I'm slowly working my way through several of William Faulkner's short stories and am starting to (starting to, mind you) understand a little of the Faulkner universe (or more accurately, Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi).
Sometimes you have to read Faulkner a few times to get it and sometimes even that doesn't help much. My second favorite Faulkner quote - Faulkner was being interviewed in 1956 in the Paris Review:
Interviewer: Some people say they can’t understand your writing, even after they read it two or three times. What approach would you suggest for them?
Faulkner: Read it four times.
That's pretty much what I've been doing this week with "That Evening Sun." There's so much going on in this story that you really have to filter it all through the opening paragraph, in which Faulkner (through narrator Quentin Compson) informs the reader that progress and technology have had a drastic (and not necessarily positive) influence on the town of Jefferson (county seat of Yoknapatawpha). Quentin speaks of events that took place fifteen years earlier when he and his siblings were children, seeing the world through children's eyes. And it's quite a frightening world.
As several as the pieces of the story come together, you get the feeling that not only "That Evening Sun" but all of Faulkner's tales and novels are just one part of the massive universe of Yoknapatawpha County with its history, its characters, their history, etc. As I'm reading, I understand with equal measures of pleasure and woe that to truly understand Faulkner, one must read all of Faulkner.
For right now, I need to take Faulkner in small doses. I imagine that after I've studied "That Evening Sun" I'll take a little vacation from Faulkner. Yet I know no one describes my home state quite like he does. Faulkner knows the wonders and horrors of Mississippi in particular and the South in general. It's all summed up in my favorite Faulkner quote:
"The past isn't dead. It isn't even past."
6 comments:
I'd be all over reading the entire Faulkner canon if not for Absalom, Absalom! But I've only tried to read it three times. Maybe the fourth time, per Faulkner's suggestion, will make the difference.
I've always looked at Faulkner's stories almost as ghost stories. Not in a genre sense, but in the very real sense that his characters are haunted, even tormented, by the dead, passed and gone.
Good luck on your Faulknerian expedition.
I think your assessment of haunted characters is a good one, at least based on what I've read so far. I foresee many rest stops along this expedition. Total immersion with Faulkner is probably not a good idea.
Andy
shoot me an email
tivy1@comcast.net
Terry Ivy
What do you think of Saffron and Brimstone?
Paella is much better with saffron.
Had some brimstone chili once...bad stuff.
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