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Absalom, Absalom!

William Faulkner

Start date: June 1, 2018

Finish date: June 30, 2018

Discussion: 2018 RT Tournament of Books

Why we're reading this: Contender for the 2018 RT Tournament of Books, Round E
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What Members Thought

Sep 23, 2015 Gill rated it really liked it

Another book by Faulkner that I enjoyed. I didn't find it nearly as difficult as some suggest that it is.

Faulkner has so many great strengths: using multiple viewpoints to develop a story, fabulous use of language, the ability to use his stories to reflect how it was to live in the South during and after the American Civil War.

My next related read is, to find a good nonfiction book that will enhance my understanding of the American Civil War.

My next Faulkner read is Sanctuary, in October. ...more

6 likes · Like · see review

Mar 31, 2012 Christopher rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: historical-fiction, american, fiction

I've decided that this book is a hugely ambitious but not completely successful experiment. Faulkner's gimmick in this book is that his story is told not by an omniscient narrator, but by several characters with limited knowledge of the story. It's an interesting tactic, like peeling back the layers of the onion, but after three hundred pages of incredibly dense, meandering prose, you begin to wonder which of the layers you actually enjoy. Because it's a great story Faulkner tells, but the way i ...more

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Jul 22, 2023 Gerard rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites, 20c-literature

When I reach the end of my road, I request that my family and loved ones bury me with the nine or ten books that most changed my consciousness as a reader. Some of these selections include Mason & Dixon, The Waves, Complete Poems of Hart Crane, Nightwood, King Lear, Invisible Man, Beloved, Ulysses, and Divine Days. I hold each of these books close to my heart because of how far they extend themselves to unearth the deepest parts of the human condition and our innermost turmoil & experiences of a When I reach the end of my road, I request that my family and loved ones bury me with the nine or ten books that most changed my consciousness as a reader. Some of these selections include Mason & Dixon, The Waves, Complete Poems of Hart Crane, Nightwood, King Lear, Invisible Man, Beloved, Ulysses, and Divine Days. I hold each of these books close to my heart because of how far they extend themselves to unearth the deepest parts of the human condition and our innermost turmoil & experiences of alienation; each piece of literature paints a unique story depicting the human spirit's ability to transcend the chains of mortal suffering. William Faulkner's "Absalom, Absalom!" is the most recent addition to my list, but certainly no exception to those same endearing qualities which I discovered in the former.

The tale of Thomas Sutpen, a "demonic" man that forced his way into Mississippi after growing up in poverty, is cataclysmic and fragmented. The narrative fragments are scattered across the wavering and often unreliable consciousnesses of the novel's characters. Yet, by the end, you begin to put the pieces of the disorienting narrative together to reach a timeless illumination: the violent, repressive, and regressive powers of Thomas Sutpen over the town are an allegory for the rise and fall of the Old South. Faulkner's sublime writing style combined with fragmented narrative & temporal structures purposefully obfuscates any clear or easy understanding from his readers in similar ways that Faulkner's European modernist contemporaries masterfully worked, as in Joyce's Ulysses or Woolf's To the Lighthouse. I believe Faulkner was so intentional with his experimental and Gothic style because he wanted his readers to slow down and feel the weight of injustice on their spirits. Time almost comes to a complete halt in all of Faulkner's novels, and this one was no exception. Racism, violence, slavery, and other forms of exploitation targeting Black and Indigenous people plague the history of America, and white people's motivations for exploiting others are often blurred by their blinding self-righteousness, which at his core, explains the character of Thomas Sutpen.

I have so much more to say about Absalom, Absalom, but it truly is overwhelming in terms of scope and style. Plus, I don't know how much more I can contribute to the discourse of Faulkner's triumphant novel that hasn't already been discussed at great length by wonderful scholars and casual readers alike. Faulkner tackles many other issues in this novel as well, such as War, incest, religious intolerance, suffering, and the burden of Time on the mind and spirit. Chapter 5, the episode where Rosa Coldfield recounts her perspective on what happened after the death of Charles Bon to Quentin, is up there with some of my favorite writing of all time.

I found the way Faulkner composed sentences in this novel prolific, and much different from his style in As I Lay Dying and The Sound and the Fury, two novels that didn't quite resonate with me on my first reads. Heck, Absalom, Absalom is still a departure from my previous favorite novel from Faulkner, Light in August; it almost reads as an amalgamation of those three novels that I've read from Faulkner so far. Not only are the stories and perspectives in Absalom, Absalom completely unreliable, but it is also that disparity between subjective and objective truth that cloaks the novel as a whole in a similar way that the Institution of Slavery haunts not only the Old South but also the soul of America. This is a novel I will come back to for many years, and even expand upon this review in the future. A masterpiece of Southern literature.

Yes, Judith, Bon, Henry, Sutpen: all of them. They are there, yet something is missing; they are like a chemical formula exhumed along with the letters from that forgotten chest, carefully, the paper old and faded and falling to pieces, the writing faded, almost indecipherable, yet meaningful, familiar in shape and sense, the name and presence of volatile and sentient forces; you bring them together in the proportions called for, but nothing happens; you re-read, tedious and intent, poring, making sure that you have forgotten nothing, made no miscalculation; you bring them together again and again nothing happens: just the words, the symbols, the shapes themselves, shadowy inscrutable and serene, against that turgid background of a horrible and bloody mischancing of human affairs.

That is the substance of remembering—sense, sight, smell: the muscles with which we see and hear and feel not mind, not thought: there is no such thing as memory: the brain recalls just what the muscles grope for: no more, no less; and its resultant sum is usually incorrect and false and worthy only of the name of dream. ...more

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Jun 29, 2015 Elise rated it liked it

Shelves: fiction, 1930s, club, read-in-2018

When Quentin Compson's college roommate Shreve the Canadian asks him what life is like in the South, Quentin tells him this insane multigenerational saga about racism and a family tree that's almost as messed up as a Roman emperor's. Nice work perpetuating stereotypes. Whereas The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying have different POVs with distinct voices, Faulkner does the opposite here. The episodes composing the Sutpen family drama are passed down over decades from one character to the nex ...more

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Aug 30, 2023 Pamela rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: boxall-1001-read

Thomas Sutpen turns up, seemingly from nowhere, in the small Mississippi community of Jefferson in 1833 and dedicates himself to building a massive house. He marries Ellen Coldfield, a respectable middle class woman, and begins to found a dynasty that will cement his place in society. Yet all is obviously not well in the big house, and when the South descends into the chaos of Civil War, Sutpen is unable to prevent secrets from the past coming to light with tragic consequences.

Faulkner is one of ...more

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