out, but it's so dark and
grim that I don't think I'll be picking it up again anytime
soon.
About the sense of smell...I don't think it's related to pure
animal instinct because the camphor is mentioned
frequently in text about "Miss Cahline" and she'd not
acting on instinct in the sections where it is..it's just noted
in passing that she needs some camphor or something like
that.
Last night I had another idea about the use of these three
particularly strong scents: honeysuckle, gasoline,
camphor. I think they each might be tied to a specific
emotion or condition of the characters. Honeysuckle to me
seems a very sensual fragrance...and the plant is just
rampant, covering everything (there's where a good
argument of animal instinct comes in!). Gasoline:
flammable, volatile, explosive. We get the gasoline odor
when he's been in the fight, he's furious,
violent...explosive. Camphor at that time was used as a
medicine; I think it used to be the main ingredient in
ointments for sore muscles or arthritis. Nowadays we use
stuff with aspirin, menthol and eucalyptus. I grew up with
a camphor tree in the backyard. I loved that tree. The
bark, branches and even the leaves smelled so good, so
spicy. OTOH I did some reading on blending scented oils
and every reference to camphor referred to it as smelling
"medicinal". I think the medicinal reference comes from it's
use in medicines. When I smell camphor I think of carefree
summer days of sunshine and youth. :-) It all depends on
your frame of reference. Since camphor was medicinal,
references to it could be linked to characters who were
physically weak or ill.
Some of you who are doing an immediate second reading
of the book can check me on the references to specific
odors being linked to the character's condition: physically
weak, furious, sensual etc.
~~Susan~~
"Then would you read a Sustaining Book, such as would
help and comfort a Wedged Bear in Great Tightness?"
---Winnie The Pooh
Topic:
The Sound and the Fury; Wm. Faulkner (52 of 59), Read 36
times
Conf:
Constant Reader
From:
Beej Connor connorva@mindspring.com
Date:
Saturday, February 09, 2002 10:27 AM
Susan I really enjoyed your post, and particularly your
thoughts on the symbolism of the sense of smell in this
book. I'll go thru the book again this afternoon with an
eye out for any common thread with these smell
references.
Quentin did commit suicide, but interestingly, not with a
knife (think 'phallic, phallic.'), He drowned himself. First we
hear his laments of the lack of 'Mother, Mother.' Then a
jump into the water..a symbol of the womb, maybe?..of
baptism and spiritual cleansing? This intrigues me, this
water business. A striking scene, one loaded with
incredible symbolism, I believe, is the scene where as a
child, Caddy gets muddy water on her underpants. I think
this is tied in somehow with the idea of woman born evil.
Isn't it Quentin who is most affected when she gets
muddy? Boy, if that didn't carry straight thru his life, and
into his death.
Beej
Topic:
The Sound and the Fury; Wm. Faulkner (53 of 59), Read 31
times
Conf:
Constant Reader
From:
Steve Warbasse swarbasse@iowabar.org
Date:
Saturday, February 09, 2002 01:14 PM
Yes, Susan, these are excellent notes that you are
contributing.
Beej, I think it is fair to say that the muddy underpants
that Caddy crawling up that tree with muddy underpants
is the most famous image in this book. It has been cussed
and discussed again and again by the lit. crit. crowd.
Incredible how much ink has been spilled in connection
with those underpants. I point this out only to say that
you are not the only one who is intrigued with the
symbolism of that image.
Steve
Topic:
The Sound and the Fury; Wm. Faulkner (54 of 59), Read 28
times
Conf:
Constant Reader
From:
Felix Miller felix3rd@bellsouth.net
Date:
Saturday, February 09, 2002 04:52 PM
Faulkner himself said that that image was the one from
which the whole story sprang. The image of a child trying
to do something forbidden, being somewhere
inappropriate and being caught. From Faulkner in the
University, a collection of lectures and classroom q & a at
the University of Virginia:
question: [since] Caddy figures so prominently, is
there...any reason why you didn't have a section...giving
her views or impressions of what was going on?
response:...the explanation of the whole book is in that. It
began with the picture of the little girl's muddy drawers,
climbing that tree to look in the parlor window with her
brothers that didn't have the courage to climb the tree
waiting to see what she saw.
Faulkner went on in the session to say that he didn't use
Caddy's point of view because "...Caddy was still to me
too beautiful and too moving to reduce her to telling what
was going on, that it would be more passionate to see her
through somebody else's eyes..."
All of this is subject to the same caveat I voiced above,
that WF was more concerned with writing his works than
explaining them.
Some days you win. Some days you lose. Some days it
rains.-Baseball Manager-maybe Earl Weaver.
Felix Miller
Topic:
The Sound and the Fury; Wm. Faulkner (55 of 59), Read 33
times
Conf:
Constant Reader
From:
Beej Connor connorva@mindspring.com
Date:
Sunday, February 10, 2002 11:32 AM
Thanks, Felix. So, Faulkner didn't write Caddie's section
because he felt it would have reduced her beauty and
passion? Hmm. So, did her absence from this family make
her 'larger than life' to these siblings, just as it does to the
reader? Did it give her more emotional power over them?
Over us?
How amazing it is that he took one little scene and
developed something with the magnificence of this novel
from it. But, I suppose that scene says it all about Caddy
and her brothers, if you think about it. She did have the
courage to look at what was really going on in that family,
set herself apart from her huddled siblings, etc. etc.
Steve, I'd love to get my hands on some of that 'cussing
and discussing.' I know there's a lot going on in that scene
and that I'm only seeing the very smallest tip of the
iceberg.
Beej
Topic:
The Sound and the Fury; Wm. Faulkner (56 of 59), Read 29
times
Conf:
Constant Reader
From:
Steve Warbasse swarbasse@iowabar.org
Date:
Monday, February 11, 2002 11:37 AM
I have a couple of these lit. crit. books on Faulkner, but
mine feature a good deal of psychological mumbo-jumbo.
The one Sara has is the one that many of us looked to
during our earlier reading. It is A Reader's Guide to William
Faulkner: The Novels by Edmond L. Volpe and Edward L.
Volpe. It was my impression that everyone liked that one
a good deal.
Steve
Topic:
The Sound and the Fury; Wm. Faulkner (57 of 59), Read 22
times
Conf:
Constant Reader
From:
Beej Connor connorva@mindspring.com
Date:
Monday, February 11, 2002 09:02 PM
Thanks for the recommendation. I did an online search for
this at Richmond's library's website, but they don't have
it.. which sort of surprised me, since Faulkner was
writer-in-residence at the University of Va.
(tho I'm positive Charlottesville's library will have it, and I
can request a transfer.)
Beej
Topic:
The Sound and the Fury; Wm. Faulkner (58 of 59), Read 19
times
Conf:
Constant Reader
From:
Felix Miller felix3rd@bellsouth.net
Date:
Monday, February 11, 2002 09:34 PM
Steve said: In fact I think it was St. Paul that screwed up
the religion.
And besides that, he wrote very obscurantist prose. An
abomination for those of us who value language. I can see
Jesus sitting down to supper with Caddy, but can't believe
He would have enjoyed breaking bread with Saul/Paul,
egotistically self-described as "chief among sinners" [can't
supply the reference at the moment, but will research)
Some days you win. Some days you lose. Some days it
rains.-Baseball Manager-maybe Earl Weaver.
Felix Miller
Topic:
The Sound and the Fury; Wm. Faulkner (59 of 59), Read 6
times
Conf:
Constant Reader
From:
Steve Warbasse swarbasse@iowabar.org
Date:
Tuesday, February 12, 2002 10:32 AM
Yes, I did say that, didn't I, Felix. It may have been a bit of
an overstatement because some of the epistles are now
believed to have been written by someone else. No doubt
that he wrote the two Corinthians and Romans. I intend to
return to those in the near future with an open mind and
as a result my amend my opinion.
Still, it's tough to imagine him hanging out with Mary
Magdalene.
Steve
Topic:
The Sound and the Fury; Wm. Faulkner (60 of 61), Read 16
times
Conf:
Constant Reader
From:
Felix Miller felix3rd@bellsouth.net
Date:
Wednesday, February 13, 2002 08:48 AM
Steve said: ...it's tough to imagine him hanging out with
Mary Magdalene.
Heh. Yes, indeed. A little problem with the distaff side of
creation, Paul had, I believe.
For me, Mary Magdalene would be interesting to talk to.
Also Brett Ashley, to veer completely off-topic. And into
fiction again.
But since the Conductor no longer conducts, off-topic is
without consequences...
Some days you win. Some days you lose. Some days it
rains.-Baseball Manager-maybe Earl Weaver.
Felix Miller
Topic:
The Sound and the Fury; Wm. Faulkner (61 of 61), Read 15
times
Conf:
Constant Reader
From:
Steve Warbasse swarbasse@iowabar.org
Date:
Wednesday, February 13, 2002 10:57 AM
Considering the heavy presence of Biblical references in
Faulkner, it may not be all that much off topic.
Steve
Prodigy discussion, June 1996
To: ALL Date: 06/27
From: MXDD10A DALE SHORT Time: 9:48 AM
THE SOUND AND THE FURY, William Faulkner *** To all who are,
like myself, still struggling through the dense tangled
thicket (replete with humidity) of TSATF, I offer this
overview excerpted from the Monarch study guide:
***
"THE SOUND AND THE FURY dramatizes a deterioration from the
past to the present," says Edmund Volpe. "A tragic sense of
loss is so predominant and pervasive in each section and in
almost every scene, that it can be considered the basic
theme of the novel--a theme similar to that of Eliot's 'The
Waste Land."
If Volpe is right and if that is the major theme of the
novel, then it is much too large a theme to be considered by
itself; other themes must be subsumed under it: modern life
as a "paradise lost," or loss of innocence; life as a tale
signifying nothing; man, if he is to survive, must endure.
Let us examine the Faulkner-Eliot theme first.
Both Eliot and Faulkner see modern society as
materialistic and commercialized, where humanistic values
have been routed by values of the marketplace and the
countinghouse and man in his self-centeredness has rejected
all the restraints, inhibitions, traditions, and values of
the past for a patently finite, sterile existence.
Both Eliot and Faulkner make use of the past to reveal the
aimlessness and sterility of the present. Eliot, for his
part, relies on historical or literary contrasts to evoke
those specific (but universal) values man respected in the
past: the meaningful, effectual rituals of primitive society
(all over the world) in contrast to the meaningless, sham
rituals of modern society; in fact, the disappearance of
ritual (both spiritual and sociological) from modern life
altogether. Without ceremony (especially the "ceremony of
innocence," in Yeats' phrase, or faith), Eliot says, along
with Yeats, "things fall apart."
Faulkner, for his part, makes use of the past in a far
less specific way; his values, according to some critics,
are those of ante-bellum Southern society, particularly in
TSATF. But Faulkner is not really that parochial; there is
very little evidence in the novel itself of a nostalgic
longing for the specific values of that time in Southern
history. When Quentin vaguely refers to the values of a
plantation society, it is only because he is actually a
"romantic adolescent," rather than a Southern reactionary
trying to turn back the clock to a self-contained, closed
society completely insulated from all historical, social,
and economic forces.
For Quentin, the present, to be sure, appears to be a
waste land, but the past that he (and Faulkner) longs for is
not that distant past but the immediate past--"the world of
childhood, innocent and idealistic..." One need but
juxtapose the idyllic childhood of the Compson brothers and
sister with their present life to feel and experience the
deterioration, decay, and loss that modern life (in
particular their generation, and Faulkner's) has bestowed
upon them.
And yet, as powerful as that theme may be, it derives most
of its force from its applicability, not merely to the
Compsons, one family, but to a much larger segment of
humanity, and thus becomes, like Eliot's poem, a metaphor
for the spiritual crisis of modern man...
***
Clearer now? Good.
>>Dale in Ala.
=============== Reply 1 of Note 94 =================
To: MXDD10A DALE SHORT Date: 06/27
From: ZRPD32A RICHARD HAGGART Time: 11:34 AM
Dale: Am not at all sure I agree (at this point) that
"Faulkner is not really that parochial". While he may not,
primarily, have been celebrating all those ante-bellum
values Volpe talks about, Faulkner's nostalgia was for a
place and a time that was defined by those values.
Something of a distinction without a difference to this
non-southerner. Again, as a non-southerner, I have yet to
"connect" with any of the characters or themes in TSATF --
although that Mr. Faulkner can certainly sling that ink
with a bit of style. So far, TSTATF kind of reminds me
emotionally of a wedding I attended down in South Carolina
25 odd years ago -- after we drank all night and the groom
and his brother had a fistfight in the cotton field next to
the house with the bride's two brothers, and we listened to
the chickens screaming at the rising sun, and then we drank
some more, I suddenly began to yearn for the road back
north. Whatever its virtues (which I still hold to be
debatable), I knew I didn't belong in that world.
Dick in Alaska, thankful to all the CR's making this
Faulkner experience possible
=============== Reply 2 of Note 94 =================
To: ZRPD32A RICHARD HAGGART Date: 06/27
From: MXDD10A DALE SHORT Time: 12:02 PM
Dick: Enjoyed (?) your account of the S.C. wedding; I've
been to a couple of its counterparts before I learned that a
greeting card w/check is much less hazardous to one's
health.
I'm reminded of Flannery O'Connor, early in her career,
who was told by one of her aunts, "Flannery, now that you're
beginning to have some measure of popular success I'd think
you'd want to write about a better class of people."
>>Dale in Ala., who isn't a Compson but sure recognizes
them...
=============== Reply 3 of Note 94 =================
To: ZRPD32A RICHARD HAGGART Date: 06/27
From: MXDD10A DALE SHORT Time: 12:33 PM
Dick: I've still got a ways to go in TSATF, but at the risk
of hair-splitting, it strikes me that terms such as
"antebellum value system" are by necessity so broad as to be
virtually meaningless in the abstract. It would be like
someone from Germany or Greece making categorical statements
about "life in America."
Are they talking about life in Portland, or in south L.A.?
In Sioux City, or the Hamptons? Etc. If there are any
common values embraced by Americans in 1996, I haven't seen
'em. Likewise for the complicated fabric of Southern
history: some aspects of it were unspeakably horrid, other
aspects sublimely beautiful. We're talking thousands of
locales and millions of human beings, each with a history
totally unlike any other but equally as relevant to the "big
picture" if anyone has the patience to view it from that
ground-level perspective.
While I think it's crucial that we know history and
evaluate its good, bad, and ugly with a hyper-critical eye,
I'm also convinced it's possible, even necessary, for both
Faulkner and ourselves to be selective in our nostalgia;
otherwise we fall into a bleakness and guilt so deep it
serves nobody and nothing, least of all our collective
futures, existing as we all do in this same leaky boat of
the present moment. >>Dale in Ala.
=============== Reply 4 of Note 94 =================
To: MXDD10A DALE SHORT Date: 06/27
From: EUCR61A RICHARD HAGGART Time: 2:08 PM
Dale: Theoretically true, but maybe not practically so.
After all, despite the fact that 'the south' is bigger than
most nations of the world, geographically and otherwise,
there seems to be a commonality of viewpoint among its
citizens that leads to shared values and opinions, at least
on a class basis (not suggesting that all the big house folk
have much in common with the boys running at the 'Nehi 500'
of course). If its an illusion, it is one that is projected
with good effect on the rest of us.
Dick in Alaska, considering Kurt Vonnegut's advice: be
careful what you pretend to be, since you tend to become
the pretence
=============== Reply 5 of Note 94 =================
To: MXDD10A DALE SHORT Date: 06/27
From: DCTW04A MARTY PRIOLA Time: 2:09 PM
Dale,
I can't quote it exactly, but the nostalga you're speaking
of reminds me for some reason of Ashley Wilkes' speech in
the film version of GONE WITH THE WIND. He's just told
Scarlett that he does indeed love her, but that he won't
betray Melanie. Then he says something to the effect of he
longs for a world that was ordered and he's watching the
whole society and way of life that he once knew vanish from
the face of the earth. Poigniant, tragic, and sad after a
fashion.
I believe that there were some aspects of the Antebellum
South that we lost in the War that we should have hung on
to. They're mythic, maybe, but isn't all the past? Like
that word--honor. R. E. Lee probably exemplifies it better
than anyone else; I think it's significant that nobody can
really write about Lee and make his life make any sense in
today's world. The contemporary accounts, per Shelby
Foote, make Lee sound like some sort of god. And the
affection and love his men had for him is amazing to me.
It's as if the later biographers decided that they couldn't
deal with Lee on Lee's own terms, so they set about to
villify him, to bring him down to their level. I'm
reminded of something else I read, this time from C. S.
Lewis's THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS. Screwtape is giving advice
to his nephew Wormwood about how to most effectively tempt
a soul, and he says that the best way to go about attacking
a religion is to degrade and demean its periphrial figures,
like Paul and the other Apostles. Then, only then, can you
attack Christ. I'm not sure where the analogy goes, but I
don't guess I'm morally obligated to connect all the dots.
--The Irrepressible DJP 6/27/96 12:43PM CT
=============== Reply 6 of Note 94 =================
To: MXDD10A DALE SHORT Date: 06/27
From: DCTW04A MARTY PRIOLA Time: 2:10 PM
Dale,
I'd also maintain that Volpe is wrong about his first
sentence.
I'd agree with it completely if it had read "THE SOUND AND
THE FURY dramatizes the deterioration of the past IN the
present." I think it's a subtle distinction, but one worth
making.
You can also read the novel as a book about (on one level)
time. Benjy has no concept of anything but the present.
Quentin lives in the past (totally, obsessively so), and
Jason is always looking to the future, so much so that he's
rootless. In fact, and this has just struck me, Jason
Compson may be the most "American" of all the characters in
the book. All that remains is Dilsey, who sees the world
in balance.
--The Irrepressible DJP 6/27/96 12:49PM CT
=============== Reply 7 of Note 94 =================
To: EUCR61A RICHARD HAGGART Date: 06/27
From: MXDD10A DALE SHORT Time: 3:56 PM
Dick: True enough. But it's still been my experience that
generalizations are our biggest stumbling block in trying to
understand the people of an era, region, race, civilization,
religion, or gender different than our own.
It's the old trap of the syllogism: Residents of Alaska
believe X, Dick is a resident of Alaska, therefore Dick
believes X. (More likely is the conclusion that Dick, being
an independent thinker, *doesn't* believe X, but it's still
an oversimplification.)
What I'm after, I think, is an approach that honors the
paradoxes of individual human lives above the more
manageable shorthand of statistics. A subtle difference, as
IDJP would say, but a very important one, especially to
those on the receiving end.
What say ye, Marty and all? Are you ever bothered by
anyone drawing inferences about you because you're "a
Tennessean," "an Iowan," "an Alaskan," "a Californian," "an
attorney," etc.? And is this any different than referring to
Southerners in the main?
>>Dale, getting the picky stuff out of the way before the
main Faulkner event...
=============== Reply 8 of Note 94 =================
To: MXDD10A DALE SHORT Date: 06/27
From: EUCR61A RICHARD HAGGART Time: 5:26 PM
Dale: I'd modify your syllogism just a tad: "All Alaskans
believe 'X'; Dick is an Alaska lawyer; Dick may or may not
believe 'X', but he will defend it to the death, for the
usual exhorbitant fee."
Dick in Alaska, who would feel very much at home as a member
of any southern bar association
=============== Reply 9 of Note 94 =================
To: EUCR61A RICHARD HAGGART Date: 06/27
From: VMMN97A FELIX MILLER Time: 9:58 PM
THE SOUND AND THE FURY*********************
I finished re-reading this book Sunday, and am full of
thoughts that did not occur to me the first or second or
third times through. Reading this book in a concentrated
period of time, with few breaks, makes the Compson family
an oppressive, enclosing little world of its own, mirroring
in small the passions and pathos of the rest of humanity.
The old Compson place becomes almost tactile, from the
weathered, paintless boards, to the scent of honeysuckle,
associated by the mad, lost son, Quentin, with his equally
lost sister, Caddy, sitting with her beaux on the swing in
the odor of honeysuckle. For those of you in the south,
familiar with the rampant fecundity of honeysuckle, the
association made by Quentin of sexual libertinism with the
vine is not a far-fetched one.
I have always found TSATF enormously satisfying to read,
particularly in the multiple points of view. Faulkner said
that the different narratives of the same events
represented successive attempts on his part, each failing,
to tell the story of the muddy-drawered Caddy. I don't
think that is the whole truth, hardly surprising in a
writer who never confined his fictionalizing to his
writings. I think the story of Caddy, which is the story
of maimed souls and inexorable history, would not have been
complete with any one point of view, not even the
omniscient one represented by the fourth section, which
Faulkner described as his own attempt to tell the story he
had tried to narrate through Benjy, Quentin and Jason.
The story(s) revolves around Candace Compson, the fierce,
flawed spirit who is doomed (a favorite word in this book
for WF) by the history of her family and her region. That
Caddy's own actions accelerate both her own fall and that
of the Compsons' as a family is part of the doom that has
hunted the Compsons down through multiple generations.
Faulkner anatomizes the relationships of the present
generation of Compsons with constant reference to their
ancestors, both the glorious, infrequent success, and the
more characteristic failures. In the four sections of the
book as first published, there are asides and oblique
references by all the "normal" Compsons to the oppressive,
the receding shadows of forefathers. Benjy, of course, is
free of the sense of past, if not of its effects. In the
"Appendix" I referred to in an earlier note, Faulkner
greatly amplifies the Compson lineage, giving capsule bios
of each of them, with emphasis on the traits which resonate
down to the last of the line, Jason IV, who by remaining
childless has exerted his cold sanity in bringing to an end
the Compson doom. As a patronymic, at least. I'm sure
there are casual children in Quentin2's future. Once was
more than enough for Caddy.
I'm not sure how well I like the flash-forward in the
appendix showing Caddy in WWII France. The idea of her as
riding in a Mercedes, "...ageless and beautiful, cold,
serene and damned," in the company of a German general, is
quite believable. But I don't think it adds to the effect
of the book. The genealogy, though, is fine, especially
for those who are just grappling with the thick, tough
intertwining vines of family relationships so temporally
dislocated.
I like the end of the original book; the last sight of a
Compson we get is of the empty, cornflower-blue eyes of
Benjy. Alpha and Omega of the Compsons.
But I am falling into logorrhea, a natural outcome of being
lost in Faulkner for several days in a row.[cont'd next
note]
=============== Reply 10 of Note 94 =================
To: EUCR61A RICHARD HAGGART Date: 06/27
From: VMMN97A FELIX MILLER Time: 9:58 PM
[cont'd from previous note] I am not much in doubt, by the
way, that WF in this book has made something universal out
of a very intensely Southern scene and culture. I realize
that the calculus of this particular geometry of the "human
heart in conflict with itself" [WF's description of his
subject in all his work] may be cryptic to those in other
regions, but give it a chance, folks.
Coeval with most everybody,
Felix Miller
=============== Reply 11 of Note 94 =================
To: VMMN97A FELIX MILLER Date: 06/27
From: KDEX08B RUTH BAVETTA Time: 10:26 PM
Everybody,
I had thought that I was going to skip this one. I haven't
read any Faulkner since I did THE SOUND AND THE FURY and AS
I LAY DYING when I was in college the first time. (Also THE
RIEVERS?) That's 40 years. I remember zilcho about the
books except that I found them hard slogging and it put me
off Faulkner. But this discussion looks like it's going to
be so fascinating I may go back to the library, return the 6
books I checked out yesterday and take out ONE book in their
place, TSATF.
Anyway, before things really get going here, and in light of
the notes Dale posted from the Monarch Notes, I thought it
would behoove us to revisit the Shakespeare quotation from
which Faulkner took his title. It's from Macbeth and it'll
be familiar to most of you, but it bears re-reading.
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more; it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Ruth, whose favorite Shakespeare is Macbeth
=============== Reply 12 of Note 94 =================
To: MXDD10A DALE SHORT Date: 06/27
From: VMMN97A FELIX MILLER Time: 10:49 PM
Dale,
Say what? So what we read about in TSATF is "...the idyllic
childhood of the Compson brothers and sister..." It seems
to me that the childhood of the Compsons is about as
dysfunctional as they come. Jason falling on his face
because he prefigures his grasping adulthood in keeping his
hands in his pockets, Quentin mooning about like the
suicide-in-waiting he is. And over it all, like an
irritating thenody, the querulous, inflectionless voice of
the mother from hell. The child is father (and mother) of
the adult here, and in Faulkner's nonlinear time, the
fathers and children are seamless. I think that the
childhood of the Compsons is the place Quentin looks back
on, for sure, but with a horrified impotence to overcome
it.
Oops, there go the endless loops of words again. Faulkner
is catching.
Felix Miller
=============== Reply 13 of Note 94 =================
To: VMMN97A FELIX MILLER Date: 06/28
From: YHJK89A CATHERINE HILL Time: 1:09 AM
The word and concept of "honor" are tempting, Marty, but
actually come down to being almost an antithesis of
Christianity. If you think about it, the whole
"honor/shame" thing was really turned upside down in the
Sermon on the Mount. And as for Southern honor - It may
have been Mary Chestnut or a more anonymous writer quoted by
Catherine Clinton or Elizabeth Fox-Genovese who wondered
plaintively why a wife's committing adultery "dishonored"
her husband when no "dishonor" attached if he did it
himself! Wonderful control device, that concept. I admit
Lee tried to act decently on any and all occasions, but
he'll never be in my pantheon, and neither will any glory of
the Old South. Hank Williams Jr. probably WOULD have it
good if the South had won; the system benefitted only rich,
white males, and he qualifies.
The Monarch Notes passage, Eliot invocation and all,
reminded me irresistibly of a much lighter poet, W.S.
Gilbert - "The idiot who praises with enthusiastic tone/All
centuries but this/And every country but his own"
Cathy
=============== Reply 14 of Note 94 =================
To: KDEX08B RUTH BAVETTA Date: 06/28
From: DCTW04A MARTY PRIOLA Time: 3:30 AM
Ruth,
Thanks for the Shakespeare. Every time I am exposed to his
language, no matter how many times I read it, I'm
overwhelmed. The same is true of Faulkner.
The mark, I think, of the masters.
By the way, it's Foote's position that Faulkner was every
bit as good at descriptive writing as Shakespeare. Do you
guys agree?
--The Irrepressible DJP 6/28/96 2:00AM CT
=============== Reply 15 of Note 94 =================
To: VMMN97A FELIX MILLER Date: 06/28
From: DCTW04A MARTY PRIOLA Time: 3:30 AM
Felix,
What a penetrating analysis.
Don't believe I could have done any better if I tried, so
let's just say that for now, I agree with you.
I'll see if I can find some quibble to expound upon. But
right now, I don't see anything.
--The Irrepressible DJP 6/28/96 2:04AM CT
=============== Reply 16 of Note 94 =================
To: DCTW04A MARTY PRIOLA Date: 06/28
From: MXDD10A DALE SHORT Time: 1:35 PM
Marty & All: I was a terrible student of literature in
college (with the grades to prove it), largely because I
could never get my mind around the issues that the questions
in the back of the book considered supreme: sociological,
political, thematic, ad infinitum. And that's certainly true
for me with this Faulkner novel.
My selfish focus has always been on the language, the
voice, the wonderful anticipation of a gifted writer
suddenly breaking into a realm where the language transcends
itself and its maker--sends a thunderclap through your brain
and bloodstream, and permanently alters in some small part
the way you view the world.
To me that's certainly in evidence in the later chapters
of TSATF, maybe even more impressive by contrast after
finally surfacing from the purposely disjointed Benjy
section.
One example of many, from the Quentin chapter:
"I dont suppose anybody ever deliberately listens to a
watch or a clock. You dont have to. You can be oblivious to
the sound for a long while, then in a second of ticking it
can create in the mind unbroken the long diminishing parade
of time you didnt hear. Like Father said down the long and
lonely light-rays you might see Jesus walking, like..."
The artists who move me most aren't the most polished, or
entertaining, or facile, but the ones pushing the envelope
of their particular form--as the critic who said of
Beethoven that his music "reached out to touch the hand of
God."
Of the living authors I've read, it seems to me that
Cormac McCarthy (who is mentioned here from time to time;
have you read him? ) is most brilliantly pushing the
envelope now, but each generation builds on others and it's
clear he was affected by Faulkner's amazing achievement.
Which brings me to my particular devil's advocacy of the
moment (I think it's a mineral deficiency, folks; I just
made a vitamin-shop run, so please be patient until the
chromium and potassium kick in):
I wonder if we don't do writers a disservice by expecting
them to create such transcendent stuff as above in their
spare time from being well-rounded, compassionate, model
citizens? Not to endorse pathology (though I've got a vested
interest in doing so ), but I think it's easy to
underestimate the merciless intuitive and emotional
high-wire that writers of his caliber perform on, daily, in
their awful solitude--the single-mindedness that it takes to
achieve on that level, in any endeavor, and the inevitable
emotional stunting and blind spots that result.
It's like expecting a world-class athlete to walk off the
playing field and sound like William Jennings Bryan in the
post-game interview, or a soldier/policeman to walk straight
from the horrors of the battlefield/mean-streets, flip a
mental switch and start teaching Sunday School. It's not
gonna happen in this imperfect world.
When Faulkner said "Any writer worth his salt would sell
his grandmother for a good paragraph," I don't think he was
being anti-granny (though there's probably a special
interest group who feels otherwise) but rather commenting
on his--and by extension, any serious writer's--priorities
in view of a viciously difficult undertaking.
I feel sorry for anybody who "can't separate the artist
from the art," for whatever reasons, as they're doomed to
miss some of the most rewarding pleasures in life. I've got
a small shelf here reserved for books by totally lovable,
kind, far-sighted, and blameless authors, and at present
it's occupied solely by a quarter-inch of dust.
(And not even a biding, dreamy, and victorious dust, at
that...)
>>Dale in Ala.
=============== Reply 17 of Note 94 =================
To: MXDD10A DALE SHORT Date: 06/28
From: NPVX84A MARIA BUSTILLOS Time: 8:57 PM
Dear Shaman, so beautifully put. I think a distinction
should be made between loving someone's work and loving his
manner of living, his politics, his habits. One is an
aesthetic judgement, the other historical, or moral, for
lack of a better word, and they are not mutually exclusive.
Isn't it possible to loathe the man and love his work??
Picasso comes to mind; also Beethoven, Boswell, Tolstoy,
Bacon, Gide, Waugh, and Ruskin. This is just off the top of
my head!! The surprising thing really is when one finds a
writer or artist whom one can admire personally as well as
professionally.
=============== Reply 18 of Note 94 =================
To: NPVX84A MARIA BUSTILLOS Date: 06/29
From: ZRPD32A RICHARD HAGGART Time: 0:11 AM
M: In point of fact, I think most driven, highly talented
people tend to be somewhat loathsome, and get more so, as
their success increases. Certainly the examples you cite fit
that pattern. How Dale has remained so loveable for so long,
as he slides helplessly toward fame and fortune, is
something of a mystery. Perhaps it's the old saw, 'tis the
exception that proves the rule. Anyway, on this Faulkner
thing. When, exactly, did Quentin have his sex change
operation? Or do these southern literary deviates run around
naming EVERYONE Quentin?
Dick in Alaska, where we label boys and girls to suit
=============== Reply 19 of Note 94 =================
To: ZRPD32A RICHARD HAGGART Date: 06/29
From: DCTW04A MARTY PRIOLA Time: 0:57 AM
Dick,
When did you notice this certain suspicious duality? I
guess that means you're somewhere near the tale end of
Benjy's section. If you really want to know, I'll tell you
what's going on. Unless Steve forbids it, that is.
--The Irrepressible DJP 6/28/96 11:51PM CT
=============== Reply 20 of Note 94 =================
To: DCTW04A MARTY PRIOLA Date: 06/29
From: KDEX08B RUTH BAVETTA Time: 2:12 AM
Marty,
We were supposed to catch on to this Quentin/Quentin duality
by the end of Benjy's section? I must be a little slow on
the uptake. I figured Benjy, being a few players short of a
team, just wasn't that good at keeping the sexes straight.
I just caught on now, at the beginning of Jason's section.
Funny thing, I remembered this as being a massive book.
It's not too big at all. I may finish by bedtime.
Ruth, who wouldn't mind a score card, seeing as the Redlands
Public Library didn't have any annotated copies.
=============== Reply 21 of Note 94 =================
To: MXDD10A DALE SHORT Date: 06/29
From: NMTT86A JAMES HEATH Time: 9:39 AM
The answer to the Quentin/Quentin problem is that
there are 2 Quentins as revealed in the Appendix Faulkner
wrote later. There is Quentin, Caddy's brother, and
Quentin, Caddy's daughter, who was named for that brother.
There are also a couple of earlier Quentins in the family
tree.
The Appendix is at the front of my edition and is
certainly the scorecard you need to tell all of the players.
A few interesting issues : 1. Is the world being
destroyed by the materialism of the present? 2. Do
great writers have to be jerks? 3.Is it fair to consider a
writer's life in relation to his work?
MATERIALISM:
Whether it is antebellum South or antebellum Europe,
we all have a tendency to idealize the past. The past we
idealize is the past of the aristocrat who didn't have to
work to support himself.
Unfortunately, while Mr. Darcy was courting Miss
Bennett, my ancestors were living in one room unheated
cottages, working 18 hour days, and dying young from
preventable diseases. While Scarlett and Rhett were
recovering from the war, my ancestors were scraping by on
subsistence farms.
In spite of the Monarch notes, I think Faulkner
saw this pretty well. His characters may idealize the
past, but he doesn't. All of us would like to be Bertie
Wooster with no job and no greater concerns than the color
of our socks, but that's not how things work.
WRITERS AS JERKS
I don't really believe that you have to be a jerk to
be a great writer. Working in isolation at a high
emotional peak may produce certain unpleasant habits, but
those habits are pretty equally distributed throughout the
population.
The writer's reputation is due more to the fact that
his life gets a lot more attention than those of the mass
of humanity. Every time he has a bad day or makes a bad
decision, it gets highlighted and preserved for eternity.
My personal delusion is that I am a better person now than
I was 5 years ago, but if I were a writer that person 5
years ago would be ME.
WRITER'S LIFE & WRITER'S WORK
One of the central tenets of literary criticism in my
college years was that it is absolutely WRONG to consider a
writer's life in connection to his work. His or her
personality has nothing to do with the text.
This has always struck me as silly. A fellow spends
the better part of his life writing books and we pretend
that the books having nothing to do with who he is. I
think the books are exactly who he is.
Robert Frost may have been cold to his children, but
he is also someone who could feel the sentiments behind
"The Death of the Hired Man". There is a lot to be gained
from considering the contradictions.
I'll dispose of all of the other burning issues in
the world in my next note.
--Jim in Oregon
=============== Reply 22 of Note 94 =================
To: DCTW04A MARTY PRIOLA Date: 06/29
From: ZRPD32A RICHARD HAGGART Time: 11:14 AM
IDJP: Nah, don't spoil it. I think I've deduced there are
two distinct Quentins here, one a girly sort and the other
a baby boy sort. The girly sort appears be making out with
a guy while Benjy is being towed around on his 33rd
birthday, and she is also being yelled at periodically by a
grownup Jason. Apparently Daddy's dead by this time, and
anybody with any sense is wishing Momma would go join him.
The baby Quentin in flashback is apparently the same
Quentin who is now doing Daliesque things with Grandpa's
watch in Chapter II. This grownup Quentin appears to be
contemplating suicide, dropping out of school, or something
equally desperate, but I'm not sure yet.
Dick in Alaska, plowing a head
=============== Reply 23 of Note 94 =================
To: NMTT86A JAMES HEATH Date: 06/29
From: ZRPD32A RICHARD HAGGART Time: 11:14 AM
Jim: Ah, you spoiled it. Anyway, Caddy has a daughter, eh?
Being raised by Jason? Who was going to be made into a
banker by Caddy's fiance? Who always had his hands in his
pockets and kept toppling over? And I know they're selling
off land to send the real Quentin to Harvard, and are all
living, cheek to jowl, in one house like a bunch of Russian
immigres. A house so small, apparently, they don't even
have an attic in which to lock poor Benjy, who has to be
moved from room to room, howling.
Really, this is just like that trip to South Carolina. All
I want is a nice clean room at the Howard Johnsons, to get
away from all these nutty people (at least Benjy has a nice
genetic/biological excuse).
Dick in Alaska, enjoying this but not at all sure Faulkner
is his particular cup of Four Roses
=============== Reply 24 of Note 94 =================
To: ZRPD32A RICHARD HAGGART Date: 06/29
From: UPDQ58A PEGGY RAMSEY Time: 12:50 PM
Sir Richard,
I am enjoying your reactions to Faulkner, mostly because
they are identical to my own. I was getting whiplash by
the end of the Benjy section. I think Faulkner had done an
admirable job of portraying what might be inside the mind
of a (oh, what is the PC term these days!) mentally
handicapped individual -- I just wonder if we needed to see
that much of it. Less might have been more.
I'm also surprised to find that the writing hasn't
gotten a whole lot clearer in the next section. At the
risk of exposing my own gaping ingnorance, does anyone have
any thoughts on why this is? I mean, I'm a hundred pages
in, and I've barely gotten the characters straight. Is
this "Art," as opposed to "Story?" Why is Bill making us
work this hard?
Peggy, taking comfort in the fact that she was this
confused at this point in THE WHITE HOTEL too....
=============== Reply 25 of Note 94 =================
To: UPDQ58A PEGGY RAMSEY Date: 06/29
From: FNMN56E LYNN EVANS Time: 1:08 PM
Hi Peggy -- I guess I find it easiest to try not to sort
things out more than they're "sortable" at any given moment.
The thing I like about the Benjy section is how the
connections between "episodes" of course fly in the face of
how most of us make connections in our own lives. The sight
of the river, the smell of Caddy's hair, the endless
procession of funeral, wakes, weddings, and parties, lead
seamlessly from one memory to another for Benjy, from waking
reality to memory and back again, so that it's difficult to
tell where one begins and the other ends. Given the world
Faulkner is describing, in which all the assumptions about
how life was organized with its "set" connections, and given
that that world was then blown apart, leaving people to
reinvent their connections with each other, reorganize their
lives, we're left wondering if Benjy's way of organizing the
world (in terms of his senses) isn't as reasonable as, and
indeed more stable than, anyone's.
Also, I think it's interesting that Benjy doesn't really
distinguish between who's black and who's white (you deduce
this from the things the people say to each other), whose
fortunes are up and whose down (you deduce this from the
subtle, and sometimes not so subtle, distribution of power)
-- Benjy simply "records". In its own way maybe a tale told
by an idiot is the most "objective" history there is. Lynn
=============== Reply 26 of Note 94 =================
To: UPDQ58A PEGGY RAMSEY Date: 06/29
From: KWWP63A SARA SAUERS Time: 2:36 PM
Peggy & All:
I, too, was expecting some clarity in the second
section. This is tough. Bordering on reader cruelty, I
would say.
Benjy's was actually an easier section for me to read.
Not because of its clarity, but on an emotional level. At
least he found a few moments of comfort. (The smells were
okay again sometimes.) The trip through Quentin's mind
absolutely drained me. This man got no break at all. No
escape from his own relentlessly obsessive mind. I could
barely sit still to finish this section. I wanted to run
and jump into freezing Lake Michigan to free myself from
HIS despair! LET ME OUTTA HERE!
Instead I am writing this. And instead of complaining
about feeling clueless about the "story" at this point, I
should probably be admiring Faulkner for being able to get
this pre-suicidal mind down in writing. I mean, I really
don't even know what this book is all about, but I find
myself responding strongly simply to the way the minds
of Benjy and Quentin are processing.
And Richard, my brave friend, thank you for bringing up
that Quentin/Quentin sex-change deal. That one really put
me over in the frustration category last night. And of
course, self-confident soul that I am not, I was so sure
this was making sense to everyone else! I even considered:
1) that I had mistaken Quentin for a male in the first
place by reading poorly, and 2) that this pronoun had been
mis-printed a few times in my edition!!
Marty, NO FAIR GLOATING!!
Whew. Perhaps a swim is in order before taking on
Jason's mind.
-Sara
=============== Reply 27 of Note 94 =================
To: MXDD10A DALE SHORT Date: 06/29
From: WSRF10B SHERRY KELLER Time: 2:59 PM
I'm in the Jason section now, and I haven't posted anything
yet because I didn't want to sound stupid. I'm so glad,
Richard, that you mentioned the Quentin gender question. My
book doesn't have the appendix in it and I thought maybe I
just wasn't able to keep track. I found a great Web page,
the William Faulkner Page. It has synopses of all his books
and it has a whole lot of stuff about TS&TF (which I haven't
read yet as that would be cheating). That was where I saw
the Geneology (which I DID read) and realized my confusion
was well-placed and not some defect in the part of my brain
that keeps these things straight. Well, to my point. Does
anyone here wonder why (& how) Faulkner wrote the way he
did? Do you think he sat down and deliberately decided where
NOT to put punctuation? or do you think the thing just
flowed out of him? Was this style confusing deliberately?
I expect the answer is "yes", but now I ask, what kinds of
reasons would he have to make the Quentins get all mixed up
(like the smell of honeysuckle) in our (the readers') minds?
I'm sure the dreamlike quality and the mixed-up times and
the confusion are all of what make him a "genius". But why?
In my youth I have read ABSALOM, ABSALOM, AS I LAY DYING
and THE HAMLET. I don't remember ever being this confused.
Maybe old age wants (P.S., my spellchecker changed all the
"Quentins" to "Questions". I thought that was fitting.)
=============== Reply 28 of Note 94 =================
To: WSRF10B SHERRY KELLER Date: 06/29
From: ZRPD32A RICHARD HAGGART Time: 3:32 PM
All: Just finished the Quentin section and nodded off. Now
I'm up from my nap and feeling much better. Is the silly
little sod going to jump in the river or not? Otherwise
things going fairly smoothly. (asbestos?) As to style, it
seems Faulkner is pretty heavily into this stream of
consciousness stuff, sort of like Joyce, except that 'south
speak' isn't quite so impenetrable as 'Dublin-speak'. In
some ways it seems very reminiscent of the Ondaatje we've
read, except that I don't find the story or characters in
Faulkner very accessible. Too archaic, too remote
culturally from me, I suppose. So, did Caddy have an
abortion or just a baby? Did she really boink every guy in
town , except apparently, Quentin? Is Quentin II Caddy's
daughter? Would it be too much for Quentin II to be Caddy
AND Quentin I's daughter? I vote yes, that would be too
much, but who knows what evil lurks in the honeysuckle,
along with Nancy's bones.
Dick in Alaska, forging ahead (which is quite different
from 'plowing a head' which is probably some sort of
obscure southern usage that my subconscious plucked out of
my reptile brain)
=============== Reply 29 of Note 94 =================
To: FNMN56E LYNN EVANS Date: 06/29
From: NCSH82B BARBARA MOORS Time: 3:35 PM
Lynn,
Great note...I've finished TSATF, but am thinking that
I've got to go back for a reread as it is being discussed.
I gave up trying to fit together the puzzle pieces about
half-way through the Benjy section and just plowed ahead
letting the pieces drop in place where they would.
And, it was a very frustrating section for me until I
looked back at it from the perspective of the rest of the
story. Then...I had much the same reaction to his sense of
immediacy as you did. And, I found myself admiring the way
Faulkner understood that everything was now to him,
including his memories that he couldn't perceive as only
memories...and then the juxtoposition of how past and
present fit together could be seen more clearly than when
we insist on chronological order.
A question for all...I picked up my edition of this
book at a used book store quite some time ago and didn't
pay much attention to it. However, now I'm noticing that
it purports to be "The Corrected Text". The publisher's
note says that it "is based on a comparison--under the
direction of Noel Polk--of the first edition and Faulker's
original manuscript and carbon typescript." Any comments
on the significance of this?
Barb
=============== Reply 30 of Note 94 =================
To: NCSH82B BARBARA MOORS Date: 06/29
From: VMMN97A FELIX MILLER Time: 5:19 PM
Barbara,
I first saw one of those "corrected text" editions this
week, after finishing my reading of an older Modern Library
edition. After looking at the changes listed in the back of
the book, I don't know that anything major is happening
with these changes. Some changes simplify individual
sentences, some amplify other sentences. The usual
comment on WF's style being that his sentences go on
forever, probably most readers would opt for more reduction
of length.
You are right, I think, to have just "plowed ahead" with
reading the Benjy and other sections without too much
effort at placing every event and reference before going
on. My own theory on the placing and style of each section
is that there is a progression from formlessness to order
in the sections as presented. Benjy is incapable of
organizing his memories in time or any other way; he
functions as a sort of unedited recorder of events. His
section also covers the most ground, and every important
event, usually by direct observation. Quentin and Jason
provide two very structured views of the material that
flowed through Benjy's mind without alteration or comment.
The fourth section, from an omniscient viewpoint, focuses
on the events of the final day in the time period covered
by the book. The fourth section would have made no sense if
we had not read the three previous sections. In fact, only
the first section would give you the story by itself,
although not in nearly the depth it does with the
other sections.
Faulkner said, as I noted in the post earlier, that
each section was a fresh attempt to tell the story, all of
which failed. One of the reasons I feel that WF was being
a little playful in this remark is the interconnectedness
of each section, and their dependence on the order they
appear in for the effect they have.The exception to this is
the appendix, which Jim Heath mentioned was in the front of
his edition. That was a great idea on some editor's part.
I wish my first reading of TSATF had been like that. I
can't see any point in the confusion of characters, it
doesn't really help or illuminate the story.
Felix Miller
(http://caladan.chattanooga.net/~dreedle) 6/29/96 4:34PM ET
=============== Reply 31 of Note 94 =================
To: ZRPD32A RICHARD HAGGART Date: 06/29
From: VMMN97A FELIX MILLER Time: 5:19 PM
Sir Richard,
I wanted to tell you how enjoyable your posts on TSATF are.
I have laughed at every one of your comments. Evidently
you are one of the many who does not have the appendix in
your edition, which would clarify the character
identifications for you. Somewhere I've read that WF told
Malcolm Cowley, who instigated the writing of the appendix,
that the book would have been better with the appendix to
start with, that it made everything come together "...like
the touch of a magician's wand." Faulkner probably
exaggerated the clarity possible for a first-time reader of
this book, but the appendix is a great help.
As for the remoteness of the story and characters for you,
this is of course a matter of individual preference. All
literature eventually becomes inaccessible due to age, even
Shakespeare will someday be read exclusively by specialists
in the study of Elizabethan culture. TSATF is about the
destruction of a family through emotional sterility and
individual acts of cruelty. That the family involved is
southern matters, positively or otherwise, to some people,
to others it does not. There are many books, and many
readers, so the caravan moves on. I hope you will continue
your comments to the end of the book; I look forward to
your comments on Jason.
Felix Miller
(http://caladan.chattanooga.net/~dreedle) 6/29/96 4:58PM ET
=============== Reply 32 of Note 94 =================
To: KWWP63A SARA SAUERS Date: 06/29
From: VMMN97A FELIX MILLER Time: 5:19 PM
Sara,
Surely Marty will not gloat over your confusion. I think
deliberate blurring of characters would be cruel, too. I
don't think Faulkner was intending quite that sort of
effect, although even with this confusion you obviously
felt very deeply about the characters he created. So the
book is working for you, although needlessly obscure at
times. Please hang in there. Oh, and after Jason's
section, you will want another swim, probably, but for
different reasons. Cleansing yourself of the lingering
taste of a unrelievedly despicable character.
Courage,
Felix Miller
(http://caladan.chattanooga.net/~dreedle) 6/29/96 5:20PM ET
=============== Reply 33 of Note 94 =================
To: VMMN97A FELIX MILLER Date: 06/29
From: ZRPD32A RICHARD HAGGART Time: 9:36 PM
Felix: Funny you should ask about Jason, Jr. Some sort of
minor bug has laid me up today so I've been napping and
reading and just finished the Jason chapter. He is truly
one of the great twirps of literature. Could easily have
wandered in from Dickens, just as the ancestral Compsons
limped across the sea from England. Reminds me a great deal
of Nigel Terry's portrayal of Prince John in "Lion in
Winter" -- if only the prince had a job in a rural
Mississippi hardware store and could steal money from a
minor ward. Hard to know here to start with this guy -- he
is so despicable, so Jax beer sullen and resentful, so
cloyingly self-congratulatory, such a MODERN southern sort
of guy. I can tell you honestly, that the Alaska trailer
court business would be flat on its back, but for the
Jason Compsons who have immigrated to our fair country.
Which is not to say we are ungreatful for the rest of the
country's sharing with us -- trailer parks are an important
part of our local industrial base.
Now, style and story. We certainly are out of the stream of
consciousness weeds aren't we? But of course increased
clarity of narration doesn't change the horrifying flaws in
the Compson family -- Jason who is, theoretically, whole
and sane, sees no more clearly that did poor old Benjy or
waterlogged Quentin I.
Fear not, o' happy grain grinder on the mountain -- I'm not
giving up on this one by a long shot. While I may not love
these characters, this is one hell of a book and with
writing to match. And when we're done, there's some more
questions I have about this Faulkner guy -- like why does
he bury himself in Mississippi? Why does he flee the
cosmopolitan experience, except through literature?
Dick in Alaska, wading into Part IV
=============== Reply 34 of Note 94 =================
To: ZRPD32A RICHARD HAGGART Date: 06/29
From: KDEX08B RUTH BAVETTA Time: 10:38 PM
All,
Finished up TSATF this morning after breakfast. Why did I
remember it as so difficult when I read it before? It
wasn't that bad, especially if you compare it with something
like ULYSSES. Someone here remarked that they saw Joyce in
Faulkner. I doo, too. I agree with Lynn and Barbara that
when reading stream of consciousness stuff like the Benjy
chapter and parts of the Quentin chapter, it's best to just
go with the flow. If you stop trying to jam every piece of
the jigsaw in place immediately, most of it will sort of
fall together of its own accord when you have enough of it
under your belt. The Benjy chapter, which people are
moaning about here, was my favorite part of the book. I'll
reread that this evening just for the fun of it. I wonder
how it would read with line breaks, like poetry.
I found Quentin's stuff the most difficult part. Maybe it
says something about me, that I'm able to get into the mind
of a Benjy easier than the mind of a suicidal obsessive.
And Dick, I wasn't at all sure that Caddy wasn't boinking
(as you so delicately put it) her brother. Quentin-she's
genesis is extremely murky, and I think meant to be so.
Jason, of course, is pure unadulterated essence of
sonuvabitch whose only redeeming characteristic is that he's
readable.
Lynn, I don't think Benjy's mind works that differently than
ours. Haven't you ever found yourself thinking of something
and wondered "How did I get to this?" Sometimes it's fun
to trace all the baggage cars in your train of thought
backwards and discover the links. Our minds dart all over
the place all the time. (At least mine does. ) It's
just that we realize what's going on and Benjy doesn't.
Ruth, in southern California, where summer roared in with
temperatures over 100 and strong breezes that have me
scanning the hills for smoke
=============== Reply 35 of Note 94 =================
To: MXDD10A DALE SHORT Date: 06/29
From: ZRPD32A RICHARD HAGGART Time: 11:42 PM
Well, I'm done, if not actually done for. A truly
interesting book and reading experience. I loved the
ending: Jason, Jr. leaping into action, completely
unchanged, to bring meaningless order out of the
meaningless chaos. As long as the world passed by Benjy,
from left to right, all would be well. The merry-go-round
spins on and only the Caddys and the Quentins get off.
I'm curious about this appendix version -- who published
it? I could probably just read that over a latte at Borders
(our new Barnes and Noble opens in just a few days -- I'm
so excited). Does it cast any light on a theory I'm
developing: that it was Caddy's departure from the
merry-go-round that brought about the ultimate collapse of
the family? As long as the players stay on the stage, then
the idiot's tale can go on, uninterrupted. But one missing
actor, and voila! Chaos on the golf course! Kind of a silly
theory maybe, but all I've come up with so far.
I do believe that this book has among the most
intellectually satisfying structures of any book I've ever
encountered. Consider the fragmentary, chaotic (three times
now I've used that word in this post, but it seems nothing
else will do) nature of Benjy's chapter -- but the
information is all there, internalized and consistent,
brilliantly scattered by the author. And then the Quentin
chapter, with the stream of consciousness and movements in
memory and time; same thing, with such extraordinary
attention to detail. And the final two chapters, bringing
it all together in more traditional narrative forms, and
neatly finishing out a rather exciting story and chase
sequence.
All this, and Faulkner (according to my encyclopedia
article he was born Falkner and put in the 'u' later, for
literary reasons. Comment?) did it when he was about 30
years old. Hell,I couldn't have READ that book when I was
30 years old.
Next time: Universal themes or just a case of local boy
makes really good? ============== Note
Dick in Alaska, mightily impressed in spite of all those
snide misgivings
=============== Reply 36 of Note 94 =================
To: KDEX08B RUTH BAVETTA Date: 06/29
From: FNMN56E LYNN EVANS Time: 11:51 PM
Ruth -- You're right, of course, that our minds do work just
so. Perhaps the difference is that we continually attempt to
make sense of our histories, are constantly shuffling our
sensations, then ordering and reordering and shuffling again,
While Benjy's mind is like an endless tape, ever recording,
never editing.
Dick, I like your theory that it was Caddy's departure
that sent all the players spinning out of their orbits, as
if she had exercised some kind of centripetal force on them,
by her very presence. But what is this appendix version?
Sounds interesting... Lynn
=============== Reply 37 of Note 94 =================
To: FNMN56E LYNN EVANS Date: 06/30
From: KDEX08B RUTH BAVETTA Time: 1:50 AM
One thing I forgot to mention. The same story from four
viewpoints. Remind anyone of RASHOMON?
Ruth, who has broken through her Faulkner barrier
PS I don't think the "omniscient" (sp?) narrator in the
fourth section is probably any more reliable than anyone
else
=============== Reply 38 of Note 94 =================
To: KWWP63A SARA SAUERS Date: 06/30
From: DCTW04A MARTY PRIOLA Time: 4:13 AM
Sara,
I'm NOT GLOATING. I've read the book before. I'm one of
the lucky ones, but I must admit to being jealous of all
you who are picking up TS&TF for the first time. I adore
that book! I don't know how Faulkner was able to get these
folks inside my head the way he was; they still haunt me,
especially Caddy. She (to me) is the best drawn character
in the book, and she doesn't have her own section.
Remember that Faulkner called her "my heart's darling."
And guys, be brave, and let the book wash over you. Take
it on the visceral level it's offered, and keep reading.
By all means.
--The Irrepressible DJP 6/30/96 2:21AM CT
=============== Reply 39 of Note 94 =================
To: WSRF10B SHERRY KELLER Date: 06/30
From: DCTW04A MARTY PRIOLA Time: 4:13 AM
Sherry,
Faulkner's chaos is quite ordered in its own way. On a
second reading, the book became to me even more a marvel
that it was after the first. he's examining perspective in
the book, and that doesn tend to make the chaos pay off.
--The Irrepressible DJP 6/30/96 2:23AM CT
=============== Reply 40 of Note 94 =================
To: ZRPD32A RICHARD HAGGART Date: 06/30
From: DCTW04A MARTY PRIOLA Time: 4:13 AM
Richard,
Quentin II is indeed the daughter of Candace (or "Caddy").
As to the other thing, well, nobody ever says for
sure...but Quentin I intimates that he slept with her if my
memory serves. Or at least that he would have.
--The Irrepressible DJP 6/30/96 2:25AM CT
=============== Reply 41 of Note 94 =================
To: NCSH82B BARBARA MOORS Date: 06/30
From: DCTW04A MARTY PRIOLA Time: 4:13 AM
Barbara,
I read someplace today that Faulkner had said that all time
was now. There was no such thing as "past" or "future."
Just thought you guys might enjoy pondering that in
conjunction with TS&TF. It speaks volumes to me.
--The Irrepressible DJP 6/30/96 2:28AM CT
=============== Reply 42 of Note 94 =================
To: ZRPD32A RICHARD HAGGART Date: 06/30
From: DCTW04A MARTY PRIOLA Time: 4:13 AM
Richard,
Another aside: Cleanth Brooks, whose essays on Faulkner are
considered classics in their own right, said that some
other critics had found poetry in Quentin's and Benjy's
sections, but were at a loss for how to describe Jason's.
Brooks said, and I think this is an accurate quote, that
Jason's section of the novel was a sort of poetry of rage.
It is definitely clear and straightforward and evil in its
own twisted way. I can't believe none of you have yet
mentioned the scene with Luster's ticket. When I read the
book the first time, I was utterly appalled at the way
Jason treated the poor boy.
--The Irrepressible DJP 6/30/96 2:34AM CT
=============== Reply 43 of Note 94 =================
To: KDEX08B RUTH BAVETTA Date: 06/30
From: DCTW04A MARTY PRIOLA Time: 4:13 AM
Ruth,
I've come up with a question: which character do you guys
identify most with? Which character represents best how
you view the world? Or which character do you most
empathise with? In my case, and I hate to say so, I think
it's Quentin I.
--The Irrepressible DJP 6/30/96 2:37AM CT
=============== Reply 44 of Note 94 =================
To: ZRPD32A RICHARD HAGGART Date: 06/30
From: DCTW04A MARTY PRIOLA Time: 4:13 AM
Dick,
Faulkner changed his name because the no-u Falkners were
known to be nothin' but no-account poor white trash.
Faulkner didn't want to be associated with them.
Leastways, that's what he said.
--The Irrepressible DJP 6/30/96 2:39AM CT
=============== Reply 45 of Note 94 =================
Board: BOOKS & WRITING
=============== Reply 46 of Note 94 =================
To: DCTW04A MARTY PRIOLA Date: 06/30
From: NCSH82B BARBARA MOORS Time: 9:56 AM
I don't think I identify with anyone whose viewpoint is
represented in the book...though Benjy and I have a lot in
Topic: BOOKS/FICTION
Subject: CONSTANT READER
To: FNMN56E LYNN EVANS Date: 06/30
From: DCTW04A MARTY PRIOLA Time: 4:13 AM
Dick,
You guys who don't have it ought to get your hands on that
appendix. The first sentence of Caddy's bio begins "Doomed
and knew it...."
--The Irrepressible DJP 6/30/96 2:40AM CT
common. The character with whom I identify the most
though is Caddy...maybe because, as you said Marty, she
seems to be the best drawn character in the book...and
maybe because my "ideal self" would be strong enough to
leave that merry-go-round, at least to some extent. And,
maybe because, I simply see a lot of myself in her,
particularly at that age.
Your observation, Dick, that the house of cards collapses
because Caddy leaves, hits at least partially on the mark
for me. And, perhaps, it is because the father dies and,
then again, wasn't a structure with such fragile and
devious (not quite the right word) underpinnings destined
to collapse upon itself? I get some of the same feelings I
get watching a Eugene O'Neill play...wanting to recoil from
what they are doing to each other and yet fascinated as to
how they all fit together. The mother and Jason II are
almost one-dimensional in their evil. The mother is less
obviously so in her sort of passive-agressive approach to
destroying her children...and maybe her husband, but then I
kept wondering how much of her character was formed by who
he was. And, then, Jason seems to be the obvious line of
progression from his mother into a more straightforward
evil. BTW, Marty, by the time I got to Luster's quarter,
Jason was such a villain that it just seemed an obvious
part of who he was.
Also, throughout the book, particularly in his section, I
kept getting a little impatient with all of Benjy's
crying...my realistic side kept saying "retarded people
don't cry all the time!" Then, I started seeing Benjy as
the common wail of all of these people. I've always said
the mentally retarded children frequently do what we would
do if we weren't (to some extent) "civilized." Well, I
think that Benjy was doing what they all wanted to
do...just stop dead still in one spot and WAIL! Also, in
this same discussion, I'm surprised that nobody's mentioned
that they *castrated* this poor soul! If I have it
correctly, it's because he went through the gate and
followed one of the school girls down the street! When I
finally came to that part, I started understanding the
reason for the wailing as well. Did Faulkner mean this
castration as a symbol for what was happening to the whole
family...or is that too obvious?
And, then, the language...I must say that I've fallen in
love with this aspect of Faulkner more than any other. As
Ruth says, Benjy and Quentin read like poetry to me. I
would read it just for the language...which is
probably why it wasn't hard for me to stop trying to fit
the puzzle pieces. The only way I've learned to become
comfortable with poetry is to drop all the effort at
decoding symbolism that was so important to my lit. teacher
in H.S. and simply go with the music of it...letting
whatever symbolism there might be occur to me at its own
pace. I love that expression used here of letting it "wash
over" me.
So, Felix, have you already made a nomination
for the CR reading list...if not, how about another
Faulkner? I'd much prefer reading him here than reading
him on my own. Barb
=============== Reply 47 of Note 94 =================
To: MXDD10A DALE SHORT Date: 06/30
From: NMTT86A JAMES HEATH Time: 9:56 AM
The Appendix appears in the Vintage Books edition that
I picked up in the 60s. It goes on for about 20 pages and
is a literary creation in its own right.
It starts with the original land grant of Jefferson
County and works down to 1945, about 20 years after TSATF
was published -- undoubtedly this was a late appendix.
Among other things, Caddy turns up in a slick magazine
pictured on the arm of a German staff general.
The appendix concludes with a famous one line summary of
the life of the black characters: "They endured."
TSATF really isn't my favorite Faulkner. I liked AS I
LAY DYING, SANCTUARY, and LIGHT IN AUGUST all much better.
They provide less of an academic puzzle and more about the
characters.
The worry with a lot of the modernists was that if
they were too direct, they would sound trite. I go along
with Robert Lowell:
Sometimes everything I write
with the threadbare art of my eye
seems a snapshot,
lurid, rapid, garish. grouped,
heightened from life,
yet parlyzed by fact.
All's misalliance.
Yet why not say what happened?
Saying what happened and not just draping experience
with the usual cliches is the great challenge. In the
later books Faulkner seems to be more comfortable with a
direct approach.
-- Jim
=============== Reply 48 of Note 94 =================
To: DCTW04A MARTY PRIOLA Date: 06/30
From: ZRPD32A RICHARD HAGGART Time: 11:46 AM
Marty: I think I identify with Earl. Being an employer is
God's own punishment for making a profit. And, as for
Jason's actions with the tickets -- I'm with Barbara;
torturing the poor kid was right up his alley, and by that
point seemed as natural as drawing breath. Early on in the
book I thought, "Oh, to be a fly on the wall in some of
these conversations." Later I realized that being a fly on
the one of the Compson's walls would be no picnic -- Jason
would pull your wings off, then Benjy would eat you.
Here I would like to quote from a passage in Jason's
chapter -- this section struck me hard, and echoes bitter
and careless words I've heard a lot of times from a lot of
people.
"About that time earl started yelling at Job, so I put
them away and went over to try to put some life into him.
What this country needs is white labor. Let these dam
trifling niggers starve for a couple of years, then they'
see what a soft thing they have.
Along toward ten oclock I went up front. There was a
drummer up there. It was a couple of minutes to ten, and I
invited him up the street to get a dope [nb. 20's slang for
a Coca-Cola, according to my Dictionary of American Slang].
We got to talking about crops.
"There's nothing to it," I says. "Cotton is a
speculator's crop. They fill the farmer full of hot air and
get him to raise a big crop for them to whipsaw on the
market, to trim the suckers with. Do you think the farmer
gets anything out of it except a red neck and a hump in his
back? You think the man that sweats to put it into the
ground gets a red cent more than a bare living," I says.
"Let him make a big crop and it wont be worth picking; let
him make a small crop and he wont have enough to gin. And
what for? so a bunch of dam eastern jews I'm not talking
about men of the jewish religion, I says, "I've known some
jews that were fine citizens. You might be one yourself," I
says.
"No," he says, "I'm an American."
"No offense," I says. "I give every man his due,
regardless of religion or anything else. I have nothing
against jews as an individual," I says. "It's just the
race. You'll admit that they produce nothing. They follow
the pioneers into a new country and sell them clothes."
"You're think of Armenians," he says, "aren't you. A
pioneer wouldn't have any use for new clothes."
"No offense," I says. "I dont hold a man's religion
against him."
"Sure," he says. "I'm an American. My folks have some
French blood, why I have a nose like this. I'm an American,
all right."
"So am I," I says. "Not many of us left...."
Dick in Alaska, where he is, technically, an American.
=============== Reply 49 of Note 94 =================
To: ZRPD32A RICHARD HAGGART Date: 06/30
From: VMMN97A FELIX MILLER Time: 3:07 PM
Dick,
I think your image of a merry-go-round is very apt in the
case of the Compsons. And I think you are right that
Caddy's departure (which includes all the events from her
impregnation to the actual wedding) skews the
intricate balance of the family. Her "doom" as WF keeps
calling it, drags the members of the family after her, one
by one. Had she not become pregnant and needed to get
married, things would still have been dysfunctional as
hell, but most of the family members would have rocked on
along a good deal longer before imploding.
About Jason's comments you quoted in your second post, I
have heard similar comments all my life, as you have. Such
spleen and anger run through life in the south like a
polluted river, poisoning lives and society in general.
We've come some little way from that, so that a politician
saying anything like that would not have a future, whereas
the whole passage could have been taken verbatim from stump
speeches well into the '50s.
I've been thinking about Jason some more (dreadful
prospect-Jason in my head and I can't evict him) and I
wonder if anyone thinks, as I am beginning to, that not
only Quentin I had incestuous leanings? Jason's rage at
Quentin II seems out of all proportion to his stated
priorities in life. Quentin II is a little cash cow for
him, but all this guff about the family honor and how he
wants to spare his mother is so obviously out of character
for Jason that you have to wonder what really is going on.
Consider the scene where Jason chases Q2 around the dining
room, taking his belt off, in order to beat her, while
noting keenly that she is nearly naked under her robe. It's
a good thing for Q2 that she slid down the drainpipe when
she did-life might have gotten really rancid for her if she
stayed under the same roof with Jason much longer.
About the Appendix, Dick, it was published as part of
Malcolm Cowley's Portable Faulkner in 1945. Viking press
published the reader, and the editions of TSATF that
I've seen still credit Viking for the copyright on the
appendix.
Still thinking about Caddy and her doom,
Felix Miller
(http://caladan.chattanooga.net/~dreedle) 6/30/96 3:06PM ET
=============== Reply 50 of Note 94 =================
To: KDEX08B RUTH BAVETTA Date: 06/30
From: FNMN56E LYNN EVANS Time: 4:33 PM
Hmm, just finished the Quentin section. At this point, I'm
inclined to believe Quentin and Caddy never "did it" --
because of various snippets of conversation that have the
ring of truth -- e.g., Caddy's surprise when she says to
Quentin something like you haven't done it, have you;
Quentin's wish to say they have so that he can "undo" all
the other guys; his father's catching him out on his plan;
Quentin's halting explanation as to why, that it would be no
good if they had and he didn't dare ask her as he was afraid
she might say yes; etc. etc. You get the sense he doesn't
really see Caddy beyond some idealized notion of honor. Of
course, all this could be going on but in addition he could
have slept with her, further adding to his torment and her
urge to run, and all this could be so dark a secret it's
hinted at least of all...
I was touched at the end of the Quentin section when his
father says (anticipating Quentin's suicide): "no man ever
does that under the first fury of despair or remorse or
bereavement... no you will not do that until you come to
believe she was not quite worth despair..." I wished as I
read this (much of this section in fact) that I knew more
about the father and his influence over Quentin. Was the
father also a tormented man?
Anyhow, it's hot hot hot here in Torrance. Ruth, you must
be a-baking out there in Redlands! Lynn
=============== Reply 51 of Note 94 =================
To: VMMN97A FELIX MILLER Date: 06/30
From: EUCR61A RICHARD HAGGART Time: 5:10 PM
Felix: This would have been a better question 25 years ago
maybe, but do you believe that this emphasis on 'doom' and
'fate' that runs through Faulkner (and some other southern
authors, I think) reflect a pessimism and fatalism in
southern culture that, in a way, actually creates the
conditions for doom and failure -- personally, culturally,
economically? Consider Jason and his fiddling with the
cotton futures: an absolute masterwork of self-deception (of
course this guy was the Da Vinci of self-deception). He will
die broke, blaming the jews and bankers and foreigners and
Caddy. It was all his fate, his doom. This is so alien to
me. My family has been picking up and running across county
lines (or international borders) for 300 years now. Only
reason I'm not living in Russia is the Cold War slowed me
down. We were raised on the theory there WERE no problems
you couldn't run from. Good theory, I think.
Dick in Alaska, running in place for now
=============== Reply 52 of Note 94 =================
To: VMMN97A FELIX MILLER Date: 06/30
From: WSRF10B SHERRY KELLER Time: 8:23 PM
Felix,
I just finished this morning and I had the same thought
about Felix and QII. His need to control her, the rage she
touched off--all sounds very much like jealousy, doesn't it?
The last section left me drained and sad. Does anyone know
why Luster was taking Benjy to the graveyard?
I grew up in the South and these people seem vaguely
familiar, except the mother. I didn't know one woman who
was that much of a stereotype of a fainting southern belle.
All the women I knew worked as hard as field hands and did
farm work AND "women's work". But EVERYONE I knew was as
racist as ole Bill and most of them still are. Even today. I
can't go home again (for very long).
Sherry who wonders about camphor. My grandmother used to
smell like camphor.
=============== Reply 53 of Note 94 =================
To: EUCR61A RICHARD HAGGART Date: 06/30
From: UPDQ58A PEGGY RAMSEY Time: 11:24 PM
Still perservering here in humid Michigan -- glad that:
I'm not the only one who was a little baffled
The end seems to be worth the means
This probably wasn't the best time for me to tackle
Faulkner -- real life is frustating enough right now, so I
don't need my reading material to make me feel inadequate as
well. But, like Barbara said elsewhere, I'm glad I'm not
reading this on my own....
Peggy
=============== Reply 54 of Note 94 =================
To: EUCR61A RICHARD HAGGART Date: 07/01
From: SEZG73A STEVE WARBASSE Time: 0:06 AM
Richard, I have shared in Felix's delight in reading
your dispatches from the front as you waded through TSATF
for the first time. In fact I am so proud of the
observations of all the first time readers here. Heck of a
group! (Ruth, I know you are not a first time reader.
Perhaps your lack of recollection as to the first time
counts. Also, recall that Faulkner was essentially a
failed poet when he wrote this book. Most certainly the
Benjy section and the Quentin section are
poetry--successful poetry.)
I don't think Quentin actually committed incest.
Quentin is quite simply loony-toons. Although one can
trust very little that Faulkner said about his own work, he
did insist that the conversation between Quentin and his
father at the end of Quentin's section concerning incest
was imaginary. Nope. Tall, handsome Dalton Ames was
Quentin II's father, I believe. Tough to tell though
because I also believe that Candace was promiscuous as the
dickens.
Here is a woman that is one of the most cussed and
discussed women in American literature. All kinds of
speculation about what she symbolizes, etc. So odd because
we really have such an unclear, dream-like picture of her.
The only sane character, Jason, refuses to talk about her
except to mutter "bitch" every once in a while. Quentin is
such a whacked out, self-centered, pre-suicidal sort that
his account sheds little light on her. Benjy, the idiot,
tells us the most about her in these bizarre "snapshot"
images of no chronological order whatsoever.
Again, this is a delight to reread. I sat on the deck
today--house empty, wife off visiting her mother across the
state, visiting daughter off at the pool--under the big
umbrella in ninety degrees and ninety percent
humidity--real Mississippi weather--swatting the
occassional errant fly and reading the Quentin section.
You gotta watch for those "he said"'s and "i said"'s thrown
in with no punctuation. Gotta watch for the sentence
truncated on one page and taken up again in mid-phrase on
the next page. It is a TRIP! One should purchase a cheap
paperback edition (so as not to offend Allen) and take
colored markers and color code those sentence fragments so
one can link them up better. Also, highlight the "he
said"'s and "i said"'s.
You know there really is no plot, no complex story, no
message to speak of in this book. This is very nearly a
pure drill in finding a new language and style for what was
to follow. That's my theory anyway. Several days ago I
said one must perforce discuss race in connection with
Faulkner. Wrong here. Not really with this book. But
when Quentin reappears in ABSALOM, ABSALOM!, then we get
into it big time. The whole thing culminates in that
tremendously difficult closing section of "The Bear" in GO
DOWN, MOSES. You are admirably prepared for that now,
Richard. Please secure a copy of THE PORTABLE FAULKNER
edited by Cowley that Felix has been touting. The Appendix
is in there. Also, Cowley's introduction to that book is
reputedly one of the best single essays on Faulkner's work
as a whole. I am in no position to judge. There has been
a ton of stuff written on him including several essays by
Jean Paul Sartre. One of Sartre's most famous is an essay
on TSATF. He opined that the book is a contemplation on
the concept of time. Well, maybe. But it is much more
than that. It is a revolution in the use of the English
language--the American version of the language, anyway.
Happy to hear that it all ended as a happy
experience for you.
Your pal, Steve
(Jim, I enjoyed your post thoroughly, too, but I still
think that with the really good stuff there may not be much
of a connection between the artist and what he
writes. [But I will not elaborate here and bring on a
continuation of this note.] Your pal, Steve
=============== Reply 55 of Note 94 =================
To: SEZG73A STEVE WARBASSE Date: 07/01
From: ZRPD32A RICHARD HAGGART Time: 1:40 AM
Steve: I'm certainly pleased that my responses to TSATF
have been both entertaining and possessed of at least a
certain amount of sense, from your perspective. After all,
the regard of friends and colleagues is one of the things
that keeps us going when money, drugs and alcohol fall by
the wayside. In turn, I would like to compliment the Unholy
Threesome of Faulknerism: Yourself, the Irrepressible DJP
and that Happy Grain Grinder on the Mountain, Felix. You
three, plus not a few others in support, have managed to
perform a miracle not unlike the loaves and fishes, except
that instead of multiplying the food supply, you have
multiplied the multitude's understanding of a remarkable
piece of literature. Anyway, thanks to all of you I have
had one of those weeks that they promised to me in the
college freshman orientation packet, and which I missed,
utterly, at the time. I have been brought from ignorance
and rejection of Faulkner to acceptance and deep
appreciation. Could anyone on the road to Damascus ask
more?
Dick in Alaska, amid a rare thunderstorm; talk about your
symbolism....
=============== Reply 56 of Note 94 =================
To: FNMN56E LYNN EVANS Date: 07/01
From: DCTW04A MARTY PRIOLA Time: 5:05 AM
Lynn,
For those of you who want to know more about Quentin I and
his father, dive immediately into Faulkner's ABSALOM,
ABSALOM!
--The Irrepressible DJP 7/1/96 12:39AM CT
=============== Reply 57 of Note 94 =================
To: SEZG73A STEVE WARBASSE Date: 07/01
From: WSRF10B SHERRY KELLER Time: 10:36 AM
Dear Steve,
Prodigy has been going dingbats on me and cut off your note
and gave me 3 blank pages after "Jason refuses to talk to
her". If you had anything important to say after that could
you repost. Emailing doesn't seem to work with me anymore.
Sherry
=============== Reply 58 of Note 94 =================
To: EUCR61A RICHARD HAGGART Date: 07/01
From: SEZG73A STEVE WARBASSE Time: 1:04 PM
Richard, I had another thought. I know you are
probably ready for a break from Faulkner now, but when you
are up for a go again, I am confident that you would
thoroughly enjoy THE BEAR. (Perhaps you have already read
it.) This is from GO DOWN, MOSES, but it is often
anthologized as a separate short story. In fact you will
find it in that PORTABLE FAULKNER deal. An incredibly
great hunting story, which is very easily read, closed out
by a contemplation on miscegenation, of all things, that is
very difficult but well worth the effort. This is an
afternoon's read at most, and I know you would really enjoy
it. (Am I off base here, Felix? Marty?)
Steve
=============== Reply 59 of Note 94 =================
To: WSRF10B SHERRY KELLER Date: 07/01
From: SEZG73A STEVE WARBASSE Time: 1:04 PM
Sherry, for you, old pal, anything. I am so flattered.
Here is a repost of the latter half of the note:
RE: Caddy
. . . .
Here is a woman that is one of the most cussed and
discussed women in American literature. All kinds of
speculation about what she symbolizes, etc. So odd because
we really have such an unclear, dream-like picture of her.
The only sane character, Jason, refuses to talk about her
.............................................
except to mutter "bitch" every once in a while. Quentin is
such a whacked out, self-centered, pre-suicidal sort that
his account sheds little light on her. Benjy, the idiot,
tells us the most about her in these bizarre "snapshot"
images of no chronological order whatsoever.
Again, this is a delight to reread. I sat on the deck
today--house empty, wife off visiting her mother across the
state, visiting daughter off at the pool--under the big
umbrella in ninety degrees and ninety percent
humidity--real Mississippi weather--swatting the
occassional errant fly and reading the Quentin section.
You gotta watch for those "he said"'s and "i said"'s thrown
.............................................
in with no punctuation. Gotta watch for the sentence
truncated on one page and taken up again in mid-phrase on
the next page. It is a TRIP! One should purchase a cheap
paperback edition (so as not to offend Allen) and take
colored markers and color code those sentence fragments so
one can link them up better. Also, highlight the "he
said"'s and "i said"'s.
You know there really is no plot, no complex story, no
message to speak of in this book. This is very nearly a
pure drill in finding a new language and style for what was
to follow. That's my theory anyway. Several days ago I
said one must perforce discuss race in connection with
.............................................
Faulkner. Wrong here. Not really with this book. But
when Quentin reappears in ABSALOM, ABSALOM!, then we get
into it big time. The whole thing culminates in that
tremendously difficult closing section of "The Bear" in GO
DOWN, MOSES. You are admirably prepared for that now,
Richard. Please secure a copy of THE PORTABLE FAULKNER
edited by Cowley that Felix has been touting. The Appendix
is in there. Also, Cowley's introduction to that book is
reputedly one of the best single essays on Faulkner's work
as a whole. I am in no position to judge. There has been
a ton of stuff written on him including several essays by
Jean Paul Sartre. One of Sartre's most famous is an essay
.............................................
on TSATF. He opined that the book is a contemplation on
the concept of time. Well, maybe. But it is much more
than that. It is a revolution in the use of the English
language--the American version of the language, anyway.
Happy to hear that it all ended as a happy
experience for you.
Your pal, Steve
(Jim, I enjoyed your post thoroughly, too, but I still
think that with the really good stuff there may not be much
of a connection between the artist and what he
writes. [But I will not elaborate here and bring on a
continuation of this note.] Your pal, Steve
=============== Reply 60 of Note 94 =================
To: DCTW04A MARTY PRIOLA Date: 07/01
From: SEZG73A STEVE WARBASSE Time: 1:04 PM
Marty and Felix, you know you pick up so much more
every time you reread TSATF. This time I noted the
reference to "Nancy" and "Nancy's bones." I am reading the
Random House corrected version at present. These
references occur at pages 33 (Benjy's section) and 153
(Quentin's section). Sure enough, this is mentioned in
Cowley's essay. This is the same Nancy who is the
principal character in Faulker's great short story, THAT
EVENING SUN, also in THE PORTABLE FAULKNER. You will
recall that Jason, Caddy, Benjy, Quentin, and their father
are prominent characters in that story. I have
often wondered whatever happened to Nancy. We leave her at
the end of THAT EVENING SUN convinced that she will die at
the hands of her implacable former lover and his
straight razor. Sure enough, these references in TSATF
make clear that she was indeed finally murdered.
Your pal, Steve
=============== Reply 61 of Note 94 =================
To: SEZG73A STEVE WARBASSE Date: 07/01
From: EUCR61A RICHARD HAGGART Time: 2:03 PM
Whoa! And I thought 'Nancy' was probably just a dead mule or
something.
Dick in Alaska, unfamiliar with rural farm life
=============== Reply 62 of Note 94 =================
To: SEZG73A STEVE WARBASSE Date: 07/01
From: DCTW04A MARTY PRIOLA Time: 3:04 PM
Steve,
Two things:
To my recollection, "That Evening Sun" makes no mention of
Benjy.
And Nancy is said someplace to be the family's cow, or some
such.
But "That Evening Sun" is still a great story.
--The Irrepressible DJP 7/1/96 1:57PM CT
=============== Reply 63 of Note 94 =================
To: EUCR61A RICHARD HAGGART Date: 07/01
From: UPDQ58A PEGGY RAMSEY Time: 3:25 PM
Sir Richard
One again, I'm with you -- I assumed "Nancy" was a dead
horse -- probably the pulling partner of "Fancy." (The
other two horses were "Prince" and Queenie," another team,
I figured). These folks were disfunctional, sure, but to
leave a dead body in a ditch???
I'm finally getting it, folks. In TIME AND AGAIN, Jack
Finney wrote a wonderful passage about how the inhabitants
of 1882 became real to his protagonist, Simon Morley (which
I'd planned to quote here, but I can't find it!). But
Caddy and Quentin I became real to me last night in the
scene following the encounter with Dalton Ames on the
bridge:
"...after a while I knew that he hadnt hit me that he had
lied about that for her sake too and that I had just passed
out like a girl..."
Then:
"put your hand against my throat
she took my hand and held it flat against her throat
now say his name
Dalton Ames
I felt the first surge of blood there it surged in strong
accelerating beats
say it again
her face look off into the trees where the sun slanted and
where the bird
say it again
Daulton Ames
her blood surged steadily beath and beating against my
hand."
Poor Quentin.... Peggy
=============== Reply 64 of Note 94 =================
To: UPDQ58A PEGGY RAMSEY Date: 07/01
From: KDEX08B RUTH BAVETTA Time: 4:45 PM
Oh my, and I thought Nancy was one of them good ol' southern
blue-tick hounds.
Ruth, fading out to the strains of "Old Blue"
=============== Reply 12 of Note 5 =================
To: EUCR61A RICHARD HAGGART Date: 07/01
From: SEZG73A STEVE WARBASSE Time: 10:15 PM
Well, dis sho nuf is a pretty mess I have made heah!
I look in da big book, and it say, "lets see if you can
still see Nancys bones I havent thought to look in a long
time have you." Den I look in da little book (Mistah
Cowley), and he say ". . . and we discover from an
incidental reference in THE SOUND AND THE FURY that the
Negro woman whose terror of death was portrayed in "That
Evening Sun" had indeed been murdered and her body left in
a ditch for the vultures." Den I look furrer in de little
book and sho nuf, that gal's name wuz Nancy. So I sez,
"Dis mus be de spot." Well, den I look back in de big
book. It say heah "'Dogs are dead.' Caddy said. "And
when Nancy fell in the ditch and Roskus shot her and the
buzzards came and undressed her.'" But den I axe myself,
"What wuz de name a' dat young man in de little story?" De
man wid the straight razor wuz a name a Jesus. Twarn't
Roskus. Whas mo', and mo' partickly, back in dees times
when de mule fall in da ditch and break hisself, we mos
likely shoot 'im. But when de woman fall in de ditch, we
mos likely try to pull her outta deah. So I's concludin'
that Mistah Cowley don't know a damned thing he talkin'
bout.
Your pal, Steve, who most likely needs a break.
=============== Reply 13 of Note 5 =================
To: SEZG73A STEVE WARBASSE Date: 07/01
From: ZRPD32A RICHARD HAGGART Time: 11:47 PM
Steve: I definitely will pickup that Portable Faulkner. And
I will need it soon; tomorrow night is my turn to chaperone
Boy Scout Camp. If I don't post within 24 hours, send
whiskey and people with guns. Meantime, what is the
consensus on the next Faulkner novel to read? I've been
thinking about 'As I Lay Dying' and 'Sanctuary'. I'm always
torn in these cases between following the novelist's
natural temporal progression, and following up on specific
themes/styles. Here, where there apparently is so much
continuity and relationship among some of the stories, that
difficulty is particularly acute.
Dick in Alaska where we read 'The Bear' in 8th grade at the
behest of an English teacher from Hattiesburg, Mississippi,
and I personally, understood nothing except the 'Field &
Stream' aspects
=============== Reply 14 of Note 5 =================
To: SEZG73A STEVE WARBASSE Date: 07/01
From: ZRPD32A RICHARD HAGGART Time: 11:47 PM
Steve: You know an interesting aspect of Faulkner's use of
rural Black dialect from the early part of this century is
how true it rings to my ear. I went to law school in
Washington D.C. and during that time lived and worked with
inner city poor people, most of whom were Black. Many of of
these folk's speech patterns were very reminiscent of
Faulkner's usage, particularly the older people (Social
Security & Medicare Clinic). The significance of this (to
me) is that it underscores the linguistic underpinnings of
traditional black speech patterns -- many people assume
that the speech pattern is simply a reflection of lack of
education and training ,whereas in reality it is a real
subset (patois? There's a word here that fits, but I damned
near failed linguistics) of Anglo-English and remarkably
stable over time -- you can hear the same speech patterns
today in D.C. and the south, that Faulkner heard and copied
three-quarters of a century ago. Pretty cool. Whatever else
modern Black America thinks of Faulkner and his views,
there is a bit of Black history and tradition encapsulated
in his stories.
Dick in Alaska, where we all are required to try and speak
like Stone Phillips on NBC; it's a state law
=============== Reply 15 of Note 5 =================
To: ZRPD32A RICHARD HAGGART Date: 07/02
From: FNMN56E LYNN EVANS Time: 0:07 AM
Dick -- Yes! Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct has some
pretty interesting stuff to say about the so-called Standard
American English and dialects, including the Black English
Vernacular. He says: "The most linguistically interesting
thing about the dialect is how linguistically uninteresting
it is: if Labov [a linguist who studied BEV] did not have to
call attention to it to debunk the claim that ghetto
children lack true linguistic competence, it would have been
filed away as just another language."
I also like this quote (from Pinker's book) attributed to
linguist Max Weinreich: "A language is a dialect with an
army and a navy." Lynn
=============== Reply 16 of Note 5 =================
To: FNMN56E LYNN EVANS Date: 07/02
From: ZRPD32A RICHARD HAGGART Time: 1:04 AM
Lynn: A language is a dialect with an army and a navy. That
is a bon mot worth remembering; you could spend a lifetime
trying to position yourself at a cocktail party to deliver
such a line. Heck, I've spent a lifetime at cocktail
parties, and didn't even KNOW the line.
Dick in Alaska, chuckling
=============== Reply 17 of Note 5 =================
To: ZRPD32A RICHARD HAGGART Date: 07/02
From: SEZG73A STEVE WARBASSE Time: 8:31 AM
This is a very interesting subject to me, Dick--the
dialect thing. As is probably apparent from some earlier
posts of mine, I am fast becoming a James Baldwin fan.
This man could really, really write, and with such a
controlled fury that reading him can be a whithering
experience. In 1979 he wrote an essay entitled "If Black
English Isn't a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is?" I am not
going to try to lay out the line of his argument here, but
at one point he says,
"Now, no one can eat his cake, and have it, too, and it is
late in the day to attempt to penalize black people for
having created a language that permits the nation its only
glimpse of reality, a language without which the nation
would be even more WHIPPED than it is."
(Now I know he is talking more about idiomatic American
expressions than he is dialect, but it is all related.)
Then he ends up with this fiery paragraph concerning the
pitiful state of black education in the past:
"And, after all, finally, in a country with standards so
untrustworthy, a country that makes heroes of so many
criminal mediocrities, a country unable to face why so many
of the nonwhite are in prison, or on the needle, or
standing, futureless, in the streets--it may very well be
that both the child, and his elder, have concluded that
they have nothing whatever to learn from the people of a
country that has managed to learn so little."
But I digress.
I know that Marty would prefer to go to ABSALOM,
ABSALOM! now (my favorite), and there is certainly some
logic to that since it fleshes out the story of the
Compsons as well as tells the fabulous story of Thomas
Sutpen. However, I would prefer a change of pace. If I
were going to do another right now, it would be
SANCTUARY--the story of that nymphomaniac, Temple Drake,
and the unbelievably evil Popeye. It gives us a little
insight into the former netherworld of Marty's home town,
as well. Reminds me of that haunting movie BLUE VELVET.
We would need to gather ourselves before we tackled AS
I LAY DYING again, literally a book length prose poem.
Your pal, Steve
=============== Reply 18 of Note 5 =================
To: SEZG73A STEVE WARBASSE Date: 07/02
From: SEZG73A STEVE WARBASSE Time: 8:35 AM
Oh, and if I recall correctly, SANCTUARY gives us our
first acquaintance with Gavin Stevens, Faulkner's great
lawyer character.
Steve
=============== Reply 19 of Note 5 =================
To: SEZG73A STEVE WARBASSE Date: 07/02
From: ZRPD32A RICHARD HAGGART Time: 9:25 AM
Steve: Well, the nymphomaniac sounds good.
Dick in Alaska, where tonight he will be sleeping in a
(shudder) tent
=============== Reply 20 of Note 5 =================
To: ZRPD32A RICHARD HAGGART Date: 07/02
From: SEZG73A STEVE WARBASSE Time: 1:53 PM
Just another couple of observations on this dialect
issue, Richard, because there is more of importance to it
than meets the eye. This was a tricky issue for black
writers and intellectuals during the Harlem Renaissance
after World War I. James Weldon Johnson is the best case
in point. This incredibly interesting man is best known to
us as a poet and novelist, but he was also a popular song
writer and U.S. Consul to Nicaragua and Venezuela and
during the 20's, field secretary of the NAACP. Many of his
early poems were written in dialect. The problem of course
was that dialect had so often been used to caracature
dialect, for example, in that bizarre white tradition of
the minstel show--most particularly by the "end man." (I
actually saw one once in the early fifties when I was tee
tiny. They survived that long!) Anyway, in the twenties
Johnson abandoned dialect and urged other black writers to
do so, also. Instead, he and writers Langston Hughes and
Sterling Brown advocated the use of idiomatic expressions,
syntax, and rhythm to recreate black speech.
Now I understand why they felt called upon to do this,
but it is a doggoned shame that circumstances compelled
them to abandon it entirely for the very reason alluded to
in your comments about Faulkner's use of it. To recreate
as accurately as possible the sound of a person's speech
goes part way to the heart of some of what literature is
all about, particularly in terms of preserving something of
a culture that is disappearing. I remain ambivalent about
this, and, as is obvious here, have not quite sorted out my
thoughts on the subject.
Your pal, Steve
=============== Reply 21 of Note 5 =================
To: SEZG73A STEVE WARBASSE Date: 07/02
From: EUCR61A RICHARD HAGGART Time: 2:37 PM
Steve: I suppose the lesson is simply that anything, no
matter how intrinsically harmless, can be put to a bad end
by the imaginative and the evil. You can strangle a baby
with a rosary. In racial and cultural matters the tendency
to utilize any differences between groups as a basis for
denigration is so common; yet even within this nasty little
bit of human nature there are some positive elements. Take
your standard, "There was a priest, a minister and rabbi
trapped on a desert island" joke. On ocassion I've heard
such jokes that were actually quite funny, and to my tin
ear, not offensive. And yet, in that same category, I've
heard a few that curled my hair -- the difference is hard
to pin down, and I wonder how much of it is within me, and
how much of it is extrinsic. Still, we are such primitive
creatures, delighting in laughing at the stranger: remember
Andy Kaufman's character in 'Taxi'? Lotka I think it was?
Hysterical, and yes, it was making fun of somebody. I wonder
if they've got that program in syndication in the Balkans.
Maybe the answer lies in that new movie "Independence Day"
-- the world unites to fight the nasty critters from outer
space. I bet THEY talk funny, by God! Anyway, Faulkner (and
much else) wouldn't be Faulkner without dialect I think.
Interesting about the abandonmentof dialect by Black writers
at about the same time Faulkner was working -- good politics
makes for less effective art, maybe. Anyway, did you know
that James Weldon Johnson was a fellow brother of the bar?
First Black member of the Florida Bar Association.
Dick in Alaska, just full of these little snippets
=============== Reply 22 of Note 5 =================
To: EUCR61A RICHARD HAGGART Date: 07/02
From: FNMN56E LYNN EVANS Time: 3:11 PM
Steve and Dick -- I'm enjoying your exchange on dialect and
social implications. It may be difficult to define
(particularly if agreement is required!), but it seems many
of us have a fairly good sense of when cultural
distinctions, including dialect, are being used to ridicule
(as if to make the other culture completely "other") and
when such distinctions are being used to paint as complete a
portrait as possible while at the same time recognizing the
thread (nay, the river!) of humanity that runs through all
such distinctions.
And maybe that's the thing with jokes, too. Some jokes
that deal with cultural distinctions reflect some sense of
being charmed by our very human idiosyncrasies, failings,
foibles, etc. etc.; some reflect an edgier sense of life's
absurdities; and so on. Some jokes, however, are just plain
mean -- and I think most of us have no trouble
distinguishing between the two -- even, even if we might
disagree to some extent on where the dividing line is. Lynn
=============== Reply 23 of Note 5 =================
To: FNMN56E LYNN EVANS Date: 07/02
From: NPVX84A MARIA BUSTILLOS Time: 7:54 PM
Cool exchange, gentlemen. My ex-husband, poor poppet, is
now teaching elementary school in South Central LA (mostly
black neighborhoods.) There is raging debate about this
language question in the LA County Unified School District.
They have a different acronym from the one you used for the
black dialect, it's AAsomething. You'd be surprised at how
much teachers have to wing it on this stuff, believe me;
however, they're not supposed to tell kids that their way of
conjugating verbs or whatever is WRONG, just different.
Really the whole thing is a mess and in my view only serves
to isolate these kids still further. They need the tools to
compete in the prevailing atmosphere.
Remind me to tell you sometime about the third-grade drag
show my ex put on. It's pretty sidesplitting.
Great job on your dialect spelling, wild man, very natural.
M.
=============== Reply 24 of Note 5 =================
To: NPVX84A MARIA BUSTILLOS Date: 07/02
From: VMMN97A FELIX MILLER Time: 9:19 PM
Steve etal.,
After diligent search, I am unable to reconcile Nancy in
"Evening Sun" and the skeletal remains of Roskus's
handiwork in TSATF. Of course, I don't have a copy of
Cowley's essay, so I don't know what he said. But to shoot
a woman (black or otherwise) and leave her as food for
buzzards in a ditch conveniently located for the
instruction of the Compson children is beyond even Southern
Gothic. Not even the Bronte' children, raised in an
overcrowded graveyard which probably poisoned their water
and contributed to their early deaths, had this
grotesque a childhood.
Going on to the much more elevated discussion of dialects,
black and otherwise, I remember from my course in
linguistics that all speech consists of "ideolects,"
individual versions of families of languages, with or
without armies and navies (great bit of cocktail chatter,
too bad I don't go to cocktail parties.) Similarities of
syntax, grammar and vocabulary group ideolects into
languages. How many of you have known twins whose
conversation together was frequently indecipherable to
even other members of their families? Binary ideolects. All
language has so many variations, even within small
populations, that the idea of "purity" of any language is
hopelessly artificial. Faulkner's use of black American
dialects is anything but demeaning to the characters. Dick
had a very good point about the sharpness of Job's analysis
of Jason IV: a man so smart he deceived himself. Job's
dialect was concisely capable of skewering Jason. Of
course, Job had a pretty good scriptwriter.
I like the way these threads shoot off in brilliant arcs,
like early Fourth of July fireworks.
from the sweltering mountain,
Felix Miller
(http://caladan.chattanooga.net/~dreedle) 7/2/96 8:45PM ET
=============== Reply 25 of Note 5 =================
To: NPVX84A MARIA BUSTILLOS Date: 07/02
From: SEZG73A STEVE WARBASSE Time: 11:02 PM
So, Richard and Lynn have illuminated the difference
between the offensive use of dialect and the artistic use
of dialect, which is simply this: the underlying intent.
And of course we here of discriminating and discerning
taste can tell the difference. (I am not being facetious
here, Maria. There is obviously a huge population extant
without sufficient taste to tell the difference.)
Now here's where I think it all gets real interesting
in Faulkner's case. Here is a man who himself spoke a
dialect, even if we define that as something more than
accent. It seems to me that dialect implies accent as well
as a distinctive choice of words and phrases and syntax
that is not found in the mainstream language. Does that
make sense? I have a tape of Faulkner reciting his Nobel
Prize acceptance speech, and I can assure you the accent is
there in spades. When he was in his cups sipping whiskey
with his pals in the scuppernong grove, one can pretty much
be assured that he had a distinctive syntax and used a
multitude of idiomatic expressions, too. Undoubtedly, on
those occassions he spoke like Quentin and Caddy's father
when he was in his cups. But he does not really render
that man's dialogue in dialect in his writing because
it isn't dialect to him.
On th
Dick in Alask
hilarious stand-alone short story, SPOTTED HORSES, from THE
HAMLET, we find him rendering the dialogue of the
white share-croppers and. . . dare I use the word?. .
.crackers, who are the main characters, in a dialect again.
It's not a heavy one, but there are idiomatic phrases,
interesting examples of syntax, and implied accent galore
in these men's speech. That is because they spoke a
different dialect than Faulkner, and he simply NOTICED it
through the years.
My point is that perhaps the army and the navy are
less important than the pen in terms of the difference
between a dialect and a language. A language is a dialect
armed with a pen. Without the literature American English,
even of the correct sort that we speak here in the midwest,
would simply be a dialect of English English. (Am I
stating the self-evident here? Is this what they call a
tautology? Seems interesting to me anyway.)
A drag show, you say? A third grade drag show? These
are the kinds of things that have always made me a little
uncomfortable in LA.
I'm going to take that last statement of yours as a
straight ahead compliment and gracefully thank you,
although I am always cautious when you start talking about
my spelling. Orlando thinks I do it well viva voce, too.
Amuses Orlando to no end.
Your pal, Steve
=============== Reply 26 of Note 5 =================
To: EUCR61A RICHARD HAGGART Date: 07/02
From: SEZG73A STEVE WARBASSE Time: 11:02 PM
In the end, Richard, the most vivid character for me,
and one of my favorites, is Luster. Here is a little guy,
quite intelligent, mouth going constantly, leading this
drooling behemoth around and constantly threatening to whip
him if he doesn't quit that embarrassing bellowing. What a
stitch!
Least favorite? Definitely not Jason. How can the
only sane Compson be one's least favorite character? Nope.
Gotta be Mr. Herbert from French Lick, Indiana, also the
hometown of Larry Byrd. What a scumbag! (Mr. Herbert, not
Mr. Byrd.) I would be more than a little upset if my
sister were going to marry that guy for whatever reason.
Probably wouldn't do myself in though. (Of course I have
the luxury of speaking as one with no sisters.)
Thanks for that additional piece of info concerning
James Weldon Johnson. I did not know that and should have.
Your pal, Steve
=============== Reply 27 of Note 5 =================
To: VMMN97A FELIX MILLER Date: 07/02
From: SEZG73A STEVE WARBASSE Time: 11:16 PM
Well, Felix, I see while I was slaving away on my
amateurish observations concerning dialect, you
effortlessly toss off a note with some solid science in it.
We can always count on you. But Felix, if you stayed home
more and spent less time researching the watering holes in
Chattanooga for your web page, you might get an impromptu
invitation to some of those sophisticated southern
cocktail parties on occasion.
Your pal, Steve
=============== Reply 28 of Note 5 =================
To: SEZG73A STEVE WARBASSE Date: 07/03
From: NPVX84A MARIA BUSTILLOS Time: 1:40 PM
Wild man, simply loved your riposte to the cocktail-party
line. Definitely, great literature ennobles language. I
will go further and say this: a language must be capable of
expressing a broad range of complex ideas. Absent this and
you've got argot, slang, dialect etc. Not that I don't love
the latter, too. In this household we have recourse to a
number of English dialects and accents, both for
mirth-inducing purposes and for pinpoint accuracy of
observation: Anglo-Indian, Nisei, valley girl, Korean,
Texan, Oxbridge, Boston, Cockney, Scots, Surfer, etc.
=============== Reply 29 of Note 5 =================
To: NPVX84A MARIA BUSTILLOS Date: 07/03
From: KDEX08B RUTH BAVETTA Time: 1:47 PM
Dick, Felix, Steve, Lynn, et al
I'm troubled by Faulkner's attempt to produce the dialect of
the southern African American phonetically. And as an
American of Italian descent I was offended by his brief
phonetic attempt at an Italian accent in the Quentin
section. Read it aloud and you sound like Chef Boyardee, a
caricature of an Italian. Having grown up in the midst of a
bunch of Italian aunts and uncles with Italian accents, I
can tell you that they do not sound like this. I'm reminded
of the time when accents were considered something to be
used in vaudeville jokes. Faulkner may not have consciously
meant to be demeaning, but I think he was. Patronizing is
the nicest thing you can say about it.
As you pointed out, Steve, Faulkner had a strong southern
accent. As someone born and bred on the west coast, I can
tell you that I sometimes have difficulty understanding a
very heavy southern accent, especially that used by the
socio-economic class depicted in TSATF. It's not just an
accent. It has a unique vocabulary and menu of expressions.
It almost sounds like a true dialect to me, yet (correct
me if I'm wrong, my copy has gone back to the library)
Faulkner uses some of the vocabulary, but no phonetic
spelling approximations. If standard spelling stands for
southern accents, then how would Faulkner render my speech,
which is pretty much "broadcast" English?
I think the African-American writers who think that any kind
of dialect or accent is best described by grammar, word
choice and syntax are on the money. If only for the reason
that English spelling is bad enough at capturing "standard"
(for the sake of argument, let's say "broadcast" as in
TV/radio) English. But more important, as I think Steve
pointed out, attempts at dialect are usually applied by the
writer to anyone who speaks differently than s/he does.
That, right there, relegates the dialect speaker to the
position of "the other."
Also we must remember that much of an accent or dialect is
not how words are pronounced, but the "music" of the
language as a whole. The rhythm, the flow, how the words
are stressed within the sentence. No way to get that in
print. So any attempt at phonetically reproducing an
accent or dialect is half-assed from the git-go, demeaning
because of the historical baggage it carries, and ultimately
unsuccessful anyway.
I say it's spinach, and to hell with it.
Ruth
=============== Reply 30 of Note 5 =================
To: NPVX84A MARIA BUSTILLOS Date: 07/03
From: FNMN56E LYNN EVANS Time: 2:41 PM
Maria -- I think as far as linguistic theorists go, the term
dialect is in fact used to describe something capable of
expressing the broad range of ideas you mention, is
internally consistent with regard to grammar, etc. etc. It
is not synonymous with slang or argot or jargon -- or even
pidgin. So Pinker's point was simply that you can't look at
dialect and say, "That's ungrammatical by some other set of
rules -- thus there's no linguistic competence there."
But! It doesn't necessarily follow that simply because a
dialect has its own internally consistent rules that a
speaker of said dialect shouldn't expect to have to learn
the grammar of the standard, accepted language IF he or she
wants to participate fully as a citizen and member of the
body politic of the country of his residence.
I see these as two separate things: the linguistic
(whether speakers of a dialect are demonstrating linguistic
competence) and socio-political, maybe(?) -- anyway, the
issue of what is required to participate in the local
culture/social institutions.
I enjoyed your comments on the use of slang and so on for
"mirth-inducing purposes and pinpoint accuracy of
observation." It's got to be fun, not to mention immensely
satisfying, to be able to move so easily amongst all those
different modes of speaking! Lynn
=============== Reply 31 of Note 5 =================
To: KDEX08B RUTH BAVETTA Date: 07/03
From: EUCR61A RICHARD HAGGART Time: 3:39 PM
Ruth: I agree that Faulkner missed the Italian accent
entirely. His problem, undoubtedly, was that he wasn't
exposed to real Italian immigrant speech, sufficiently,
while living in the south. He of course did some traveling
in his youth -- Canada, New Orleans, New York and even a hop
to Europe, but there is a sense he was not a cosmopolitan
sort of guy. (I say this without benefit of any knowledge,
other than the fact that his travels always seemed to be of
relatively short duration, and he doggedly insisted on
returning to the hellish heat and perdition of northern
Mississippi). The 'Italian' Faulkner used in TSATF reminded
me of the Marx brothers Italian accents, and not the real
Scicilianos I've known in New York and the mid-Atlantic. I
remember reading somewhere in 'Advice to a Young Writer' or
something that you should be very careful with the use of
dialect in writing -- if you're off, it will kill you. I'm
not sure, however, how the use of grammar, syntax, etc., can
be substituted for dialect to get the same effect. Could
anyone point in the direction of a good example? I've got a
four day weekend coming up here, and only two rounds of golf
scheduled, and Marty has the French translation program, so
time may be hanging heavy on my hands. Extra credit reading
might just be the thing.
Dick in Alaska, who survived his night with the Boy Scouts
=============== Reply 32 of Note 5 =================
To: EUCR61A RICHARD HAGGART Date: 07/03
From: KDEX08B RUTH BAVETTA Time: 3:54 PM
Dick,
It wasn't just that he missed the Italian. Any accent is
going to be missed. It just can't be done with phonetic
spelling. It always ends up as a caricature of "the other"
who isn't like us.
Ruth
=============== Reply 33 of Note 5 =================
To: KDEX08B RUTH BAVETTA Date: 07/03
From: ZRPD32A RICHARD HAGGART Time: 10:09 PM
Ruth: True enough that you can never "really" do an accent
phonetically; all you can do is suggest an accent, and if
that suggestion is well done in terms of its structure,
spelling, rhythm, etc., (and if the reader has a basis in
the real thing, perhaps) it can work. Isn't it something
like painting? Can't suggestive techniques cue the viewer
in ways that are beyond the narrow technical bounds of the
painting itself (i.e., three dimensional effects when you
are demonstrably dealing with a two dimensional medium?) In
th at case you wouldn't say that a painting that suggested
three e-dimensionality was a "caricature" would you? It's
simply a device, that in terms of the art, either works or
doesn 't. Sounds like dialect never works for you. Didn't
you even fall for Jimmy Breslin's New York tough-guy
Italiano in "The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight"? Now
there was caricature, and I still heard my friends parents
in Hicksvil le, Long Island, in the background.
Incidentally: fo r any CR's who missed it, a fun ny book,
in my 'umble opinion.
Dick in Alaska, who just did his cockney impression
=============== Reply 34 of Note 5 =================
To: KDEX08B RUTH BAVETTA Date: 07/04
From: DCTW04A MARTY PRIOLA Time: 0:24 AM
Ruth,
I think I disagree with you about this whole dialect issue.
In one sense, all of us are "Other" to someone or to some
group; one of the points of literature is to make all of
the "others" understand that they aren't as "other" as they
thought they were.
The fact of the matter is that the people Faulkner lived
among wrote and spoke English, and what Faulkner wrote was,
to his ear, English. But people who talked differently
than the inhabitants of hilly northern Mississippi didn't
say the same words the same way. In other words, we learn
language by speaking it, and when you associate the spoken
word with its written manifestation, that's how it sounds,
whether it looks right or not. So "standard" English to
someone born and raised in the South might involve drawls
and dipthongs, where the same word in some other area
wouldn't require them. Thus, when you encounter someone
who talks differently than you, you are compelled to
represent that speech on the page in a different manner. I
don't think that necessarily makes the representation--and
this seems to be the leap you're taking--patronizing or
worse. It makes the representation the manifestation of
what the writer's eye sees. And that's all. Not some
attempt on the part of the writer to demean "others" but an
attempt to capture something that'd otherwise be omitted,
or worse to the artist, I think, inaccurate.
I'm not saying that dialect cannot be used for demeaning
purposes, but that when it is, it's usually very obvious
and the artistic spell is broken.
By the way, what do you think of HUCKLEBERRY FINN? It
might be a better book around which to have this
discussion. Do you think that Twain was being patronizing
to his characters because of the way he represented their
speech?
--The Irrepressible DJP 7/3/96 11:09PM CT
=============== Reply 35 of Note 5 =================
To: DCTW04A MARTY PRIOLA Date: 07/04
From: YHJK89A CATHERINE HILL Time: 3:04 AM
I grew up the works of an inveterate dialect writer -
Rudyard Kipling. Kipling did have a good natural "ear", and
it is obvious - certainly in his earlier works - that he is
trying to introduce his readers to a world of people of whom
they are ignorant and to whom they feel superior. In his
stories and poems about the British Indian Army, he is
virtually rubbing the noses of the upper classes in the
reality and humanity of what too many considered lower class
cannon fodder. Even his Indians - he's controversial in
India, of course, but you can't read SOLDIERS THREE or even
the late A SAHIB'S WAR without coming away with great
respect for the Indian fighting man and his code. This is a
man's world, of course, though his dialectal "Mary, Pity
Women", based on conversations with a local barmaid, is
still a pithy truth worth quoting.
John Buchan was another heavy dialect user, though
obviously of dialects he himself knew and loved. He also
interspersed his work with Gaelic words and phrases; I had
to ask my Irish friend what they were doing to a deer when
they were "proceeding to gralloch".
In these instances, of course, we're talking about evoking
foreign climes for folks who don't get to travel them much.
Gerald Durrell's African pidgin (pinyin is the original
Chinese term, I believe) is delightfully expressive and
obviously delightedly indulged in. It's easy to see the
author isn't patronizing these people; he loves them and
willingly exchanges eccentricities.
Some writers, I think, "get up" dialect like they "get up"
the vocabularies of various industries or endeavors.
Kipling certainly did. And there are some folks who
subconsciously change their own speech patterns (hopefully
not writing ones) with exposure to other cultural groups. I
can always tell when Larry's been visiting his Chinese
friends. He starts leaving out his auxiliary verbs and
speaking staccato.
Cathy
=============== Reply 36 of Note 5 =================
To: VMMN97A FELIX MILLER Date: 07/07
From: SEZG73A STEVE WARBASSE Time: 9:40 AM
Felix, La Divina sent me a little swatch on Caddy from
a guy named Volpe's READER'S GUIDE. It goes as follows:
"Only one Compson is capable of giving herself completely
to love and to life--Caddy. Everyone else is completely
self-absorbed. Caddy is the only vibrant, warm, and loving
person in the family. In adolescence, she responds to love
and to life; later her natural response is twisted into
something corrupt by her family. Driven by the sense of
guilt they foster in her, she becomes promiscuous."
and. . . .
"Caddy is 17 when she gives herself to Dalton Ames. She is
passionately in love with him. As far as can be
ascertained, he seems to return her love."
Now, Divina and I have a bit of a disagreement about this.
I will certainly let Sara speak to this herself, but in
essence, these remarks do not hold true for her. She
thinks Caddy is as genetically screwed up as all the rest
are. I on the other hand tend to agree for the most part
with Mr. Volpe. Part of the problem, as I alluded to
earlier, is that Caddy is so sketchily drawn that the
reader is free to interpret her in almost any way that
suits. Nonetheless, since I view Benjy as the only
reliable reporter and human being here and since he adores
Caddy and since she seems to respond to him very warmly, I
conclude that Mr. Volpe is pretty much on the money. I
would certainly be interested in your observations on Caddy
though--and anyone else's for that matter.
Marty? Richard? What do you think?
And Divina, please. I yield the floor. I am
certainly not a hundred percent on this yet myself.
Your pal.
=============== Reply 37 of Note 5 =================
To: SEZG73A STEVE WARBASSE Date: 07/07
From: ZRPD32A RICHARD HAGGART Time: 12:10 PM
Steve: We certainly see Caddy only in reflection, and I
agree that Benjy's 'I am a camera' images should be
considered the most trustworthy. I hadn't really thought
about it until you posted this note, but I instinctively
liked Caddy and it was simply because of her goodness to
Benjy and his love for her -- the only redeeming bit of
humanity in the whole bloody mess. So in general I guess
I'd vote for the Volpe analysis -- although I'm not sure
that Caddy was 'driven' to promiscuity. She just seemed
like a darned healthy girl to me.
Dick in Alaska, ready for a final round of golf before that
next Supreme Court brief
=============== Reply 38 of Note 5 =================
To: SEZG73A STEVE WARBASSE Date: 07/07
From: DCTW04A MARTY PRIOLA Time: 4:59 PM
Steve,
Caddy seems to be the only one in the family who gave a
rat's behind about Benjy. For that, she is to be
commended. Her promiscuity is hard to interpret since it
comes largely through the mind of Quentin, who was
completely obsessed with promisculty himself. So
basically, I think I agree with you, Steve.
--The Irrepressible DJP 7/7/96 3:53PM CT
PS--I've thought for several years now that someone could
make a fortune and crete an instant feminist classic were
he to write a book called, simply, CADDY. The academics
would go wild.
=============== Reply 39 of Note 5 =================
To: MXDD10A DALE SHORT Date: 07/09
From: NMTT86A JAMES HEATH Time: 10:12 AM
For the answer to all your Faulkner questions check
out
http://www.mcsr.olemiss.edu/~egjbp/faulkner/faulkner.html.
This is the Faulkner Home Page and includes a complete
description of who the characters are and how they relate
to each other. Highly impressive.
--Jim in Oregon
=============== Reply 40 of Note 5 =================
To: NMTT86A JAMES HEATH Date: 07/09
From: KDEX08B RUTH BAVETTA Time: 7:39 PM
I've just come back from the library where I discovered they
do not have a copy of ABSALOM, ABSALOM. (Amazing) Since
I'm trying to cut down on my book buying, what do you
Faulkner fans suggest instead?
Ruth
=============== Reply 41 of Note 5 =================
To: SEZG73A STEVE WARBASSE Date: 07/09
From: KWWP63A SARA SAUERS Time: 11:02 PM
Steve, Dick & Marty: Okay. Caddy is certainly more
caring and warm and loving than the rest of the Compsons. I
didn't ever mean to say she wasn't. It is just that Volpe
(and this is in A READER'S GUIDE TO WILLIAM FAULKNER),
seems to be painting this absolutely GLOWING picture her
mental health and I just don't think there is any way the
news on Caddy is this good or this simple. She has grown up
in a home where almost every "normal" inter-family
relationship is twisted or non-existent. She has
essentially provided a mother's love and caring to Benjy
and Quentin and then, after her loss of virginity throws
this family into total disfunction, she even feels
compelled to offer to relieve Quentin of his very weighty
virginity. (I believe that offer was made and don't agree,
Steve, that one must just summarily dismiss Quentin's
section as not offering ANY truth or insight about Caddy.)
Marty, the same idea occurred to me about a CADDY
story. I imagine it as written by a woman, however, because
it is definitely going to require a lot of
dual-hemispheric neuron action. (Of course a guy like you,
who knows so much about the female psyche, might take it
on!)
And, Ruth, I believe I read somewhere in here
that Dick has acquired SANCTUARY, and I have as well, so
perhaps we could all take on that one together.
-Sara
=============== Reply 42 of Note 5 =================
To: KWWP63A SARA SAUERS Date: 07/10
From: ZRPD32A RICHARD HAGGART Time: 0:10 AM
Sara: I did indeed obtain 'Sanctuary' (well, at least I got
the book) and would be delighted to forge ahead with it.
I've also been reading the Faulkner & Southern History
volume that I purchased last weekend, and what a rascal
that Billy Faulkner was! Showing up at home in 1918 in an
RAF officer's uniform, telling tales of his flying exploits
when in fact he was a prematurely discharged (easy there,
Lynn, you suggestible woman, you) cadet with no air time at
all. Given the hearty contempt with which Hemingway's
'exaggerations' of his life and exploits tend to generate,
am I missing something if I seem to detect a bit of a
double standard about the personal integrity of the two
gents? Now, keep in mind you Faulkner and Hemingway
afficianados that I'm woefully undereducated about both
authors. So if a little learning is a dangerous thing, and
I've cut myself on the sharp edge of ignorance, I am
trusting all of you to point out the blood and offer me a
suitable bandage.
Dick in Alaska, who was a hero in several wars across the
centuries, but whose records have been lost due to a
combination of governmental misfeasance, malfeasance and
downright malice.
=============== Reply 43 of Note 5 =================
To: ZRPD32A RICHARD HAGGART Date: 07/10
From: FNMN56E LYNN EVANS Time: 0:51 AM
Dick -- What was that about a premature discharge? I was
nodding off there, I think, and came to rather suddenly. And
Dick, have you called the White House re your misplaced
records? Maybe Craig Livingstone has them. Lynn
=============== Reply 44 of Note 5 =================
To: KDEX08B RUTH BAVETTA Date: 07/10
From: DCTW04A MARTY PRIOLA Time: 0:51 AM
Ruth,
All true Faulkner fans know that your library must now be
burned to the ground. It's only fitting, in a Southern
Gothic sort of way.
SANCTUARY...is not generally thought to be one of
Faulkner's five great books...those being THE SOUND AND THE
FURY; AS I LAY DYING; LIGHT IN AUGUST; ABSALOM, ABSALOM!;
and GO DOWN, MOSES. My vote would be for either AS I LAY
DYING or LIGHT IN AUGUST, but I've already read all of the
books mentioned in this note except for GO DOWN, MOSES.
And I'm working furiously on the McCarthy paper for the
Oxford Conference on Southern Writers and Southern Writing,
so I probably won't have time to delve back into Faulkner
anyway. Which is, of course, my loss.
--The Irrepressible DJP 7/9/96 11:43PM CT
=============== Reply 45 of Note 5 =================
To: ALL Date: 07/10
From: SEZG73A STEVE WARBASSE Time: 10:14 AM
Well, yes, Marty, but it is his SIXTH best book and
his one "best seller." I thought it was an acceptable
choice at this point because it is not nearly as difficult
as the others you have mentioned. It seemed to me that we
needed a break from the really heavy going. This is simply
an entertaining book.
I found it so interesting that both you and Sara came
up with the idea of the CADDY book independently. Great
minds and all. Since Sara thinks it would best be written
by a woman, she should get busy on it. I'm serious. Not
facetious at all. What an interesting project! And who
better to do it?
As to the overall subject of the last several notes,
Sara's point is well taken, now that I have read her views
carefully. Let's just say that Caddy, regardless of her
quirks, is still the most appealing of the Compsons. But
there again, that may just be because we know so little
about her.
Jim, thanks for that reference to the web page. I
will look into it.
Your pal.
=============== Reply 46 of Note 5 =================
To: SEZG73A STEVE WARBASSE Date: 07/10
From: EUCR61A RICHARD HAGGART Time: 2:10 PM
Steve, Marty, Ruth & Sara: Plus, let's not forget this is
the one with all the sex and lewdness. Well, maybe not ALL
the sex and lewdness, but a respectable portion. Packaging,
you know.
Also, I just reread all the notes on this thread dating back
to Dale's first post this morning. Pretty good discussion,
folks. I don't know whether we could do better than a 'C+'
at any major state university Senior Seminar on Faulkner,
but it's not bad for a bunch of aging boomers and upstart
X-er's with day jobs.
Dick in Alaska, trying to whack Horace Mann, which requires
REAL creativity
=============== Reply 47 of Note 5 =================
To: ZRPD32A RICHARD HAGGART Date: 07/10
From: ACCR69A JOSEPH BARREIRO Time: 3:24 PM
Dick - The old "the records were destroyed in a courthouse
fire" routine seems to work as well. Personally, I
appreciate a crafty liar, especially when they are merely
lying about themselves (as opposed to those who lie about
others for their own aggrandizement); this must
have been the primary source of entertainment for all
generations before the appearance of mass media if we
discount waiting for wild animal attacks. The highest
honor I can claim is battle-scarred veteran of several
domestic wars, surely a mean distinction among the
brotherhood of man. I have half a mind to read more
Faulkner just to see if I might like it better than I did
TS&TF. The only other Faulkner I'd read was the short
story "A Rose for Emily" which is what Catherine Hill must
have in mind every time she disparages Southern Gothics
(though come to think of it she could just as well have
meant this novel). The other half says to take a break and
read something for fun (like the biography on Stalin my
wife is almost finished with). Joe B
=============== Reply 48 of Note 5 =================
To: MXDD10A DALE SHORT Date: 07/11
From: KGXC73A GAIL SINGER GROSS Time: 9:36 PM
greetings to all CR's...
is there anyone who didn't like THE SOUND AND THE FURY...
gail..hp..a passionate reader in cool..sunny and windy SAN
FRANCISCO...
=============== Reply 49 of Note 5 =================
To: KGXC73A GAIL SINGER GROSS Date: 07/16
From: ACCR69A JOSEPH BARREIRO Time: 2:11 PM
Yes gail - I did not enjoy it very much either. I had much
the same reactions as most of the people who posted about
it: confusion in the first two parts, distaste for Jason in
the third, etc. It seemed an experiment to me that I
probably haven't got the feel for - I didn't get the sort
of payoff I expect from a novel - the conclusion was
depressing and left me asking why do I want to know
anything about these people? I'm sure it was considered
much more sensational when it was originally published. I
see it as an influence on many writers' perceptions of the
South 'cause I know I've seen these characters in the
movies. Steve's opening remarks to the thread leave me
feeling I'm missing something here but I don't know what it
might be. I'll probably try another Faulkner novel just to
see if it goes down any better. Without the commentary
from the CR's I'd not have finished the novel on my own.
Joe B
=============== Reply 50 of Note 5 =================
To: ACCR69A JOSEPH BARREIRO Date: 07/16
From: DCTW04A MARTY PRIOLA Time: 9:14 PM
Joe,
My suffestion would be that, instead of reading another
Faulkner, you reread THE SOUND AND THE FURY again,
immediately, now that you've a feel for the plot. What
amazes most people I know about Faulkner is that he had a
feel for the musicality of language, and for depth of
character. It's not necessarily that we like these
characters, but that we feel like we know them, that we've
been them.
--The Irrepressible DJP 7/16/96 8:10PM CT
=============== Reply 51 of Note 5 =================
To: DCTW04A MARTY PRIOLA Date: 07/17
From: ACCR69A JOSEPH BARREIRO Time: 12:14 PM
Marty - The book is already back at the library and I'm
already into MAN'S FATE and SUTTREE, as well as some
'light' reading, so WF will have to wait for a while. I
probably will at least look at it again sometime, but I'm
not overly enamored of Faulkner. You are right about that
sense of connection to the characters, but to me it is not
so immediate or overwhelming as it apparently was for
others; there is a remove of time and mindset and
perhaps a sense of the hand of the author that is a kind of
barrier between me and them that doesn't exist for me
(most of the time) when I read Steinbeck or Stegner for
instance. One thing about participating on this BB is that
I have done more rereading in the last year or so than I
had done in the previous twenty years. And I am also
relearning how to squeeze something more than the initial
sensory experience of the novel from my reading. I'm
looking forward to your accompaniment at the carnival of
SUTTREE. This will be my second time through this novel so
I hope to be able to contribute to the discussion. Joe B
=============== Reply 52 of Note 5 =================
To: ACCR69A JOSEPH BARREIRO Date: 07/17
From: KGXC73A GAIL SINGER GROSS Time: 7:37 PM
greetings JOSEPH...
wonderful to find your post...actually i thought everyone
would think i had NO TASTE in literature nor patience and
was off on another book...which doesn't bother me a bit as
at my stage in life...whatever i do is TERRIFIC...
now i must share with you my latest find...i started
SANCTUARY and somehow that evening..nothing was right...the
next day..decided to give it another whirl...I AM HOOKED...
i hoPE DIAMOND JIM reads this post......will fill you in
JOSEPH when i am further along.... i just didn't want to
give up on FAULKNER without effort...i am a moody reader and
it becomes a problem..i am anxiously awaiting two pieces of
nonfiction..the bio by peter ackroyd of WM. BLAKE...and THE
RAILWAY MAN by eric lomax....a fascinating story..
NONFICTION..centers me and then i am able to plow through
my fiction...
thanks for sharing ...
gail..hp..a passionate reader in ..by george..i spy some
sun..in SAN FRANCISO at almost five p.m. ..we take it at
any time..
=============== Reply 53 of Note 5 =================
To: KGXC73A GAIL SINGER GROSS Date: 07/18
From: DCTW04A MARTY PRIOLA Time: 0:53 AM
high priestess,
Horray! You like Faulkner...at least in passing. Well, he
grows on you. Be careful...but remember, Faulkner was
pretty prolific; if you develop a literary crush (to
steal from Theresa) on him, you'll be busy for years.
--The Irrepressible DJP 7/17/96 11:45PM CT
=============== Reply 54 of Note 5 =================
To: ACCR69A JOSEPH BARREIRO Date: 07/18
From: DCTW04A MARTY PRIOLA Time: 0:53 AM
Joe,
SUTTREE is indeed a carnival. A wild, twisted, sentient,
and depraved carnival perhaps, but carnival nonetheless.
I'm looking for ward to it too; expect a note (or a
repost of the note I posted a few days ago) on it when I
return from the Oxford Conference that will officially
begin the book's discussion.
--The Irrepressible DJP 7/17/96 11:48PM CT
=============== Reply 55 of Note 5 =================
To: KGXC73A GAIL SINGER GROSS Date: 07/18
From: ACCR69A JOSEPH BARREIRO Time: 11:07 AM
gail - Some people are also reading SANCTUARY on Fearless
Reader subject. It sounds very creepy. I will have to
watch out for the bio on Blake, he is a person who
interests me very much and I would like to know more about
him and his fascinating work. Joe B
=============== Reply 56 of Note 5 =================
To: KGXC73A GAIL SINGER GROSS Date: 07/19
From: SEZG73A STEVE WARBASSE Time: 10:21 AM
gail,
Your exchange with Marty and Joe has illustrated my
point that I made early on so well. It is an absolute,
doggoned shame that the first exposure to Faulkner of so
many is TSATF. It is a daunting book, highly regarded
mainly for its experimental style and language. Its
characters only start to acquire real depth when viewed in
the context of two or three others of his books, and not
many people are willing to immerse themselves that much
into one author's work.
Delighted to read that you are giving him a second
shot. I just finished my reread of SANCTUARY last night.
This book does not require a familiarity with his other
books. It stands alone. I will be back to chat with you a
bit about it this weekend, but I must get some real work
done right now--the kind that brings in the scratch.
You might consider latching onto the collection of
Faulkner short stories. I think you would find them to be
a delightful entre to this man's work. I do so
wish Joe would very soon leap into my personal
favorite--ABSALOM, ABSALOM! That is the companion
piece to the TSATF that would enlighten him as to why
he should care about these characters. Not for me to
preach, though.
Your pal.
=============== Reply 57 of Note 5 =================
To: SEZG73A STEVE WARBASSE Date: 07/19
From: FNMN56E LYNN EVANS Time: 10:30 AM
Marty, Steve, et al -- It struck me throughout TSATF but
especially in the final section how gorgeous Faulkner's
language and imagery are. (Jason 'leaving the bells' as he
leaves town...) And yet I've never seen him copied or
imitated anywhere! Writers may be influenced by a sense of
his vision and maybe even the freedom of his language, but
they don't seem to try to imitate the language itself. Which
in this day and age, when fads seem to sweep through the
American fiction-writing workshop world, strikes me as
pretty amazing. Whatcha think, Marty? Lynn
=============== Reply 58 of Note 5 =================
To: FNMN56E LYNN EVANS Date: 07/19
From: FNMN56E LYNN EVANS Time: 10:51 AM
The exact quote about the bells: 'And he drove on out of the
bells and out of town...'
Amazing, imagery and metaphor so breathtakingly lovely and
yet so incredibly economic! Almost swept past, like Jason
and his single-minded fervor. Lynn
=============== Reply 59 of Note 5 =================
To: FNMN56E LYNN EVANS Date: 07/19
From: DCTW04A MARTY PRIOLA Time: 11:16 AM
Lynn,
I think Faulkner's been copied--and imitated--usually
badly--by many writers, especially the male ones from the
South.
Madison Smartt Bell (I think that's the proper spelling of
his name) says in his NYTBR review of THE CROSSING that
Cormac McCarthy is perfectly capable of leaping into "high
Faulknerian crash-and-burn" when the situation seems to
demand it. He does, and it works. Reading it
post-Faulkner is something marvellous to behold, yet it
reads indisputably like McCarthy--not like Faulkner.
Something about those passages is quite similar to
Faulkner's writing, yet they remain intensely, well,
McCarthian. I seriously hope you're planning to join us on
our romp through SUTTREE. It's McCarthy's...best Faulkner,
if it's possible to say that and at the same time maintain
that SUTTREE is intensely original and un-Faulknerian in
some way. There's no better time to read SUTTREE than
after a healthy dose of Faulkner.
McCarthy's first book, THE ORCHARD KEEPER, reads a lot like
poor Faulkner. One critic said of McCarthy that he was the
only writer who had looked Faulkner in the face and lived
to tell the tale.
Shelby Foote is often compared to Faulkner in terms of
style and everything else--setting, characters, etc. I
think that comparison is unfair to Foote, because it seems
to me that Foote is drawing heavily on some older narrative
tradition, too.
Robert Penn Warren's ALL THE KING'S MEN reads sort of like
Faulkner in places, to me anyway.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez' ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE is
often mentioned as having a Faulkner-derived style.
But your comment was very specific..."they don't seem to
try to imitate the language itself." I think that some of
them have tried and failed. The ones have succeeded have
managed--somehow--to sort of incorporate Faulkner's style
and cadence with their own. I'd say that better if I knew
how.
Have you ever read any of the Faux Faulkner contest entry
books? They're hysterical. I remember the title of one
piece--"The Soft and the Furry"--but I have no idea what
it's about.
I'd like to know what some of you think about this whole
question of Lynn's. This seems to be an area where some
hair-splitting would be a good thing.
--The Irrepressible DJP 7/19/96 10:11AM CT
=============== Reply 60 of Note 5 =================
To: DCTW04A MARTY PRIOLA Date: 07/19
From: FNMN56E LYNN EVANS Time: 11:39 AM
Marty -- What a smorgasbord of a note! I'll have to print it
out and savor the various morsels you've laid out. But
briefly: the faux Faulkner sounds hilarious, would love to
find me one of those; Gabriel Garcia Marquez? hmm, love his
writing but I wouldn't have thought of Faulkner (nor did I
think of GGM while reading Faulkner--still GGM is certainly
capable of the same kind of gorgeous economy, doesn't feel
compelled to take an image, riff on it, beat it to within an
inch of its life and then some); Suttree, sigh, will try,
not optimistic, did ye know I was starting law school next
month? yes, 'tis true, so you know what the odds of my
success on reading, and finishing, Suttree are. Later! Lynn
=============== Reply 61 of Note 5 =================
To: FNMN56E LYNN EVANS Date: 07/19
From: NDKB53A THERESA SIMPSON Time: 9:37 PM
Lynn - spill the beans - what school? why? why didn't you
talk to me first so I could warn you?
Theresa
=============== Reply 62 of Note 5 =================
To: NDKB53A THERESA SIMPSON Date: 07/19
From: FNMN56E LYNN EVANS Time: 9:48 PM
Theresa, gulp! I knew some eagle-eyed person would spot that
and call me on it, but I did so hope I could slip it in
unnoticed, thereby allowing myself to claim later: Well I
did post it! It's not like I kept it to myself!
But it's Loyola, evening part-time. Maybe switch to
full-time day next year if I can line up a little funding.
And hmm, I've backed into this whole thing, marvelling the
whole way: This can't be happening. Am I really about to do
this? I can't be about to do this... But now that I am, what
can I say? I'm thrilled!
Oh but warn me anyway. Would love to hear any advice,
warnings, suggestions you might have! Lynn
=============== Reply 63 of Note 5 =================
To: FNMN56E LYNN EVANS Date: 07/20
From: DCTW04A MARTY PRIOLA Time: 1:13 AM
Lynn,
I was going to say something myself, but my jaded, cynical
law-school mind can think of only one syllable: RUN!
--The Irrepressible DJP 7/20/96 12:09AM CT
=============== Reply 64 of Note 5 =================
To: DCTW04A MARTY PRIOLA Date: 07/20
From: FNMN56E LYNN EVANS Time: 1:30 AM
Marty -- Jaded, cynical and irrepressible. Hmm. Having a
tough time with this combination, Marty!
=============== Reply 65 of Note 5 =================
To: DCTW04A MARTY PRIOLA Date: 07/20
From: KGXC73A GAIL SINGER GROSS Time: 9:47 PM
greetings to our IRREPRESSIBLE DIAMOND JIM...
now just hold your horses. don't get excited about my
enthusiastic adventure with FAULKNER..that is
SANCTUARY...his first book...as i remember years ago we had
some dialogue about CORMAC MCCARTHY...THE CROSSING and then
SHELBY FOOTE and magically appearing in my mailbox ..you
sent me this tome on THE CIVIL WAR... .which in due time i
returned with a courtesy note..... actually I DON'T DO THE
CIVIL WAR... you can't attempt to make us all into
SOUTHERNERS...... please no books...a gentle shove is all
i required to begin SANCTUARY again...see you NASHVILLE..gsg
=============== Reply 66 of Note 5 =================
To: KGXC73A GAIL SINGER GROSS Date: 07/21
From: DCTW04A MARTY PRIOLA Time: 1:02 PM
high priestess,
Point of correction: SANCTUARY was not Faulkner's first
book; it was after THE SOUND AND THE FURY and AS I LAY
DYING. Plus a few other books.
I wasn't planning to send you books, gail. Don't fret.
And that other book eventually went to a worthy cause; I
gave it to a young woman I'm enamored of who happens to be
a Civil War buff in her own right (she comes by it honestly
and not as a result of my pernicious influence), and she
was, of course, thrilled.
No, gail, I can't make you all into Southerners, but that's
sure a pity...for all of you and for the South. I think
that CBJ can back me up on this one.
And I'm stunned and amazed that you'd have problems with
books magically appearing in your mailbox....
--The Irrepressible DJP 7/21/96 4:13AM CT
=============== Reply 67 of Note 5 =================
To: DCTW04A MARTY PRIOLA Date: 07/22
From: KGXC73A GAIL SINGER GROSS Time: 9:44 PM
greetings DIAMOND JIM..
thank you for setting the record straight ..i was under the
impression that SANCTUARY was the first... and delighted the
CIVIL WAR book has found a worthy home... but do understand
your kindness was well appreciated... i prefer to do the
sending of magically appearing materials.. it is a joy on
my part so when something does appear in my snail mail..i
am startled and amazed.... and glad to be thought of...but
i still like to surprise people...... we can argue about
this all day...tbc in NASHVILLE.. must get back to
reading... gail..hp..a passionate reader ...
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William Faulkner
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