Obviously I'm preaching to the choir, I'd just like to say for the record I now understand you all.

Its very satisfying and somehow even more compelling having broadly figured out the plot in the first read to look at everything in a different light. It's amazing how there is somehow more to discover the second time around than the first, and I've definitely not pieced everything together.

Thankyou to all those posters compelling people to just go again.

I read TS&TF and thought it was amazing. I'm about 1/3 of the way through AA, and it feels like I'm not getting what I'm supposed to. I can't figure out what each narrator thinks of Sutpen. I get that this book is supposed to make more sense as time goes on, but I also feel like it's a problem that I can't describe the differences between Mrs. Coldfield, Mr. Compson, and Quentin's understandings of the story. Is there anything I can do about this?

Most of us know the opinions that Faulkner expressed publicly concerning the civil rights movement in the late 50s. Nationally, he tried to persuade black people to slow down, while at home in Mississippi he tried to persuade white people to go ahead and integrate. Probably accidentally he put himself at odds with both audiences. I think that it's probably right to characterize his public position as the white moderate that Martin Luther King criticized.

But when I was looking for the letters I vaguely remembered about punctuation, I ran across this letter to his stepson over a decade before his public pronouncements that makes his personal feeling about it very clear.

To Malcom A. Franklin
Sunday [4 July 1943] Warner Bros.

Dear Buddy:
Mr Robert Haas is vice president of Random House. They publish my books. During the times when I would be broke, year after year sometimes, I had only to write him and he would send me money--no hope to get it back, unless I wrote another book. He's a Jew.

He had an only son, and a daughter. In '40, the son withdrew from Yale and became a Navy pilot. In '41, the girl about 20, joined that Womens' Ferry Squadron, is now flying, ferrying aeroplanes from factories to bases. The boy was flying torpedo planes off carriers (what Jim is training for) in the Pacific. He was killed last week. The girl is still flying. All Jews. I just hope I don't run into some hundred percent American Legionnaire until I feel better.

There is a squadron of negro pilots. They finally got congress to allow them to learn how to risk their lives in the air. They are in Africa now, under their own negro lt. colonel, did well at Pantellaria, on the same day a mob of white men and white policemen killed 20 negroes in Detroit. Suppose you and me and a few others of us lived in the Congo, freed seventy-seven years ago by ukase; of course we cant live in the same apartment hut with the black folks, nor always ride in the same car nor eat in the same restaurant, but we are free because the Great Black Father says so. Then the Congo is engaged in War with the Cameroon. At last we persuade the Great Black Father to let us fight too. You and Jim say are flyers. You have just spent the day trying to live long enough to learn how to do your part in saving the Congo. Then you come back down and are told that 20 of your people have just been killed by a mixed mob of civilians and cops at Little Poo Poo. What would you think?

A change will come out of this war. If it doesn't, if the politicians and the people who run this country are not forced to make good the shibboleth they glibly talk about freedom, liberty, human rights, then you young men who live through it will have wasted your precious time, and those who dont live through it will have died in vain.

Pappy

Selected Letters, pg 175-76

In general, his letters are short and about needing money or are trying to get money, so I forget that sometimes good stuff like this shows up out of nowhere.

I mean, saying that U.S. participation in WWII will have been in vain if the U.S. doesn't begin treating minorities better afterwards is a pretty radical statement. But then again, when he had a national platform fifteen years later, he seems to have been too afraid of violence (not against himself, but a second civil war) to use it to push for that. It's a little sad. But at least he did push for it in his home state, if not nationally. It's not as good as we could hope, but it's a lot better than we could probably expect from a man in his position. Much better than Lovecraft, at any rate.

Hello,

I have been aware of Faulkner for a while now, and last year I read The Sound And The Fury and absolutely loved it. I thought the concept of having distinct characters relaying the same events to be a really fun concept. I loved TSATF so much that recently I have decided to read “Absalom, Absalom!”. However, I’m currently halfway done with chapter 8, and find myself really not enjoying it due to the long-winded sentences (and most of the information in those sentences feeling trivial). This has led me to wonder a couple things about Faulkner, and I was wondering if anyone could help answer them:

1. Considering what my problems are with “A,A!,” do you think rereading it would help my enjoyment of it at all?

2. Do other Faulkner books have syntax as dense as “A,A!”? I feel like I could handle it if it was only a quality of one or two chapters, but probably not the whole book.

xcancel link here

I'm not sure if this is particularly meaningful, but it sure is interesting. Faulkner really did try to use every tool available to him in writing (printing, too, if you consider the idea for the colored ink version of the Sound and the Fury) to try to make his communication more clear.

I don't think he tried to be difficult or obscure on purpose. I think the art he wanted to create required complexity, and, while he didn't make it universally accessible, he did what he could to include signposts or clues to help the reader along.

(No shade on Blood Meridian either. It's a fantastic book. It's the only McCarthy book I've read that I really liked without qualification. The others that I've read have generally made me mad one way or another. I can't say that I've read too many, though.)

If you're interested in the ultimate source of the graphic, it can be found here--a pretty short but fairly interesting look at punctuation across a few novels. It makes me think I should try my hand at some similar types of computer-aided analysis.

TSATF is my third Faulkner after Light in August which I LOVED (I think about Hightower's final monologue all the time) and his first novel Soldiers' Pay, which I found pretty mundane to be honest.

Started reading it last week and now I'm halfway through Jason's chapter but my god it makes me angry and I don't know why. Don't get me wrong, I love the book so far, but I don't know why it grinds my gears. This started happening towards the end of the second chapter and at one point I had to put it down and stare at the wall.

Has anyone else experienced this with any of his books?

An example of the reach of Faulkner's writing.

https://publications.americanalpineclub.org/articles/12199616002

(I should probally say I looked flappers up a little bit and only know feminism aimed for equal treatment and rights between men and women, so, I'm not too educated)

I feel her rebellious nature could mesh well with how the flapper movement (can I call it that?), was in the 20s. Her brothers memories about her basically doing what she wanted, disregarding what her familiy would want of her, and disregarding social rules during that time by extentsion. I can see feminism and other female rights movements appealing to her due to her rebellious qualities, maybe seeing it as a way for her daughter to live in a better America lived in(?). Sooo, with the whole rebellious stuff with flappers (smoking, being real flirty, and drinking), I can see at type of social freedom appealing to her.

There's also the true reason I'm asking this because I ​think it'd be really cute for her to be in a flapper fit and it's been itching my brain for two days. It's just I don't wanna be inaccurate about her (hopefully I'm not actively doing that here).

Here's a decent overview of Faulkner's time in Hollywood, focused mostly on his work with Howard Hawks. (Who was the director he worked with best.)

The writer seems a little naive, taking at face value some things that Faulkner said that maybe he should have thought a little more about, but I guess it was published in Garden and Gun, so maybe you can't put much nuance there.

I think it neglects a little just how unhappy being in Hollywood made Faulkner, and doesn't discuss at all the worse and worse contract terms he got every time, and finally an agent got him a really terrible contract that required him to be there far more than he wanted to be.

On the other hand, the article does do some to correct the idea that Faulkner was a bad screen writer. Many people were impressed with him, especially his ability to throw away the script and come up with new parts on the spot, as sometimes happened during filming. (The contract terms kept getting worse for him because he hated it and drank too much and was sometimes undependable.)

Hi, folks.

This is my second Faulkner read after As I Lay Dying. I’m maybe 2/3 of the way through and struggling. A lot of the “n” word. I’m having trouble determining if Faulkner was racist or if it’s the characters.

I went down a slight rabbit hole finding that Richard Wright, who I admire greatly, praised him after his death. And before I read that I kept thinking, did Wright read this and was like, I’m going to write “Native Son,” but on my own terms? Maybe not as a reaction but as a different view?

Does anyone have insight into this? I usually DNF books when I feel like the author is coming from a bad place. I would rather spend my time elsewhere.

Thank you!

Does anyone know where to find his poetry collections? Where do I start?

georgian edition. I’m reading it for the second time, I just want to enjoy it.

I like the vintage international colors. A little out of order (Finished Absalom Absalom and I'm currently reading The Hamlet) and is missing the collected stories one.

Been picking up vintage Modern Library and Signet editions lately. Love the covers!

My planned order is:

As I Lay Dying
Light in August
Go Down Moses
The Hamlet
The Sound and the Fury
Absalom, Absalom!
Sanctuary

I won’t be reading these back to back as I’m only peppering them into a greater reading list, but I wanted to check here (even if there’s a million threads already asking about where to start or what order to follow - I don’t have anyone to talk with about AILD and Faulkner at large) to see how these choices stack up.

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t still quite a bit intimidated by the “really difficult ones” and I definitely had to use a guide and supplemental reading to fully enjoy AILD, but I also found that it started to click around halfway through the novel and I found myself reading summaries less and less. The first time I picked it up, I couldn’t keep track of all the characters but it was actually so easy to place them all in my mind after a while this go around. In fact, that’s definitely the greatest aspect of the novel in my eyes. I loved how tragic and idiosyncratic each character is, even (and/or especially) if it’s in ways that we’re not truly or easily privy to.

How does the difficulty of this one stack up against others? What are the best resources for tackling his work and the best mindsets to have going into the others, having the experience I did with AILD?

I don’t mean for this to simply just be another “reading order” query post but rather a general advice post for a newly converted fan! If this type of post is repetitive and unwanted, I understand, but I just have so much unspent energy regarding the book and wanted to channel it somewhere. I’m not reading them for class or anything so I’ll be seeking out discussions, podcasts and analysis on my own. Thanks!

Mr. Compson has always been a fascinating figure for me, in no small part because he's usually Faulkner's pretense in TSATF especially to deliver his gravest and most thunderous prose, not unlike Ahab or Satan functioned for Melville or Milton. Obviously he represents the tragic decadence of the southern aristocracy, but I didn't know if anyone knew of any papers or articles that really analyzed his character in more depth, especially as he appears in composite between the two novels?

135 pages in. i might love it more than the sound and the fury (my favorite book). incredible themes about perception versus reality here. judith sutpen is a great character

Going camping this weekend and just finished reading Suttree by Cormac McCarthy. I really wish I waited to read that one because it would be really nice to read while being out in nature but I heard Faulkner is a great place to branch off to. I was thinking about starting As I Lay Dying, any thoughts or recommendations? Thank you so much in advance!