. Spinning .

Was coming down the homestretch this afternoon, going through the last twenty or so pages at a fairly steady pace since something was actually happening now. In the middle of this action, while the end is in sight with a big secret revealed and the whole Sutpen clan history ready to be finally laid to rest with a bang, I catch this:

“Wait,” Quentin said. “Let’s drive up to the house. It’s a half a mile.”

“No, no,” she whispered, a tense fierce hissing of words filled with that same curious terrified yet implacable determination, as though it were not she who had to go and find out but she only the helpless agent of someone or something else who must know. “Hitch the horse here. Hurry.”  (p. 365)

Leave it to Faulkner to drag out that final end to the story by making Quentin and Miss Rosa–who is an old 65–abandon the buggy and walk a half a mile to the mansion. Faulkner adds to the drama by having them walk the distance, tire, stumble in the dark, and add to the anticipation of the reader as to what they will find there, simply by extending the span of time it takes them to get there. Almost a movie ploy, Faulkner manages it within pages of a novel.

Overall, the writing is eloquent and yet almost to the point of overwriting. There is the repetition of the main story by several different characters (as well as told to and by other characters to them) so that we get a different slant on the story and something different is revealed in each telling. Whether it be fact or feeling, the characters are the focus of Faulkner’s story. The narrative is the story of one man who comes to town, buys up a lot of land to build a mansion because he’s learned late in life not only the difference between black and white but between rich and poor. Then he finds a wife–though we find out he already has a wife and son hidden away and abandoned but taken care of with money because she had an eighth of Negro blood. Well, this son grows up and meets the established son, is pushed into an engagement with his own sister, but retreats because the acknowledged son loves him and refuses to believe his own father when he tells him the truth. Except that part about the Negro blood…

Typical also of Faulkner is the passing down through generations the secrets and often the repeated acts that add drama to a Southern family during the war years. The stories are loaded with sex but not for sex’s sake but more importantly, the aftereffects of each coupling that causes the problems.

Faulkner writes with passion and emphasis on detail. He wants the reader to feel, to comprehend the trials of his characters. Faulkner requires a patient reader who understands that even under the worst possible circumstances, the most horrific scandal, the most important part of the story is within its characters.

While it is the at the core of his style, Faulkner’s use of metaphor and simile are weird. The purpose of these elements of writing are to give the reader a quick, readily recognizable, usually visual, word or phrase that will explain a statement by the comparison: sharp as a razor, flat as a board, a body of steel, etc. But here’s what Faulkner does with simile:

“(…) and he said how he thought there was something about a man’s destiny (or about the man) that caused the destiny to shape itself to him like his clothes did, like the same coat that new might have fitted a thousand men, yet after one man has worn it for a while it fits no one else and you can till it anywhere you see it even if all you see is a sleeve or a lapel”  p. 245

Quentin is recounting his father’s words of his grandfather’s conversation with Sutpen, and so, describing Sutpen’s thoughts on destiny. Comparing it to the fit of a coat is appropriate for Sutpen wore the same clothes for years and the explanation makes the reader make the connection between Sutpen’s opinion and his actions–though Faulkner takes care of doing that for us as well.

What intrigues me is that many find Faulkner so difficult to follow, yet here he is explaining even his similes.

Faulkner does tend to like a small crew as his protagonist personality–perhaps a makeup of the raw textures of each that bring together a specter of a main character that is an extension of each, and a representative of man.

Each is defined by interaction with others, reaction to events, and in this particular novel, by another character’s version of a situation in which the character played a part. Notably unusual is the retelling of the whole background by Shreve, a college roommate of Quentin’s. Faulkner is giving us more information via this path, put in the way that a listener (or reader for that matter) might recount what he has heard to insure that he has understood it well. But so much more is revealed in the retelling, new facts, new perspective, even as Faulkner follows the story in time and allows for side trails while reinforcing the history already laid out.

It also is telling of the characters. In Chapter Six, we’ve gotten a bit more background on Quentin himself; back to his childhood investigation of the Sutpen homestead in decay. Pieces come together from what he remembers and what he has been told.

The characters in a Fulkner novel are always strangely tied together through blood, loyalty, environment. In this case, Judith, who was only engaged to marry Charles Bon before he died, takes in the child of his common law wife and while keeping him there at the estate, still does him no favors in the way he is treated for he grows up resentful of both his Negro and his white background.

Faulkner uses his characters as links to each other. Particularly with the offspring of affairs versus marriage, the lines are traced through the years to braid into new generations. The use of a college roommate of Quentin’s to retell the story brings to mind the college friendship of Sutpen’s son Henry, and Charles Bon, where so much of the drama has started.

This one’s amazing:

“(…) a wife after three years to scrutinize, weigh and compare, not from one of the local ducal houses but from the lesser baronage whose principality was so far decayed that there would be no risk of his wife bringing him for dowry delusions of grandeur before he should be equipped for it, yet not so far decayed but that she might keep them both from getting lost among the new knives and forks and spoons that he had bought–” (p. 178)

This is still Quentin’s roommate’s assessment of understanding, this being about Sutpen’s choice of Ellen, daughter of a shopkeeper as his wife when he first comes to town. The first part, simply saying that with nothing but dreams and ambition, Sutpen wisely avoided seeking a wife who would be comfortably ensconced in a status he could not yet afford. The second part, the one about “getting lost among the” cutlery is priceless: simple a reference to proper etiquette about knowing which spoon to use on the custard.

In Faulkner’s style of using different points of view to reveal both attitudes of the characters and to give another insight that may be unknown to the other characters, I stumbled upon a nugget of information that I’m not sure whether I missed in reading or if Faulkner indeed has employed the process to inject this surprise:

“if he hadn’t been a demon his children wouldn’t have needed protection from him and she wouldn’t have had to go out there and be betrayed by the old meat and find instead of a widowed Agamemnon to her Cassandra an ancient stiff-jointed Pyramus to her eager though untried Thisbe who could approach her in this unbidden April’s compounded demonry and suggest that they breed together for test and sample and if it was a boy they would marry;”  (p. 177)

The speaker here is Quentin’s roommate who is reciting his understanding of what Quentin has told him regarding Miss Rosa and the Sutpen history, so the story here defined once again by an outsider, is based on Quentin’s understanding of it as he received the information from his father and Miss Rosa directly. Now besides the allegory of mythical couples, Faulkner drops in the bit about Sutpen’s rather blunt and unromantic demand that Miss Rosa first provide him with a male heir before any nuptials need be taken.

In the previous chapter, which featured the story from Miss Rosa herself, it seems she did not reveal the horror which had her racing from the mansion back to her own father’s house in town. There was bitterness, yes, but is this the first time I’m reading of the actually insult? Did I miss it before, perhaps sleepy-eyed and dense and lost in Faulkner’s prose? If not, it is sheer genius to startle the reader this way.

If I missed it, my apologies to William Faulkner.

There is lots to love about Faulkner’s choice of words and way with the language, but this was just perfect:

But Quentin was not listening, because there was also something which he too could not pass–that door, the running feet on the stairs beyond it almost a continuation of the faint shot, the two women, the negress and the white girl in her underthings (made of flour sacking when there had been flour, of window curtains when not) pausing, looking at the door, the yellowed creamy mass of old intricate satin and lace spread carefully on the bed and then caught swiftly up by the white girl and held before her as the door crashed in and the brother stood there, hatless, with his shaggy bayonet-trimmed hair, his gaunt worn unshaven face, his patched and faded gray tunic, the pistol still hanging against his flank: the two of them, brother and sister, curiously alike as if the difference in sex had merely sharpened the common blood to a terrific, an almost unbearable, similarity, speaking to one another in short brief staccato sentences like slaps, as if they stood breast to breast striking one another in turn, neither making any attempt to guard against the blows.  (p. 172)

First thing to note is that this is all one sentence. How much else does it bring into itself however, than the simple face to face confrontation? There are the two different timelines, that of Quentin considering the scenario of Judith and Henry, and the scene itself. He brings in as subtle metaphor what they are wearing: Judith holding up her unfinished wedding dress, white and innocent (as well as telling the story by its design composition of what she’s been through the last four years) while Henry is dressed in his military uniform, tattered as well (and telling a tale) but intimating that he is both aggressor and defender in this personal battle just as he was in the war.

There is also Faulkner’s tendency towards redundancy which simply would not be tolerated in today’s publishing world: “the two of them, brother and sister, curiously alike as if the difference in sex had merely sharpened the common blood to a terrific, an almost unbearable, similarity…” two, brother and sister, alike, difference, common, similarity” all saying pretty much that the two appeared almost as one.

The best part of all is the almost metafictional statement that the pair is “speaking to one another in short brief staccato sentences like slaps (great simile here) though Faulkner chooses never to say in three words what could be said in a paragraph. And earlier in the sentence, “the running feet on the stairs beyond it almost a continuation of the faint shot” that seems to tell the reader that as many times as he emphasized this particular action in the chapter, if you didn’t, you should have caught this intentional continuation of the bullet flying through to destroy lives.

Amazing, when you really look into it deeply.

Just finished the wild ride of Chapter V wherein Miss Rosa takes over the narrative and repeats what’s happened, yet shows a different slant because of her own mental baggage.

One thing that I read a bit warily is the drama that Faulkner puts into his work. There are several pages of Rosa describing how she entered the mansion and attempted to fly up the stairs where her niece is waiting, having just found out that her fiancee has been shot by her brother (why is a short story, but Faulkner has managed to write it up to half a book already).

There is more that one can infer from this drama and the length of Rosa’s recital of an event that would take only a paragraph if written by other than Faulkner. It is how she says it, more than what she tells; it is that Shakespearean “methinks she doth protest too much” attitude that speaks footnotes into the actual text. I myself am suspicious that Rosa felt that Judith’s fiancee, Bon, should instead have been presented to her as a possible suitor with marriage the ultimate goal. Rosa feels put upon, feels she has gotten the short end of the stick from her family, particularly since her sister Ellen who married Sutpen and mothered Judith and Henry (while Sutpen additionally fathered Clytie in bedding a slave) was so much older than Rosa that her niece is actually younger than her.

It’s a nice tool, giving the characters each their own voice, and Faulkner does it flawlessly. It’s what drove me nuts in The Sound and The Fury until I accepted him into my soul.

Again on Faulkner’s style, his description of aging and the normal gaining of weight is done with a flourish:

He was not portly yet, though he was now getting on toward fifty-five. The fat, the stomach, came later. It came upon him suddenly, all at once, in the year after whatever it was happened to his engagement to Miss Rosa and she quitted his roof and returned to town to live alone in her father’s house and did not ever speak to him again except when she addressed him that one time when they told her that he was dead. The flesh came upon him suddenly, as though what the negroes and Wash Jones, too, called the fine figure of a man had reached and held its peak after the foundation had given away and something between the shape of him that people knew and the uncompromising skeleton of what he actually was had gone fluid and, earthbound, had been snubbed up and restrained, balloonlike, unstable and lifeless, by the envelope which it had betrayed. (p. 81)

Holy guacamole. That’s some process, no? One of the things I noticed is that while the aging encompasses years, Faulkner employs several short sentences to step up the pace of his emphasis on the speed of this in Sutpen (of whom he is speaking).

There is also the bringing in of a whole lot of characters–Rosa, Wash Jones, the negroes, the people–as if to attest to this physical change. Perhaps this is a grounding technique, a base of reality and thus credibility.

There is the mixing in of time, of eras: “not portly yet, though he was now getting on toward fifty-five. The fat, the stomach, came later.” “the year after whatever it was happened to his engagement to Miss Rosa and she quitted his roof and returned to town,” and “one time when they told her that he was dead.” There are even more, but this seems to illustrate something that Faulkner does quite a bit in this work; he hints at things, large events, big drama, and continues with little references that grow into a story. It’s as if he is giving pieces of the puzzle–though this is not a mystery story–while focusing on the characters in the story and not letting us forget the story line.

Then of course there is that textural ending: “the uncompromising skeleton of what he actually was had gone fluid and, earthbound, had been snubbed up and restrained, balloonlike, unstable and lifeless, by the envelope which it had betrayed.” How visual, how real to the touch. The transformation of hard bone into liquid, the taut sausagelike feel of a well blown-up balloon, the paper skin or envelope, which holds it all together even while this exterior has been a bit of a liar to reality.

Very nice.

Getting used to Faulkner again, and his interminable sentence structure that bathes a scene and character in mood with words that wrap around and spiral into sumbigdeal.

They would be seen together in the carriage in town now and then as though nothing had occurred between them at least, which certainly would not have been the case if the quarrel had been between Bon and the father, and probably not the case if the trouble had been between Henry and his father because the town knew that between Henry and Judith there had been a relationship closer than the traditional loyalty of brother and sister even, a curious relationship: something of that fierce impersonal rivalry between two cadets in a crack regiment who eat from the same dish and sleep under the same blanket and chance the same destruction and who would risk death for one another, not for the other’s sake but for the sake of the unbroken front of the regiment itself.  (p. 79)

Sentences–yes, that’s a single sentence employing both a semi-colon and a colon amid the sprinkle of commas–like the above make me wonder why I fell in love with Faulkner and wonder if the bloom is off the rose.

In the example above which describes the changing relationship between Sutpen and his daughter Judith, Faulkner brings in the other characters to contrast the scenario had it been other characters involved. Then he brings in the example of “two cadets” to complete his explanation. Simile here seems stretched way above and beyond the necessary. But Faulkner wants to involve the reader so deeply into these dramatic family situations that he pulls out all the stops. Is it overwriting? According to today’s standards, most definitely. I’m guessing that about three-quarters of the verbiage of the sentence could be dumped with little meaning lost.

But then, I don’t find myself weary of the words, as I did with Styron’s Nat Turner. I find myself reading, reading, reading; a bit breathless before I stop to consider what I’d just read. And that, I suppose, is the magic of Faulkner.

As a treat to myself for all the writing I’ve been doing lately and in getting work published, William Faulkner.

It was a tossup among Faulkner, Marquez and McCarthy–all of which I have a few unread copies of–but I think that the last book (The Confessions of Nat Turner) turned me back on to the Southern novel.

Faulkner’s writing is amazing. I need to read for that too right now.

A delightful, fast-paced ending to this story and once again I find myself loving Faulkner's style. Though I struggled through (thought it terribly plodding) the first quarter of the book that set up the environment and the characters, the base he laid down for us clearly had a purpose in that we become comfortable with the characters, already know how they interact, and then can more easily see them more intimately as they face the conflicts of Faulkner's tale.

Just as with his characters, Faulkner lays down a simple base situation and then creates the complications that keep one on edge. A stolen automobile turns into a trade-off for a horse that makes a race necessary to win back the car. The horse is known to balk at running ahead and then we find the horse has been stolen prior to being traded so there is that extra need to sneak around as more folk get involved. Faulkner gives us side stories too; the whorehouse with Miss Reba, and Miss Corrie who is inspired by Lucius not to ply her trade but find a decent way to make a living–which of course messes up Boon Hoggenbeck's plans and causes even more trouble with the southern lawman Butch.

But the characters, and the close look at their personal interactions and particularly the way black and white keep close yet at a distance to each other is the heart of the story. Ned is not what he seems, he is a clever man who knows the ways of blacks and whites both and knows how to fit in either world to suit himself without compromise. And Faulkner shows us the differences between the cultures and yet ends the story with the Boss and Colonel Lincomb and Mr. van Tosch, the horse's owner, wheeling and dealing on the final outcome of a race with the same sense of finagling that Ned applied.

There are themes that run through the story that hold it together beyond the racial issues and the friendships; Minnie's gold tooth that means so much to her that the boy Otis steals. The evil natures of Otis and Butch against the honesty of Lucius or Ned. The ability to change, or strive to improve by watching others and learning; this comes to Lucius, of course, as an eleven year-old boy who learns he can lie and steal and yet shows others how he keeps his promises, is loyal, and willing to defend the dignity of others, as he does with Miss Corrie. Boon Hoggenbeck gets himself into more trouble than ever simply by the boy's influence and example.

Faulkner has each character wanting something and shows how they will go about getting it; this is a major element of fiction and he has endowed each of the main characters with a desire, a means, and an ultimate decision to make and they all come out finding what they need at a price they were willing to pay.

Loved the story, loved the intricacy of the plots that Faulkner neatly brought together through introductions of new characters and conflicts. All I need to remember is that starting a Faulkner novel is the toughest part; enjoying and finishing it is easy.

Forgive the language that's considered politically incorrect as a racial slur now –it had a different, less evil meaning in the era of the story, simply meaning what 'black' or African American means today (except coming from the mouth of Butch Lovemaiden, the stereotypical Southern lawman, whose "boy," is no less demeaning)–but this explanation of Ned's as answer to the Colonel's question of behavior is priceless:

There's pride in that, and each man treats the other with respect though a difference in social status and culture is certainly accepted as a natural state of being. These families have crossed racial barriers in their bloodlines, and without hesitation acknowledge it without shame or concern, and yet the wall stands more because of social status than color, though color certainly marks the division as clearly as football jerseys at a game.

Faulkner wrote this novel, his last, in 1961–it was published in 1962, the year that he died at age 65. The story takes place in the present, that is, around the 60s when one considers that the narrator is in the present, telling a story that happened to him back fifty years ago, or around 1905. Faulkner's own life span corresponds somewhat to the time frame, his being around the same age as the narrator as a child. What makes this interesting then, is adding in the time factor of the era in which it is being read, for example, my reading of it in the year 2009.

So much had changed in the American South between 1905 and 1960 and particularly in the areas of race and gender rights and struggles on which Faulkner focuses. I have been through Georgia on a road trip back in '61; though I was only a kid myself I do remember the separate public bathrooms for blacks and whites. Here, nearly a half century later things have changed so very much again, striving for a balance and equality of spirit that transcends the legal letter of the law that was itself so ponderously slow in coming.

How different do we read a book then, a story that encapsulates a time period of which we have little knowledge except from slanted history texts, if not through those who've been there, who write the feeling rather than the flatness of the time?

Then again, I guess some things take longer to change.

Faulkner has kept this story strictly linear, straight first person narrator, starting with a dramatic opening scene, then continuing with setting up of environment while introducing his characters and their relationships. Pretty straightforward writing style here, and except for the rather overbloated detail of setting up the story, the only literary element missing was a more intense pace.

Now we are starting, with the theft of the automobile, the new characters of the ladies, and the trading of the automobile for a horse that needs to learn how to run and win a race, to have some much-needed action. Now I'm not one who needs action, but we did need something by way of strong conflict at this point of the story, and we get this in the rush to meet a deadliine and the underlying threat to all if they cannot win back the car.

Faulkner is still Faulkner, however; we are gradually finding quite an interesting character developing in Lucius, the eleven year-old narrator. We have already seen him change the character of Boon, and of Miss Corrie. We have seen a change in him as he struggles to become worldy-wise while retaining his own sense of ethics.

As the plan goes into action to race the horse, the narrator sleeps up in the attic with Otis, another young boy at the house who is very different than Lucius. When Otis reveals that he has made money by drilling peepholes into the rooms and charged others to spy on what was going on with Miss Corrie and her customers, Lucius feels rage and disgust and attacks him. Otis, however, has a knife and while he takes a bad beating, Lucius grabs the knife away and is badly cut.  Miss Corrie comes up to dress the wound and Otis has told her what the fight was about. She is obviously moved by Lucius' actions.

Corrie's promise not to prostitute herself is made because she has seen someone else defend her virtue. Lucius is a product of his upbringing and while he doesn't know exactly what's going on here, he knows that Otis' actions played on the evil side of man's nature, and in the process, further degraded Miss Corrie's own. He is learning fast:

Lucius has resolved to his understanding that his taking the car with Boon and taking off was a struggle that Non-virtue seemed to make all too easy, his lies were corroborated just by circumstance and helped pave his path to the forbidden. With this encounter, he has seen that things happen just as easily when one does the right thing. Just as Miss Corrie has learned that good does exist, so has Lucius and they have formed a bond in their acceptance.