ZAbsalom, Absalom! ~ William Faulkner ~ 1/00 ~ Gre Export

Joan - Why do you say it is Faulkner’s intent to slow us down? Certainly you almost have to read it slowly, but I don’t understand how I’m supposed to understand that that is his intent

One of the things that always goes right by me when reading is voice…narrator. I almost never pick up on/pay attention to that aspect. Someone always has to point it out to me before I’m aware of any specific voice – the “they” of the first sentence eliminates Quentin and Rosa so to me this ‘narrator’ is unidentified at this point.

I grinned at this from page four: Miss Coldfield tells Quentin that since “there is little left in the south for a young man” perhaps he will “enter the literary profession” and write the story of Thomas Sutpen. She says that maybe he’ll be married and need the money for his wife’s purchases and write and submit the story to magazines. This is all not without a certain self-reference and irony which would have passed right by me but for the bios.

I believe it was Claire earlier who pointed out, quite rightly, her impressions of Quentin’s desire to be anywhere else but in the presence of Rosa Coldfield. “long still hot weary dead” – that’s a five spot with no commas! Followed by a triple-bagger: “dim hot airless” (no commas). “dead old dried” (no commas)– another trey. Then “dry vivid dusty” (no commas) – three again. Then “grim haggard amazed” (no commas). He hits us right off with the five like a jazz trio counting off a crazy time signature (“One – Two – Three Four Five”– then settles into the groove with with these triples like a drummer slamming his brushes on his cymbals. I HEAR ‘ya Willie. Yeah!

Joan--

I found you again, and in the right place this time, I think. Just a thought, but perhaps Faulkner could see the story whole by the time he wrote Chapter I. He also may very well have heavily revised the first chapter after he knew for certain what was going to happen. What is really fun is to read the whole novel and then go back and reread Chapter I and see how much of the story is there.

It's a really good idea to read parts of the novel outloud, either to yourself or someone else. The language, so close to poetry, begs to be heard.

claire--- I am sure that Quentin's eyes were glazing over as Miss Rosa ranted. Her point of view is extremely distorted, as are others in the novel.

Mary

Joan----

Sorry, I forgot to answer your question about my email address. I checked it and it is correct. The problem is that I cannot access my account at the moment. AOL is on my daughter's computer and she is having it upgraded and Y2K compatiblized.

There is a delay in the upgrading process because a friend of hers is doing it and he has not yet installed the modem. Or something like that. I know how to operate computers but am not very good at talking about them!

Anyway, one of these days, I will again have access to my email.

Mary

no dictioary???not needed after all since it is not miss rosa who uses unfamiliar language. It is the omniscient narrator who makes up words as needed and as a kind of shorthand. In the first chapter I found these.., often using adjectives as nouns. as in docility. Then there are combinations like using the prefix "un" as in unamaze or undefeat, unregret or notpeople to describe the two quentins having a conversation with each other. or ogreworld -- ogratale to see the place and story as Miss Rosa interprets it. 'prisoned leaving the prefix off.

palmlifted to describe the noun (person) Sutpen the powerful one, is often used.

(my question: Why is TATTERAN used to describe the captive architect who is gentle and powerless?

Oh yes, Miss Rosa is sixty years old, or as quentin puts it three times as old as he is and Quentin is twenty.

Much of this narrative covers a time when she is very young, going back to the age of three and on through seventeen and twenty . It leaps about in time which is a little confusing, but not impossible although his made-up word reason-flouting leads me to believe that WF thought it all might be. . . impossible. (VBG) and he uses parenthesis freely. . . something I like but understand isn't considered good usage. What fun, breaking the rules (S). and exprsive too -- re the JAZ rhythms established as pointed out by Charlie.

Enough for now . . . Claire

Mary - “Distorted” points of view. I have a feeling that WF uses such points of view for more than one reason…

It’s September 1909 – that much is certain. (Am I allowed to say that!!??) Quentin attends Harvard in 1909. This makes Rosa 64 (born 1845 per the official Genealogy) and Quentin 18 (born 1891per the official Genealogy). Except Quentin has been breathing the same air and listening to his fathers stories for 20 years – which would either make it 1911 or mean he was born in 1889 and the official Genealogy is wrong or the 20 years air-breathing is really 18. Besides, Rosa has worn her “eternal black” for 43 summers…the blinds of the room they meet in have been closed for 43 summers. Makes you kinda wonder what happened 43 summers ago!! 1865. End of Civil War (the South lost!)?? “The deep South dead since 1865”. I’ll go with Rosa is 64 and Quentin is 18 – but I reserve the right to change my opinion later as more facts are distorted by some other character!!!

I have gone back, as Joan suggested, and reread parts of Chapter I. My feeling is that Quentin may be the narrator or that it may be someone who is unknown to us--the all seeing narrator who is setting the stage. I felt some sympathy for Sutpen when I read Miss Rosa's account of his actions. His ostracism by the community seems more based on his being a stranger than his actions at first. Miss Rosa is not a sympathetic character in Chapter I. I was also struck by her telling Quentin that "there is little left in the South for a young man". The truth of the matter is that there were very few young white men left in the South after the Civil War and although this story takes place after the death of Charles Bon and Miss Rosa enlists Quentins help in 1910, that was not so far removed from the "War". Down here, we still have people who talk about it as if it happened recently.

Claire's observations about Faulkner's vocabulary also struck a chord with me. I usually can figure out what an author means by the context surrounding the unknown word. However, this is tricky with these long sentences. Yes, they do flow like poetry, but what do they mean? I tend to be much more literal in my interpretation of what I read, and I agree with Charlie. I'm not always in tune with voice and/or themes. Sue

the faint triangle of lace at wrists and throat…the wan haggard face…p 2
the wan triangle of lace at wrists and throat…the dim face…p 5
the unmoving triangle of dim lace…pg 16

Gouache, Claire.

The wan goes from face to lace
The dim goes from face to lace
I feel like Dr. Suess

for those who don't paint is an opague watercolor medium used mostly now by graphic designers, unless they are on a Macintosh. I like the combinations Charlie of face, and lace and wan and dim...how clever of you to notice that. But what does guache have to do with it?

Claire

"the request from a woman three times his age". . . . it would be three hours . . .before he would learn why she had sent for him because this part of it, this first part of it Quentin already knew. It was a part of his twenty years' heritage of brething the same air . . . "

I stand by Quentin is twenty and Miss Rosa is three times twenty or sixty.

Claire.

Thanks for the email...I am sorry to tell you that I cant finish reading this book --it is too too much for me to handle....I had read four chapters and dont know what the heck I read!!!! The sentences are so long I lose track of what is being told of the story...My mind needs simpler writing I guess...I feel Faulkner was trying to write as in a poetic way and really didnt care if there was clarity... I spoke to someone about the book and this person smiled amused and told me yes, it was ramblings of the mind...and this person told me that Faulkner was considered a genius...Genius! Is that the thinking processes of those persons who are so much ahead of the commonman in the arts etc.? Their thinking processes must be really convoluted (if thats the way one could describe such thinking ) Was all of his writing written in these long undetermining sentences? Well I am taking the book back to the library regretfully realizing I will never be with those who enjoy such writing! "Yes,for them: of that day and time, of a dead time;people too as we are and victims too as we are, but victims of a different circumstance, simpler and therefore, integer for integer, larger, more heroic and the figures therefore more heroic too, but dwarfed and involved but distinct, uncomplex who had the gift of loving once or dying once instead of being diffused and scattered creatures drawn blindly limb from limb from a grab bag and assembled, author and victim too of a thousand homicides and a thousand copulations and divorcements."(Chapter4) Man Alive!!!Ann

Oh dear, Ann!, oh dear...I could drive the 20 minutes down to Woodbridge and try to stop you...or at least talk you into renewing it! You'll be pleasantly surpised as we open it up together! Ann? We're not giving up on you! Don't read another line of the book! Just stick around for the discussion! I think I'd better email her, don't you? I hear her car in the driveway...

Maryal, that's a good idea! When we finish, let's go back and reread the first paragraph, the first chapter and see the story embedded within. Right now, Sue, I'm with you! Don't know who is speaking, or what has happened - or who these people are!. And Charlie is asking what time it is! I'm so glad you brought up the fact that "43 summers ago" was 1865, Charlie! The same year the War was over! Great!

This circular way of storytelling...no beginning, just presenting a few facts, then dropping the thread, flipping back some forty years, and then back to the present...seems to be Faulkner's way of including us, right along with young Compson...in the mystery? "Why tell me about it?", he asks? Yes, we ask - why did Rosa Coldfield choose the boy? Who is the boy, we ask, how is he related to her? He has known her all his life...but they have never exchanged more than 100 words.

Clever not having a clear narrator...life has no narrator! Faulkner succeeds, I think, in putting us right in the middle of the story with no guiding voice to explain what is going on...We are not hearing Miss Rosa's story (she makes it clear that she doesn't know the whole story - Quentin doesn't know...and our omniscient narrator isn't really making his presence known either. We are on our own, I'm afraid...but we do have one another!!!

claire, does it bother you that the twenty year old boy views Miss Rosa at 60 as old???

Through his eyes, she sits in the dim coffin-smelling gloom..(.no commas - is this intentional? Is this causing a problem for us, the reader?)
...the rank smell of female old flesh
he notices the dead old dried paint...and the dust, always the dust!

At first I was appalled at the characterization of a sixty-year old woman...but then there are the contrasts! And I see, I think Faulkner's purpose here...

Quentin narrates her "antiquity", but our narrator interjects

the image of the "old flesh embattled in virginity"
...dressed in black, yes, but "sitting bolt upright feet not touching the floor - like a schoolgirl
..."resembles a crucified Christ on the too tall chair" - like a child

So we are viewing the child imprisoned in an aging woman's body (I feel like that, don't you?)...and to the boy, the grim haggard amazed voice drones on...the voice talking with incredulous and unbelievable amazement"

Will someone please address this "amazement" ??? It comes up again somewhere in this chapter...the permanent state of amazement? Can you relate this state to the South after the War?

I'm off...must go find Ann and bring her back to help us out!

I wish you and others were right here with your feet on my round coffee table exchanging our views "in the flesh". . . this is such an immediate discussion. Yes, it helps me that I"ve read well into the novel --chapter four to be exact, because I can see where much that is taken for granted here is explained later. I won't spoil it for you all by being more explicit, but read on and then come back. . . be one of the community which is a character in itself and knows some if not all of the things miss Rosa and Quentin know already here in chapter one.

Ann, this book can really frustrate you and me the first time I tried to read this kind of writing without the help of these kind people. I was reading modern suspense and mystery novels which are direct, move along nicely and don't confuse except for the "who done it" part which is what they are all about. S snarl a little if you must but don't give up on us. (S)

Claire

I agree with him. When I was twenty THIRTY FIVE was OLD.... I don't identify enough to take any of this personally. That goes for the questionable moral issues as well.

.Claire

I read Faulkner when I was young. And that was a long time ago. I read book after book, absolutely hypnotized by his long, meandering sentences. It didn't matter whether I understood what he was talking about or not. I loved it. After Faulkner, I thought no book about the South ever rang true again. Now, I am curious to see if he still has the same effect on me. Many of the writers I loved when I was young, I no longer like. Hemingway, for example. I want to re-read Absolom, Absolom, and see what I make of it now.

I enjoyed reading your comments, though I was surprised when Charlie said Faulkner's prose was like jazz. I remember it as being turgid as swamp water, full of decaying vegetation, dreamlike and murky.

Shasta----Hi and welcome. I think you're new to the discussion. I don't like Hemingway any more either (though I enjoy reading about his life) but I still love Faulkner. Once hypnotized, for me, always hypnotized. Please join us in reading Absalom and see if you see it differently now.

Charlie---As to Quentin's and Miss Rosa's ages. You have it about right. But Faulkner was not careful about dates, giving them sometimes as one thing, sometimes as another. Miss Rosa is about three times Quentin's age (and he DOES think of her as OLD) and the 43 years does take us back to the end of the Civil War, 1865.

Joan---Miss Rosa is "amazed" at the story she is telling about Sutpen, still amazed after all these years. She is also horrified by it. She portrays Sutpen as the devil himself who roared into Mississippi and brutally tore 100 acres out of the land. After 43 years, Miss Rosa is still outraged.

Ann---hang around with us and join in whenever you want. I'll bet more sunk in than you think. Did Joan manage to drive down there to renew your copy?

Mary

Did you notice Faulkner's use (twice) of the word "holocaust"? It is familiar to us now, but quite unusual, I would think, for a book copyrighted in 1936. WF's use of language and the variety of his vocabulary are remarkable and make his writing most stimulating and expressive. I haven't read him for a long time, but now remember the excitement of his work. I agree with some earlier posts here, that Hemingway is no longer interesting, but WF still cuts the mustard for me. June

Joan's quotes about MR and the setting is reminiscent of Miss Havisham in Great Expectations. Shows that WF was really well read. I've been deep into Morante's, History A Novel, trying to finish it. Will come back soon. I really enjoy getting my teeth into Faulkner

Charlotte

Shasta! Welcome! So glad you found us! Pull up a chair, leave Ann's empty for a while longer...we're hoping she'll return. And June too! - this is great! Another chair! And Claire says it's okay to put feet on the coffee table....

Claire, yes I understand the young man's attitude toward age. I over-reacted when I calculated that Rosa was merely sixty and was being portrayed as "ancient one". To me Quentin was Pip ...the wedding banquet scene - the stifling air, the cobwebs, dust, decaying cake...and flesh of the virginal Miss Haversham.

But this is different, isn't it? The lady is not heart-broken...her heart does not seem to have been involved at all... she remembers her "intended" with such violent terms, and makes it very clear that the only reason she was living under his roof was her destitution following the "holocaust". (thanks for pointing that out, June...went right by meand it was repeated twice!) And if her broken heart is not the issue, then what exactly is it that causes her to dwell on the event that occurred 43 years ago? Maryal has described it as her permanent state of "amazement". Do we know yet (from the reading of this first chapter) what happened?

Charlie has pointed out that forty-three years ago, the War, the holocaust ended. The South, and Miss Rosa are left in this state of "amazement", and struggle for survival. Is it at this point that we begin to see the parallels between the two stories, the rise and fall of the Sutpen family, the rise and fall of the South? The land, the curse on the land? What do you think? What are the parallels...but just those presented in this first chapter? (Some of us have read no further)

Chollie, am interested in your reply to Shasta's jazzy question!

Charlotte!, we were posting at the same time! You felt the Great Expectations scene too! And that Dickens did influence Faulkner's young boy/abandonned bride interview. Hmmm. Interesting! Later!

I love the way Rosa discribes her as the "widow before she could be a bride" over and over instead of using her name or something shorter. There's a beat to it. . . chollie that jazz is showing all over the place.

Claire

Can anyone explain the title of the book? I know that Absolom was the son of King David, and overthrew his father and took over the throne. Later, Absolom was killed by David's army. Does "Absolom, Absolom!" mean that a father is chiding his son for disloyalty and rebellion? I can't recall what the connection was between this Bible story and Faulkner's book.

Claire - “what does guache have to do with it?” – I have no idea. I frequently have thoughts that mean something only to me – but the word “opaque” captures the feeling I had about those lines…

Shasta - jazz only in the one-two-three rythym that he employs, stacatto-like (to my ear, but not necessarily to anyone else’s). Ann - Believe me, I will only read this book slowly, Chapter by Chapter, following in the footsteps of Joan – the path already trodden. You wont find me blazing any trails here!!

Joan said “we ask - why did Rosa Coldfield choose the boy?”. What did ya’ll think of Quentin asking his father that question: “But why tell me about it?” Or – what did you think of his answer? That she needed someone to tell the story to and to go with her (presumably out to the Sutpen house. Then she establishes the connection between Quentin and Sutpen – Quentin’s grandfather, Thomas Sutpen’s best/only friend. Seems pretty much of a stretch – the heredity excuse. Faulkner talks a lot about ghosts in this chapter. Not only the War turning the South’s Ladies into Ghosts. (What do you think he means by that?) But the entire South (“dead since 1865”) “peopled with garrulous outraged baffled” (another triple play) ”ghosts”. Quentin, in fact, despite his young years (whether 18, 19 or 20) having ghost-hood forced upon him merely by virtue of the fact that “he was born and bred in the Deep South”. I’m wondering if he’s not talking about myths here, being forced to deal with them as part of the ‘heritage’ – the ghosts of past glories, real and imagined….”notpeople” talking a “notlanguage” a language of perpetual amazement that the glories (real and imagined) have ended. And the REALLY amazing part, the only mystery to me in this first Chapter is Rosa’s OWN amazement at herself, after ticking off all Sutpen’s actions…”yet I agreed to marry him.” We (I) certainly don’t have a clue about THAT yet!

Just a brief greeting from a faithful lurker. The library has finally obtained a copy of Absalom in English, and I'll pick it up later today. They regretted that their 4 Norwegian translation copies were on loan to a study group in another town. Isn't that interesting? Wonder what the translator has made of Faulkner's complex and original language. Am so glad to be able to join in; reading everyone's comments, and especially with your leadership, Joan, is a wonderfully rewarding activity. Carolyn

Welcome, Carolyn of Norway!! Am a sort of lurker myself, even though I absolutely mean to plow through the moving boxes to retreive my copy of Absalom any hour now to read the first chapter again.

Prose poetry. That's what this feels like to me. It screams to be read aloud---or at least, as I do when the voice is this unfamiliar, HEAR it being recited in my head. I hear a Hal Holbrook southern, on stage voice reciting, performing it, as in poetry form, as in the oldest form of MUSIC with recurring themes. Don't know enough about jazz to know if that's close to what you're saying, Charlie. So many poets talk of hearing the words as music.

For those who are struggling with the strange form and voice, as I always do with something this unusual, I want to tell you that there is a different kind of satisfaction in this for me. I expect the frustration, the reaching for the dictionary, the dependence on others to get story and meaning straight. I ALWAYS think of giving up. But some time ago, as I kept going back to something that felt so impossible, I got hooked on the PROCESS. The staying with it, the rereading, the letting go of my need for it to feel easy---satisfaction began to build in the smaller ah-ha's (oh, so HE'S the grandfather of the kid)---I'm talking very small ah-ha's.

The other thing that helps so much (with this kind of writer) is to NOT let some odd words or phrases ruin my pleasure in a sentence. Some of it I'll get right away. Some I'll get from others. Some words or phrases or parts of the story I'll have to leave behind, period. If Hal Holbrook is still on that stage reciting the story, I'm going to miss a few things as I enjoy the rest.

Aaaaah, Carolyn is with us! All is right with the world. Carolyn's been with us since the git-go and has a wondrous little granddaughter..who goes into her books when she's alone..Do you still have that piece you wrote several years ago, Carolyn? I will never forget that and would love to read it again!

Very wise advise, Bettydoc! So glad you know which box to open next...we've missed you here. Yes, reading aloud, letting somethings go by the first reading and then the magic begins...coming in here and sharing with the wonderful people here! Such an important reason Not to give up when this marvelous resource exists right here!

Shasta, I put a reference to the Biblical Absalom up in the heading...I am certain you will see connections between it and this title as the story unfolds.

Chollie, I'm thinking about Miss Rosa and this permanent state of amazement since she turned down the marriage proposal 43 summers ago, which just happens to be 1865 when the War ended. I'm wondering why this event crippled her, causing her life to ...freeze-frame. It had everything to do with the time and place, didn't it? I've been looking for parallels between the rise/fall of Sutpen family and the rise/fall of the South - they weren't parallel lines at all! The reason Miss Rosa couldn't go on with her life was the economic devastation in the South after the War...if she turns down the marriage proposal, where on earth can she turn? She and the South - helpless and impoverished...and amazed! The two stories are one and the same!

claire, will you say more about "the widow before she could be a bride", "the widow before she could be a bride", "the widow before she could be a bride" ...the child in this opening chapter, who is rarely addressed by name, but who is promising to be a key player in the story? In the two childhood incidents described here, she is in the company of a black child. What are the implications here?

Joan, I overlooked your reference to the Bibical Absolom. It's very interesting and very complete. And now I recall the story that unfolds in Faulkner's book. I won't jump ahead of the discussion, but the genealogy and chronology in the back of the book pretty much give the plot away. I suppose Faulkner thought the reader would not look at those until he finished the book.

But I have another question. Where was the mother of Ellen and Rosa at the time Ellen married Sutpen? The aunt is controlling the wedding as if the mother didn't even exist. But the mother didn't die till Rosa was born. Am I getting my arithmetic all screwed up? (It wouldn't be the first time.) Ellen was born in 1818. Ellen was married in 1838. Rosa was born and the mother died in 1845. So the mother was still living when Ellen was married, but no mention was made of her. Ellen and Rosa were born 27 years apart?

Quentin said that the mother must have been at least 40 when Rosa was born. Well, doesn't that make her 13 when Ellen was born?

Joan, I am upset with the red warning you posted in my last post. I was merely trying to answer Shasta's question about the Biblical reference to Absalom. My answer was pure speculation and gleaned from Faulkner's notes/biography at the end of the story. I didn't intend to give away the plot. I really think you should have e-mailed me if you had a problem with my post. However, as you can see I deleted my post. From this point I intend to lurk, as I do not feel my comments are welcome here. Most of the time they have been ignored--and I feel that some of the readers would rather discuss the esoteric language forever, rather than get on with the reading. A week for Chapter 1? I prefer reading at a faster pace. Sue

Southern Sue, it took us a year to read the Odyssey just so you understand the pace to which we have become accustomed. The week is not a reading schedule, but rather a discussion schedule. But some do not read ahead of the discussion schedule. I'm sorry this is not to your liking. The editorial note was a "friendly caution" to those who may not have read the whole book yet...certainly not for everyone else.

We really value your input here...I am here everyday and certainly don't recall a single post of yours being ignored. But I understand that something has upset you. If I have time this afternoon, I will go back through the posts and examine them for the oversight! Please accept my apology.

Sincerely,
Joan

Springcreek Sue--

Please continue to post. I have been interested in what you have to say. I haven't commented very much because I have taught this novel a number of times and I didn't want to push my way of seeing--or get ahead of myself as I often do--on anyone else.

I really understand the problem here. When I teach a novel, we always read and discuss a section at a time. In order not to get ahead of the students or flashforward before they have read further, I have to reread the section before I teach it. By the way, some of my students always find the material in the back and are often confused by it. Then they bring the information to class when I am tryng to keep us all together and Faulkner becomes even more confusing than Faulkner by nature is. Sometimes I honestly don't know what they have grasped and what is still darkness. What fun!

Anyway, please don't go away. I will miss you if you do.

Mary

But I don't think I can get up the courage to post about Faulkner or Absalom yet. I have felt rather intimidated with the intellectual level of this discussion and with others in the Great Books and Prize Books discussions. I have had a rather lengthy e-mail correspondence with Ginny, one of the discussion leaders, about this, and hoped to hold my own in the Faulkner discussion. However, I am not a very patient person and have rather unsophisticated reading skills, and I just don't feel I have much to offer this discussion.

I don't know if you saw my previous, now deleted post, but I had proprietary feelings about my writing, and was hurt to see something I interpreted as critical added. I am probably being ridiculously childish about this, but right now that is how I feel.

And here's the clincher: I had to borrow both Faulkner biographies and Absalom on interlibrary loan because they have been "permanently borrowed" from our small local library. I've had to turn them back in today. I did take notes on my reading of Absalom, but would probably find them difficult to interpret very far into the future.

Thanks very much for your supportive post. It made me feel a little better. Sue

Hi! Thanks for the email, attention, and encouragement...I find the postings very interesting and will continue to read them...Maybe if I had a chapter by chapter synopsis to read I would then be able to concentrate on the method of Faulkner's writing...Is there such a thing available somewhere? Wasnt 60 years of age considered really old around the time of the story? I think it is just lately that we all try to be "young old"...I had to laugh at the descriptions of the older female...was it done with utter disgust in the facts that this was a person vulnerable and perhaps useless to the world...What could afterall an old virgin really do then? But I can relate to the fact that times can make it difficult for a single old gal to be self sustaining and yet remain interesting...Women were pictured in the old south as young beautiful and buxom with lovely clevage! Did the old gal use the young man to assuage her fears and longings intensified by her being alone? Did I read that right? There is a fear even today of being all alone especially in a crisis...there are medical alert adjuncts and equipment to notify those concerned about such matter-for there still remains a kind of fear of being so all alone...What better foil than a younger man for this reason! I personaly find my "foils" on campus as I study with the younger generation!!! I am glad you saved a chair for me! Much thanks readers! Ann

There are so many signposts which remind me of the biographical data we’ve read. Speaking of the history of Sutpen and his semi-mythical past, the heritage, the narrator says that “Quentin had grown up with that; the mere names were interchangeable and almost myriad.” WF certainly grew up, as we have read, with all the stories of the Old Colonel, and other characters of the family history – and in some cases the names were interchangeable.

Joan asks about ‘favorite word pictures.’ From this same passage - Quentin had grown up hearing the same types of tales that WF had: “His childhood was full of them; his very body was an empty hall echoing with sonorous defeated names; he was not a being, an entity, he was a commonwealth. He was a barracks filled with stubborn back-looking ghosts still recovering, even forty-three years afterward, from the fever which had cured the disease, waking from the fever without even knowing that it had been the fever itself which they had fought against and not the sickness, looking with stubborn recalcitrance backward beyond the fever and into the disease with actual regret, weak from the fever yet free of the disease and not even aware that the freedom was that of impotence.” The empty hall echoing conjures of pictures of busts of civil war heroes in a dusty old museum. And Quentin (WF) has been filled with these stories all his life. He was a repository for them (a barracks), More ghosts. Always ghosts looking back into the past. The stubbornness and recalcitrance of this way of always looking back to a glorious(was it?) (but defeated) past rather than toward an uncertain future. Help me out here with the fever and the disease. The war the fever? Slavery the disease? Still recovering from the war (the fever?) after 43 years….which had cured the disease (slavery?)….Looking bac BEYOND the fever (war) and into the disease (slavery)with actual regret. Regret for the loss of their way of life? Regret for the institution…or the loss of it? Weak from the fever (the war?) yet free of the disease (slavery?). But it was a freedom of impotence…Do I have this right? Am I close? Can someone more coherent than I take a crack at this?

I'm not even as coherent but I saw the fever disease section as difficult and like you tried to figure out which was which..The war as fever makes sense, but slavery as disease leaves me wondering because southerners thought that slavery was the way things SHOULD be. . . so what was the disease if not slavery? In fact that southerners depended on others to o everything for them and were dependent and helpless to fend for themselves ? Slavery resulted in this but in itself wasn't considered to be WRONG.

Sue I've been reading and enjoying your posts....common back. I'm just as ignorant as you are having put off the classics all my life in favor of mysteries and suspense. I'm not upset if my contributions don't make sense to someone . I hope they do because we're all trying to clarify this difficult material and I'd like to think I'm "getting there". In learning any new skill the hardest part is "getting the ego out of it". I learned that studying voice. . . I didn't have one but needed it to teach folk songs.....enough!

do return Your observations have made good sense to me.

Claire

Southerners looked upon slavery as an economic necessity, but many had ethical problems with it although they depended on slavery to make a living on the large plantations. The greatest majority of Southerners who fought for the South in the Civil War did not own slaves and felt they were fighting for States Rights rather than Federalism. Although my paternal grandmother was a Lee, distantly related to Robert E., no one in her immediate family owned much property, much less slaves. My great-grandfather Lee was a cobbler and small farmer. Even the great Robert E. had very few slaves, and those he had came from his wife's side of the family. She was a Custis, I think George Washington's step-grandchild.

So it is no surprise to me that Faulkner described slavery as a disease and the War as a fever. These two institutions nearly destroyed the South and its people. Faulkner, himself, seemed to find slavery as abhorrent as we do, Claire, who live today. Sue

P.S. I've calmed down and couldn't resist answering this question. I'll try to keep myself under control and will continue to lurk. When I see something that I can discuss, I will join in.

Sue – Thanks for continuing to give your perspective. I have found them sensible, balanced and informed.

It seems that Sutpen (”man-Horse-demon”) descended upon ”a scene peaceful and decorous” (the old bucolic, pre-slavery South?) as an emissary from hell (“faint sulphur-reek still in hair clothes and beard”). He brought slavery with him (“his band of wild niggers”)? They overran “the hundred square miles of tranquil and astonished earth” (again, the old pre-slavery South?). This is certainly presented as an Old Testament creation: The garden, Eden, was dragged violently “out of the soundless Nothing” – creating like a thunderclap (“like the oldentime Be Light) this new “Sutpen’s Hundred.” Is this a possible way to look at Sutpen? This “man who “had no past at all”, who “rode into town out of nowhere”, this man who “concealed himself behind respectability’?

Springcreek Sue--

You see--you are needed. I was worried about the southern point of view leaving with you. I agree---the passage about the fever that cured the disease--the disease was indeed slavery which many southerners thought wrong in principle but right in situation.

Charlie--Keep in mind that this is Miss Rosa Coldfield the outraged who presents Sutpen, and I do like that Man horse demon part, as reeking with sulphur and straight from hell. Miss Rosa is not exactly a reliable point of view person, but we get fascinated with who this demon might be, he with no past that anyone knows who appears out of nowhere.

Mary

Oh Sue! You must know, you have to know how important the Southern perspective is here! And imagine that, our own SN connection to RELee! A thread, yes, but enough to keep us aware of what that War was about to the South.

But I want to be sure to point out, that even if you were NOT from the South, your voice and perspective is every bit as important as the next person's. YOU - and your love for reading - the reason we are having these discussions in the first place! No one is here to show off his/her learning, but rather to share their love of reading with those who are striving to appreciate what is obviously great writing...like Ann. We are all delighted to see you back in your chair, with your feet on the coffee table!

Okay,see if I'm getting this straight -

Sutpen's 100 = the Old South-(100 sq. miles is a lot of land! Think about it! Please refresh my memory...just how did Sutpen get the $$$ gold coin to acquire it?
Sutpen = the outsider? The greedy Southern plantation owner? (a bit confused here? He represents the outsider who introduces slavery to the "pre-slavery South", Chollie? Makes me wonder about WHEN slavery was introduced and what the Southern economy was before that? Was slavery the backbone of the Southern ecomony?
the "disease"= slavery
the "fever"= the War Maryal, I noticed you refer to the fever as the "cure" for the disease - whereas I had regarded it as the "symptom of the disease? I know this is semantic, but am wondering now if the "fever" Faulkner is describing is in fact the War - if the War was the "cure"?

Interesting that this perspective is coming from a Mississippi boy, with the same understanding of the causes of the war and the impact of slavery as Sue has...

What of Judith? Where does she fit in here...or is it too early to tell from Chapter 1? The curse of the father's greed...? We gather from the beginning that she is being exposed to the "disease", at a very young age. That she is her father's girl, who is early developing an immunity to the disease, just as it is making her brother ill.

The wild carriage ride to Church with the "wild negro" at the reins...this is attributed to the will of the 6 year old. Is she a demon too? And her enjoyment of the bloody late night "cock fight" between the slaves...What do these two incidents reveal about Judith?

Joan--

I think of the War as the fever because when there is an illness, the body's natural reaction is to produce a fever which is a sign of the activity of the immune system as well as a sign of the illness itself. Once the fever "breaks,"--the patient has passed the crisis. The Civil War, especially as it lives in legend, was a feverish activity engaged in primarily by young men. From the point of view of the South, we have such manifestations as the terrifying "rebel yell" the boys in gray used when they attacked.

We don't know yet how Sutpen got his money. It is one of the many mysteries we want to work out. We also only have a little information so far about Judith Sutpen, but we do know that she is strong and daring unlike her brother who is a wimp. (For those who have read The Sound and the Fury, the comparison between Caddy and Quentin comes immediately to mind.) The scene where Judith and Clytie are watching the men violently wrestling from the loft in the barn is an example of Judith's determination to experience the life around her. I'm not sure that we know Henry's reaction to the wrestling yet. Mary

Okay, will be patient to learn how the penniless Sutpen, with only the clothes on his back, was able to come in and take the 100 square miles of prime land from under the noses of the local inhabitants. I'll scratch my head and wonder right along with them.

How do you interpret 6 year old Judith's part in the racing carriage ride? It's being blamed on her, right?

The bloody barn fight between black and white, between Sutpen and his wild negroe that he brought by force to his land...that's a bit easier to interpret...and Judith witnessing it quietly in the loft, invisible to her father and her mother...the silent acceptance of what she is seeing...especially in contrast to her brother's reaction:

"Ellen, running down the hill from the house...in time to hear the sound, the screaming (Henry?)...hearing it even before it occurred to one spectator to say, 'It's a horse' then 'it's a woman', 'my God, it's a child'...the spectators pulling back to permit her to see Henry, plunging out from among the negroes who had been holding him, screaming and vomiting'...'while Henry clung to her crying.'"

Are we seeing the effect of the slavery system on the sons of the Southern plantation owners...and the daughters? Or is it way too soon to tell anything yet? We do know that Judith sat silent...accepting? While Henry wretched and screamed in horror though.

A bit off the subject, but there was an interesting article in today’s Boston Globe magazine section: The Confessions of William Styron by Wil Haygood.

One focus of the article is that Styron is one of the last of a breed of writers that were influenced, even a product of, the issues of Race in America. Most of his contemporaries whose art and focus were molded in that cauldron are now gone. Specifically, the article says that “he [Styron] misses” James Baldwin and William Faulkner. About Faulkner, Styron says:

"I had lunch with him back in the '50s. It was fascinating. He was about ready to go cover the Kentucky Derby for some magazine. He talked about horses. He also talked about Truman Capote, whom he didn't like. He said Truman was like a big flea that gets on your skin and annoys you."

Haygood writes:

” Styron got himself down to Oxford, Mississippi, when Faulkner died in 1962. Browsing in the dead writer's bedroom, Styron noticed a half-empty bottle of Old Crow and the last book Faulkner was reading, a biography of Stonewall Jackson, the Confederate general. Styron wrote about Faulkner's funeral for Life magazine.”

Many similarities and differences. Rose Styron seems to be a rock, a strong woman, a poet herself. Unlike Estelle. On the other hand, as a child Styron seems to have been heavily influenced by literary women in and around his family. Hollywood has been very kind to Styron, allowing him to be comfortable as a writer, despite the fact that he is nowhere near as prolific as Faulkner. Baldwin, as well as Faulker, hated Hollywood. He had early success, unlike Faulkner, earning some good money from his first novel, Lie Down in Darkness.

Sophie’s Choice, a terrific book and unusual, a stunning movie, or The Confessions of Nat Turner might make worthy reading material elsewhere in Books and Literature. Sophie’s Choice is about to get a 20th Anniversary reprinting. The writing of, and the reaction to The Confessions of Nat Turner, published in 1967 and a Pulitzer Prize Winner, are particularly fascinating in light of our reading of the Faulkner biographies. The relationship between Baldwin and Styron was also fascinating. Currently there are celebrations planned in Virginia next year honoring the work of their native son, Styron.

An excerpt on Styron’s awareness of the separateness of White and Black life in America:

“There were blacks who glided in and out of the Styron household every day of Billy Styron's growing-up life. They clothed him, served him sweet potatoes, poured gravy atop his chicken, sliced his corn bread. They were stronger than ghosts but they were like ghosts. They were the household help.
"My little family - mother, father - always had a black cook working for us. But it would be a long time before I had a real relationship with a black."
There they were: black folk. Someone black cutting the grass. Someone black stirring food in the kitchen. Someone black passing by on a Sunday morning, tipping a hat, helloing the Styrons. The 1930s, and hard times, and Negroes everywhere.
"I was intensely aware I lived in a world of two groups of people, white and black," Styron says. "And there were different rules for different groups. I began to be haunted by the presence of black people. It became almost exotic and romantic. For instance, their music. It was a different kind of music than I was accustomed to. I was interested in Negro spirituals. I remember there was a program called Wings Over Jordan, broadcast every Sunday morning. I forget which network. They would have choirs from Hampton Institute, from Howard University. I was devoted to listening to these programs. I was touched by it. That was one measure I felt between my whiteness and this need to understand the souls of black people."
There'd be times he'd just watch blacks, their world folding and unfolding right in front of his world. It was like a newsreel come to life. He couldn't get behind the screen but he'd hear their voices clearly enough: "Yes, ma'am." "No, ma'am." "'Night, Mr. Styron." "'Night, Billy."
"There was this enormous fact of segregation. There was no impulse to bridge the gap. That was the curse of segregation. But I always had this profound and curiously romantic desire to understand what black life was like. It was a constant need." “

After the Korean War, Haygood writes:

” It was then that William Styron started thinking about his childhood, about the black man he had heard about with a kind of fear and danger attached to his name. It was a name still cursed around the parts of Virginia where he grew up. His name was Nat Turner. The white writer fell in love with the black rebel. Turner had led a slave rebellion in Virginia in 1831. Blood flowed. Styron saw a historical novel.
It's no secret, of course, that blood has long extracted great literature. Ask Faulkner. Ask Baldwin.

If you’d like to read the whole article:

Haygood article.
These Globe links usually are available for only a few days.

Charlie

Off the subject, but it's Charlie's fault. I was interested to hear about the Styron article and will check it out. Styron has also written what I consider to be one of the very best books on Clinical Depression, Darkness Visible, which I recommend to all who are affected by, or have family members affected by, this terrible disorder. Styron writes from his own experience with Depression.

Joan---I never go to the symbolic level until the literal level is dealt with. I think Judith's actions show her personality and not a reaction to slavery. Same goes for Henry. We can discuss this more later.

Mary

Mary: From the Haywood article:
He wrote a book about the illness, Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness. A slim thing, less than 90 pages. But a powerful thing to its readers. "A classic," Buchwald [Art]calls the book. It became a bestseller, was translated into many languages. It was as if he were pulling all those pained souls, from all around the world, close to him, comforting them. Loads of money poured in. "I felt I earned it," Styron says. "It was payback for the suffering."

Charlie---Most interesting. Art Buchwald has also suffered from depression. I feel vindicated in my opinion!

Mary

Where would I be without Cliff's Notes. Dr. Roberts devides the characters into romantics vs. realists. The romantics consist of Miss Rosa and Ellen and even their father, and as well as HENRY. Judith is, like her father a realist, hard and manipulative.

She and Clyty (her half sister) weren't even supposed to be in the barn watching the fights, but there they were in the loft fascinated almost as if witnessing a sexual scene. There is something very erotic about the men fighting nude. It reminds me of a scene in an old movie...do any of you remember? The two men stripped and fighting in front of a fireplace after the women had retired. . . this instead of spending the time with the women ?. Henry was screaming in fear, but he did go away to war and he did survive and he did kill his best friend and ...I'd better stop here. There are abiguities all over the place.

Claire

OkayMaryal, I'll stop with the symbolism...you are witnessing my own insecurities - symbolism often goes right over my head! So I look for it under every rock, in every barn in YOK-na-pa-TAW-pha County! It is comforting hearing your voice, reassuring that it is too soon! Will give it a rest - and read on...

claire, are they fighting naked? I think that...and then I read how they are "naked to the waist"? Now which is it?

And one more question and I'll go back to my reading. The text I am reading is referred to as a "corrected text"...now what on earth does that mean. It seems to have been "corrected" in 1986 - under the direction of Noel Polk...and WF died in "62. It was "corrected" without his knowledge?

Later!

Joan

Such good authors on C-span today. The National Book Award ceremony (on tape from Wednesday?) is at 8PM eastern time.

I was much more interested in what the bare-knuckle fights with the slaves said about Sutpen than about Judith. It seemed to be something he did to show his (white) superiority over the black man. It also sert him apart from the other slave holders.

Incidentally, Sutpen arrived with no money, having left it all to his first wife (I must have remembered this from the bios), so he didn't have money to buy the land when he arrived.

Bettydoc, stay around and discuss this "good author" - you always have such insights!

I found Sutpen's behavior fascinating too, Chollie! Not my understanding of a typical plantation owner's behavior with his slaves at all! I would be very interested in learning more about the typical plantation owner before the war? I understood that the land came down through one's family somehow...but never stopped and thought about someone new coming in to buy land to start a plantation. Was this in itself an unusual occurrance? And when did slave labor become the practice? Where were the slaves brought from? From Africa I thought! Not Sutpen's slaves though?

Chapter 2 & 3 are on the schedule for this week...but there is so much in each! I just read that Chapters 1, 2 and 3 are the most difficult in the book...that the average reading time for each is three hours (who figures these averages, I don't know!) - so we may stretch Chapter 3 into next week (Thanksgiving and all!). I'm sorry, Sue, I understand you prefer a faster pace. I'll try, but it doesn't look good right now! Please bear with?

I have a few disconnected thoughts on the Southern mentality, seen from the perspective of a person who has lived in South Carolina almost 40 years, whose family is originally from SC, and who is married to a person from South Georgia.

When I first came South I was bemused by the different sort of conversations. There is a courtly mannerism present in all conversation, but you never really know what the other person is thinking, nothing is all laid out. Ya'll come does not mean Ya'll come. Since the converstation is slower and more courteous, individual words take on much more important meanings than they do in other parts of the country. Coming from the urban North, where I was accustomed to rattle on a million miles a minute and to tell everything I thought in that minute, I was irritated at first by what I thought was hypocrisy, and the slowness, the difference between what a person feels and what he actually says here. Almost 40 years later, I know better, and can recognize it for what it is, and now acutally prefer it. It's simply a different way of communicating and once you master it, you understand where the other person is coming from.

But it does have it's pitfalls, one major one being the reaction to the off or chance word and the high propensity to take offense at the slightest imagined slight. It's almost like the Mafia or how I perceive the Mafia, every nuance is considered, it's no wonder people carefully watch their words, and reply more slowly.

I don't know what, if anything, this helps add to your reading of the story, I have always hated Faulkner but not as much as Hemingway, and am determined to read ABSALOM and see if my new found maturity matches up with a new appreciation of Faulkner.

Ginny

This is may not be accurate as I am using my memory to relate this, but my recollection is that the first Africans came to America in 1619 to Jamestown Colony. These first Africans were treated as indentured servants--work 5 to 7 years, then they would be free. This was also the practice for poor minorities from Ireland, Scotland, England, and other European countries. However, some of the African immigrants did not earn their freedom from indenture. I don't know the reason for this. Also some Africans who were freed in this practice became slave holders themselves.

The Plantation system of slaveholding was dependent on the triangular trade of shipping. British ships (usually, although others including American companies did this) had a triangular route where slaves were picked up in Africa, sailed to the Carribean Islands, traded for molasses, then molasses was taken to Boston or New York where molasses was made into rum and then rum to African to be traded for people. (I may have this part backwards--maybe molasses from Boston, rum from Caribbean). Remember this is the recollection of years ago history classes.

Plantation owners began buying, selling and trading humans in port cities of the Atlantic Coast. Plantation owners who owned large rice, tobacco, or cotton plantations were most active in the slave trade. It continued in the Southern states after it had been declared illegal in many Northern states and after Britain discontinued the triangular trade routes. This would have been sometime in the early 1800s, so slave trading existed in American approximately 200 years. Many of the slaves had been used as slaves in the Caribbean on sugar plantations before being sold in America. Perhaps Sutpen had acquired slaves who spoke only French or their native Gullah or other African speech. A number of times Miss Rosa spoke of the slaves speech as unrecognizable. Sue

Boy it's hard to participate and not give anything away. Good overview of the slave trade, Sue. We don't know yet where Sutpen got the wild slaves he brings with him nor do we know where the money comes from. As so often in Faulkner we get the effect before the cause.

Now that we are through with Chapter I for the time being, I guess it's ok for me to comment. Miss Rosa is both an old dried up woman (as Quentin sees her) and a rhetorically powerful figure. She uses repetition (anaphora)--"No,I hold no brief"--first "for Ellen" and then "no more for Ellen than I do for myself" which she repeats "no brief for myself." The language she uses comes from the law and economics. She is passionate and intelligent. We thus see two sides of this woman--the one Quentin and no doubt members of the town see and an impression we form on our own based on how well and powerfully she speaks.

Chapters 2 and 3 have Mr. Compson, Quentin's father, as the primary point of view character. His voice should seem distinct from Miss Rosa's. He rambles and inserts his own opinions. Take note of how many times he says "probably," "most likely," and "maybe." He is also not a firsthand witness to the goings on at Sutpen's Hundred. His father, Quentin's grandfather was "the closest thing Sutpen had to a friend." That's a rough quote--I dont have the book in front of me.

Joan---the corrected text. There were many errors in Faulkner's novels and Noel Polk undertook an enormous project, correcting spelling errors, printing errors and comparing various typed copies. One example that I remember is at the end of The Sound and the Fury. Dilsy has taken the 33 year old retarded Benjy to Easter Sunday services at the Black church. There's a sentence in the uncorrected text that refers to Dilsey putting her "head" on Benjy's lap when he gets restless. Clearly the word needed is "hand."

Mary

U.S. shipping and the slave trade continued up to the civil war. When over a year after The Civil War began the focus became emancipation rather then States Rights, New York did not want to enter the Civil War on the side of the North, since they were heavily involved in shipping and financing slave trade for profit. The recent PBS special on the history of New York recounted the massive and most damaging riots in the history of this nation initiated by the Irish against being drafted. Many of the New England ship building towns were accumulating great wealth from the building of sailing vessels used in the slave trade.

When Henry Gates, Harvard Professor, visited Africa with cameras rolling and shock on his face he learned that Africans were the main slave trader with Europeans and Americans acting as middlemen. The episode where the brutality was described that took place in a cathedral as Africans were sorted for trade by other Africans was chilling. Some of the history learned on that filmed trip is on this site Gates visited Africa

This was a world wide blight that estimates of 20 million Africans were shipped to the colonies without counting the vast numbers enslaved and are still enslaved in Africa today, as well as the millions shipped to points in Arabia and Europe. Focusing on our abhorrence of slavery I think is keeping the understanding of Faulkner at bay.

Today, when the beauty of a home filled with oriental carpets is admired, no one recoils and passes judgment with pictures of small children, some kidnapped, spending 10 to 12 hours at the looms; nor do we think of the Mexican family living in a make shift shack, with no utilities, earning 56 cents a day making parts for the vehicles we are driving. Rather we enjoy our carpets and find our transportation a necessity. That is a closer way of understanding how the plantation system was viewed. The nostalgia for the plantation life was not with flashing pictures of the horrors of slavery in mind, just as the justice system today is not thought beneficial because we have a flashing mental picture of the horrors that sometimes occur in jails.

Faulkner was a man of his times. A Faulkner quote made Feb.20,1958

...I think that he (Negro) doesn't want to go to white schools just because they're white schools. I think he want to go to them because he's under the delusion that white schools are good schools....I would say that we train the Negro first into the responsibility of having the privilege of going to the white schools before we dump him into it. That he should be selected by rigorous examination before he was permitted into the white schools.

To recoil in horror at those statements is to forget the same type of statement was made about most emigrants, Irish, Chinese, Mexicans as well as woman.

I am not trying to justify slavery or the ill treatment of Blacks today. What I do believe is, it is easy to point or judge with our current sensibilities and that is a way to take the focus away from ourselves. The day we all accept that we have had a hand in slavery, segregation and really look at how free we really are of prejudicial thoughts we may then become a support in equal rights for all. Also, we will allow ourselves to read and identify with a story like Absalom because we will bring, with acceptance, without shame, understanding based on owning our own flashes of prejudices. Faulkner also did say, "There are very few people that have enough grandeur of soul to be able to use people and not develop contempt for them. And that --the contempt for people come ...out of success."

Quoting Faulkner to better understand his south.

They were the aristocrat of provincial Mississippi at that time. It was still frontier. In Natchez they had the fine Empire furniture, people had --they spent their money on objects d'art from Europe, furnishings and fine clothes. In the country, these people, they were aristocracy, but they were still frontier, they were still the tall man with the long rifle, in a way. That even their splendor was a little on the slovenly side, that they went through the motion of living like dukes and prices but their life wasn't too different from the man who lived in a mud-floored hovel. No, they represented the aristocracy, they were the wealthy, the men of power, the owners of slaves....Sutpen wanted to get rich only incidentally. He wanted to take revenge for all the redneck people against the aristocrat who told him to go around to the back door. He wanted to show that he could establish a dynasty too --he could make himself a king and raise a line of princes.

Ginny - I don’t know if your post has helped my reading of this story…yet. But your observation that” individual words take on much more important meanings” and the “high propensity to take offense at the slightest imagined slight” was a timely revelation for reasons I wont go into. By the way – did you catch the drinking in the scuppernong arbor on page 22??!!

Didn’t we learn that WF wrote about Thomas Sutpen elsewhere – and that he had a previous wife who he had left all his monies too – he had built up a plantation in the Caribbean (Martinique, we learn is where the French Architect comes from) – and that this is where his current “wild Negroes” came from?

Well I just read Chapter 2. Interesting how the narrator (unknown – to me at least) tells the story with a number of references like “it was years before the town learned” and “apparently”, “the town learned” – then the “Mr. Compson told Quentin” part of the narration kicks in. Pretty neat.

naked to the waist.

I keep seeing that scene (bridshead revisited with alan bates and that fireside fight between men which was meant to indicate their homsexuality). Again I could be wrong. But the night time scene with it's dramatic lighting set up a tone which made the fights animalistic, pure physical. CHARLES rather than show his superiority? I felt that Sutpeen was fitting himself into their culture, become ONE of them for purposes of his own be it control? or enjoyment. According to Dr. Roberts (Cliffs notes) he had a DESIGN and everything he did contributed to it . . . was this dancing with the slaves (for that's what it was) part of the plan?

small protest here. long long long posts. I find myself skipping stuff. And now I'm doing it too. writing long long long sentences and paragraphs too.

Claire

claire~ whether nekkid or not, don't you think it was unusual for the master of the plantation to be acting this way with slaves? I guess we already know that he was not your stereotypical Southern master though? Is Faulkner trying to emphasize the fact that Sutpen is not a Southerner?

Barb...Yes! That helps understand Sutpen's motive...

"Sutpen wanted to get rich only incidentally. He wanted to take revenge for all the redneck people against the aristocrat who told him to go around to the back door. He wanted to show that he could establish a dynasty too --he could make himself a king and raise a line of princes."

He doesn't really want to be like the Southern aristorcracy...in every way...but he does want to raise a line of princes and establish a dynasty. Why? We get some hint of his early life...leaving home at the age of 14...I'll have to go back and reread that passage that described his leaving home...

Where did he come from, do you suppose? What's the reason for these "fights"? Is he playing? Is it a "guy" thing..? Is he trying to dominate the land and all who work on the land, including the "wild" ones?

Sue! Thanks so much for the slave history...I pounced on this

"... had a triangular route where slaves were picked up in Africa, sailed to the Carribean Islands, traded for molasses, then molasses was taken to Boston or New York...

I am "pure" as far as knowing anything about the origins of these "wild" ones...a Faulkner "tabula rasa"...so I didn't know ahead about the French connection to these guys..but I did write in the margin of my book as I read the chapter (French?). This was during the post-wedding scene

"...as she turned and saw one of the negroes...when Sutpen spoke to him in that tongue which even now a good part of the county did not know was a civilised language."

Maryal, I can understand just how difficult this must be for you. My hope is that you will come away with something more than you are putting into this discussion! So we now read the "corrected" version! Makes you wonder where the editor was the first time around. Was this a budget publication, do you think?
The narrators are turning into an interesting lot, aren't they? Miss Rosa can be firm, and formidable in her hatred of Sutpen, as if it happened yesterday. But Quentin's memory of what his father told him of what he could remember his Grandfather telling him...is necessarily full of "maybes, probablys and perhapses." I agree, Charlie, "pretty neat!"

Yeah Ginny, we know you didn't read your first chapter yet or you'd be all over the page with the reference to the "scuppernongs"!!!

Good discussion Sue and Barbara, but what I might add that the African tribes sold some of their own people and kidnapped and sold others from other tribes.

They were chained and stacked like cordwood in the bellies of the ships, were not allowed to move around or have bathroom privileges. When they sickened or died, they were unceremoniously thrown overboard. The overboard treatment was also used to avoid discovery by concerned authorities.

Charlotte

I envy you guys so much. I think this is one I could really get into. I lost my computer about a month ago but. I'm getting a new one so hopefully will be able to join in soon! Thanks for still being here. i'm at the library doing this.

Claire - The movie you’re thinking of was the film version of D. H. Lawrence’s Women in Love. The wrestlers were Alan Bates and Oliver Reed (Susannah York, sigh, was also in the movie). I wonder if I could sit through that scene with a straight face now – bet it seems dated. The only movie I ever walked out on was another Oliver Reed vehicle: The Devil’s. Te only one – ever! Anyway, you got the tone exactly right, I think: “animalistic, pure physical.” There seems to be always something animalistic and purely physical about Sutpen – and always representing the archetypal ‘male’. For three years, after basically finishing his plantation house, he had parties of men out to his house to do the things that men do (allegedly): camp, play cards, hunt, drink. All with a design, Claire, as you say.

As for his fights with the slaves, here is what it says to me: Owning a slave is one thing. It alleges superiority, by contract, by ‘law’. There but for he grace…Getting down as an “equal” with a slave and beating him into submission perhaps was Sutpen’s way of exercising “real” superiority – in his mind. May have also had something to do with his way of repaying the slight of is youth (which we learned about in the bios) of being turned away by servants to the back of the house.

Here’s my big question from Chapter Two. (Mary???). When he returns with all the materials needed to finish his Plantation house, he returns as a “public enemy.” They are all suspicious as to how he arrived by his money. This sheriff’s posse put together to follow and investigate him – well I just found it…unbelievable. Too weird. From what WF presented here, none of their reactions seemed to be justified. It didn’t follow. What did I miss?

WOW! This site is so interesting and I am recalling history from high school...It reminded me of a news item on Swedish Radio (that I have on my computer) and that is that the Norwegian ships were tossing overboard those people who snuck aboard without fare and who belonged nowhere...immigrants who had not found work in Norway...The Norwegians were putting them off ship at the first port of call but then it was deceided that they were to be required to provide airfare for the immigrants somewhere...it became cheaper to just toss them overboard.. Tough Norwegians!!!!Vikings!(this summers news) BTW I noticed Claire has NOTES about Absalom and that is what I have found at the bookstore...Many many books interpreting Faulkners writings and one mentioned that his writing style had much criticism...BTW2 I am glad that you all are going at this slowly! Ann

ANN: There was an HBO (I think) movie that depicted this very thing (throwing stowaways overboard)recently. Don't recall the name.

Sounds - like a call from William Bennett

Hi all:

I don't know where to start here since I made comments during the Bio and don't want to repeat them here. However, I will repeat that I read The Sound and The Fury, which brought me more underestanding of AA. I also read the short story "Wash" in Faulkner's Collected Stories, which gives a more complete picture of Sutpen's friend Wash Jones and what happened with him. However, this is the most brutal, horrible story of all--really shows Sutpen to be a devil and a demon.

Charlie: You should read Lawrence's version of the fight between the two men. I probably read it about 20 years ago. Never forgot it.

Charlotte

Charlotte! So happy you're back, even if a tad "tardy" We are only discussing Chapter 2, so you will be just fine. Please don't hesitate to repost anything you posted in the Biography, relevent to the chapters under discussion. Though you will see familiar faces here from that discussion, there are many who missed that one.

The Biography discussion is a valuable resource, by the way, and still open and available under "Current Discussion" in the Books & Lit menu. Particularly useful if you know how to use the SEARCH tool...try it out, if you don't! Scroll down to the bottom of this page, click SEARCH, type in "slavery" and every post containing this word will pop up. Magic! Neat!

Slavery...interesting comments. I haven't ever really stopped and thought about the Africans selling their own people, kidnapping them even, for the trade. And Ann's post about the Norwegians and their treatment of immigrants...open my eyes to the fact that our Southern plantation owners were not some sort of aberration of humanity...that there are periods in history when human rights, individual rights, are not as keenly, sensitively protected as in the present. It was the accepted condition, the way it was...everyone was doing it...

And from what Sue has described, there was a long period in the South where the slaves had a better life than that which they had left. It appears that as man's greed grew, the plantations became larger, the tendency to overwork the slaves, to regard them as tools, rather than human beings increased. This isn't to say that the slave market, the separation of family members...wasn't horrible, but perhaps to say that life in the South was not all bad, all the time. But I don't think that Sutpens' "wild negroes" were in the same category as many of the Southern slaves and indentured servants...do you remember Mr. Coldfield's slaves...he'd buy them at the market and free them as soon as he did? I wonder how common that was?

Marg-at-the-library! What do you mean you "lost" your computer!!! HAHAHA! A great "euphemism"! I'm sorry, I don't mean to laugh! It is a form of isolation, isn't it? A new one on the horizon? Yes? Marg? We'll save you a chair!

Charlie! That's a BIG QUESTION! and I'll put it in the heading right away.

Let me tell you why I think it's important. The sheriff and the posse investigate and imprison Sutpen because he comes back with huge wagon-loads of mahogany, furniture, rugs, chandeliers...truly impressive furnishings for the big new, partially-unfinished mansion out on the prime bottom land...100 square miles of it...that he couldn't possibly have paid for...the land I mean.

They were not yet over that, so when they see all the stuff he brings now, knowing that he is dirt-poor, they conclude (and rightly) that he couldn't have paid for them. Must have acquired them illegally. And this group mentality that is similar to that which demands a lynching, the group-thinking turned their suspicion into enough fact for the sheriff to believe he had cause to arrest him until he could be investigated, or the opportunity would be missed, just as it was when he "acquired" the valuable piece of land from under their very noses.

I think that Faulkner uses this moment to involve you...US ...in the story. We all sit here reading this...and say, no, this can't be right! They can't arrest him just because they are jealous and suspicious! It is at this moment, that we begin to feel some sympathy for Sutpen. That we begin to think that he is innocent of this one thing, that others are WRONG about him...and maybe we have been too quick to assume that he is such an "ogre" just because Miss Rosa has led us to believe he is... If some can be wrong about him, others can be wrong...and unwittingly, we begin to look at him differently, as someone who is misunderstood perhaps... Let me be quick to say that I don't think a one of us believes that he bought and paid for it all. We don't know how he got it! But we don't think there is grounds to convict him...the door is open...

Would love to hear how you reacted to this incident! It is interesting to me that Mr. Coldfield, the same man who freed slaves the moment he bought them, would be the man who arranged for Sutpen's release from jail. Still can't understand why he arranged for the marriage though!

CHARLIE: Thankyou for the correction -- "WOMEN IN LOVE" is right. I'm terrible with titles and even authors, but visual...I can still see that scene and feel the excitement and sensuality of it. It's the first thing I thought of when reading about the fights in Absalom. Winning a fight with a slave would make Sutpen seem more powerful, but wasn't he taking a chance, that he might lose?

HEROS? Sutpen is more of an "anti-hero". We care about him because everyone in the town does and we get swept away, become part of that group or character. TAke on their mores and feeings of doubt and distrust

He probably makes his money in the slave trade in the Carribians (sp) where he not only has contacts but has married and divorced a woman whose blood turned out to be "tainted", (one sixteenth black) whose son therefore, was tainted also, unfit to become a prince within his realm, his kingdom.

What makes for an egomaniac like Sutpen? poor self esteem as well as economic poverty plus that childhood insult --go to the back door for deliveries -- were enough for this unstable but determined character. We find him interesting enough to become a pro-tagonist for this novel, But hardly a HERO.

Claire

from the indians. The town was sure that he had somehow cheated them. They always suspected the worst with S. but were perfetly willing to share in his pleasures...i.e. the hunting parties etc. at his still unfinished home. These ceased when he furnished the place and married Ellen. His purpose was to become acceptable in the community and this was now achieved, even though behind their hands most still disaproved of him. Ellens social activities were helpful. . . but hardly enogh for him to form a dynasty. When she died he approached her young sister with this in mind.

Claire

Hi All: Please see Katie Jaques post #463 in BC on line for January. This sounds like a fascinating book which gives much info on this subject. I went to Amazon. It's won many awards, was featured in the NY Times Book Review. All the reviewers seem very excited about it.

Best comment of all from the Cleveland Plain Dealer:

"Not since William Faulkner wrote his masterpiece Absalom Absalom has any writer rendered a more hauntingly poignant exploration of the dark roots and bitter fruits of slavery in America."

I would vote hands down to read this book very soon.

Charlotte

Joan doesn’t think that Sutpen’s “wild Negroes” are in the same category as many of the Southern slaves. Likewise, Sutpen is not in the same category as the other Southern Plantation owners. No coincidence. Sutpen is to the other Plantation owners as his “wild Negroes” are to the slaves of those other owners…

I take your point, Joan. But where I am right now is: I agree that WF wanted to make us consider other possibilities as far as Sutpen was concerned (maybe he’s not so bad a guy after all…), and you make the case, but I don’t get to that point because I’m too incredulous at the turn of events.

This development of Sutpen's 100 to achieve acceptance calls to mind one true story and several of fiction. The true story is a man named Horace Tabor who made his millions in silver mines in Colorado, divorces a wife and marries Baby Doe (name of opera in English that tells their love story), then builds a block-sized mansion in Denver to win acceptance in Denver society---it never happens. One fictional---Gone With the Wind's Rhett and Scarlet in their mansion-building phase to gain respectability.

The group-think suspicions. Reminds me of the remnants of British aristocracy that evolved into closed classes in the U.S. You were either in or not, but you rarely "worked" your way in. (Although we all know famous exceptions.) This is bound to be related to...we know your family, therefore we know you. Someone without a known family would be suspect. This is true for all economic levels, but exaggerated in the upper levels, don't you think? As a girl, I remember adults trying to place me by asking about my family. We were quite poor, but still, people would search for a context in which to place me. One girlfriend's father referred to all children in relation to the last name---the Johnson boy, the Sims girl. Sutpen came with little context.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

Charlie:

I read "Wash Jones" in WF's Collected Stories while I was in the bookstore. Had to get a shaky old guy reach up to get it for me.

This story recommended to be read by Cliff's Notes tells the kind of person Sutpen really is. He gets Wash's 15-year-old grandaughter pregnant, sees her after her delivery in the barn, tells her too bad she isn't a mare, she would have received better care. Then he just leaves. It 's a horrible, horrible story, probably the most awful I've ever read. Fortunately, Sutpen gets his just desserts in the end.

Charlotte

I guess I'd better get back in here. I feel so out of things, don't know where to start. Did you notice the word "abrupt" (Sutpen out of a quiet thunderclap would abrupt--not erupt.} Interesting concept putting both words together in one. "Man-horse-demon," we are going to hear the story of a demon. The description of the slaves is horrific like something out of Joseph Conrad.

There are two separate Quentins--the one who is going to narrate the story and the Quentin preparing for Harvard in the South that has been dead since 1865.

Miss Rosa has called Quentin Compson to tell the story only she and he will remember and maybe some day he will write about it. She wants it to be recorded. "God let us lose the war," she says.

I am impressed with the way adults treat young people and blacks in the South. They order them to do something and they are expected to comply. I've noticed this in Eudora Welty's stories also where a passing black child is commandeered to do something for an adult.

As noticed by the rest of you, we get the whole story in the first chapter. The details will come later.

This is the woman who supported her concientious objector father, kept him hidden and alive. Quentin knew part of the story about the nephew who shot to death his sister's intended groom on the day of the wedding. He had grown up with it. In discussing the story with his father, he had learned that Rosa had married Sutpen after his wife Ellen, Rosa's sister had died. Describing the conception of children, R tells him "it was without gentleness." She knew he was a demon from the very beginning.

Quentin tells her he was born too late. He was only three when Sutpen turned the road to the church into a race track. The family arrives there like in the forefront of a tornado in thunder and fury,

wild-eyed horses and dust.

We later learn that Judith had instigated the running away of the horses, not Henry. What does this tell us about Judith? Also we learn that Henry is against the fighting, but not her. She is hidden watching it from above. Not the accepted concept of a Southern lady!!

Charlotte

Charlie I agree---it always surprises me that Sutpen is arrested on what seems to be the town's perception that he must have gotten those expensive furnishings for the house through some illegal means. The balancing shocking scene is that of Sutpen and Ellen's wedding, attended only by a handful of people. As they are leaving the church, they are hit by rotten vegetables and other refuse. Not exactly what one would expect at the wedding of a reputable woman.

It may help to remind yourself that the "narrator" here is Mr. Compson, Quentin's father, who has gotten these stories from his father, General Compson, who was Sutpen's friend. At the time of the arrest and the wedding, Gen. Compson (not yet a general) was a young man, newly married himself. Mr. Compson appears to know what happened to Sutpen---that he brought home wagonsful of goods, that he married Ellen and almost no one was at the wedding, but the details are slippery. We have effects in this chapter but the causes are in doubt.

Mary

Charlie--

Forgot to mention in addition that, as a number of folks have pointed out, we see how provincial Jefferson is, a small town where it is very important to know where you came from, where your parents came from and what they did. Sutpen is suspect because unknown. All you have to do to see the same sort of insider/outsider construct is to go to certain small towns in Maine. I suspect certain small towns in lots of other places as well, but I know something about Maine.

Sutpen is a man without a past, not to be trusted. And then he gets some prime land and builds a big house. And then he gets rich furnishings for that house. At this point apparently suspicion and jealousy has reached a peak.

Mary

Amazement! First Miss Rosa, then the townsfolk regard Sutpen with "shocked amazement", lost in "amazed speculation"! Should we keep tabs on how many times Faulkner applies this term? I've counted four so far, maybe more...And now Charlie! Charlie's caught the amazement and can't get past it! Shall we put him in quarantine??? Our turns will come! I'm sure it's catchy!

Do you know what else this scene brings to my mind, besides the lynch mob mentality? "Crucify him!" "Crucify him!" And just because of the fear and suspicion of the mob, Barabas was freed and...fancy that! Sutpen, the demon-ogre brings to mind the Christ-figure! Amazing, isn't it?

Maryal, the balancing, amazing, shocking scene - the wedding, the tossing of the rotten vegetables at the upright Coldfields.. that was equally incomprehensible to me. Slippery details they were...perhaps Mr. Compson wasn't in on some of these details, or forgot them or didn't relate them to his son. He made it sound to his son, as his son relates it to Quentin, as if they were still so upset that Sutpen had somehow pulled off something horrific right in their midst that they were willing to "get him" at his big moment, at his chance for respectability by marrying into the Coldfield family. But what of Mr. Coldfield. What went on between himself and Sutpen? Why on earth would he consent to give his first-born daughter to this terrible outcast in marriage? We do know he is a business man, but he is upright! Why did he arrange for Sutpen's release from jail? Because he was upright, because he knew he was arrested without cause. I can understand that, but not the marriage.

And why does "the aunt" want this big wedding? It's clear that Sutpen wants it, but he is portrayed as innocent in this case too...did nothing to convince Coldfield he wanted it. Even though, yet again, the townspeople believe that this is his doing. Are we beginning to see a "misunderstood ogre" here?

And Ellen, Ellen's attitude toward the marriage? Was she ordered into it? Charlotte is this what you mean about adults in the South ordering a child to do something and the child complies? Is this a Southern thing, or did most children at this time "comply" to parents' wishes?

That complying daughter did shed tears though, didn't she? We are told that it wasn't the marriage that caused the tears, but the wedding and the fact that only 10 of the 100 invitees showed up. I guess they didn't send their RSVPs! Why did "the aunt", Ellen or anyone think they were going to come? Because it was a Coldfield wedding? There was a great line in this chapter...

"...or maybe women are less complex than that and to them any wedding is better than no wedding and a big wedding with a villain preferable to a small one with a saint."

Is that it? Is that the reason that Ellen is marrying Sutpen? How old is she? Past the acceptable marrying age? Is this a case of "any wedding is better than no wedding?"

Maryal, I'd be interested to know if your students read this particular novel, Absalom. It is considered one of Faulkner's more difficult novels isn't it? Do your students come to you with any background, biography or previous reading of his novels? At some point, I'd be curious to know how we, as a group, differ from your students...the type of questions, the things we pick up on. What would they be "amazed" at in this chapter? The same things that interest us?

Joan----That's an easy question. You folks bring a world of lived experience to this difficult novel as well as much prior reading. And you are choosing to do this. My students are somewhere between 18 and 23 or so and they just don't have much experience. They do fairly well with this novel--we do a good deal of reading aloud in class---or they do. Some of them become quite adept at reading Faulkner.

Last semester I taught a whole course on Faulkner; those students knew what they were getting into and we didn't read Absalom till close to the end. I finished with Go Down, Moses, another one I love. But usually I teach one Faulkner novel in a Freshman class on the novel and poetry. I switch back and forth between The Sound and the Fury and Light in August. Next semester---no Faulkner at all for a change. If I had known I would find this reading group, I probably would have picked one. But alas, book orders were already turned in when I found you wonderful folks.

I love the comments and the questions that people come up with in this discussion, makes me think and see the novel anew. It's amazing how many times you can read Absalom and see it differently.

Chapter 3 is in Mr. Compson's voice. Faulkner does not use the quotation marks he used in the previous chapter, but it is still Mr. Compson telling the story. Mr. Compson again uses many qualifying words, such as "Perhaps." There are three Perhapes in a row in the paragraph that begins at the bottom of 47 and goes onto 48. It is important that he is speculating. Some facts he knows from his father, but he cuts lose with his imagination a number of times and tells things that he can't possibly know but believes "doubtless" happened.

Mary

Yes Joan, I think this definitely a part of Southern culture,rather than a practise of the time--an overwhelming teaching of respect. Think of all the Yes'ms and No'ms and always adressing men as either Colonel or Sir.

Back to my notes to get together a post on this difficult and challenging book.

Charlotte

I still use these terms of respect to those who are older or in a position of leadership to me no matter their age. This is a common Southern practice. Sue

What. No comments on the “closed masonry of females” and “the entire male principle”??

Quite a childhood for young Rosa, eh?…blamed for her mother’s death….hated her father…raised by her spinster aunt who’s mission was to take her revenge on the town, indeed the human race “with the blind irrational fury of a shedding snake.” I liked that one! This is one interesting character. Was she ever a prominent figure in other Faulkner novels? I got the feeling that WF had a LOT more to say about her – wonder if he ever got around to it. Seemed like he was thinking of her as the subject for a whole other book.

Now, I have to say this. Because this REALLY irritated me. Pg 59. WF (Mr. Compson) is talking about how Rosa came to live out at Sutpen’s Hundred. He’s talking about how little Rosa had actually ever SEEN of Sutpen. He starts: “Because until he came back from Virginia in ’66 and found her living there with Judith and Clytie--…” Note the DASH. Then we vear off from this though for a whole page and then toward the end of pg 60 (two paragraphs later) – with a DASH – we’re back around again: “When he returned home in ’66, she had not seen him a hundred times in her whole life.” Phew. Take a breath!

So Rosa’s sense of Sutpen was molded her aunt – according to Mr. Compson. I do admit that along about here I’m hooked to find out what that “old business” between Sutpen and Mr. Coldfield was. Probably would ‘splain a lot.

Thomas Sutpen “hardly ever spoke during the meal” – sounds like Faulkner’s old dad, huh?

Charlotte, your posts have convinced me, but in reverse: having read "Slaves in the Family," now I MUST read "Absalom."

But I don't have a copy in the house. (Odd, that; I seem to have at least one of almost everything else <G>. But the only Faulkner I can find is "The Rievers," which I love.) So I have ordered it. It should show up sometime this week, and it will take me a while to catch up with y'all. I'll use your posts in lieu of Cliff's Notes!

I get a big kick out of what you say--how we've influenced each other! That's the marvelous thing about our all finding each other on SN and how one exciting thing leads to another. Now I really have to read Slaves in the Family.

I have several Faulkner novels in the house, including the unread Rievers. I was thinking seriously of reading it since I reread Sound and The Fury for this discussion and am deeply into AA. I think my faovorite is S and F. Got hung up on all the books I have to read besides the NY Times, The New Yorker, Three-Penny Review, Poets and Writers Magazine, etc.

Gotta send this post before it gets wiped out.

Charlotte

One final comment on the Sound and The Fury:

The stream-of-consciousness technique so obvious here is WF's handling of Benjy. Never saw anything like it in his understanding of how the undeveloped childish mind works.

Charlotte

Ah Katie! Welcome !!! So happy Charlotte lured you in! While waiting for your copy of Absalom to arrive, you might find it informative ...and amusing...to read the posts on Faulkner's Biography (see the clickable to that discussion up in the heading). It will be fun passing you between Wonderland and YOK-na-pa-TAW-pha County for a change of pace!

Southern Sue, I love the "Yes ma'am, no ma'ams"!!! It becomes automatic to a Southern child, but never fails to impress this Yankee! Looking forward to your comments on what is expected of Southern ladies as mentioned in this Chapter...and question #7 in the heading....?

Charlie - yes! Rosa is an interesting character here, isn't she?...yet we are constantly told that she is a minor character in the story! So is "the aunt" - (the dominating mother-figure in Faulkner's life?) Both seem to be important characters at this point in the story. We haven't seen much of "the hero" and I'm going to argue with claire someday soon. I think that Sutpen Sr. is emerging as the "hero" of the piece, even though he's long gone and we may never meet him! Need a good definition of "hero" and also of "anti-hero" first!

Miss Rosa has been introduced as one of the narrators, perfectly capable of relating personal details of her life and how she felt back then. I suppose she hesitates to reveal such personal stuff to the young Quentin. I'm still reeling over the fact that Faulkner puts them into Quentin's grandfather's narration. As Maryal points out, the quotation marks are missing! He is making statements he could know nothing about, much less be quoting!!! How could he possibly have learned any of this? Sutpen couldn't have told him...as Charlie just points out after reading p. 59, he's absent through most of these episodes, through most of the marriage, it seems! Perhaps the information escaped through the "close masonry of females", Charlie? What did Faulkner intend for us to think about this choice of narrator?

Miss Rosa continues to be an enigma. I am afraid we won't be told so much about her - that I really want to know! How could she have been raised by "the aunt" as "delicate" and "precious" for example, and still have no expectations of marriage...feels as if she is doomed to spinsterhood and living out her days on Sutpen's 100?

Milt just picked up Slaves in the Family for me at the library. I'm thrilled. Will let you know what I think later.

Charlotte

A Southern lady immediately cooks her specialty and hustles it over to the home of the dearly departed. She takes lots of lace edged hankies with her (now I take paper tissues). She gives lots of hugs to everyone present, especially family members who live out of town. She sits quietly in the viewing room (when I was a little girl, it was in our living room--now it's at the funeral home) and helps the loved one receive guests. She brings a notebook so she can write down the names of everyone bringing food. She tends to the kitchen, directs the servants, if any, and keeps tea and coffee made. She weeps huge quiet tears. She doesn't go home until 2 days after the funeral. Someone has to support the widow/widower. Which of these things didn't Rosa do? And what do Yankee ladies do? Sue

[Sue - I'm dropping this in as I see your post. Really love that you continue to come at us from that angle. It adds a LOT to the discussion. Thanks]

Well. Talk about men objectifying women….How about Ellen on the relationship between Judith and Charles Bon? Of course, this comes to us by way of Mr. Compson (doesn’t it? I’m never sure…):

She spoke of Bon as if he were three inanimate objects in one or perhaps one inanimate object for which she and her family would find three concordant uses: a garment which Judith might wear as she would a riding habit or a ball gown [the trophy husband], a piece of furniture which would complement and complete the furnishing of her house and position, [status accoutrement], and a mentor and example to correct Henry’s provincial manners and speech and clothing.[There’s that Faulkner-Stone connection rearing it’s head, Joan]

Calculating. Also not lost was the phrase: “mothers who want to can almost make themselves the brides of their daughters’ weddings.” Give the misogynist his due. He certainly sees some things that can be found in real life, don’t you think?

I really did like “the face of a foe who does not even know it was embattled” and “a foe who did not know that he was at war” and “the foe who was not even aware that he sat there not as host and brother-in-law but as the second party to an armistice.” It puts Sutpen in an “innocent’ light, if you will. Rosa is obsessed with Sutpen, and sees herself perhaps) as an “instrument of retribution.” To her, Sutpen is the “ogre face” of her childhood, by way of her aunt – “the aunt had taught her to see nothing else.” TO Sutpen, Rosa is but a distant un-thought about face. To him, she hardly even existed. This I great stuff…

More Faulkner on women: Compson believes that Rosa has stolen linens from her father in order to sew garments for Judith’s trousseau. Taken the materials from right under her father’s nose “with that amoral boldness, that affinity for brigandage of women.” This sewing, ostensibly for Judith was actually for her own “vicarious bridal.”

Chapter 2 is told from the point of view of Mr. Compson who is Quentin Compson's father. It is here that we get a good characterization of Mr. Coldfield and his daughter Ellen. Mr. Coldfield has somewhat the same life experience as Sutpen, which is probably why he identifies with him. Ellen has been brought up in her father's image which is why she goes along with the marriage. She is impressed by money and material goods and hopes to buy acceptance of the townspeople once she has acquired these things.

I will give more details in the longer post I am now working on.

Charlotte

A characteristic of Faulkner's writing is his exaggeration of human behavior. If he wants to say the town disapproved of Sutpen's marriage, he has people throwing garbage at the bride. Who ever heard of people throwing garbage at a wedding? Nobody would do such a thing. And why should the aunt "climb out the window and disappear"? If she wanted to marry the horse-trader, why shouldn't she walk out the door and marry him? She seemed a pretty strong- willed woman. She could have done anything she wanted to do. And when Coldfield disapproved of the war, he nailed himself into the attic and starved to death. Rather extreme behavior, isn't it? But I suppose Faulkner's heavy-handedness is part of the charm of his writing, along with the meandering sentences.

Joan:

Oh yes, Rosa was doomed to spinsterhood at age sixteen. Never had any money of her own. Went shopping, charged everything and then Mr. Coldfield paid all the bills. Never had any decent clothes, wore the silks left behind by the aunt who eloped, which she cut down for herself though she was devoid of any dressmaking skills. Nor did she know anything about housekeeping when she went out to Sutpen's place to take care of Judith. She also had to take care of her father who was hiding from the Confederate army and the top insult was when Sutpen proposed to see if they could produce a male heir, in which case he would then marry her. No wonder she was a bitter woman.

Charlotte

Do you get the feeling you are reading a detective story? The clues are tantalizingly present, but lots of red herrings too? And always the suspicion that we will never know anything for certain because all the witnesses are dead - and the evidence is all hearsay? I find it so curious that Compson Sr. is narrating Miss Rosa's story, especially when Rosa herself is available to tell it...the one most closely associated with the events being described! I keep asking myself Faulkner's reason for this? To keep us guessing? In doubt? To keep us absorbed in getting at the truth? Including us in the story?

Sue, I love your "Southern" perspectives...I hope you don't mind being cast as our expert in this area...of course we want to hear from you on any and all aspects of the story! Please don't feel confined to the one (that you are so good at!!!)

Your description of a Southern woman's response to a death in the family, reminds me of the "yes ma'ams" we talked about yesterday...so ingrained that the behavior becomes automatic and predictable...and in time of need, reassuring that things will be taken care of. A Northerner sort of pussyfoots about, not wanting to be intrusive, waiting for some sort of indication that the bereaved wants help. A casserole, certainly not a supply of hankies would be the rule, not taking over the kitchen, the list of those present, etc....without being asked. Am I right on this, Northerners?

Now, Charlie's posts continue to underline the feeling I get that Miss Rosa is not your typical "Southern woman" - anymore than Sutpen fits the description of the ante-bellum Southern plantation owner out there wrestling with his slaves. These are both strong individualists who appear on a stage cast with Southern characters. Sutpen, I can easily understand - he comes from the outside.

Rosa is not as comprehensible. She was raised by that "aunt" - a spinster aunt...as "precious" and "fragile", "victim of the aunt's unflagging care and attention.". That's the part I don't understand. At all. Perhaps it will be revealed before it's over, but I suspect not. It seems that young women were raised to marry, or to remain spinsters, caregivers. Education was not an option, and yet here is Miss Rosa penning thousands of odes to the Southern soldier. What was the aunt training her to do with all this "unflagging attention"? My guess? Training her to take care of her brother, Rosa's father, to keep house for him, so she, the aunt could get out...which she did! Or did she teach her to read and write, as Faulkner's own dominating mother had done? Rosa's marriage prospects seem non-existent. She prepares for Judith's wedding "vicariously"...but does not expect one of her own...the word "doomed" is used several times..."her own doomed and frustrated youth."

By the way, what do you suppose she meant when she said of Bon, "we deserve him"?

Anyway, we are told, "the natural thing for her to do, or any Southern gentlewoman to do, would have been for her to go out and live with Judith (when Ellen died). She would not have needed to be asked. Because that is what a Southern lady is. That's what she would have been expected to do. But she didn't.

Miss Rosa did not do "what a Southern lady would be expected to do". Why didn't she?

Shasta, I see you and Charlotte are here already this morning! Yes, I agree, the exaggeration to make a point can be dramatic, but I think he's getting away with it by having it come down through the ages as "mythical", facts that have become embellished with time so they are bigger than life! I think it is "contrived exaggerations" to emphasize the fact that they are not coming from those who were actual witnesses. I suppose that is why Miss Rosa's story is being told by Compson and not Miss Rosa herself?

Charlotte, you are right! Miss Rosa's future prospects of marriage are doomed by her father's economic situation...and her father's once-prosperous business (remember when his was the biggest business in town?) was ruined by what? The business association with Sutpen that we don't yet know about? Or the war? I'm going to guess his business was cursed by his association with Sutpen.

I still don't know what "the aunt's unflagging attention" taught Miss Rosa though...housekeeping or reading/writing? She could keep house...remember? That was her first wedding present offered to Judith...she was going to teach her how to keep house?

Oh yes, it is a mystery, not so much a "Whodunnit" as a "Whydidhedoit." I love reading your comments. I will keep our discussion on a disk for future forays into teaching this novel. So many interesting responses.

Sue--I loved your description of what a Southern Lady does when a dear one's family member dies. Up north, people don't seem to know just what to do although the bringing of covered dishes by friends and neighbors is a commonplace. But to have the tradition of the widow or widower having a faithful friend to stay with her or him at this time is wonderful. We need more of this behavior.

Joan---The question of why Faulkner uses Mr. Compson as a narrator is a central one. In the course of his narration, many questions come to mind such as "how on earth does he know that?" One must speculate that some of the stories of Sutpen he got from the mythology of the town, some from his father who actually knew Sutpen, some from his grandmother who would have moved in the "women's world" of Ellen, Judith, and Miss Rosa. As Mr. Compson moves deeper and deeper into the story, we wonder more and more how much he is adding to it. In places I am sure that what Mr. Compson tells reveals far more about his own thinking and attitudes than it does about Sutpen and his family. I'll return to this point later when we get there. But for the time being, how could he know the details about Miss Rosa and the making of the trousseau? How does he know she stole the linen? How does he know that Judith was walking around as if in a dream?

Mary

One thing that I haven't seen mentioned is Mr. Compson's statement in Chapter 2 that the "women of the town agreed never to forgive him (Sutpen) for not having a past". It is now and was then extremely important to have a known history. You know: my Mama was a Thompson on her mother's side. Her great-aunt Glory was Harvey Ledbetter's first cousin, etc. Jefferson knew nothing about Sutpen's past, and as far as I can tell, very little about the Coldfields.

My impression is that Ellen, Miss Rosa, Judith, and the runaway spinster aunt did not take an active part in Jefferson society. Perhaps owning a shop was not very high on the totem pole, socially. The only mention of church attendance is the ill-fated wedding. Southern Society revolves around church--and the hierarchy depends on the denomination, which may differ from community to community.

I think Miss Rosa hated her father because he blamed her for her mother's death. She may also have resented him not taking a greater part in Jefferson's social life. And the aunt's elopement with a totally unsuitable suitor brought the Coldfields even lower on the social register.

Why was Miss Rosa doomed to be a spinster at 16? She had few, if any, skills to be a housewife. She had a wizened, unattractive child-like appearance, and we don't really hear of any eligible men of her time. She seems to have been a bitter, unforgiving woman from her childhood and not a desirable match for anyone. Sue

Joan: I think WF wants to tell the story from several points of view, since no one sees a story in exactly the same way. Each person contributes what he knows, so that in the end there is a more complete picture, like the classic Japanese film Rashomon.

I am slogging through AA in a pedestrian way, but loving it. It’s so great to be able to report here what I learn. I don’t think everyone wants to read what I write, but it helps me. If it helps one other person, that’s a plus.

I don’t know if I’ll be able to contine in AA in this manner, it’s so time consuming, but at least I’ve got a start on clearing up some of the details.

Charlotte

Chapter 2 - Abasalom, Absalom 11/28/99

I must say it’s difficult to swallow the use of the now banned N word , as well as the bigoted attitude towards the blacks. But I guess we must overlook it as we overlook bigotry in the work of other great artists like Eliot, Joseph Conrad, Ezra Pound and even Shakespeare. These writers were , after all human, and subject to the mores of their time. It is left to us, who we hope are more enlightened, to see and perhaps overlook their failings.

This chapter opens on a peaceful scene. Quentin sits with his father on the porch until it is time for him to start back to Harvard. Faulkner shows us a Sunday morning in the square, where descendants of the same pigeons strutted, crooned, wheeled “resembling soft fluid paint smears on the soft summer sky.”

I loved the ladies floating in their hoop skirts, remembering when I was a child and believed that such ladies had no feet. (Were they on roller skates?”)

Quentin wants to determine the meaning of Sutpen’s story for himself and for the South. Perhaps he wants to think about it in relation to his own life plan.

We see how Sutpen has come into town where everyone knows everyone and his forbears. This is a man with no predecessors and no willingness to relate to anyone in town. He has “abrupted” (I thought WF had created a new word, but no. It is in the dictionary.) “looking as though created out of thin air.” From the Indian Agent we learn and probably secured in a nefarious way, 100 acres of the best bottom land in the county, where with Akers the unpaid and naked negroes coated only in mud, with no blankets to bed down at night, he builds his mansion.

Although Miss Rosa pictures him as a devil and dijin, he is able to communicate with the negroes in their language, never raises his voice to them, “but caught them at the psychological instant by forbearance rather by brute fear.” However, he avoids all contact with the townspeople, except during the hunting parties. He never has anything to do with the social arbiters who are the women of the town This is completely unacceptable in Southern society and means that he can never become one of their own.

When he returns home with a load of elegant furnishings, he is immediately arrested, though Faulkner never explains why. Perhaps there is a logical acceptable reason, since Mr. Coldfield is able to get him released from jail. Coldfield seems to have developed a relationship with the man, since Sutpen’s only acknowledgement of anyone else is the formal gesture to his hat on his way into Coldfield’s store.

Here we learn that Clytie is Sutpen’s daughter, whom he begot with one of the two women who arrived in the wagon with the other negroes. Also, Sutpen had lived in the empty mansion for five years without any contact with a white woman.

In this chapter we also learn about Mr. Coldfield who’d come to town almost like Sutpen, but not as flamboyantly. He had opened a store in which he was the sole clerk, had freed his negroes and paid them wages. However, his attitude is not completely liberal, since he docks them when they do not have to prepare a noon meal and also docks them for the leftovers they would have to eat.

When the Confederate soldiers come into town, he closes his store and refuses to sell anything to them, or to anyone associated with them. Probably his own identification with Sutpen, as a self-made man is what makes him willing to allow his daughter to marry him. Ellen seems to have gone along with it, since her tears were not for the marriage, but for the fact that so few people came to the big wedding she planned--also for the watchers who remained outside and for the offal they threw. Notice, they were careful not to hit her. Such abuse was mainly directed at Sutpen., would never be directed to a Southern lady.

Question: What is “the state where, though still visible, young girls appear as though seen through glass and even the voice cannot reach them?” Does this speak of male dissatisfaction with his concept of what a young woman should be? Faulkner describes Judith as a hoyden who can outdo her brother in most male activities, then he goes into the pearly lambence (p.66) of unpredictability, “fluid and delicate.”

Compson or perhaps the author continues to speculate on what would have happened if Miss Rosa had moved out to Sutpen’s place and if everything had remained as planned. It is an example of very human decision and indecision. Miss Rosa is a complicated woman who is hiding her father from the confederate marshals and at the same time writes poetry to the very men Mr. Coldfield was hiding from.

Rosa had not seen Sutpen for many years, but often spent time with Ellen who seemed to be blooming within the marriage. So is there a good side to the devil? Sutpen had corrupted Ellen in many ways. She is not only reconciled to her marriage, but is actually proud of it. She had “bloomed as if Fate were crowding the normal Indian summer which should have bloomed gradually and faded gracefully” (p. 67) Ellen and Judith had developed a good social relationship with the women whom Rosa had tried to force to attend Judith’s wedding.

Ellen and Judith would stop to see Rosa before or after one of their shopping trips, but after fifteen minutes which Ellen would fill with shrill uproar and Judith remained mute, perhaps in a depression. Rosa had offered to teach Judith the elements of housekeeping--a story which Ellen often recounted with shrieks of amusement. After that when they stopped to visit, they were told that Rosa was not at home. Henry and Bon, when they came, were given the same treatment.

Sutpen was now the biggest single landowner and cotton planter in the county. He was accepted because he now had too much money to be rejected, but he was not liked and he was feared. It was suspected that his plantation was a cover for nefarious dealings.

Ellen stopped her shopping and demands on store owners. It was now 1860, war was unavoidable. The family and the South were facing catastrophe. The males were gone. Lincoln was elected Rosa went on sewing Judith’s trousseau. The negroes told the story of what happened. There was a quarrel between Henry and Sutpen. Bon left. Judith took to her deathbed . And there is a hint of an unusual relationship between Judith and Henry. (p.79).

Rosa was still sewing when Mississippi seceded and Confederate uniforms began to appear in town. Mr. Coldfield did not support the war. He closed his store and would not sell to anyone who was for the rebels, nor would he allow the sister who had eloped with the horse-trader to come back home. When Mr. Coldfield learned that his store had been broken into and looted, he sealed himself in the attic, where Rosa supplied him with food which he pulled up in a basket. She continued to write poetry to the rebels. (p.83).

Coldfield freed his negroes and put them on a wage basis. After he died, Rosa was left a pauper and an orphan with no discernable kin but Judith. Henry and Bon had disappeared into the Confederate army. Sutpen had tried to tame the “wild” negroes by mixing them with the tame ones, with the sa

Sutpen had triedto tame the "wild" negroes by mixing them with the tame ones, with the same care with which he blended that of a stallion and a mare. After reading the short story "Wash" I feel that this was a sardonic comment from Mr. Compson. It is probably the most horrific story I ever read.

Mr. Compson goes on to tell that Rosa, as a Southern lady, would be expected to go out to Sutpen's place, to live with Judith and take charge of things. But it took her four years to there. She speculated for some time on who knew what. Finally she learns what she can when Wash Jones comes to see her, as the chapter ends.

Interesting post Shasta. Faulkner’s “exaggeration of human behavior.” Something like Sherwood Anderson’s grotesques?

Joan, the reason I’m not a good “mystery” reader is that I’m a sucker for red herring’s…Joan, although “Miss Rosa is not your typical Southern Woman”, I’m not sure I’d agree with you that Rosa is a “strong individualist.” I say this because someone so consumed with hatred – of her father and Sutpen - is at their core a weak person. Perhaps. Maybe. How do we know? How do we know anything at all? It’s all conjecture and hypothesis

I've read so much that is written ABOUT this book that except for the poetic language I'm bored with it. . . been there know that. is the problem. These long evaluations and interpretations feel to me like "beating a dead horse". I think I'll just give it a rest. syyall later.....maybe.

Claire

Wondering where you were, claire...claire is bored???? So do you feel that our little experiment with the bios BEFORE reading AbAb was a mistake? Be honest..

honestly? the bio and outside discussion was more interesting to me coupled with the characters as parts of WF himself, than the book. The long discriptions of the weather and campus in that harvard room and the might have beens for the lawyer and the reasoning behind whether Bon knew or didn't know of his parentage --did his mother tell him or not and what were her feelings about it, seemed irrevalent to me, or at least overblown digressions....I'm a simple soul I want to follow the STORY. There are others here though who probably are more into HOW it is told and they would disagree with that. Thanks for asking. It made me think -- again.

Claire

would have told the story in a straightforward manner and it would have been complex and interesting depending upon the skill of the writer to bring us into it. I guess WF's genius has taken him beyond the realm of ordinary readers....at least this one. The technique has outshown the message....the medium is the message.

Claire

claire---

It's fun to imagine what the novel would be if it were a straightforward narrative. I don't think it would be much, given the story. Much of this story is about the telling of stories with the big question of "how do we know what we know?" I hope you hang around until we get to Quentin and Shreve. You might like that part.

Mary

Claire: sorry about your being bored by my long post. I enjoyed studying, but it was a hassle to type it all out. I think I'll keep such things to myself in future. Also, I think doing the bio and the book together was not such a great idea. I feel that going over the same territory again was a bit too much. I still think Faulkner is a great writer and am learning much from him.

Charlotte

Charlotte----I don't think Claire was bored with your post. It seems to me that she is bored with Faulkner, doesn't like the way he writes. I found your post very interesting. I learn from everyone who posts here.

Mary

Ah claire, I knew this was coming...Charlie and I were both wondering where you were...and I thought I heard you all the way from California..."boring...boring...boring..."

But! I didn't think it was Faulkner, I thought it was...us! I had been thinking that we were concentrating so much on guessing, questioning what and why, that we were missing the poetry, the artistic expression. I wish you'd reconsider...we need your Left Brain to remind our Right what we are missing!

How can Faulkner be boring? He's a lot of things, but boring he's not! I had counted on you to remind us of that!

We had read about Faulkner's life...and about his themes, but had not experienced the writing before this. Maybe we should concentrate more on that, than on the story itself. Personally? I'd like to try to strike a balance? Personally? I can't help asking a million questions...because I'm afraid I'm missing something. By now I am beginning to realize that most of my questions will either be answered in later chapters, or not at all...and I can manage to keep them to myself if that would help?

You must have learned by now that I am reluctant to let go of any one of you! You each bring something unique to the discussion and when you go, you are sorely missed and we are not what we could have been.

Charlie, what I was trying to say was that Rosa was a carefully delineated character, interesting because of that, and stereotying does not occur with her...rather than to say she is a "strong individualist." She certainly had an unusual upbringing!

I was quite interested in Faulkner's use of the names Cassandra and Clytemnestra in Chapter 2. Cassandra, okay. A prophetess. Miss Rosa is described as "Cassandra-like"...

Some have said that Cassandra fell asleep in the temple of Apollo, and when the god tried to embrace her, she did not allow him. That is why Apollo brought it about that she should never be believed, thus making vain his gift of prophecy. For that reason she says:

"Apollo, my destroyer, for you have destroyed me..." [Aeschylus, Agamemnon 1080]

For this reason Cassandra was not believed when, near the end of the Trojan War, she said that there was an armed force hidden in the WOODEN HORSE that the Achaeans had abandoned.

But Clytie? The story goes on that after the war, Clytemnestra's husband claims Cassandra as his prize and so Clytemnestra kills both Agamemnon andCassandra!!!

But now in this chapter we are told that Sutpen named Clytie himself, but since he taught himself to read, he made a mistake... meant to name her "Cassandra." I'm sorry, but I have another question here. Why make such a point of these two names? If they have nothing to do with this story? Will Clytie murder anyone? I know, I know! More questions! Let's call them "observations"...I know better than to expect answers!

Well, claire….your post made me think too. Think about, of all things – epistemology. What is the truth? Can we ever know it? There is a Notes to Absalom, Absalom! written by one of the Faulkner professionals, Cleanth Brooks. It lists, almost in spread-sheet fashion, everything we “know” about Sutpen and his children, about what Miss Rosa and General Compson did or did not know, all the important “conjectures” made about the Sutpen. The FACTS are stacked up against the ”Ultimate Authority” – with page citations (and there are really only three: Gen Compson, Miss Rosa, and Quentin). The CONJECTURES are identified with who made them. This all really leads us back to MYTH, does it not? I can appreciate your McLuhanesque message though: “The technique has outshown the message....the medium is the message.” Claire – I ask you this in all sincerity (a rarity) (for me) (heehee): Is it incumbent upon an artist to make his art accessible? Would like to hear your thoughts on this. I don’t think this is ‘off point.’

From the Dictionary of Consciousness:
An epistemology is a mental model of what can be known.
A mental model of nature is a "theory of everything," with a statement about its ontology and our epistemology
An ontology is a mental model of what exists.

Did Ellen “fall asleep” in the temple of Sutpen?
When the god tried to embrace Miss Rosa – did she “allow him”
Is Miss Rosa “to be believed?”
Miss Rosa believes that Sutpen is The Destroyer – does she not?
Hmm…

Claire: I, also, feel that we are overdoing the analyzing. I thought I would not post anymore because I find the questions tedious. I like to get to the point of the story, myself, and don't find analyzing characters, mood, theme, and language very helpful. However, I continue to lurk and try to add my thoughts when I think they are pertinent. I completed the book before Thanksgiving and returned it to the library, so I'm having to look over my sparse notes and remember what I can. Sometimes I think I must be missing the whole point of this discussion--I frequently don't know what everyone is talking about. So don't feel that you are the only reader who is bored by Faulkner's and our excessive wordiness. Continue to lurk and comment when you feel like it. That's what I've decided to do. Sue

yes but not with you Charlotte or anyone else. At the moment with SHREVE who goes on and on and on with conjectioure all based on heresay and he's not the only one..they all do it. Charlie I think there is enough for a novel there. Do you recall Laurence Durrel's The Alexandra Quartet in which there were four novels all covering the same material from the point of view of a different contagonist. It's the sme kind of umpteen dimensional approach, but easier to follow, the message not so distracted by the medium.

Sue I'm glad I'm not alone in this. Since all those messages were in answer to me I try to respond, although I'm not sure about what the artist one has that is applicable here. visual art doesn't use words. It's entirely an exercize in intuition and people see it differently from one another and often even from the artist. I would expect that writing with it's distinct use of language would mean pretty much the same thing to most of us....although it depends on your focus.Are you looking for symbols or just following the story. I have read all but a few pages. I do it in dribblets and often have to review. The character of Judith was never developed very well. Maybe he really didn't understand her except as an object, necessary for the brothers to use in their dynamic.

Claire

I understand what Charlie is asking you, claire:

"Is it incumbent upon an artist to make his art accessible?"

And then the next question would be...the same for the writer...for Faulkner? You feel that there is a difference between the artist wielding the brush and the writer's pen... because he is using words..I was about to disagree with you there, but suddenly you add, "it depends on your focus!" Why that's the same as with art, isn't it? And different people respond to art in different ways, "and often different from the artist."

That's what's happening here, perhaps? We are looking at things differently...some the Sutpen story, others the parallels between the fall of this family, slavery and the South, others Faulkner's own psychic baggage from his upbringing, others his interest in poetry and the classics...

If you just focus on the story line, then I can see where the boredom would set in because you're right, the story is told in Chapter 1 and the rest of the book just fills in details. What makes the story different from the "common historical novel" is what else is going on besides the storyI remember something from the biography that is very apropos here regarding the "tension" that Faulkner creates with all the layers ...let me go to the biography and find that quote, because I'll only botch it up if I try to get it out...

line.

In the meantime, let's look at Judith. She is behaving in a very strange manner for a bride-to-be?

A friendly word of caution for all those who have not yet read the final chapters of this book, this post contains important details of the plot and you may wish to skip it for now. It will be reposted at a later date.

If I make art so as to be purposefully accessible to others I'm NOT making art. It has to come from some place inside me and mean something to me. If you happen to "get it", that's great, but not the intention of THIS artist.

I finished the book last night and that final scene, with clytie burning the building at Sutpen's 100 with herself and henry inside and Jim Bond, the last of the sutpen's ilk, with his tiny biological connection . . . Jim Bond running howling into the darkness. left me spooked for hours

The irony of sutpen's design for an aryan pure blood line in a castle with a kingdom finally represented Charles bon, 's relationship with the octoroon and whose son married or had a son (JIM BOND) by a full blooded negro.

What goes around comes around doesn't it. He left his first wife because she was tainted in a small way and in the end his one remaining off spring that we know of was tainted in just the opposite way...a black man with a speck of his white heredity.

Miss Rosa didn't know about Jim's blood line she asked for his help saying thank goodness he wasn't a Sutpen. . . but he WAS.

As to art being similar? NO, I don't think so. I think the words make the difference. Everyone reading this story understands words or can look them up. Most people are confused by art that isn't simply representational. Some times if they let themselves accept ambiguity they can find meaning in abstraction but for the most part they "know what they like" and that's usually pretty EASY to like, because they haven't the experience or interest to know anything else.

I gave this book the benefit of the doubt and really tried to come from that place of " I know what I like". I'm not sure that it was worth the effort.

Did we ever figure out the meaning of the title. Intuitively I think of the son Henry in his fathers arms in the colonials tent during the war when Sutpen embraces him saying "my SON". . . precious to him above all things and the only hope for the success of his design. . . the moment when he insists that Judith and Bon NOT marry is clearly because of race and not necessarily because of their incestuous relationship. Sounds like the south to me, cousins marry and maybe even sisters and brothers have relations, but white and black must stay apart. Their combining their blood lines is the worst sin. Sutpen tries again for a son but is presented with a girl baby whom he kills (did I remember that right) ...he didn't believe that his design could be accomplished through the women in his family. . . . so where was Judith in all of this...not enough attention paid to her.

Claire

this is explained in the short story "Wash." Wash kills his 15-year-old grandaughter whom the devil Sutpen had raped. He also kills the baby. Then Wash kills Sutpen. A horrible, horrible story.

Charlotte

Oh Charlotte, that is a horrible story! I wonder if it comes up in Absalom? If you have finished the book, can you answer that with a yes or a no? If no, do you think we should read "Wash"?

I think it is interesting, curious, that Chapter 3 ends with Wash calling out to Miss Rosa (all those years ago), "Air you Rosie Coldfield?" - and then Chapter 4 begins with no mention of Wash at all...but rather Quentin getting ready to go with "Miss Rosa" out to Sutpen's 100. I loved the 43-year jump here! I also liked the use of the "Rosie" - her childhood name, contrasted with "Miss Rosa", the spinster...to emphasize the time change.

I just started Chapter 4 yesterday for Monday's discussion, by the way. We all seem to be at different stages in the reading of this book, but would like to try for the sake of those who have not yet finished to stick with the reading discussion table posted above. claire is cool with this - told me that she thought she was behind in the reading!!! (I mean that she is "okay" with this - I spend much time with young boys - "cool"!) If you have read the book, and have read claire's post, you'll see, as I did, that my question regarding the Cassandra/Clytemnestra story was answered!!! HAHAHA...more on that later - at the end of the discussion!

I must say, I for one am loving this...this manipulation of my mind as I attempt to keep straight fact and heresay...and the easing in and out of time periods is...awesome!

Claire, I have to take issue with something you said. I am a southerner, born and bred, and I have to tell you that southerners DO NOT MARRY THEIR SISTERS OR BROTHERS. And neither do they marry their cousins. This is the kind of thing that is always said about the south, and it is simply not true. Incest is as shocking to us as it is to anybody else.

I've just read Chapter 4, and I find this chapter a bit tiresome because Faulkner keeps covering the same territory over and over. What did Sutpen actually find out in New Orleans? That Bon was already married. Isn't this what they were making all the fuss about? Did any of them know that Judith and Bon were sister and brother? Did Sutpen himself know that Bon was his son? If any of them had known this, they wouldn't have been worrying about bigamy. There would simply have been no question of a marriage between Judith and Bon. I suppose the chapter bored me because I knew what they didn't seem to know--that this marriage was simply out of the question.

I think he did know. After his trip to New Orleans, I think both he and Bon knew about their connection. This was why he was so adamant about the engagement between Judith and Bon. The fact that Bon had a relationship (not really a legal marriage) with an Octoroon meant nothing to Sutpen. He just did not want Bon's tainted blood mixed with Judith's. Henry was bewildered by Sutpen's insistence that Judith and Bon must not marry. He mistakenly believed it was because of Bon's mixed blood son--and since Clytie was his half-sister, he really didn't think that mattered. Henry did not know until the end that Bon was his half brother. Sue

Shasta, thanks for making it clear that Southerners do not marry their brothers and sisters. However, cousins do marry and it is legal if the relationship is distant enough. This was also a common practice in England. My own great-grandparents on my father's side were distant cousins. And guess what, none of their descendants are crazy or have had genetic defects.

I am appalled, as you are, at the incestuous relationship between Bon and Judith, but I also think that there is an emotionally incestuous relationship between Henry and Judith, as well as Quentin and his sister. In another Faulkner novel Quentin commits suicide because of it. Faulkner seems to have incest as a theme in many of his stories and novels. Sue

Whew! This is some book and I have so enjoyed everyones postings...So interesting!!! My innocent life seems to have been so boring when compared to those living in the south during that time of upheaval...I wonder what someone with my stature would have been doing at such a time (A senior almost at the poverty level) these folks seem to have some status in society...as for them being evil as is suggested one only has to check the courtrooms of today to find the same happenings as then...My question though is to those so well read and it is ... Did Faulkner copy his style of writing from some other writer in the past? Or did he truely think as he wrote his tale of woe? Ann

but some of his other work was derivative, Ann. If you read the biographies, you may remember that WF did not graduate from High School. He was a prolific reader and used many earlier writers as models when he first started.

Ann, if you were a Senior near the poverty level back in the days of Sutpen, you would probably be a dependent of a male relative. You would live in his house and probably have a near-servantlike position. I think Miss Rosa would have been like this if she had stayed at Sutpen's. However, she had an even poorer life because she returned home. When I read the part about the neighbors leaving food on the stoop for her, I was reminded of several eccentric spinsters in my home town who roamed around looking in trash cans and taking handouts from neighbors, even while they lived in mansions. These ladies had outlived everyone who might have helped them. After these women died, it was discovered that they had plenty of assets but had not used them. Believe me, Southern people do take care of their own--maybe not like we would like, but unmarried ladies, especially, are looked after. Sue

Claire – I don’t think words are that simple as to have only one meaning – I don’t believe they can be nailed in context to mean, universally, the same thing to everybody. So, I’d really have to disagree that art is different from writing (in fact, I use the word “art” to mean a creator of a work as a means of self-expression. The medium may be canvas and brush or paper and ink).

Joan used the word ‘manipulation’ – I’m wondering if as a reader do you feel manipulated by Faulkner? Manipulation by an artist in their ‘art’, if I may use that term, is something that I recoil against. It’s cheap.

Agree with Sue, Ann – I think Faulkner borrowed from many sources as he developed his style – found his own voice. This is not uncommon.

Joan: So glad to hear that I am right on schedule. Am just beginning this chapter. Took a break yesterday from heavy reading to look into Frank McCourt's 'Tis. It's about a guy who comes to NYC, with no money, and no understanding of it's manners and mores. He spends Christmas Day hungry and alone. The reader understands his suffering, but the writer tells his sad story with a great deal of humor. Quite an accomplishment!!! I highly recommend it.

Re: reading "Wash" It explains what happened eventually to Sutpen, but it is such a horror story that I recommend it only to those who can bear it.

Charlotte

I've been reading "The Portable Faulkner" edited by Malcolm Cowley, in which he outlines the saga of Yoknapatawpha County. At one point Cowley says, "Faulkner carries to an extreme his effort toward putting the whole world into one sentence, holding it suspended between one capital letter and one period. There is a sentence that occupies six pages...The reader may have difficulty in fitting the subjects to the predicates and in disentangling the subordinate clauses."

Is that what Faulkner was trying to do? Put the whole world into one sentence? I keep trying to figure out why he wrote that way. Was it because this is how the human mind really thinks, rambling along like a river? Did we have to train ourselves to put our thoughts into neat little sentences for the sake of coherence? Is this part of the power of his prose--that it follows the instinctive pattern of thought rather than the one imposed by logic?

Well, Shasta - if Faulkner's prose is like a river, for me it's the Colorado in Spring and I find myself capsized in the rapids, gasping for air!!

I agree. One does have to do some detective work to disentangle the clauses.

I have the Portable Faulkner too. It's very helpful . . . puts all the watsuts county books into perspective. I still can't spell that thing.

As to the form he has chosen, I think that is his creative contribution . . . yes the mind, or at least mine, does work that way. It doesn't punctuate at all, just rambles along and I found myself well able to understand his long sentences but out of breath because we're used to breathing along with the periods and commas.

CHAS. I disagree with you....enough! (G) everyone has his/her own idea about the a definition for ART. Mine is more fine-tuned than yours. but it doesn't matter does it?

Would this group like to be able to chat in real time as well as here in this this form where we get to edit and do little essays? At big bob's they are offering anyone who wants it a room on a subject which interests the group free. It's a nice organization replacing the defunct WBS. I use the sixties plus room for simple socializing but it might be fun to be more immediate in our responses.

THIS from an e-mail I just received.

"Furthermore, all rooms are fully up and running, and we're quite willing to create more. If you have a group of people that you'd like to "bring" to Bigbob's, let us know, and we'll create a room for you, absolutely free of charge."

Big Bobs registration of handles to keep them exclusive so that no one else can use them.

She has the gift of foresight but can't persuade anyone of what will happen so no one believes her.

"... for me waits destruction by the two-edged sword."
"Agamemnon fell victim of a conspiracy conceived by his own wife Clytaemnestra and her lover Aegisthus, who murdered both Agamemnon and Cassandra. This too Cassandra predicted:"

She knows everyones' secrets and does what she can to help. i.e. bringing the retarded Jim Bond to Sutpens 100 and hiding Henry when he "comes home to die". Clytimnestra on the other hand, with her husband murdered people.

Claire

Having finished the book I can't remember what is in which chapter, but did refer to the questions above on the clytie/cassandra issue. I hope I didn't spoil anyones fun. to be safe,m just skip my posts.

Claire

Chas: words are not as effecient in creating images as images are.

So, claire....like 1 picture is worth 1000 words?? (:>

One of the reasons Wolfe, Joyce and Faulkner use this method is because of the realization that the human mind works on many different levels at once. While we are listening to a lecture, reading a book or perhaps watching a movie, we also are breathing, shifting our bodies to make us more comfortable in our chair. We might be thinking about what we're having for dinner or worrying about our kids.

The mind does not always work in linear fashion, which is sometimes why we have to push so hard to make it do so. It is also why humans use many different methods in studying a subject. It is a real problem for teachers and I think perhaps they are learning to adjust their methods to the learning styles of individual students. This divergence in human thinking needs to be much explored. It will perhaps bring greater rewards than we ever expect.

Charlotte

Good morning Charlotte. Good thoughts for a blue Monday morning...I agree with you completely, the mind works on so many different levels at once...and so does Faulkner's writing! And not only the visual and the intellectual...but you hear and smell and taste his words - that's the magic here!

I'll have to agree with Charlie (although I'm mad at him) on this one, claire! Remember of course this is coming from a "right-brainer" - but, this is ART! Highly refined art! The thing is you have to work at it, to appreciate it. That means rereading! That means you can't scan through it once to follow the story as with the "common historical novel" and appreciate the ART! That's what slows the reading...no matter how familiar the biography and the plot line. (but I think they help - a lot!) The magic is to be found in the total experience! Faulkner paints with words - pictures, feelings, tension - sometimes with 1000 words, sometimes with just a few...

"...drifting across Quentin's face wistaria colored smoke..."
"...the father and the brother, percussion and repercussion like a thunderclap and it's echo"
"...the soft and fuller random of the fireflies
"...the hot equatorial groin of the world"...

Will you share your favorite(s) from this chapter?

CHEAP!!! CHOLLIE called me "cheap"!!!! Did you hear him? Did you all just hear him? He thinks I'm cheap because I like to be "manipulated"!!! Here's a question for you, Charlie. Do you think Faulkner "manipulates" his readers just as Bon manipulates Henry's soul and intellect - "by slow degrees, building gradually toward the picture he desired to retain, accept...the calculation, the exposures brief, so brief as to be cryptic"?

Cheap!!! Fie! Capsize in verbal protest! Gasp for air! And leave me to my manipulated sensual enjoyment! (That's why I read fiction, Chollie!

Shasta - great stuff! "The whole world in a sentence!" I used to love diagramming sentences (do kids still have to do that?) I can hear claire groaning all the way from CA!) This would certainly be a challenge! Do you find yourself going back over and over to complete the sentence...looking for the object of the verb which is found at the end of the paragraph, or even several paragraphs later?

I'm enjoying very much the important argument between you and Sue! Did Sutpen know Bon was his son? What did Sutpen find out in New Orleans? Did any of them know that Judith and Bon were brother and sister? I kept asking myself that as I read this chapter and I think I'll have to agree with Sue on this one.

Sutpen wouldn't have called off the marriage and sent Bon packing just because he had a son, of mixed blood in New Orleans...Sutpen himself had done the same thing with Bon and his mother! The now-absent Sutpen thinks he has handled the "situation"...no word on how he felt about meeting his first-born son or how he felt about losing Henry, his heir-apparent over the situation. It is the end of his hoped-for dynasty, isn't it? Henry has renounced his birthright! You'd think Sutpen would be devastated! That was the whole reason for the plantation, wasn't it?

Nothing! We get nothing! Faulkner is manipulating us...keeping our attention by withholding this crucial information! I'm not bored at all by this, but totally absorbed, looking for answers in these tangled sentences...

I agree Sue - that's the explanation...Sutpen tells the Henry that the reason the marriage has been cancelled is the octamaroon mistress and the son...and to the puritan, moralistic Henry, this is an outrage that must be resolved...and he chooses not to believe his father, though he knows in his heart it is true....

Ann, such thought-provoking questions! Where would we fit into the post-War South! I keep imagining myself as Scarlett O'Hara doing magical things with the green velvet drapes to fashion a ballgown for Mr. Rhett's return! But that's not realistic at all! Poor Judith...fashioning her wedding gown (and veil!) out of bits of stolen scraps...it makes me wonder why she didn't call on Miss Rosa for help...we left her in the last chapter sewing the trouseau, remember?! Where is she at this point? AM I forgetting something here?

You are all being very patient with me while I try to catch up with all your posts! Hopefully this week will be less hectic than last!

Oh! One more note...to one of our favorite lurkers - Nellie!!! has indicated that she has some different observations that could set this discussion on it's head!!! C'mon, NEllie, we'd love it - would absolutely love a different angle - breath of fresh air!

Later!

One of my favorite passages, from p.80. Mr. Compson summarizes Henry's reaction to Bon's octoroon mistress and his one sixteenth part Negro son and then goes on to say:

"It's just incredible. It just does not explain. Or perhaps that's it: they don't explain and we are not supposed to know. We have a few old mouth-to-mouth tales; we exhume from old trunks and boxes and drawers letters without salutation or signature, in which men and women who once lived and breathed are now merely initials or nicknames out of some now incomprehensible affection which sound to us like Sanskrit or Choctaw; we see dimly people. . .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."

Having done just a little geneological research, I am reminded of how one takes a fact here, a note there, an old family story here, and tries to put them together so that the story will make sense.

Mary

again it's a matter of definition. Poetry is an art form made of word, metaphor, images and music (rhythm) but it is not as simple a matter to understand than an actual image and not available to people who may not speak the particular language that is used. . . unavailable in fact to all who don't know the language. It doesn't take language skills to appreciate GRAPHIC art.

NOw this is lovely poetry and if I have to submit phrases that I'd liked, I'd end up submitting much of the book. WF a much better poet than he was credited with.

Claire

ok favorite passages selected at random. open book put finger somewhere on the page -- in this case 153 and there it is...one I noticed in passing

"now the two dogs came in,drifted in like smoke (that's the best part but it goes on with more metaphor)their hair close-plastered (etc etc).

another one? ok here goes.

page 197 is just long winded unpunctuated narrative. "onward".

page 118 Rosa is talking about having not seen the face of Sutpen but there is a phrase about plain young girls' image in a mirror.

If I were God I would invent out of this seething turmoil we call progress something (a machine perhaps) which would adorn the barren mirror altars of every plain girl who breathes......it would need vague inference out some walking flesh and blood.......shadow realm of make-believe

all of this within one sentence/paragraph about an inch of vertical space on page 118. so when and where do i stop.collecting metaphors and visions? Was I unable to appreciate them because I wanted a plot that was comfortable and accessable? i didn't stop noticing if not collecting. There are too many of them for that.I read the book fully aware of them , .

Words as used here constitute another media of art from the one i am able to use. i'm not much of a poet but have tried my hand at it and appreciate it when it's done well. see mal's poetry e-zine and especially the works of jim fowler.

claire

Joan, I'm glad you pointed out those beautiful phrases in Post #136. I'm embarrassed to admit that I flew right past them without even noticing them, and I thought I was a pretty sensitive reader. I need to slow down and pay more attention to what I'm reading.

Uh, oh....what did I say? On the off chance that you are serious Joan P I apologize. I remember only saying something about artists manipulating the emotions of their audience being cheap (I certainly wasn't referring to you!!

You said reading Faulkner you can hear and smell his words. Exactly. And you used one example that struck me as I was reading. His use of the word wisteria in a couple of instances made me hear and smell what he was saying. So some pictures are worth 1000 words and some words paint a picture that you can also smell and feel...

I very much liked (from Chapter 3): "unaware that his flowering was a forced blooming...and that while he was still playing the scene to the audience, behind him fate, destiny, retribution, irony - the stage manager, call him what you will - was already striking the set and dragging on the synthetic and spurious shadows and shapes of the next one."

Very Shakespearean. All the worlds a stage and all that. Sutpen is just acting his role. Playing his part (much as Billy had tried on various parts for fit and comfort as a youngster). There’s something inevitable though about these parts. A supreme irony reigns here, though - once a part, a role has been taken - it takes on a life of its own - an inevitability that leads down a path with no forks. Everything is as a gathering storm that must descend from the mountains. Cardboard mountains though, capped with filigree white clouds with gray splotches of foreboding. The Die is Cast/Le Jeux Sont Fait. He was The Planter, The Landowner. The Country Squire. The Baron. The man of "arrogant ease and leisure." This was a "forced blooming" though. An accelerated ascendancy. A Hot house flower that circumvented the naturally lazy pace of generations. And the play must go on. To its conclusion whether the main actor is through with his current lines or not. After all – it was he who set this pace. "The stage manager, call him what you will"...reminded me of Ferlinghetti's The Smiling Mortician - I loved that

I also like the image that Faulkner comes back too a number of times - Ellen as butterfly.

I think Joan already alluded to this earlier - but the ending of Chapter 3 with Wash Jones' call to Miss Rosa and then the circling back through Chapter 4 - telling the story of Henry and Charles and Judith and the quarrel - the abeyance, durance, waiting and hoping - all spokes of a wheel linked to The Letter which ties it all together - and then ending back with Wash's call to Miss Rosa "Air you Rosie Coldfield?" - but with three more sentences added. This Chapter is in some ways a microcosm of his storytelling. It revisits old ground in a little more detail, from different angles, and then advances the linear story just incrementally. But we feel as if we've learned a lot more about motivations.

AHAHAHAAA! What does LOL mean? Is it "lots of luck" - or "laughing out loud" - if it's laughing, that's what I want! LOL!!!

Claire! I can just picture you - eyes closed - taking your finger and randomly pointing to an example of WF's poetry! My son had a French teacher (a sub, actually, who used to do that each day he came in...open the book randomly and the kids would spend the period on that page!). But what wonderful images! I loved the "two dogs drifting in like smoke", and the " the barren altars of every plain girl"...

Shasta, I miss a lot of these images too - and I won't say here how many times I have to read and reread each passage to fully appreciate it! Aren't we so important to one another? Of course it's easy to miss Claire's references...because she has been through the whole book and is pointing randomly to pages many of us haven't reached yet....will certainly be more aware of them when I get there though!!! Have you noticed the repeated mispelling of "wisteria" ? We've talked about the poor editing of the first edition, but in my "corrected" version, it continues to be spelled "wistaria"...Southern girls, would you mind telling me how this world is pronounced in the South?

And Chollie...of course I thought you were calling me "cheap"! AHAHAHAHAAAAAAAA! No, I didn't, really! I know you are too much of a gentleman - even if that's what you were thinking! AHAHA! LOL!

I agree with you and Mary - Judith, Bon, Henry and Sutpen are there, but something is missing! From the passage you quoted, Mary, I feel I am doing much the same...reading, re-reading, poring, making sure nothing is forgotten, but these characters remain "shadowy, inscrutable". Oh, I'm not saying I think this is a failure on WF's part...but rather a "coup"...he has succeeded in presenting the same experience you have in piecing together the bits of information you have gleaned from your genealogical research to form an image of a living breathing character...and yet something is missing. As Charlie compares them to actors on a Shakesperean stage...What is missing? Perhaps the soul of these characters?

But I am finding the Coldfield girls much more "accessible"...is to WF's detailed attention to these two ladies? Ellen - the butterfly. She seems to have usurped the "amazement" factor, hasn't she? Why do I find her so sad? Perhaps because I know her?

"Ellen at the absolute flood's peak of her unreal and weightless life ..."
"Then Ellen died, the butterfly of a forgotten summer tow years defunctive now - the substanceless shell, the shade impervious to any alteration or dissolution because of its very weightlessness: no body to be buried: just the shape, the recollection, translated on some peaceful afternoon without bell or catafalque in that cedar grove, to lie in powder-light paradox beneath the thousand points of marble monument which Sutpen had brought in and set above the faint grassy depression which Judith told him was Ellen's grave."

Joan-- glad to hear you like the passage also. I think it describes exactly how the reader feels when faced with all this detail and all these questions without getting answers. Mr. Compson makes up scenes to answer his questions, but his description of what happened when Bon and Henry went to New Orleans is exactly THAT. His description, created by him, in his imagination. The view of women as divided into categories is also his.

It's fun to figure out what we know for sure, what information is first hand. For example, we have the letter that Bon wrote to Judith at the end of the Civil War saying that they had waited long enough. We have the fact the Bon came to visit Sutpen's Hundred twice at Christmas. We know that Sutpen went to New Orleans. We know that Bon and Henry went to New Orleans. We know that Bon and Henry enlisted in the University unit. We know that Sutpen fought in the war.

We know that Judith died. We know that Wash Jones appeared at Rosa Coldfield's door. We know that Rosa's father was a conscientious objector to the war. We know that Henry met Bon at college. However, much of what we "know" is only speculation, an attempt on the part of (at this point) Mr. Compson to make sense of the story.

Mary

Chapter 4 - Absalom Absalom 12/7/99 Hey doesn’t anybody remember Pearl Harbor Day? I know I was the oldest person at the NYC bash, but come on that date must have had some impact on the rest of you.

Chapter 4

Wow is this chapter difficult. Old Billy tells it like it is:

“you re-read, tedious and intent , poring , making sure you have forgotten nothing, made no miscalculation; you bring them together 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.” (p.103, Modern Lib. ed.)

At the beginning of this chapter, we get a picture of Miss Rosa, but then Mr. Compson takes over again. He speaks as though he is talking aloud to us using expressions like “He must have said to himself “and repeats “must have said,” just as we speak in ordinary conversation.

There are so many questions. What did Sutpen tell Henry? Why was Henry destined to kill Bon? Is it because he is a sibling of Judith and himself or because of Bon’s drop of black blood?

On page 94, we learn that Sutpen was a member of a “Fraternal Organization.” Could this have been the KKK, which Faulkner hesitated to mention? Was this an effort to attain acceptance in the white community and did this produce some conflict in Sutpen’s mind?

Does the flowered, feminized gown Bon wears suggest a homosexual relationship between Bon and Henry?

Did Henry misunderstand that the picture of the woman and the boy was not Bon’s mother and himself, but that of Bon’s own previous marriage?

And what is the “pure and perfect incest” that the brother feels must be destroyed in order to have existed at all? Did he want to be the lover of his sister and of Bon at the same time? What kind of engagement was this with so few meetings? Bon had not even paid Judith the complement of trying to ruin her. Four years later Henry had to kill Bon to prevent the marriage, “so it must have been Henry who seduced Judith not Bon.”

All of this is conjecture on the part of Mr. Compson. But I think WF is there himself when he says”these are shadowy paragons which are our ancestors born in the South and come to adulthood about 1860-1861. We have a few old mouth-to-mouth tales; we exhume from trunks, boxes and drawers letters without salutation or signature, in which men and women who who once lived and breathed are now merely initials or nicknames.”

He also points out that the sweat is the same--”the only difference being between those who labor in the fields and those who don’t have to.”

I am not even half way through this chapter, but I will go on.

Charlotte

wis-teer'-ee-ah! I wondered if anyone would notice that WF mispelled this beautiful, but creeping, overtaking plant. Perhaps his "wistaria" is a metaphor for the creeping, overtaking evil found at Sutpen's 100. Sue

Wistaria is the genus, named after the American anatomist, Caspar Wistar. The most common species is Wistaria Sinensis. Wistaria Fruticosa (commonly known as wisteria, grows wild in the South.

But I like Sue's metaphor better.

a thousand words

it's safe . it's a SN image.

Claire

I wondered about this word too. I thought it was carelessness on the part of writer and editor. But there must be a double meaning.

Charlotte

How come he didn't use Kudzu. I guess wistaria is prettier

Charlotte

Another "picture"...wistaria, but how do you convey phrases like - "wistaria-colored smoke", from that cigar...or "the hot equatorial groin" of Africa, or "the woman with the face of a tragic magolia" - visually? It is the power of this man, I think, to take our mental image of an object and mix it with an abstract idea or feeling - right there in our brain, which he uses as his own palette! What do you think of that?

And now, while my brain lingers on that "face of a tragic magolia" in the New Orleans brothel, I am looking at "a row of faces like a bazaar of flowers, a corridor of doomed and tragic flower faces"...

WF seems to be making a very clear distinction between the definition of a whore and these "women"...and earlier, made a distinction among "...three sharp divisions which could be crossed but one time - ladies, women and females"

Can anyone explain to me that second category, the "women" in Henry's world, and how they differ from Bon's New Orleans 'sparrows'? Or are they the same?

I think it's going to be important to understand why Bon didn't simply renounce the sparrow and child for Judith - and Henry too of course, oh, but of course!

Maryal, thanks for the reminder...to distinguish between what we know, and what is heresay - and yet, all of it, all of it is in the mind of the author! He wants us to struggle with this very thing!

Charlotte, your careful reading has brought forth many interesting questions - hopefully we can find answers to some of them in this chapter...others will probably have to wait for another day, or later chapters...

I'll put some of them in the heading this afternoon!

ps Sue, I like your explanation better too! It's catching, you see....you are starting to look for symbolism under every rock too!!!

pps Hey, Claire, I'm trying to make your name "wistaria-colored" - how am I doing?

I didn't know wistaria was named after a man named Caspar Wistar. I learn something new everyday. Yesterday, I just learned that poinsettias were named after a man named Joel Poinsett, a U.S. ambassador who brought the flowers back from Mexico.

Wistaria is a real plague in my neck of the woods. It grows as rampant as kudzu, and I've fought it for years. But Charlotte, how would you know about kudzu? Surely it doesn't grow in New York? And I'm wondering if kudzu was growing in Mississippi in Faulkner's day. It was brought over from Asia, but I'm not sure when.

Shasta, from what I've been reading, kudzu will eventually find its way up to NY one of these days - it's been likened to an "alien invasion"...but you were right about its introduction...it wouldn't have been much in Faulkner's time I don't think:kudzu Somehow "kudzu-colored cigar smoke" doesn't evoke the same image as "wistaria-colored smoke"!

Shasta, from what I've been reading, kudzu will eventually find its way up to NY one of these days - it's been likened to an "alien invasion"...but you were right about its introduction...it wouldn't have been much in Faulkner's time I don't think, as it was imported into the South to control soil erosion in the 1930's:kudzu Somehow "kudzu-colored cigar smoke" doesn't evoke the same image as "wistaria-colored smoke"!

REL:" from that cigar...or "the hot equatorial groin" of Africa, or "the woman with the face of a tragic magolia" - visually?"

I often use images that i find in books to make paintings. i remember doing it with michners "Hawaii". The image of the beaten people taking off in a double hulled boat with their gods in the bow -- taking off in a hurrican for an unknown but ledgendary place five thousand miles to the north, really stayed with me so I did a painting about it.....not an illustration because it stands up by itself as a powerful piece. No I don't have it here. I get it from movies too. I did a series of overlapping images after seeing

"The English Patient and it is here on line at my site. I couldn't get that bandaged wrapped head out of my mind. The mafia movies did the same thing. multiple images usually. My daughter has that one. She loves it, but others probably wouldn't...not pretty.

This one would lend itself to that treatment

woman with the face of a tragic magolia

as to "wistaria-colored" - smoke I've done something similar to illustrate one of Jim Fowlers poems when I had them at my site. That's an easy one for an abstract painter like me.

Claire.

painting was done on my computer in photoshop. I like to be able to superimpose images and variations on an image. . . sorta like music. BTW I can't imagine anyone equating wistaria with a noxious weed. I think they are so beautiful.

Claire

No Shasta, we don't have it here in NY. I learned about it when my daughter spent five years in Memphis.

As for the wisteria ( which is always the way I spelled it), There was one planted in the middle of the yard when we moved into the house. It was pretty and had a pleasant odor, but the kids hated it for all the bees it attracted. When it was knocked over by a big wind, we had to pull it out, after replanting it several times. Like kudzu, it never gave up. A tendril kept shooting up from the soil for years.

Charlotte

Claire:

I tried your clickable, but it was too dark to make anything out.

Charlotte

Claire, wisteria is one of my favorite plants and we have several in our 5 acre lawn. However, to explain why some people don't want it, my husband is the natural gardener in our family. As such, he spends lots of the chilly winter months pruning shrubs, grapes, peach trees, etc. His biggest chore is usually wisteria. Two years ago he had surgery for colon cancer and 24 weeks of chemotherapy. He wasn't able to prune and I was teaching. The wisteria spread all over the place. It almost choked out our blueberries and entwined itself all around the pole which brings power into our yard. I've been helping him try to cut it back this year since I'm now retired and we still have a long way to go to get it under control.

The roadsides and woods are full of beautiful lavendar and white flowers in the spring and early summer. The fragrance is wonderful. And we welcome the bees, Charlotte, because they pollinate so many of our blooming friends. Sue

Here in SJC geraniums grow like crazy. I have a five foot mountain of red and pink combined in the middle of my yard resting on the remains of a dead avocado, but gaining height by climbing all over itself. They're elsewhere too. It's a good thing you can't kill them. my thumbs are lethal.

Claire

I am also reading – rereading to be precise - History: A Novel by Elsa Morante. I often think when reading Faulkner here, about what we think of as ‘history’. What we ‘know.’ In the context of reading this novel, Mary said that “much of what we ‘know’ is only speculation, an attempt on the part of Mr. Compson to make sense of the story.” Or His Story – or History. Might we substitute “the reader” for “Mr. Compson”? Aren’t we trying, as we read, to cobble together from the bits and pieces that we “believe” to be true, some “sense” of what the real truth is? Further might we substitute “mankind” for “Mr. Compson”? What I mean is that Elsa Morante seems to be saying that much of what we know is only speculation, an attempt on the part of mankind to make sense of History – our existence. In fact, she says that this is what separates us or “distinguishes us” from the other species. We sink into madness without the ability to believe in our own explanations of the world. It is what allows us to live. I have read no further than this Chapter 4. I know that Quentin and Shreve attempt to make sense of the history of Sutpen and the surrounding clans. I know that Faulkner attempted to make sense of the little acre of his imagination. Why? I wonder if to avoid that slide into madness.

Charlotte – nice job on Chapter 4, by the way. Helpful synopsis.

Sue:

My kids knew about the work of the bees, but we are on a very small plot of land. They were afraid of bee stings.

Charlie: No, I don't think we can substitute "the reader" for Mr. Compson. What he says is what is his opinion is, or what he knows from hearsay. There are some points where Faulkner himself comes in as narrator.

Thanks for your nice comment. I really enjoy getting my teeth into and studying the material. Though I'm taking a break right now to read Frank McCourt's new book. A good writer and funny

Charlotte

My husband, Milt had colon cancer 7 years ago and 20 weeks of chemo. He is in great shape and better off than I am. He swims, 20 laps at the Y and uses the bike and rowing machines. He puts out a volunteer newsletter for our local psychiatric center and is a volunteer mediator to help solve problems and take the load off the court system. A further major interest is computer problems, which he solves for me and for everyone else we know.

Best wishes for your husband's health and longevity.

Charlotte

At the risk of getting Joan made at me (again!! – and in no way to denigrate THIS discussion (it’s terrific) – I am sorry that we aren’t doing St. Joan. Such fabulous, fabulous stuff around now. Just heard Chris Lydon (on PBS radio) with a great discussion with some Jean d’Arc experts. There are new books out. There’s a new movie out (Rivette?)I think) for Christmas. There are a LOTS of movies that have been done. There’s even a Mark Twain treatment that I knew nothing about (which he claimed to be his favorite work!)…it would have been very timely. Maybe next time.

Charlie----I liked what you said about history and various versions of it. The winners get to write the history, and all writing is always to a degree subjective. Plus one always has to decide what to put in and what to leave out, thus distorting "reality" if such exists in any real way. The reader is certainly trying to do what Mr. Compson is attempting except at one remove. Later, when we get to Shreve, Quentin's college roommate, we will have a person who really does stand in the place of the reader. Shreve is from Canada and is privy to all the stories and facts that Quentin has. But Shreve knows nothing about the legend, hears it only as Story, and furthermore, has no stand on the Civil War, being neither from the south nor the north.

Mary

whose contributions are full of maybe's and could-haves and might-have-beens under circumstances that might have been or likely could have been etc. etc. . He conjectures about everything as if it had or must have happened. No wonder people get confused. I think it's a heavy load for this rather unimportant character to carry. WF is put all possible interpretations into his mouth instead of choosing and developing ONE.

Claire

It's always good to hear that someone is doing so well seven years later. Bob is doing great two years after the surgery, too. I appreciate your concern. Sue

Please remember that I have returned the book to the library. However, FWIW, here are some of my notes from Chapter 4:

As Compson narrates this chapter, we see Sutpen in a different light. Has he become somewhat sympathetic in Compson's view?

abnegation: to refuse and/or deny oneself. I think this may have been used in describing Coldfield. I wondered if Coldfield was obsessed with the war, full of fears? I'm not so sure that I agree that he was a Conscientious Objector.

On Henry: puritan heritage, fierce, proud mysticism, and ability to be ashamed of ignorance and inexperience. Henry was depicted as an ignorant country bumpkin when compared to the cosmopolitan Bon. Certainly this was the initial attraction for Henry.

I felt that Bon and Henry considered themselves victims. Henry seemed to be a Coldfield with a conscience, Judith a conscienceless Sutpen.

Does any of this make sense to you? Sue

claire---agree that it is a lot to carry, but I think Shreve comes as close as anyone can to imagining the past by actually entering it. He gets all caught up in the story and keeps going on with it until he brings it to what he, at least, thinks of as a satisfactory conclusion. I think the whole novel becomes much easier to follow once Shreve and Quention take over. Which is not to say that he gets the story "right."

Mary

Sue---We must be here at the same time. Yes, I think that the view of Sutpen through Mr. C's eyes is more sympathetic than it is through Miss Rosa's. But the part where we really understand him and where he comes from comes later. Good to see you again.

Mary

Charlie! Shaw's St. Joan was my first choice last vote, do you remember? I have a special affinity with Joan! She and I share a name, and my birthday, May 30 is her feast day, the day she was burned to death. I just read a wonderful book, An Army of Angels, by Pamela Marcantel - a rising star in the University of Virginia's English Department. Her own story is quite "amazing"! She is the departmental secretary!!! She had given up writing after her undergraduate days at the U. of Louisiana in the late 60's. She managed a ski lodge in Colorado and then returned to Louisiana as a secretary. In 1991, she felt a growing need to write, quit her job and moved to Virginia where she was supported by the faculty. She is getting rave reviews for this book.

So yes, Charlie, I'd love to do Shaw's St. Joan...I'd love to do it with BC On-line! Any chance of Great Books crashing that party in 2000 - or are you all "booked"?

Philly Sophical! I'm with you! Most of what we all know of family history, our own great grandparents, for example - is just that - speculation, heresay, depending on the narrator. And the surviving narrators are all piecing together what they remember from back then on certain occasions. You should hear what one aunt has to say about my own Great Grandfather! I often wish he could either defend himself, or explain. There are no more living "eye witnesses"!

Yes, substitute Mankind and include the fictional Compson and the author himself in the same category, piecing together what little he does know of his own GG, and choosing the parts that caught his imagination...until that person became very real to him! Remember reading that in the Biography?

I'll even go so far as to "speculate" that Faulkner himself attempts over and over to explain his own disturbing family history to avoid that "slide into madness."

Claire, I agree, Faulkner uses many voices to piece together his story, but that's how we learn about the past - if you are looking for just ONE voice, that would have to be Miss Rosa's - an eye-witness, but even she was not out there at the plantation...hardly ever! Besides, she was in such a state of "amazement", her viewpoint is permanently skewed against Sutpen - her story one-sided. She was an "unimportant" player too...

We have seen Sutpen in a sympathetic light before this - sort of. At least he is excused of some of the things he was blamed for...like Judith's presence in the barn during the "fight", like Judith being the one responsible for the racing rig through the Sunday morning churchgoers.

In his letter, Bon refers to that event which seems to be some sort of dividing line of their (his and Judith’s) history. Now Rosa referred to 1865 (the end of the war – “the deep south dead” since). Does Bon refer to the START of the war – or just that “leavetaking” by he and Henry to join? “…what WAS is one thing, and now it is not because it is dead, it dies in 1861.” Their way of life, I assume? The very necessity of war and its imperative to fight for their way of life…is it that to which he refers? “…and therefore what IS…Because what IS is [editorial note: I can’t believe my restraint in foregoing the obvious Clinton joke] something else again because it was not even alive then.” He goes on to tell Judith that in his letter she holds the best of the old South “which is dead.” He ruefully tells her that he’s reduced to writing his letter with some spoils of the war – stove polish from the new North. The South has been vanquished and it is apparent that he (and she) are “doomed to live” in this brave new world.

p.s. may be some opportunity to do St. Joan in BC Online. It certainly fits in a few places so we’ll just nominate it again.

Now is the time for Bon and Judith to marry, as they are among survivors, "doomed" to live in the post-Bellum South, doomed to live together...

I'm thinking of what you just quoted, Charlie - about Judith representing the "best of the South" and then compare that with what Sue concluded, (and I agree with) - thet Henry was the Coldfield, with the puritan conscience, Judith the Sutpen (without one). Hmmm...Judith the Sutpen/Judith the "Best of the South"...something is not working here. I think we'd better consider the source of that statement...Bon, the mystery man.

Sue? Bon, a victim? Well, yes, he did get murdered; I suppose that makes him a victim...but was he too a Sutpen ("without a conscience" )- as you describe them. I sense somehow that his conscience was finer-tuned than Henry's - in an odd way.

The question that goes round and round in my head...Why didn't Bon renounce his wife and child? There was a long explanation about the three divisions of women, the ladies (unaccessible virgins like Judith - and Miss Rosa?); women, like??? Ellen? and females, like the slaves, the whores (?)...and what if someone like Bon plucked one of these slave girls from whoredom and made her his wife? He has "saved" one of the sparrows... Does that put a moral responsiblity on him to for life? Will his conscience not allow him to leave her? Can someone decipher those words that described the position that Bon represented?

I'll have to read that part yet again. Can anyone explain why Bon didn't just leave the wife, now that he has made the decision that it is time marry Judith? And then the other question lurks, but I'm afraid to ask...(don't tell, Puleeze if it comes out in later chapters - which I, and several others have not yet read!) Does Bon know all along that Judith is his sister? Henry, his brother? I'm assuming no. Not that that has anything to do with the question...why does he not leave this wife as Henry is pressuring him to do?

Joan:

I'm not sure that Bon repeated what Sutpen had done with producing a child with the octoroon. It's too pat. I assumed that the picture that was found was of Bon's mother and Bon as a child.

I'm still working on Chapter 4.

Charlotte

oooooh, Charlotte, I'd better reread that again...I immediately jumped to the conclusion that Bon had done exactly as his father had done! We must rely on one another's close reading here!

Joan, the reason why Bon didn't leave his wife and child is that he saw no reason to do so. His moral code was different from ours. Keeping a mistress was to him a normal thing to do. He saw no reason why a man shoudn't have a mistress and a wife both. He felt a certain responsibility for the mistress/wife and child, and probably he loved them. Remember that Bon was supposed to be very sophistocated and old-world. The puritan ethic seemed like childish nonsense to him. And remember that New Orleans was the most European city in the U.S. I remember when I moved to New Orleans as a young woman. Even then it seemed as strange to me as a foreign city.

Shasta, I have one foot out the door and better get the other out quick or St. Nick won't make it to my house...but I must bring up the "ceremony" before I go...Bon and the woman went through a marriage ceremony, which puts his relationship into a different category altogether, doesn't it? No longer merely a "mistress"?

I need to know more about Catholicism in the old South at this time...Bon was Catholic. Was this a Catholic ritual? I seem to remember something about an "old crone", presiding, which made me think otherwise while reading it! Will have to go back over that carefully too! Spend so much time rereading! As I never, ever have before! Not even Joyce!

Take care! Talk to you later!

Bon and his "wife" had a wedding ceremony, but it was a morganitic (sp) marriage, not Catholic or Civil. I agree with Shasta that Bon felt no reason to leave his "wife" and child. I believe he felt responsible for them and cared for them deeply. He held Henry's views on the subject in contempt.

I can't agree with Charlie on his assessment of Judith as a Lady. Her response to the fight in the barn and the hell-bent-for-leather race into town are very unlady-like. She had few skills of a lady. For example Rosa complains in Chapter 5 that Judith is too extravagant and wasteful with food (p. 156). No lady facing starvation would do that. Also Judith was too calm when Rosa arrived. She was not mourning in the accepted social way of a lady. I stick to my impression of Judith as a ruthless Sutpen who enjoys, perhaps vicariously, violent behavior. Sue

Joan---I've done a cut and paste job here for the definition of morganatic marriage. I hope it works. From the Encyclopedia Britannica Online:

morganatic marriage

legally valid marriage between a male member of a sovereign, princely, or noble house and a woman of lesser birth or rank, with the provision that she shall not thereby accede to his rank and that the children of the marriage shall not succeed to their father's hereditary dignities, fiefs, and entailed property.

The name is derived from the medieval Latin matrimonium ad morganaticum, variously interpreted as meaning "marriage on the morning gift" (from German Morgengabe), with the implication that this morning gift, or dowry, was all that the bride could expect; or "restricted marriage" (Gothic maurjan, "restrain"); or simply "morning marriage," celebrated quietly at an early hour.

Essentially a German institution, it was adopted by some dynasties outside Germany but not by those of France or England. The practice ensues from the German notion of Ebenbürtigkeit, or Gleichbürtigkeit (evenness or equality of birth), which in the European Middle Ages had a widespread application in German law. It required that parties to many sorts of transaction be of the same standing or estate, but it could not be an impediment to marriage in the law of the church.

This is the marriage that Bon contracted with the beautiful octoroon with a "face like a tragic magnolia" and with whom he conceived a son.

Mary

for that explanation. I wondered. So if Bon was to have any LEGITIMATE offspring he would have to have a marriage with an equal (Judith). As to Judith not behaving in a ladylike manner I think she never thought of herself as a lady but the community did even though they disapproved of her behavior. It had to do with her antecedents, i.e. her mother and grandfather.

Claire

as ladies. Judith, Ellen, Rosa, and their aunt didn't participate much in Jefferson society. Ellen fell out of the lady category when she married Sutpen--an unknown nobody. Remember in chapter 1 where the women of Jefferson agreed never to forgive Sutpen for not having any past.

In chapter 5, Miss Rosa laments her fate of spinsterhood. She said something like this, "Had I been the daughter of a wealthy planter I could have married almost anyone, but was the mere daughter of a small storekeeper and so would have been doomed to marry at last some apprentice clerk in my father's business". I conclude from this that Southern women of the time did not marry out of their class.

A further indication that the Coldfields were not members of the highest class was that the aunt was a spinster and ran off with a horse trader. This is not to say that a lady might never run off with an unacceptable suitor, but it was highly unlikely that "ladies" had much exposure to men of a different class, except for servants and slaves. Sue

Sue--very interesting about the ladies. It doesn't appear, from what little evidence we have in the text, that Ellen Sutpen had lady friends. She seemed to be out there on Sutpen's Hundred without much companionship at all. Rosa is only the daughter of a shopkeeper and an impoverished one at that. The aunt's running away with the horsetrader shows me two things: class and desperation.

If Judith had married an acceptable suitor and been given land by Sutpen, I think that she and her children would have been accepted. But this doesn't happen, so we will never know.

Mary

Just to clarify - I didn’t say that Judith was “a Lady” or that she represented “the best of the South”. I was quoting from Bon’s letter. The best of the old South is actually the paper itself – and the ‘words’ appear courtesy of the best “of the new North”.Bon’s letter is interesting for many reasons, especially this one I think. The letter is written on the very best of paper, with“French watermarks dated seventy years ago”. The paper is but a remnant of a “gutted mansion of a ruined aristocrat.” But the ‘ink’ used is “stove polish” manufactured at a “New England factory.” This amalgam of the Old South and the New North is not without its irony – and it seems the irony is not lost on Charles Bon.

Sue - where did you come up with that morgantic marriage? It wasn't in the text, right? And thanks for the definition, Mary. Good stuff!

Honestly, Charlie, I don't have the book to check and see if the term is used in there. Somewhere I noticed that Bon had a wedding ceremony, but not a proper one. I've read lots of Historical novels with morganatic marriages in them--usually as an adjunct to the plot. I think several of the Crown Princes in England in the 1700s had this kind of relationship with women not acceptable as Queen candidates. Maybe Mary can tell us more about it. She at least knew how to spell it and where to look for an explanation. Sue

Charlie---It is in the novel though I don't think it has appeared in our reading to this point. If I had my marked text at home, I could find it for you in a minute or two, but I am on sabbatical and am working with an unmarked text. What a handicap!

Mary

Now that explains why morning weddings are not considered proper for girls/woman in this part of the country and are always celebrated in the afternoon or evenings.

A Henry Potter discussion! I hope it's the first book, the one I'm reading.

Mary

Harry Potter is here!

Continuation Chapter -4- Absalom Absalom - 12/11/99

Let’s keep in mind that this chapter is being told from Mr. Compson’s point of view.

He wonders why Sutpen would make a 600 mile trip to New Orleans. This kind of character would have shot a man, rather than make a 10 mile journey to investigate him. This precipitated Ellen’s and Judith’s embarkation on America’s latest popular pastime SHOPPING, a labor-intensive experience for the coachmen who had to build a fire every few miles, in order to warm the bricks to keep the women comfortable.

Compson says that Sutpen had no one to talk to about his fears, since he trusted no one. Ellen was incapable of love, Judith was too much like her father and Sutpen was too successful. Compson describes this kind of success as “that solitude of contempt and distrust which success brings to him who gained it because he was strong instead of merely lucky.”

He also suggests that Henry loved Bon, perphaps better than he loved Judith, “ seeing perhaps the woman vessel with which to consummate the love whose actual object was the youth.”

Check out the differences between life in Memphis or New Orleans as compared to life on a plantation: bottom of p.110 to about 112. Also look at Bon’s discussion of whores p. 118 and following pages. I am using Modern Library edition published in 1993. I can’t begin to discuss this in detail since it would take up so much space that B&L or AOL would throw me off. However, I cannot refrain from a couple of my underlined quotes:

About God: “So perhaps now that God is an old man, He is not interested in the way we serve what you call lust either. Perhaps He does not even require of us that we save this one sparrow anymore than we save the one sparrow which we do save for any commendation from Him. But we do save one who would have been sold to any brute who had the price, not just for the night like a white prostitute, but body and soul for life. He would use her with more impunity than he dared to use an animal, “then discarded, sold or murdered when worn out or when her keep and her price no longer balanced.” (this is not an exact quote, but is edited by me for brevity.) p.119

About whores: Sometimes I believe they are the only true chaste women, not to say virgins in America and they remain true and faithful to that man not merely until he dies or frees them, but until they die.” p.120.

On page 121 Bon compares marriage to prostitution. Is this in Compson’s imagination or is it in the voice of WF. Are Henry and Bon talking about Bon’s mother or about Bon’s relationship with another woman. If it is about another woman, why would it take four years for Henry to repudiate Bon. Did Henry ever see the woman and the child?

I am beginning to confirm my opinion that Bon did not repeat what Sutpen did with the octoroon and that Henry is confused by Sutpen about the marriage. Let me suggest again that the picture Judith found was of Bon, as a child with his mother.

P. 125 Judith’s statement about waiting for Bon and suffering if she has to. I believe Compson is wrong, wrong, wrong. What women would wait 4 years? Can you imagine Sutpen and Judith not talking? They didn’t need to? Sutpen rode away with his regiment and Judith didn’t tell him she knew where Bon and Henry were?

Page 134 we see how the South kept the home fires burning and the necessary laughter to survive on an empty stomach.

Here we also get Bon’s letter which is very indefinite in detail. He never knows when he will come. Says we’ve waited long enough. He never talks about marriage, but Judith sets about making the wedding dress.

At the end of this chapter we learn what Wash Jones has come to tell Rosa at the end of Chapter 4. I found all these questions in the text and then looked at James L. Roberts’ comments in Cliff’s Notes. He says that we later find out that the opinions expressed in this chapter, or most of the things reported, are later proved to be either false or subject to different interpretation.

So let’s forge on with the story.

Charlotte

Charlotte----Boy, you bring up some interesting points. I think I'll start with the last one. Judith's waiting four years is the probationary period that Henry demands and Bon acquiesces to, but notice that it is the four years 1861-1865, the Civil War. Bon and Henry enlist in the same unit. Bon's letter to Judith, which Mr. Compson shows Quentin, is written toward the end of the war when the defeat of the South is certain.

When Mr. Compson is talking about women in such derogatory ways, I think it is the character's mysogyny and not the author's. In The Sound and the Fury, Mr. Compson is also a world-weary man whose cynicism and problems with women are obvious. The "whore" in question is not a prostitute but an octoroon carefully raised (I've always imagined geishas) in order to be an ornament and a pleasure to a man. Such young women were actually presented at Octoroon Balls in New Orleans. They were faithful to the man they "married" until death and never remarried. All through this section, you can see Mr. Compson's incredibly romantic imagination at work. You have to ask yourself, but how on earth does he know this?

Mary

became a social butterfly and had friends among that ilk. Isn't that accptance as a lady? even though she wasn't always treated like one. There is a quote about the South raising it's women to be ladies in the first or second chapter and that now the south no longer exists they are to be seen a ghosts.

Claire

Charlotte, I agree with you - it is quite a stretch to believe that Charles Bon's experience with the octoroon mirrored his father's. But, I think that is exactly what happened. New Orleans was quite the cosmopolitan city at the time...many French - French Catholics. Also, the strange voodoo beliefs of the French Haitians have found there way to this city. Thomas Sutpen begat Charles Bon of Eulala, the daughter of a Haitian planter..he "married" her too, but did not know at the time that she had any "tainted blood, so his was probably a true marriage ceremony. Catholic? Maybe. Anyway, when Sutpen found out, he left immediately, renouncing the son. No wonder the son, Charles Bon, refuses to renounce his own son in this same way. He's been hurt by his own father.

At any rate, I feel there is enough evidence that Charles married his beautiful Octaroon, knowing that she has some Negro blood, but does he know that he has Negro blood too? I'll guess he does, but maybe not. Thanks for that information on morganatic marriage,Sue. Apparently they were quite common in New Orleans at the time - so perhaps the coincidence is not so surprising! It is reassuring, Maryal, to know that we will hear more about it before we are finished! Or is this all in Chapter 4? We do learn something about it here. I did a quick search and found this:

MORGANTIC MARRIAGE - During the middle ages, there was an intermediate estate between matrimony and concubinage, known by this name. It is defined to be a lawful and inseparable conjunction of a single man, of noble and illustrious birth, with a single woman of an inferior or plebeian station, upon this condition, that neither the wife nor children should partake of the title, arms, or dignity of the husband, nor succeed to his inheritance, but should have a certain allowance assigned to them by the morgantic contract. The marriage ceremony was regularly performed; the union: was for life and indissoluble; and the children were considered legitimate, though they could not inherit.

So, this child of Bon cannot inherit because of "the ceremony". This is probably Bon's argument to Henry. WHat difference should it make to Judith? What do you think Judith would have said if she knew about the wife and child?

I would still like to know more about it. Where was it performed? Certainly not in a Church? A civil ceremony? I don't think so...Bon describes it as

"a formula" performed by ...a crone mumbling in a dungeon light...in a tongue which not even the girls themselves understand anymore, maybe not even the crone herself..." (Sounds like a Haitian voodoo ceremony to me.

And yet if it was this "meaningless", why won't Bon renounce it? Because there is no need to! Because he does not want to do to this child and the woman what Sutpen did to his mother and himself if he doesn't have to? We are told a bit more about morganatic marriage here in this chapter...

"The manner in which his intended bride's family reacted to the discovery of it was doubtless the first and last time the Sutpen family ever surprised him."

Why was he surprised at their reaction?...

"If Bon, until he saw Sutpen's reaction to it (his secret), ever looked upon it as a cause for secrecy, certainly not as a valid objection to marriage with a white woman - a situation in which probably all his contemporaries who could afford it were likewise involved and which it woud no more have occurred to him to mention t his bride or wife or to her family than he would have told them secrets of a fraternal organization which he had joined before he married."

No, Bon has no problem marrying Judith with a morganatic wife, though Henry has a problem with it...sees it as bigamy...and Sutpen has a huge problem, but that's not it. He wouldn't be upset at this situation, because it is exactly one that he himself was in twenty-some years before. No, he forbids the marriage, because he knows who Bon is. I don't think Bon knows that Sutpen is his father however.

There is so much in each chapter, on each page, in each paragraph! Re-reading is becoming a habit!

Claire, I think Ellen believes Judith, grandchildren are her ticket to respectability. I don't think she has any friends, or social life at all way out there at Sutpen's. She never stops for tea with anyone when she comes to town on her shopping expeditions, hardly stops to see Rosa. No, I don't think she's one of the "ladies" of Jefferson but once Bon comes into the picture, she comes to life, and does become that butterfly, flitting around town, making announcements and plans for Judith's upcoming marriage. She thinks the fine Harvard man will father the children that will bring her respect. She now has a reason to come to town.

So--you don't agree with me and with the comments of James L. Roberts Phd. that we will "later find out that the opinions expressed in this chapter, or most of the things reported, are later proved to be either false or subject to different interpretation?"

This is an extremely difficult chapter. I doubt that Mr. Compson could possibly know all he says he does. Like poetry, there is no right or wrong, each reader brings his own meaning and understanding to it. Often an author may be surprised to find that reader's perceptions are different from what was originally intended.

In fact,now that I really think on it: This confusion with which WF presents the reader is a device to continue the story which he has presented in complete form in the first chapter. Here are the facts from the point of view of this person and this person and this person. What do you think actually happened?

Charlotte

Charlotte----I think the operative word in that quote is OR, "false or subject to different interpretation." Scholars disagree all the time about what is going on in this novel, so we are all in good company.

Mary

You make me feel a whole lot better for all the time I spent on it.

Charlotte

anything...it's fiction. Sutpen's design at the base of it all . . . WF's basis for everything he wanted to happen to these characters he created. . . . remember, an allegory for the old south.

trying to not give it away. . . . Claire

was ellen's father even though he didn't have money he was "respectable" which is why Sutpen married her. The wedding a fiasco...It didn't work very well did it.

Claire

Every so often, right after the long, convoluted, impossible-to-diagram sentences, we find the sudden pronouncements, which aren't really sentences at all...

"Because Henry loved Bon"
"Because he loved Judith"
"Because he was her first and last sweetheart"

These are all in quotes. Whose? Compson's? By placing such statements, telling the story from the mouths of narrators who would have no way of knowing what really happened, or what these characters really felt or thought, Faulkner has created a MYTH as opposed to history, a MYTH as opposed to a story even.

Was there an incestuous relationship between Judith and Henry? Faulkner is vague...describes their relationship as "curious" and in other places, describes them as two heads with one body...

Was there a homosexual relationship between Bon and Henry? (Between Phil Stone and WF??) That's never clear either, though hinted at...

Yes, the whole thing is open to interpretation! I'm still curious as to why you have chosen to question Bon's relationship with the octoroon and his son, Charlotte? Is it because you are questioning everything? It seems to me that Faulkner, who has chosen to leave many other points open to interpretation, has been less than vague about this relationship. Isn't it the backbone of Bon's story - admittedly as told through Compson's narrative?

I've tried to take this relationship between Bon and wife/child out of the "myth" and the only motivation for Henry's behavior would be the fact that he knows that Bon is his brother and wants to keep Bon away from Judith. So he kills him. But how would that explain Bon's desire to marry his own sister? Does he really want to marry her, and have a child of "tainted blood", thereby destroying the dynasty his hated father has abandonned him in order to create?

Why do you feel that the child in the photograph is Bon, not his son?

You ask what we think really happened? Hmmm. That's a tricky question for two reasons...

a. this is fiction, as Claire points out...so the question becomes - what is the story as Faulkner wants to tell it...
b. WF himself claims that he his writing his own story over and over...and I'm looking for him in this one.

We are only half-way through...right now, I'm inclined to believe that Bon has a wife and son in New Orleans, but still intends to marry Judith...that Henry cannot understand this, nor can he accept it, even though he wants Bon to marry Judith for so many psychologically complex reasons...

Your turn...

And it's all Faulkner's responsibility. Let's wait to see what happens later on in the story.

Charlotte

Why is Chapter 5 written almost entirely in italics? I know italics are usually used for emphasis or perhaps to indicate a memory rather than a present action, or perhaps to indicate that somebody is thinking rather than talking. This is Rosa in Chapter 5. But why the italics? I find it irritating to read page after page of italics, I'm not sure exactly why. Maybe because italics are harder to read than straight print? Or is it because the author is stressing something that I don't understand?

Shasta - I don't recall if this is the novel - but it seems to me that his publishers tried to change large sections of italics in proofing one of his novels and he was quite adamant about it. When I started this Chapter, I assumed that it was Miss Rosa in some interior monologue, but abruptly at the end, it appears that Quentin wasn't listening, and that she had been relating this story to him. Perhaps on their buggy ride out to Sutpen's Hundred?

Great question to start with, Shasta! And if WF was adamant, as Charlie says - in keeping the italics, then he had a reason for it! I wonder what effect it had on each of you? Did it annoy you too?

Shasta----very perceptive of you to notice. This is, I think, the most difficult chapter in the novel. I consider all that comes after it relatively easy to decipher in comparison. Yes, this is Miss Rosa again. The chapter is out of chronological order---we are back at Miss Rosa's where we were in Chapt 1. Chapters 2,3,4 take place that evening. This chapter has Quentin there listening, although that is not at first apparent and there are mentions of the sun, so we are back in the afternoon of Chap 1. Chapter Five has been called by one critic "Miss Rosa's Unspeakable Monologue" because it is very very difficult imagining that anyone could hold forth like this and for so long. It just doesn't come close to anything we think of as conversation. Faulkner uses italics to indicate a switch of some kind, a shift in time or place or from exterior to interior. Here I think the shift is to the "unspeakable monologue" which is sort of half in Miss Rosa's consciousness and half the monologue she delivers to Quentin. I hope that makes sense. It's been a long day.

In this chapter we discover a whole lot more about Miss Rosa, and I promise the going gets much easier when we arrive at Chapter 6.

Mary

Mary: Thanks for your encouragement Guess we'll really need it in this one. I'm delighted to be keeping up with the schedule. Hope I can continue.

Charlotte

Joan---what an aptly chosen quote from Miss Rosa's chapter---indeed another summer of wisteria, this one from her youth. Remember in Chap 1 the wisteria bloomed twice also--a parallel. Nothing takes us back in time faster than a smell, and I think the scent of wisteria has unloosed Miss Rosa's memory of her "blooming," becoming an adolescent, falling in love with love.

Mary

To Rosa, that Jones is almost indistinguishable from that mule or that brute or that animal. And here that brute, that brute progenitor of brutes (Milly Jones, "who was to supplant" Rosa) ("so they will tell you") has the gall, the temerity to approach the front of the house.

I'm fascinated with this concept of "that justice which presides over human events." It seems there's a delicate balance here, this justice which seems at the center of human activity. Things run their course, a natural course, but "when flouted", well - it's trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored time. Ruthless retribution. A curious concept. Very Old Testament.

I liked this chapter. I liked Rosa's entrance into the decaying mansion, her seeing Henry's face, then Judith's face, then that "familiar coffee-colored face." A dramatic scene. And Rosa's replaying of the events down to the details of when hand touched flesh - it really is like a slow motion instant replay.

Then, of course, the summer of wistaria. "sense, sight, smell: the muscles with which we see and hear and feel" - the substance of remembering. And "there is no such thing as memory: the brain recalls just what the muscles grope for: no more, no less." Well, this is really brilliant. Memory, this kind of intellectual concept, is reduced to the twitches of muscles in response to oddly familiar stimuli, as if in an almost forgotten dream. And so we "remember" not events first, but events surrounded by smells and colors - and what we remember is "colored" if you will by those overpowering senses turning what we remember often into a "trashy myth." Well, then isn't the retelling hearsay of Mr. Compson just as relevant as Miss Rosa's "memories." The story told but one participant or one narrator may be less confusing, but also less revealing, being one-sided. Being the "remembering" (not the "memory") of but one "figment stuffed mind "warped out of all experience." The more sides we hear, the closer to the truth we may be getting. Now I'm really anticipating the conversations between Quentin and Shreve - to see how they filter everything they've heard.

Charlie, I liked this chapter too! Rosa"s chapter...that's what those italics kept saying to me throughout...this is an eye-witness...direct quotes from someone who was there - at least some of the time! And someone privvy (I love that word) to what was going on in that house!

Now that you mention it, we do have "biblical justice" here and I am reminded again of the souce of the title, Absalom...Will have to spend some time thinking that one through again - it's been a while, and it is late...

Today was my first-born son's birthday! I can't believe it's been so many years - I remember it all so clearly! "When the angels ask me to recall the thrill of them all," I'll remember him and his birth 31 years ago...what will you remember..the "thrill of them all?"

David was here for dinner and some cake and presents. He's a riddler and told me to pass this to you; he knows you are all puzzling through Absalom with me. So, I'll leave the riddle with you and be back bright and early to respond to your posts.

Who will be the first to solve it? I'll bet it's ........

> Most first graders got this answer within 5 minutes, but most college graduates did not figure out the answer (only 2% got it). Here is the riddle:

A seven letter word Greater than God More evil than the Devil Poor people have it Rich people want it If you eat it, you'll die...

What is the answer?

AHAHAHAAHAAAAHHAAA! Cocaine???Maryal! I love it! Well, it fits! But I doubt, no, I hope 95% of first graders wouldn't say that!

Saaaay, wait a minute! I also asked what you'll say "when the angels ask you to recall the thrill of them all"! Was that the question you answered? HAHAHAHHHHAAAAAAAA Feeling pretty silly today!

Will be back in after I do three important errands and see how you are doing...I see "fortune", but no, that's not it either...are you thinking of eating up your fortune and dying? A fortune cookie?

You'll get it...

Back in a bit! Ho! Ho! Ho!

"(I never saw him. I never even saw him dead. I heard a name, I saw a photograph, I helped to make a grave: and that was all) though he had been in my house once, that first New Year's Day when Henry brought him from nephew duty to speak to me on their way back to school and I was not at home."

I love the portrait of three women who survived at home with all the men, most of the men anyway, gone to war: "It was as though we were one being, interchangeable and indiscriminate, which kept that garden growing, spun thread and wove the cloth we wore, hunted and found and rendered the meagre ditch-side herbs to protect and guarantee what spartan compromise we dared or had the time to make with illness, harried and nagged that Jones into working the corn and cutting the wood which was to be our winter's warmth and sustennance;---the three of us, three women. . . ."

And my very favorite from this chapter----". . .I became all polymath love's androgynous advocate." I cannot imagine anyone under any circumstance actually saying these words outloud to another person.

I love this chapter too---don't know how many times I've read it, but I always notice something new.

Mary

Joan Gee, not cocaine? I thought it might be part of a drug education program currently running in the schools to warn kids away from cocaine with a riddle. After all, it IS the nineties, you know.

Mary

The answer is NOTHING NOTHING NOTHING NOTHING

NOTHING

Joan----Now that I have had the fun of posting N O T H I N G I must give credit where credit is due. My daughter got the answer. She isn't a first grader and she has a Master's Degree. HEhehehe

Mary

Yes, NOTHING! Isn't that fun! I wish YOU had gotten it though...it is so much fun when the answer finally dawns on you! You were such a good sport, even while I laughed at you and your "Cocaine" response, Maryal! Did you tell your daughter that one?

It is just such a hectic time! We will slow down the pace here for the next 10 days or so, but in spite of everything, I find I am walking around thinking of poor Rosa Coldfield, and her pitiful life, as if she were a real person! Shall I leave some of these freshly baked Christmas cookies at her door? Is there a Rosa right here in my neighborhood?

Can it be that the best time of her life was that vintage summer of wistaria? When she was fourteen and felt her feelings "blossom" - a riot of feelings for.......CHARLES BON!

That's what I like about Chapter 5! The element of surprise! I thought that everything was said in the first chapter, and the rest of the story would be an amplification of that...But BAM Chapter 5....Our "amazed" Rosa is in love with Bon! Of course! We did see her "vicariously" stitching Judith's trousseau...stealing bits of fabric from her father!

And it was just that...a vicarious experience! SHE NEVER EVEN LAID EYES ON HIM! He passed through that first time on the way to Sutpen's (when Rosa was not at home) ..."There must have been some seed he left, to cause a child's vacant fairy-tale to come alive in that garden." A vintage year for wistaria... So, of course, it was the idea of being in love, of directing the early urges of womanhood...somewhere.

That was my favorite part of the chapter...the delicate manner in which Faulkner made the case for her romance...her MIGHT HAVE BEEN romance which she considered more real than Judith's feelings for Bon. I too think that sometimes, dreams of what might-have-been become more real than reality. They certainly did for Rosa.

The fact that these are Rosa's words (well, not all of them - the end of the Chapter seems to revert back to that omniscient narrator, even though the whole chapter is italicized...did you have a problem with that?)...but the fact that we learn of Bon in Rosa's words moves us closer to what really happened, I think, because there is no one else in the world who knew about her feelings for Bon We get the feeling that this is not heresay, pieced together in time...this is Rosa's memory of how she felt and what motivated her all those years ago!

A strange "triumvirate" of women out there at Sutpen's 100, isn't it? Yes, they were out there together, struggling for survival, yet each a mystery to the other - well, at least to us! We still know nothing much of Clytie, and very little of Judith, though the three spent many days and nights together. I don't recognize the feisty Sutpen in Judith, do you? Perhaps the daily struggle for survival...It seems to be there in Clytie, however...

I'm wondering if Clytie's mother is out there still...she was one of those slaves brought from Haiti, wasn't she? Who else? Where is she? Can she be the one alluded to at the end of the chapter..."There's something in that house - living hidden in it...." What do you think could be out there?

". .I became all polymath love's androgynous advocate." Maryal, this is your favorite line... will you, or anyone else please translate it for me...any other time, I'd get my dictionary and work on it, but time is limited! No, I can't imagine this coming out of Miss Rosa's mouth! I wonder what Quentin understood it to mean. Pretty funny, Mr. Faulkner!

Sorry that I'm getting ahead st this busy holiday time. Seems I can never get it right. Either I'm too late or too early, can never make it right. I'm wowed by Joan's idea that Rosa is in love with Bon after never having seen him. Probably the typical reaction of a romantic 14-year-old.

HAHAHAHAA! Now, Charlotte!, that has to be a first! Has anyone here ever made such a statement????"Sorry that I'm getting ahead this busy holiday time..."

I love it!! Love you too, Charlotte!

Charlotte I just love it that you are ahead--and at this time of year. Faulkner is feeling very pleased I'm sure that his words still reach out.

Joan The italics stop on p. 139 with "But Quentin was not listening. . ." They resume briefly with the imagined dialog at the bottom of the page, and then we are back to Roman type on p. 140.

Best I can do with a translation of "all polymath love's androgynous advocate" is that Rosa feels that she was, during that summer of wisteria, the spokesperson, lawyer, embodiment, for Love, as felt by both sexes. A global statement indeed. Earlier somewhere in the chapter she says something to the effect of feeling male as well as female and that maybe she should have been born a boy.

Now---isn't there a holiday that I have to do some shopping for coming up?

Thanks for saying I am a good sport. A man I loved more than life told me that on numerous occasions, and you took me back to a very happy time.

Mary

“I too think that sometimes, dreams of what might-have-been become more real than reality. They certainly did for Rosa.” – JOAN

“...but the fact that we learn of Bon in Rosa's words moves us closer to what really happened…We get the feeling that this is not hearsay, pieced together in time...this is Rosa's memory of how she felt and what motivated her all those years ago!” – Joan

But, Joan – are Rosa’s memories more real??? Is her Rosa’s “memory” (there is no such thing – WF)more real than what ACTUALLY happened – not only in relations to Charles Bon but, other events, perhaps? WF seems to insist otherwise in direct words. This is a trap – a red herring. (said the devil’s advocate)

And here I’m going to repeat myself (omygod – he’s quoting himself!! – I hope this is not TOO arrogant!!): “Then, of course, the summer of wistaria. "sense, sight, smell: the muscles with which we see and hear and feel" - the substance of remembering. And "there is no such thing as memory: the brain recalls just what the muscles grope for: no more, no less." Well, this is really brilliant. Memory, this kind of intellectual concept, is reduced to the twitches of muscles in response to oddly familiar stimuli, as if in an almost forgotten dream. And so we "remember" not events first, but events surrounded by smells and colors - and what we remember is "colored" if you will by those overpowering senses turning what we remember often into a "trashy myth." Well, then isn't the retelling hearsay of Mr. Compson just as relevant as Miss Rosa's "memories." The story told but one participant or one narrator may be less confusing, but also less revealing, being one-sided. Being the "remembering" (not the "memory") of but one "figment stuffed mind "warped out of all experience." The more sides we hear, the closer to the truth we may be getting. Now I'm really anticipating the conversations between Quentin and Shreve - to see how they filter everything they've heard”

Charlie, I do see the problem with accepting Miss Rosa's faulty memories as fact, reality, history, but nonetheless, I find they are closer to reality than Compson's musings on what the characters must have felt. I'm trying to say that Memories, not matter how flawed by perception and time are still closer to the truth than musings by a third party about what must have been going on at a given time in history...I think this can be compared to "memoirs of an eyewitness"(though flawed by time and perception) and an historian reconstructing history for the textbooks by surmising what must have been (or should have been) in the minds of the principles.

Yes, and memory is formed and triggered later, not by historical facts and dates, but rather by the senses - in this case, the pervasive smell of the vintage crop of wistaria?... Of course, there was no romance between the poor girl and Bon, but we are now closer to fact than we were...we are inside the house, and close to the "main characters"...although not close enough to be satisfactory...closer though!.

We see Rosa's resentment and disdain for Clytie in no uncertain terms. We see Clytie's position in the house...sleeping in the same room with Judith - sisters, closer than Rosa and her niece. Clytie no longer the slave daughter playing in the yard with Judith, but on equal footing within the house.

We see Judith the day Bon was shot, burying him. An interesting buggy ride with Wash Jones, revealing the importance he and his family will have in the story...maybe it happened, maybe didn't, but an interesting vehicle and probably no red herring! One of my favorite "word pictures"...as they approach the farm, Rosa espies Judith "in the barnlot in a cloud of chickens"! I liked that a lot! Not only is it visually stimulating, but it shows Judith's role now, no longer the planter's daughter being cared for by a staff, but a working girl, trying to survive right along with the rest of them!

And although it isn't "history", I appreciated Rosa's comments about Judith's demeanor at the burial...

"She did not even weep, and then in a lamp-gloomed mirror, saw my own face and thought 'Nor did you either'"

As if Judith's lack of weeping signalled that she did not love Bon as much as did Rosa, Rosa then admits her own lack...I liked that, made it real- perhaps she was admitting that she had no more of a relationship with him than did Judith?

We also get closer to Sutpen - and the cause for Rosa's "amazement"! She tells us why she stayed out there waiting for his return...and it wasn't to "help" Judith, who clearly did not need help...let's talk about that!

It has just occurred to me that Bon spends as much time "away" from the story, as does Sutpen. Judith spends most of her time waiting for the men in her life to return home, as did Ellen...out there on that farm...it was her way of life! She actually had no more of a life than poor Rosa, with Bon or anyone else, except her relationship with Henry, whatever that was. Perhaps this is the way it was for all of the Southern ladies at the time...certainly during the war. But on the whole, the men seem to have affairs, business or otherwise, that keep them away from home and family much of the time.

Maryal, happy that you have such happy memories which can be triggered by such a casual remark as that...and probably other colors, smells and sounds as well. Warm happy memories - what more can anyone hope for in this life? You are fortunate and blessed - as well as a good sport!

Chapter 5 - Absalom, Absalom - 12/16/99

For the entire 12 miles to Sutpen’s hundred, Rosa sits beside Wash Jones, the brute whose granddaughter was to supplant Rosa in the bed to which she had aspired. She imagines the shot, the running footsteps in the hall and Judith and Henry, who had not seen in each other in four years, confronting each other across the unfinished wedding dress. It is Clytie she meets when she arrives “gradually the face, the Sutpen face now swimming up out of the gloom.” She imagines the scene in the upstairs bedroom with the bloody corpse on the bare mattress, but Clytie tries to keep her from going up there. At first she thinks that Clytie “did me more grace and respect than anyone else I knew * * * she knew I was no child.” Then she stopped dead and relapses into the terrible bigotry which separates the races, “Take your hand off me nigger.”

Though they had grown up together, she still instinctively fears Clytie and would not touch anything her hands had touched. She remembers that Judith seemed to have no such scruples and on occasion slept with Clytie in the same bed. There is a terrible ominous sense about the house, stripped of all it’s elegant furniture and carpeting. She runs up the stairs and Judith appears in the gingham dress she has worn ever since Ellen had died Judith’s voice sounds as if the house, itself, is speaking. Rosa believes that even at nineteen she must have known that “living is one constant and perpetual instant” when the “arras-veil before what is to be hangs docile and even glad to the lightest naked thrust * * * to make the rending gash.” (a reference to Hamlet and the incident in which Polonius is murdered.)

On the next page we find the beautifully written quote which Charlie included in his post. We remember Faulkner says through our senses with which we see and hear and feel--not mind, not thought. She says she lived out that wistaria summer not as a woman, a girl, but rather as the man she should have been.and waited for the female victory which is to endure and then endure without rhyme or reason or hope of reward --and then continue to endure. She insists she had never seen Bon. Henry had brought him to meet her, but it was on a day she was not at home. She never even saw him dead. She saw a photograph and helped to make a grave. That was all she knew. That summer of her fourteenth year, never having known anything about love, she “became all polymath love’s androgynous advocate.”

“ I do not know that Ellen ever saw (“Bon’s face), that Judith ever loved it, that Henry slew it,” she says. Not knowing love, she wanted Judith to tell her what it was like. Then she went back home and stayed away for five years. She waited at home while the stable world she knew dissolved in fire. There had to be love and faith and hope for peace, else what do men fight and die for? Rosa stayed for dinner which Judith prepared while the men hammered and sawed the boards for the coffin outside the window. When Rosa became unnerved by the sound she went out to complain. Jones said it was so they would not have to carry the body so far. She became one of the pall bearers, but she still did not believe what was so, because she had never once seen Bon. She keeps repeating this throughout the chapter. They went through the ceremony of burial, cooked and ate dinner and Judith never wept. Nor did Rosa either. “One day he was not. Then he was. Then he was not. It was too short, too fast, too quick.”

She goes on to describe why she went to live with the sister she could not understand and the woman whom she believed was of a different species. They all waited for Sutpen to come home to salvage and restore his acres. “we existed in an apathy which was almost peace, like that of the blind insentient earth itself which dreams after no flower’s stalk nor bud, envies not the airy musical solitude of the springing leaves it nourishes.|” She insists that she never once thought of marriage to Sutpen because he never once even looked at her.

The three women gardened, cooked and wove the cloth they needed together. They were self-sufficient and unconcerned about who did what job. Yet they were three strangers. She never knew what Judith thought or felt and Clytie and Rosa were open enemies. They slept in the same room for safety and to conserve firewood. They feared the men who had risked, lost everything and returned to a ruined land. These were the men who had been transformed by the ultimate degradation to which war brings the spirit, the soul--”into the likeness of that man who abuses from despair and pity the beloved wife or mistress who in his absence has been raped.”

The three women sat before the fire in utter exhaustion at the end of the day, talked of Sutpen and what he would do when he returned, of Henry, but nobody ever mentioned Bon. After seven months Sutpen came home. In four sentences Judith told him the state of things and then burst into tears for the first time since the death of Bon. He had ridden up the drive into their lives again. He was there, but not there. He talked into the air but not to them. Without waiting to recuperate, he set about restoring the house. They never saw him from dawn to dusk.

That was the winter when doors and windows were locked at night and women began to frighten each other with stories of Negro uprisings. The men of the town did not go back to work the ruined land, but gathered at secret meetings with pistols in their pockets.

Unwittingly, Rosa gives Sutpen credit for almost being a decent man, when a deputation rode out to ask him if he was with them or against them, “friend or enemy.” He declined to tell them, with no change in his demeanor. Said if every man would see to the restoration of the land, the South would save itself. Then he ushered them out the door. This may be war they said. He answered that he was used to it. But it was like trying to dam a river with his bare hands and a shingle.

Then one afternoon, Sutpen stood in the garden looking at Rosa. He announced that he would marry Rosa.. She was given no opportunity to agree because, “she was not asked, there was no place, no niche, no interval for reply.” She thinks he was a madman for the way he treated her. But then she says it was no madman who cajoled hard labor out of men and who kept clear of the sheets and hoods and night-galloping horses with which his former friends discharged their feelings of defeat.

Though she had viewed him as an ogre since childhood, she forgave him the memories of the past and went to him when he called her as he would a dog. Then one day he arrived back from the plantation and called to her to come down at once, and spoke bald, outrageous words which were too painful for her repeat.

Most of the young men were dead. Had she been a daughter of a plantation owner she would have had a better chance at marriage, but as the child of a small store keeper, she had little hope. She became engaged to him, but two months later went back to her own house where she lived alone. Judith would bring her food and she would steal from neighbors gardens to have enough to eat.

She admits that she forgave him, because there was was nothing to forgive. She had not lost him, because she never owned him. “A certain segment of rotten mud walked into my life and then walked out.” She continues to talk about him as the “blinded bat-like image cast by the fierce demonic lantern from beneath the earth’s crust.” When she is told that he is dead., she insists heaven that can’t be. Heaven will not have him and hell dare not take him.

(Continued on next post)

Thankfully, we are now at the end of the italics. Quentin is not listening. He is thinking about when Henry confronted Judith and told her that he had killed Bon. He asks Rosa what she said. She tells him that there’s something living in that house. “Hidden in it. It has been out there for four years, living hidden in that house.”

With a sense of terrible foreboding the chapter ends with Hardyesque or Dickensenian intent to urge us on to the next chapter.

Charlotte

Wow Charlotte Wonderfully done. I love the end of this chapter where Quentin can't get past that door (in his mind). He stops listening when Rosa talks about the bedroom door where he imagines brother confronts sister with "Now you can't marry him." Quentin has been paying good enough attention to get to that scene at the door. And there he remains, transfixed.

Mary

At age 14, Rosa had an encyclopedic view of love from both the male and female point of view.

Charlotte

Charlotte----I agree---Rosa thought she understood love from every possible angle.

Mary

Everyone has different ways of learning. I think that the problem in traditional education is that students are not given enough time to digest and think about what they are studying. However, here in SN, I'm on my own and can spend as much time or as little as I like. I choose much time, because that's the only way I can understand a really difficult book.

Now that I've gone through Chapter 5 in detail, I can comment on some of the questions in the heading.

I think that Rosa's story is told in intalics because it combines the experience of her 14th summer with what she thought about and learned in her maturity. She had years to think about what happened

and also much time to build her hatred of Sutpen and see him as a demon. Certrainly he does not seem to have a modicum of sensitivity to the women, but his attitude towards his negroes who worked so hard for him, must have been different. He was obviously a Yankee in his feelings towards the blacks, he wants to be accepted by those around him, but he is battling the whole attitude of the South.

Rosa represents how hard it is for Southerners to accept the blacks as human beings because of the way they treat them and because of the inhuman, unsanitary conditions in which they force them to live.

I see the italics as an attempt to slow down our "shotgun approach" to the reading, as Claire describes it, and to think more carefully about what we are reading.

I love you. You made my day.

Charlotte

Charlotte, Charlotte, Charlotte!!! I don't know how you do it! But so fortunate that you do it like you do!

You are soooo right about different learning styles, different approaches to literature! That, to me is the magic of these Great Book discussions. We all share the benefit from the others' observations that we would have missed reading all by our lonesome. I know I would not even be attempting something like Absalom on my own...

And yes, the pace! We can't forget that...we each move through these tangled sentences at our own pace. You all enable my need to question my way slowly through each chapter, with no concern about what is to come. That's how I read and learn...a million, questions! Some never get answered and that's fine...it's the questions along the way that do get answered that count and make what is to come even more meaningful. Your style provides so many of the answers!

Your willingness to then type your synopses of each chapter is a priceless gift to all of us! Do your fingers hurt? You deserve a week off! When do all your "families" arrive for the holidays? I know that you are ahead of yourself, having completed Chapter 6 by mistake! (hee hee!)

I don't know where you found the time to work up Chapter 5 after all you did for 6! I'm making time this morning to get at the specific points from your "work". Probably raise more questions, though!

We can't thank you enough for what you do, Charlotte!

Thank you. Thank you Thank you for that wonderful accolade. I often work differently than every one else, wonder why this is so and if I am really the outsider I feel I am. But WF felt that way too and so did many other writers I read. Maybe in another life, I'll have an opportunity to try to do what they did.

Much love and thanks to you and SN

Charlotte

If I may butt in here I would like to say that, here, at least, in the Books I hope that all we "outsiders" may finally find the home we long for as far as being able to be ourselves, bookish, and inward as we may be, that here, among other like readers, we can feel we are, and indeed, are, "insiders."

Ginny

I'd rather be an outsider in here than an "insider" in a lot of other places which I will not name, so that peace and the holiday spirit may reign. Many people who are quiet and thoughtful feel "outside," but I am an extrovert and thoughtful and although I can get In, I'm not happy there. It has taken me a long time to figure this out. I, for one, Charlotte, think of you as an Insider. And your outline of Chapter 5 was wonderfully done.

mary

Faulkner has carefully set this story up to be a page-turner - and it is! " Something's hidden in that house - living hidden in it for four years..." It's just so hard to get through the page once you've turned it! More difficult now that the holidays are in high gear too! We'll see how we do, maybe stretch Chapter 6 into two weeks.

You really can't skim these pages, can you! You have to keep rereading whole paragraphs to find the subject of the verb- who is speaking and WHEN. At least I do. Each new chapter is a major challenge, but at the end, I feel I understand what was said....until I get to the next! Whew!!!

Before moving on to Chapter 6, a few observations...and of course questions...

Something's going on between them. Rosa resents Clytie calling her by her first name. She doesn't want her to touch her, nor does she want to touch anything Clytie has touched. Does she fear what Clytie represents, the changing position/attitudes of blacks and slaves, more than she fears Clytie herself?

What was she waiting for? She swears it was not to marry Sutpen. She says that the women did not need him - they had divided the labor among them - but that he was all they had - the only reason to continue to exist.

"We led the busy eventless lives of three nuns in a barren and poverty- stricken convent."

They waited for him to come back and restore the plantation, the South, life as they knew it. And Sutpen did come back to do just that! He didn't worry about 'Negro uprisings'...no hooded Klan for him...no, he just came back to restore the plantation/South.

An integral part of the restoration, is the need for a son - in Sutpen's mind. "If he was mad, it was only his compelling dream which was insane, not his methods." Rosa agrees because he is in uniform and she wants to be part of the restoration process.

"as if she had been instinctively right in hating her father and so these 43 years of impotent and unbearable outrage were the revenge of some sophisticated and ironic sterile nature on her for having hated that which gave her life."

I think her outrage was the fact that Sutpen died without any recognition of the devastating effect he had on her life. I loved this oh so true comment:

"Being right is not enough for women who had rather be wrong than just that who want the man who was wrong to admit it."

Off to read Chapter 6...I understand we are to meet one of Quentin's college buddies, who is to listen to both Rosa's and Compson's versions of the tale as related by Quentin and somehow get to the heart of what really happened. This should be interesting...instead of getting closer to the truth, I feel we are becoming further removed! Let's see what we come up with this week. Perhaps we'll continue this chapter into the following week. I know you are all very busy. I know I am too!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

FALALALALA LA LA LA LA!

Joan:

I went back and deleted my precipitous post on Chapter 6. I'm delighted that it worked. Will be working on this and will post it in the proper order.

Love and Falala to you.

Charlotte

Interesting earlier post, Joan. Here’s how I, short attention span that I have, have found myself reading Faulker paragraphs.

A Faulkner sentence: AAAAAAAAAAA (CCCCCCCCCCCCCCC) -– BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB - -AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.

I read through to where he veers off – I pick up the thread to complete the first thought. Then I go back and read the diversion (s). Then – if I’m feeling really smug – I go back and read the whole thing straight through!!!

Love to hear from you. I get great fun out of doing the work and am so pleased by your wonderful comments. They make my day.

Charlotte

Charlotte---Just the message I needed today. I have been taking care of a friend who has just been diagnosed with bipolar disorder (manic-depressive illness). She has been staying with me and my daughter. She has gone to her house with another friend so that we can enjoy Christmas quietly. My friend is in a serious manic state and is adjusting to medications. How good to check onto senior net this morning and hear your lovely sane healthy voice.

Sometimes I think that Faulkner did no more than tell the truth about disturbed people (and haven't we all been at some point?) in magnificent language. In fact, the novel almost seems to me to be about "normal" people caught in odd circumstances who have trouble adjusting. This is not real interpretation but rather a comment in the light of my recent experience with active mania.

You have just made My Day!

Mary

I couldn't have more sympathy for you. We are host to a grandaughter who has had eight major heart surgeries. Naturally, she is somewhat hard to take. She is constantly on my tail during the visit, asking me where I'm going when I am going to the bathroom, etc. It's very difficult because I am not used to this kind of surveillance.

Charlotte

My 89 year old mother-in-law has been spending the holiday with us. She doesn't talk much, never answers questions or joins in conversations, probably because she has turned down her hearing aid. However, her most annoying characteristic is coming to wherever I am working and peering at what I'm doing. If I ask her if she wants something, she always says No and nothing more. She snoops into every corner of my house. I wonder what Faulkner would say about our relationship! Sue

Good morning everyone. I am posting in order to see if I have managed to create a tag line. If "Name it and tame it" does not appear with the message, I will have to ask for help.

Fa la la la la la la la la

Mary

Maryal! You did it! Great idea to use the tag line to express a New Year's resolution, I think. I love yours! Hmmm What shall I choose? Carpe diem comes to mind... Still a few days to decide.

Your quiet, peaceful Christmases appeal - a time to get in touch with inner thoughts and gentle care of those in need. Ours was a noisy, frenetic...a houseful (well, not quite...youngest abroad - first time he's missed)

My Faulkner has been sitting on the shelf...somehow not up to the deep concentration required...not exactly festive for the holidays, either! Last year at this time we were reading the dazzling Sir Gawain and the Green Knight - now that was Christmas reading!

I see quite a few of you are caught up in Harry Potter fever...It's fun seeing the kids' comments, isn't it? Believe it or not, I sense strong parallels between Harry P. and Rosa Coldfield...Judith too....and between Harry and young Charles Etienne St. Vallery Bon especially. Traumatizing childhoods all! Too much to expect any of them to grow into balanced, productive adults.

So many of the characters in Absalom have turned stony and impassive, haven't they? Were WF's own family members dazed characters such as these - OR

is Faulkner describing the devastating effects of the war years on the women and children struggling to survive in the South?I wonder how Christmas was observed during those years... and id did the triumvirate of women celebrate on Sutpen's 100?
Let's extend the scheduled discussion of Chapter 6 another week until we get back to normal...I'm ready to resume - an interesting Chapter as we meet an unlikely new character.....but will follow your lead and your New Year's Ever schedules...What are you doing New Year's, New Year's Eve?

I'm Comin.' I'm Comin.' Just finished up on Grace Paley. My families have left to get home before Y2K. Got the Harry Potter book also and may consider posting on that, or just reading it for fun.

Charlotte

Charlotte-- Harry Potter is lots of fun. I have been reading it in spare moments (on hold for phone calls) and am almost through The Sorcerer's Stone, which is book #1. I like to do things in order or I get confused. Hehehe.

Mary

Here I am finally coming out of my state of eternal lurking. Mind you I'm not sure how much I can add to the ongoing conversation...But where to begin since I'm playing catchup here...

I think I shall begin with a piece on page 80: " We have a few old mouth-to-mouth tales; we exhume from old trunks and boxes and drawers letters without salutation or signature, in which men and women who once lived and breathed are now merely initials or nicknames out of some now incomprehensible affection which sounds to us like Sanskrit or Choctaw; we see dimly people, people in whose living blood and seed we ourselves lay dormant and waiting, in this shadowy attenuation of time possessing now heroic proportions, performing their acts of simple passion and simple violence, impervious to time and inexplicable-"

As far as I can see that is what this book is; a family history told to Quentin by word-of-mouth, and through at least one letter; and even through the gravestones in the old cedar grove.

Wandering off on another tack...what fascinates me in this book is the people who 'bury' themselves away in dim dark places long before they die in actuality. Ellen who retires to her darkened bedroom never again to emerge until she dies two years later; Colfield who locks himself in his attic by nailing the door shut and spends three years there until his death. Old Rosa, when Quentin is asked to visit her, seems to have been in that dim closed in house for years.

Then there is that strange relationship between Charles Bon, Henry, and Judith. First Henry appears to press for the marriage between Bon and his sister Judith...and yet later he kills Bon for wanting to do just that very thing. Is he protecting the honor of his sister? Or does his anger at the fact that Bon will not give up his octoroon mistress/wife and son, finally come to a head? I know this is not stated straight out in the book but I believe that Henry who loved Bon; and who thought that Bon loved him -in fact the book does say that Bon loved Henry more than Judith -and that he (Bon) would give up his mistress for Henry.

Some word pictures I enjoyed: Rosa in the dimly lit house sitting like an old child in that big chair; the carraige driving wildly up to the church; Sutpen going to court Ellen followed by the 'committee' and the men, while the womenfolk watch from behind drapes; the dreamlike scene in which Henry meets Bon's octoroon mistress; the 'struggle' between Clytie and Rosa when Rosa wants to go upstairs to see the dying Bon.

I think this is enough for now...

Oh my, we are down to hours before the century comes to a close. I don't understand why this is getting to me...a combination of awe and fear - almost as one must feel at life's end...feelings of regret, of lost opportunity, unfulfilled use of talents...and yet appreciation and gratitude for so much life had to offer.

Nellie!, no that 's not enough for now. Can't get enough of you and what goes on in that fantastical brain of yours! You have no idea how much your observations help, do you? For instance, it your recent post, you crystallized a heretofore unstated puzzle/problem I'm having with these narrators.

~ "from old trunks and boxes and drawers letters in which...we see dimly people, people in whose living blood and seed we ourselves lay dormant and waiting..."
~ "what fascinates me in this book is...the people who 'bury' themselves away in dim dark places long before they die in actuality....Old Rosa...

EUREKA!!!

There it is The narrators! We are getting this story through Quentin Compson, the grandson of a friend of old Sutpen, that's all Quentin is. Yet, he's been elevated, in my mind anyway, to the 'blood and seed' of those people whose letters and tombstones reveal the story. Isn't Quentin indeed William Faulkner? Yet his grandfather is Compson, not Sutpen. The Sutpen I see described here is William Cuthbert Faulkner that WF sought through books and tombstones in real life!!!

That's what has been discomfiting here. I cannot understand Quentin's interest in the Sutpen family. He's off to college and he's discussing this with his room-mate in such detail. I suppose we are really talking about the impact of the war on the South...and Shreve is trying to understand what effect the war had on Southerners...so Quentin is using the Sutpen family saga as an example...but why not his own family. Why is he so involved in this family? Perhaps that is to come. I haven't read past Chapter 6 yet.

Am more than puzzled at the introduction of Shreve's character at this point...a new narrator of the story - a friend of a boy who is the grandson of a man who was a friend of Sutpen (sort of). Now just how removed from the heart of the story can you get. Yet we discount Rosa's narrative as influenced by bitterness and hatred for Sutpen...Rosa might as well be in the grave for the attention and credibility her account of the story receives - as you say Nellie - 'buried away in deep dark places long before she dies in actuality....

You really must look into Harry Potter, Nellie...it's right up your alley! Charlotte and Maryal, hurry back to Yoknapatawpha...you can bring HP in your backpack with you!

Joan---I'm here, hon, lurking and turkeying. Hehehehe. Don't want to give anything away, and I figure many folks are still disgesting their Christmas duck, turkey, ham and trimmings. I have a couple of questions for fellow readers to ponder. Now that we are at Harvard with Quentin and Shreve during the winter of their Freshman year, we see how obsessed Quentin is with the stories from his past. He is both attracted and repelled. He brought up the story of Sutpen and Shreve clearly has listened to Quentin since he periodically summarizes what he has been told (off camera, as it were). Why does Shreve get so caught up in the story? Why does Quentin wish it all would go away when he is obviously the one who brought it all up in the first place?

I love the contrast provided by the switch from the very hot day back home in Mississippi to the frozen "iron" New England weather in Cambridge. I love Shreve who is marked by his language. He doesn't understand the ways and customs of the American South. He continually refers to "Aunt" Rosa, and Quentin corrects him every time. Shreve is the perfect outsider, neither Northerner nor Southerner, a Canadian with no vested interest in the outcome of the Civil War. And yet clearly he finds the story fascinating and worth talking about, worth telling even.

(then Shreve again, "Wait. Wait. You mean that this old gal, this Aunt Rosa----"

"Miss Rosa," Quentin said.

"All right all right.-----that this old dame, this Aunt Rosa----"

"Miss Rosa, I tell you."

"All right all right all right.-----that this old----this Aunt R----All right all right all right all right.-----that hadn't been out there, hadn't set foot in the house even in forty-three years, yet who not only said there was somebody hidden in it but found somebody that would believe her, would drive that twelve miles out there in a buggy at midnight to see if she was right or not?"

"Yes," Quentin said. (pb 143-4)

Why, Maryal! There it is again...this "Aunt" Rosa business! Quentin/WF should be Rosa's nephew if he's writing about his own grandfather...Sutpen/Old Colonel, right? And yet he is the grandson of Compson...Wait a minute! Is he? Is Quentin actually Sutpen's grandson? Is that why Rosa is interested in him - so interested in him that she sends for him and takes him to the "farm" and tells him all this personal family history? Is that why he is so absorbed with the story that he goes on about it to Shreve? Well, whose son is he then?

Maybe not...maybe another red herring. Maybe Faulkner confusing his own life with his story inadvertently...

Yes, this chapter is certainly a change, an about-face...from the wistaria to the snowflakes on the sleeve...not only the locale changes, but so does the definition of present tense! No longer 43 years after Rosa's amazement, but now, she has died, and Quentin is a Harvard boy. Why not Old Miss? Harvard? And Shreve down from Canada...is this how Canadian boys spoke at the time, or how Faulkner imagined them to speak? Kinda funny and casual, slangy, compared to the more formal adult-speak we have become used to so far.

A fresh new persepective for the NEW YEAR. My very best wishes to all my "aulde acquaintances" - for a

A VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Joan:

I am again sending my comments on this chapter which I had posted prematurely. Have been heavily involved with Grace Paley, but will get back to this and finish it soon.

Charlotte

Chapter 6 - Absalom, Absalom - 12/14/99

Now we are back at Harvard with Quentin and Shreve talking together. (I remember that campus well. Milt and I had our first apartment nearby, just down the street.) There is a lovely passage full of the memory of the wistaria, the cigar smell, the fireflies -- odors which bring thoughts of Mississippi to the New England Winterr

We learn that Rosa is dead and buried and also that Mr. Compson is very uncertain about his own attitude towards death Shreve wonders why Quentin even cares about Rosa who bore no relationship to him at all. “Then what did she die for.?” Shreve wants to know. This was not the first time the New Englanders asked about the the South. They wanted to know why they lived there? What did they do there? . Then we are back to the narrator who says Mr. Compson stopped talking at last. It was time for Quentin to go and there was something he was still unable to understand. Whose hypnotized youthful face is he thinking about (p.181). Is it Miss Rosa’s face which he imagines in her youth or Judith with the wedding dress she is never to use. Are Rosa and Judith battling each other?

He remembers the the twelve mile trip with Rosa How Rose looked in her worn, old clothes, carrying all the keys the house possessed., the roadside trees squatting like huge fowl, their leaves separated like feathers, coated with sixty days of dust. The dust cloud enclosing them, maybe warning:

“’Come if you like, but I will get there first., so that you will find no destination, but will merely abrupt (there’s that word again “abrupt,” full of potentional trauma) gently onto a plateau , a panorama of inscrutable night, so I would advise you not go. Turn back.”

Quentin tells about sitting beside the old woman, smelling the heat-distilled old flesh, afraid of what he will find at the end of the trip. Shreve doesn’t believe that Quentin would be willing to go out with this old dame, who hadn’t even set foot in the house for 43 years, just because she said there was something hidden in the house. And they were going in a buggy, at midnight besides. This is really becoming macabre.

Quentin reviews some of the facts we already know and then tells him that Sutpen had suggested that Rosa and he sleep together and if she produced a son, he would marry her. This is the basis of Miss Rosa’s thoughts about him. “This Faustus, this demon, this Beezlebub.” There is no limit to her hatred of him. It was he who had married her sister, he “who hid horns and tail beneath human raiment and bought his wife from his father-in-law, “bringing him for dowry, delusions of grandeur. They had produced two children Now the demon wants to get engaged again, to replace the progeny which he, himself, had destroyed.

Faulkner keeps talking about the “Creditor.” Does he mean God or is it the man from whom he borrows money to restore his plantation. Or is it a combination of both in one person? (There are always questions to confuse the reader.) He has invented “the thing which husbands and fiances have been trying to invent for ten million years: the thing without harming her or giving her grounds for civil or tribal action would leave her irrevocably husbanded and himself safely cuckolded before she could realize what had happened. He had lost most of his acreage and now all he had left was Coldfield’s store to run with Wash Jones as his clerk.

As Quentin tells the story to Shreve, he realizes that Sutpen is behaving is behaving like Quentin’s father. Quentin’s thoughts are in italics. He begins to realize that after he came back from the plantation and told his father what he had found out, that Mr. Compson must have seen himself as an old worn out cannon. (This is really confusing here, because I can’t understand why Compson is so linked with Sutpen (p.189). “son gone, vanished more insuperable to him now than if the son were dead since now (if the son still lived) his name would be different and whatever dragon’s outcropping of Sutpen blood the son might sow on the body of whatever strange woman would carry on the tradition, accomplish the hereditary evil and harm under another name. I’m not sure if he is talking about Henry or Quentin is thinking of his own suicide? Faulkner then makes us doubt what we’ve begun to think, by bringing us back to the scene building the coffin. He also mentions Wash Jones and the rusty scythe, which was lent to Jones by Sutpen and would eventually be the instrument for killing Sutpen. We are in Quentin’s mind in this passage in italics. We can’t know what he really believes and what is merely conjecture It boggles the mind of the reader. I will have to come back at another time.

Charlotte

I discovered something interesting in the back of my copy of the book - I have the Vintage Books one. In the back of the book on pages 307 to 309 there is a bit about each of the characters in the story, and it says that Shreve was born in Edmonton Alberta and that he was a practicing surgeon there- that's rather neat because I live there right now. I wonder if Shreve was pictured after some real person who came from Edmonton and later went back to be a surgeon.

I'm wondering too why Quentin is being told the Sutpen family history, and why it is of such interest to Shreve...a thought: perhaps Quentin is being told the history because once Rosa and Quentin's father die, there will be no one left to tell the story?

Happy New Year Everyone!

Nellie-----I don't know about Shreve being based on anyone in particular, but Faulkner did enlist in the RAF and had some training in Canada. It's always interesting to see where writers come up with certain ideas, but it is usually a combination of experiences and people that stand behind characters.

Charlotte---Glad to see that you reposted. Keep in mind that when we are inside Quentin's mind, we are in a disturbed place. And it is very very hard to tell what happened as all is filtered through individual consciousnesses.

Mary

Happy New Year to all!!

Happy New Year, Bookies!!!

Less than three hours to go! Will the old computer boot up in the morning? Will the server respond after three days of balking and acting weird? Will we ever get back from the mall...have to be there! The Pres. will light a fuse from the Lincoln Monument, right through the center of the reflecting pool and ten seconds later, the Washington Monument will be enveloped in fireworks! They've never done anything like this...and of course, there was no "dress rehearsal"...gotta go!

If you don't hear from me for a few days, I'm either trying to get home from the mall, or the computer blew...but again, a Happy New Year to some very special friends!

Love,

Joan

We'll send out an owl for you, Joan.

Nellie that is some coincidence...Edmonton! Must do a little research on this Shreve character. I find him quite puzzling to say the least. He's not some wooden vehicle which WF is using to elicit the story from Quentin...but a strange character...repeatedly described as "Cherubic, pink-skinned, half naked"...if you entered the "snug monastic coign", you'd think he was sitting naked at the table...

Maryal, I had forgotten that WF had gone to Canada to join the RAF...so he did actually hear Canadian speech/slang at the time...Edmonton! Where Nellie lives! Quentin's mind is a "disturbed place"? Why? Because the South has lost the War and is in disarray...or???

Charlotte, your repost helps a lot... I liked the snow on the sleeve, to indicate that Quentin was now in Cambridge. We lived there too! Loved it! Even the snowy winters when everything but Mass. Ave. was impassable!

"Shreve wonders why Quentin even cares about Rosa who bore no relationship to him at all." Shreve and me too! I am so freaked about this that I suspect he (Quentin) has got to be a Sutpen grandson, but can't figure out how...even thought that he might be Wash's grand-daughter's baby - until it was revealed that the babe was a.) a girl, and b.) murdered!!! If he is not, is it fair to say that Faulkner is trying to make us suspect there is more to his interest in the Sutpen saga than simply the fact that he is a "son of the South"?

Shreve is like Quentin's father? In what way?

Pat! - the owl arrived safely and I have sent my RSVP...

Help me. Or scroll right through me - but above all, please forgive me for what I am about to do - commit the major SN sin of SPAMMING...and a long spam at that.

It is out of desperation that I will paste this post in Alice in Wonderland, Harry Potter, and Absalom, Absalom! (will stop at "Good" War, although I see strong links between Sutpen, Voldemort and the Holocaust-maker of World War II...)

For days I have been attempting to post for each of these discussions, but they are of a piece in so many ways, that I feel paralyzed, unable to separate the three to write at all.

I will take advantage of your good hearts to spill out my thoughts in these pages, hoping that your objectivity will help me through this.

"It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live."

I watch very closely all children who have been traumatized at a young age, fictional children as well, to see how they "struggle to live", and not dwell on the dreams of "what might have been"...

The child in me tends to hide behind a veneer of normalcy - in a struggle to live, hiding from reality. The children in all three stories, Harry Potter, Charles Etienne Bon and Alice, have been communicating to my inner child in a profound way. This is highly personal, soul-baring...raw and unedited..so please, scroll right through to the next topic is if is more than you care to listen to...I can understand that...and I won't even know if you do that!

...I'll begin with Alice, who was seven at the time her story is told - because up until that age, I had a normal childhood - I think! I don't really remember anything much before seven, when my mother died. My memories before that resemble Harry's - vague fleeting memories of color and sounds, but no faces, or voices....not a single memory of his mother's face!

My mother was reading Alice in Wonderland to me before she died. I do remember that because I continued to read it alone, trying to make some sense out of it. I no longer thought it amusing, though I once did. Now it was simply baffling, and I thought I was missing the obvious meanings that everyone else grasped easily. Now, as I read it with you folks, I understand all the reasons that no child really understands this story. Children just delight in the story...and what strange things children find amusing...violent things! Throwing that awful pig/baby around like a sack of potatoes...these stories remind me of the cartoons we all loved as kids...violent, canon blasts, rifle shots, pummeling...yet never even a band-aid on the victim in the next frame!!! Clearly not real! Just a story...

So, I read of Alice, suddenly transported from some place safe and warm - to a mean place where everyone was angry, in a hurry, totally unconcerned about her physical or emotional needs. Completely lost in Wonderland, in the Dursely's in Surrey, Sutpen's 100...and lost in that strange boarding school...

A child needs a parent ...or a strong parental substitute at least. Alice, Harry, Charles and I were alone. We fell, we flew, we lost touch with reality to some extent...and then created our own idea of reality from our rabbit-holes, cupboards, and attics....why did Judith Sutpen send for Charles Bon's delicate, octoroon son at his mother's death, only to keep him in the spartan attic, totally alone with his grief?

"Clytie or Judith, found hidden beneath his mattress the shard of broken mirror: and who to know what hours of amazed and tearless grief he might have spent before it, examining himself...with quiet and incredulous incomprehension."
"What are you? Who are you?"

And then there's Alice and the Looking Glass wondering, "If I was on the other side of the glass, wouldn't the orange still be in my right hand?"
In a mirror all asymmetrical objects go the other way...Alice is told that "to say what she means is not the same as meaning what she says"....

Does Harry's MIRROR OF ERISED read the same from the other side? If his reality could be reversed, would he still be "aching for the smiling, waving beckoning" desires, his heart's desire??? ...I don't know the answer to that. Is it right here in front of me and I don't see it?

"He stared hungrily at them with a powerful kind of ache inside him, half joy, half terrible sadness...

My heart's desire, to see to remember my mother's face...would I be satisfied, or worse off. Probably still the same powerful ache of loss! Yes?

Would Charles Etienne Bon have been better off knowing of the curse on himself and his family, the reasons why he was hidden away from the world. Was this the reason Judith kept him hidden...out of love for his father and concern for his child, or out of fear? What do you think?

"It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live."

My child struggles with these children, struggles through Wonderland, knowing the loss, the ache will never really go away, but avoiding that mirror at all costs, not dwelling on dreams of what might have been.......

Thanks for listening...just for being there. I do feel better and free to get on with all three discussions now.

Joan---What a powerful post! It reminds me of how, when I was going through a really painful divorce, I wished with all my might that I taught some subject like mathematics or physics instead of literature. I kept seeing myself, my friends, my exhusband, my children in all the characters in the novels and short stories I was teaching. It was excruciatingly painful. Now I am returned to myself and once again read with pleasure, identifying with some, but not ALL, of the characters.

I was especially interested in what you said about Alice in Wonderland. I was sick a lot with bronchitis when I was a child and was read to by a live-in grandmother as well as my father. From time to time, one of them would try Alice and I would protest. I did not like that book. I did not like the illustrations which I found frightening. I did not like Alice or her older sister. Years later when I found out about the author's passion for photographing young girls in seductive poses, I felt vindicated. I had always felt there was something creepy going on.

So--although there are parts of Alice that I admire---I do like Jabberwocky and the Cheshire cat--I will not read that book all the way through. Interestingly, my older sister loved the Alice books.

I liked Mary Poppins, Heidi, Mrs. Wiggins of the Cabbage Patch, Anne of Green Gables, any dog or horse book, all of Terhune, all the Black Stallion books, and a set of biograhies for children that had orange covers and sillhouette illustrations. Wonder if anyone will remember what that was.

Harry Potter reminds me of Mary Poppins more than anything else I read as a kid. I see no connection to Alice, thank heaven. I am never going to be old enough to read that book without feeling creepy.

Mary

the biographies, Mary, but not the name. The next time I go to our little library, I'll go downstairs to the Children's section and see if I can find some. They tend to keep all their books for at least 50 years! I also liked Mrs. Wiggins and never cared much for Alice until Disney made the cartoon. I thought parts of that were interesting, but scary.

Joan, your post is moving. I do think there are times that all of us identify with literary characters--and sometimes that can be quite painful. Sue

Sue----Oh thanks. I would love to know what those biographies were called. I read a lot of them. I especially remember the one on Jane Addams for some reason. Maybe I remember it because there were so few books about women then. I love reading biographies to this day, sometimes engaging in the passtime of reading the interesting parts at Border's instead of buying the book.

Mary

...but the living can be such a challenge - for some, a struggle...Certainly for these Faulkner characters!!!

It was the waif in his tattered silk clothing that really got to me! Charles Bon's son.

I know children have a natural resiliency and ability to adjust - but this was just too much!

Charles Bon OR the ocotroon's family had provided a cushy life for the delicate boy in white silk stockings...

I'm remembering from Faulkner's biography - a delicate child, effete in silk Fauntleroy suit....and can just see him being carted off to Sutpen's' 100 with Clytie - speaking no English...no English!!! Talk about isolation!

"...could have known nothing certainly except that all he had ever been familiar with was vanishing about him like smoke."

Why did Judith send for him at his mother's death? Why did his mother's family let him go? Will we ever learn the answers, Mary, or just let it go? Let's see - Charles E. is Thomas Sutpen's grandson...that makes both Clytie and Judith his aunts....so he his the heir to the Sutpen legacy? Sort of... We read earlier of the legality of the octoroon marriage...the offspring are legally the children of the white man, but not legal heirs...

So why is he there? Because he is family? Did Judith make a promise of sorts to Bon, to her father? He stares into his broken mirror and wonders, "What are you? Who are you? You know, Faulkner has succeeded in making me wonder what he's doing out there, right along with Charles...

Quentin's grandfather narrated that the town believed that Judith was "Bon's widow without the papers", that he believed the boy might be Clytie's, fathered by her own father, Thomas Sutpen - until he recalls that he was the same boy who attended his father's funeral with his octoroon mother years ago...

So the boy looks different...with his olive complexion...He must have figured that out by staring into his mirror. That bit of DNA, which is visible in his complexion, causes him to associate with the Negro boys in the vicinity. But to them, the pale, delicate boy looks white and he doesn't fit in or get along with them either. When he gets in legal trouble, Grandfather Compson represents him in court, at Judith's request. It is he who tells him that he is the son of Charles Bon. No one else had ever mentioned this to him in all those years of his existence at Sutpen's 100, those crucial formative teenage years...Compson gives him money and sends him away from YOK-na-pa- TAW-pha County -

"Whatever you are, once you are among strangers you can be whatever you will."

This is an important defining moment in his life! In all of our lives! That's the moment we decide how we are going to get on with the living part...

Thanks again for your listening, understanding and sharing yesterday. It helps to keep things in perspective. We waifs tend to think we are different and alone...that those we associate with are all Muggles!

for the child out of a belated feeling of compassion and need for family. All she had left were Rosa and Clytie. Perhaps she knew that she would never marry and have children and this "adoption" of the octoroon fulfilled a mother wish for her. In previous chapters we have no reason to suspect Judith of the softer, feminine feelings, but perhaps deep down, they were there. Sue

Sue---I agree. Somehow the sense of family got to Judith since she would have had to be the one to send Clytie to get Charles E.S-V Bon and bring him "home," even though Sutpen's Hundred didn't really turn out to be much of a home for him. Perhaps Judith also thought of him as a link to Charles Bon. As to the octoroon mother, we don't know anything whatsoever about her family or if she even had one. That part of the story is most hazy indeed.

Have we gotten to the part about the beds yest? Judith's bed and Clytie's pallet on the floor, and the cot that little Charles Etienne slept on that was between the other two beds, neither up there with Judith (white), nor down there with Clytie (black), but somewhere in a nomansland in between? It's a scene that connects well to the mirror scene.

Mary

I returned Timeline to the library and saw a display of books of Short stories. DOWNHOME, a collection of short stories by southern women, caught my eye. The introduction speaks of such writers as having much in common and being different from other writers. The only one I recognized is Alice Walker, but am finding the idea interesting. Sensory input seems to be part of the style, smells, sights, touch...all are described frequently as in Absalom.

Claire

Sue, I just read over those pages again (for the umpteenth time!) and see the possibility that perhaps it wasn't Judith who sent for the boy, but maybe Clytie herself?! That part isn't clear. Quentin relates his Grandfather's confusion about this. Clytie, perhaps she had the same wish to have a child...but I wonder why Clytie never marries. Neither does Judith. Is it because the men are gone? Was this resignation to the single life a "Southern woman syndrome"? Did none of them have hopes for marriage after the war took so many of the men? Is that really why they send for the child...because they cannot have children of their own? Because Judith wants a link to Charles Bon? I think there's more to it!

Claire - if Southern female writers do differ from other female writers, does it follow that Southern women are different too? We know these Southern women in the CSA had a bad time of it during the war, but what about today? A difference?

I wonder how long this society of octoroons continued after the war in New Orleans, the octoroon debutant balls, etc....

"...one grave was watered by tears. The octoroon knelt, arranged her skirts and wept."

Some of the best writing in Chapter 6 went into the description of her visit to Sutpen's 100...after visiting Charles' grave, she stayed a week. "She passed the rest of that week in the one remaining room in the house whose bed had linen sheets, passed it in bed, in the new lace and silk and satin negligees subdued to the mauve and lilac of mourning..."

...and the description of the boy even more descriptive and revealing! Before he came out to Sutpens', he didn't have any kind of normal life in New Orleans either...it seems that a life of isolation was normal for him...he was just more comfortable with his well-off mother! Was Charles Bon providing for them, I keep asking myself. And if he was, where was the money coming from? He married and impregnated her when he was in college...did the money come from his father, Thomas Sutpen??? We'll never know, but I will wonder. Charles Bon died after the war, and it was 1870 when his wife and son came to Sutpen's to mourn at this gravesite....they were attended by servants and extremely well dressed!

"a thin, delicate child, who having been born and lived all his life in a kind of silken prison...had seen little enough of sunlight before, let alone out-of-doors, trees and grass and earth....Clytie would quit the kitchen from time to time and search until she found the strange lonely boy...sitting quietly...with his four names and his sixteenth-part black blood and his expensive esoteric Fauntleroy clothing...found him one afternoon playing with a negro boy about his own size in the road outside the gates...and cursed the negro child out of sight...deadly, cold."

Still from this solitary life spent with his mother, it had to have been traumatic to find himself out there in the wilderness with these two strange aunties, regardless of who sent for him!

Maybe it was a joint decision - to carry out their father's wishes. After all, this boy is the only grandson to carry out the Sutpen line, is he not? I forget, what was old Thomas Sutpen's attitude for him when he came home...or was he already gone by that time?

Maryal, I had forgotten the sleeping arrangements when he first arrived. It shows that there was some feeling of "family" for the boy - it also shows that they had no idea waht to do with a 12 year old boy. It seems he retreated to the spartan attic himself? An adolescent desire for privacy, perhaps? That would be understandable...When does Sutpen get home - after the boy leaves to seek his fortune? My timeline is all jumbled up!

I had the impression that the octoroon had no family. After Bon's death, she would have developed another attachment with a new protector, who probably would not have wanted the child. Judith-- hard-hearted Judith--sent for the boy out of a grim sense of family duty. She was his aunt after all. But her treatment of the boy was appalling. She could not have had any maternal feelings for him, or she would not have treated him as she did. Did she resent him because he was Bon's child by another woman? The child she should have had, but never did. She was the one who said to him, "You are a Negro." The poor child spent the rest of his life trying to figure out who he was and where he belonged. It was Judith who made it plain to him that he was not white, and never could belong with white people. So he tried to find a place among black people, and they would not accept him either. As far as they were concerned, he was white. Black people resent white people trying to behave like black people. I may be jumping ahead of Chapter 6, but his wretched life was what you would have expected it to be.

As for the money that supported the octoroon and child, this came from Bon's mother. Sutpen had left her financially comfortable. But why didn't Bon's mother want the child? I can't remember. Was it because she had already died before Bon died?

I forgot to mention that Sutpen would not have accepted the boy as his heir for the same reason he would not accept the boy's father as his heir. Because he had one drop of Negro blood in his veins.

SHASTA!!! You've brought up such interesting points - and caused me to go back once again to the scene where the still un-named octoroon brings her boy in 1870 to Sutpen's 100 to mourn. Someone, somehow has notified her of the death, or how else would she know to come out there? You think Judith?

~"I had the impression that the octoroon had no family"!
~"As for the money that supported the octoroon and child, this came from Bon's mother. Sutpen had left her financially comfortable. But why didn't Bon's mother want the child?"

She must have been sitting on a lot of money to last through the War...does that make sense? A new protector?
SHASTA!!! Can it be, just humor me for a minute here, can it be that this octoroon is Sutpen's Haitian wife??? That she is the mother of not only Charles Bon, but also Charles Etiene Valery Bon? Doesn't it make more sense than the story we are being led to believe?

Charlotte's been saying all along that it's too much of a coincidence that Thomas Sutpen and his son, Charles Bon have each married an octoroon, ...and the only proof we have that this coincidence happened is the existence of Charles E Bon! Is the answer in his strange name? I admit there is an arguement for the coincidence - the sin of the father repeated and revisited upon the son - the family curse - and yet there are more pieces that don't make sense...

As soon as Sutpen saw Charles with Henry that first Christmas, he jumped on his horse and rode directly to New Orleans. Did Charles tell his father where his octoroon wife was living - that doesn't seem likely. So where did he go? Did Thomas Sutpen already know where his own octoroon was living and rode right to her?

Shasta, maybe Bon's mother is not dead...maybe she is mother of both Charles'! Look at this from the timeline!

1831 Charles Bon born, Haiti
1859 Charles E S-V born, New Orleans
1865 Henry kills Bon at the gates.
1869 Wash Jones kills Stupen
1870 Charles E and octoroon mother arrive at Sutpen's 100

Now I am going to go back and read the scene again of the tearful gravesite scene ...on first reading, I assumed that she was mourning the death of her husband, Charles Bon - but he died five years before this. She comes out there with the boy to grieve right after old Sutpen's death! Is that strange? If she was summoned to mourn the death of Charles, why now, why not earlier?

Okay, here's what we were told about that gravesite visit:

"But there was one afternoon in the summer of '70 when one of these graves (there were only three there then) was actually watered by tears. ...(Grandfather Compson) didn't know at the time how the octoroon came to be here, how Judith could even have know about her to write to her...
...she took the cushion and knealt beside the grave (not saying which grave here) and wept."

See, it doesn't say which grave...and this is the summer following Thomas Sutpen's death! I know that there are 28 years between the two "boys", but it wouldn't be the first time that Thomas Sutpen took a young girl. We aren't told how old Charles' Haitian mother was-

Or another possibility...this octoroon is Sutpen's octoroon wife, but the younger Charles is not Charles Bon's son, but rather his half-brother with a different father... Either way, I'll bet that this octoroon is the Haitian wife.

Even if I am wrong, it makes more sense to me and answers a lot of the questions that are yet unanswered in the story as narrated so far... We have two more chapters go...but I have a funny feeling that William Faulkner will leave many questions unanswered, don't you. But there is something waiting to be told...What's in that thick letter that has upset Quentin so much!

I'm getting a kick out of Shreve...he represents us in his amazement and his scepticism, doesn't he? Hopefully he'll get some hard information out of Quentin!

Will change the schedule up above and hope to finish both Chapters 7 (where we meet Thomas Sutpen up close and personal) and then get into Chapter 8 in the coming week.

Joan, I have you at a disadvantage because I've finished the book, and know what happened. Reading ahead like this makes it hard to participate in the discussion, because I don't want to spoil it for others. But I have no patience with all Faulkner's little tricks and ruses to keep us confused. There is a chapter that goes back to the beginning of Sutpen's life and explains his motivation--I don't remember which chapter it is, but I thought it was interesting. I thought, "Now, any other writer would have put this at the beginning of the book, but how like him to get everything out of order."

HAHAHAHAHA! Shasta!, I just came in here, after finishing Chapter 8...only a very short Chapter 9 to go before we put this very difficult book back on the shelf! I think Faulkner is much more difficult to read than James Joyce!!! There are rewards for struggling through, but oh what a struggle!

I should have learned not to try to outguess his plots!!! But I really got into it. How wrong I was! There were two octoroons!!! Still don't know which one came out to mourn in '70...but since she brought the boy, it was probably Bon's wife. In case even one of you has not read Chapter 8, I won't reveal what has happened to Eulalia Bon...at least what seems to have happened to her.

The chapter you are referring to, the chapter that reveals Sutpen's character and motivation is Chapter 7, Shasta...probably the most important chapter in the book...

I'd like to spend some time on that...let's see if I can round up the YOKnapaTAWpha gang to finish the last two weeks of this discussion...

Thomas Sutpen coming up>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>.

Claire:

Why did you return Timeline to the library? I'm just getting interested and wondering if I should read it.

Charlotte

Boy, someone should have given Thomas Sutpen this advice! After reading Chapter 7, he becomes a sympathetic character...someone I can relate to... His life was one long struggle to achieve his "dream" and not once does he appear to enjoy his life, or even appreciate it.

Joan---I think Faulkner withheld all this information about Sutpen in order to not make us too sympathetic with him too early. As it turns out, although the people in town see him as coming out of nowhere, he comes from somewhere and has a whole history. The scene of him being sent around to the back door which causes him to understand for the first time the difference between classes of people is wonderfully done. Later, he will (figuratively) bar the door to his own son despite the fact that he has vowed to have one of those big houses from which no boy will be turned away.

I'm back to teaching now. First day of the spring semester. However, I have a computer and the internet at work. <G>

Maryal

The first day back to school after a long break, Maryal And a blue-gray rainy day it is! You know what I'm thinking? It would be a wonderful day for us to have our tea together! What do you think? I have a million questions about this book, but I promise to restrain myself!

Yes, I do think it is wonderfully done and can understand why Faulkner puts this enlightening chapter on Sutpen's innocence at the end...Shasta, we would have had more of an understanding of what was driving Sutpen, but I think it was quite effective to present the results/failure of his "grand design" first...provided we stuck around to the end!!!

In this late chapter I have found the inner child of the man, which I always look for in my "heros"...and he definitely is the hero, the central character of this book! In Sutpen's case, I see his inner child as his driving force, making all of his decisions for him.

This inner-child is another waif, forced to reach his own conclusions, and form his own dreams, his own moral code without guiding parental light...or substitute or teacher... The fact that his conclusions were faulty is beside the point...what else could be expected? They became his reality, his guiding light, his moral code and he remained true to them until the end...well, until he reached the crossroads where he had to make a choice. His moral code failed him then!

Joan--Tea sounds wonderful. Unfortunately I am in Annapolis and have a doctor's appointment back home late this afternoon. But we do have to do it. I teach Monday-wednesday-Friday, so the other two days are better for me.

maryal

Joan, it puzzles me that you find Faulkner harder to read than James Joyce. I always found Joyce harder to read. Maybe that's because I'm a Southerner and Faulkner sounds familiar to me--the dialogue, the racial bigotry. He doesn't romanticize about the Negroes; he presents them as they really are, with their good points and bad points both. I think a lot of the confusion in Faulkner is done deliberately. He withholds information for dramatic effect, and he also exaggerates for the same reason. For example, there is no way a gang of savages from the jungles could build a large house. They simply would not have the carpentry skills. And did you notice the part about Sutpen having only two or three months of school in his entire life? That's too fantastic, isn't it? He could never have done what he did when he was that illiterate.

There's a point where Sutpen asked Compson where he went wrong--why his grand design failed. I think he went wrong when he put aside his first wife. After that everything became complicated. Of course, he was just following the general prejudices of his time, but a really intelligent man would have ignored these prejudices.

Shasta, that's a great question...when did Sutpen go wrong? I'll put it up for all to consider right now. I think it's interesting that Sutpen asks this question so late in the game...only when faced with the important decision about what to do about Charles Bon marrying Judith does he question the foundation of his entire "kingdom"...only then!

Yes, there are some pretty fantastic things we are asked to believe. About building the huge plantation manor...is that the reason the French architect was so important...without him no one would have a clue as to how to build the place? Is this the "answer" to what Faulkner anticipates as our incredible response to the 20 wild men building the place?

Maybe you, as a Southern lady, are able to grasp this story more readily than I because of that, just as Joyce (admittedly difficult) was easier for me, an Irish Catholic! But to be honest, my problems were not centered around the Southern dialogue - or mindset, as with the structure of the story. I found that I had to read and reread to even discern which character was being described, the subjects of verbs...found pages later...

It was not easy reading, but definitely worth the effort!

A brief question because I wasn't here at the time. Which one of Joyce's books did you read? Surely not Ulysses? That novel has to be harder than Faulkner.

Maryal

Maryal, we planned to read Ulysses, but chickened out after reading something as harmless looking as Portrait of the Artist...got sidetracked into the entire Joyce biography, the pre-Artist book, Stephen Hero and then into My Brother's Keeper by one of his brothers...

Ah but we had a merry time of it! Bloomsday occurred during the madness and we entered a contest sponsored by an Irish pub live...It took 6 months! SIX MONTHS I nearly had a breakdown...there is still a hearty cadre interested in Ulysses...

We thought we'd follow it with something light...and the vote went to Faulkner!!! I honestly think that the biography discussion helped, helped a lot, but feel we should have started with an easier Faulkner!

Joan---OK, good, I was pretty certain it wasn't Ulysses which is harder than anything Faulkner ever wrote (I think) or the (to me) absolutely incomprehensible Finnegan's Wake. I had a colleague a while ago who used to read Finnegan's Wake outloud with his wife, alternating sentences or something. When they got through, the began again.

You are probably right about Faulkner. Light in August is quite comprehensible as is Go Down, Moses. As I Lay Dying is tricky but short.

Mary

Aie.the holidays seem to have messed everything up. I've got notes on this chapter, but don't know whether to post since it appears we are already in Chapter VII. Everything's going just too fast. Maybe I should just forget about VI and go on to VII.

I think Faulkner is much harder than Joyce. I studied 6 chapters of Ulysses with a group. Each chapter is written in a different style, but there is no wondering who is speaking and no continual back tracking as in Faulkner. If you read Joyce carefully, it comes alive and you see everything as it is happening around him, including his inner thoughts from the point of view of Leopold Bloom.

Faulkner requires more involved study and much rereading. I am intrigued by the dark promise which always leads us on to the next chapter. I have read AA before, as well as several other Faulkner novels, but I seem to have forgotten everything, except The Sound and The Fury. Don't have a clue yet as to how Sutpen could evoke my sympathy.

Joan, please don't give up on the hard ones. That's where I get my pleasure. No easy reads for me.

Charlotte

Just to set the record straight. I own Finnegan's Wake, but that's where I chickened out. Have tried to read it several times, but there's just no way. My professor son-in-law read it with a concordance. His field is Math., but I'll bet he can't remember much about it. It's been years.

Charlotte

Innocence...and amazement. Key words here, yes? Thomas Sutpen's innocence!

"All of a sudden he discovered not what he wanted to do but what he just had to do - to fix things right so that he would be able to look in the faces not only the old dead ones but all the living ones that would come after him."

Okay...we have motivation...Thomas Sutpen is innocent of greed. He did not set out to build his empire, his legacy, for personal profit or glory...but to "fix" that which needs fixing, to set something right that is not right. But what is this thing he must do, what is it that needs fixing?

"...at the very moment when he discovered what it was (that he had to do) he found out this was the last thing in the world he was equipped to do because he not only had not known that he would have to do this, he did not even know that it existed to be wanted, until he was almost fourteen years old. Because he was born in West Virginia."
Please help me out here- to understand what he needs to fix for those who have died - and for those who will come after...There is a link to the War here, isn't there?
I'm having trouble with the parallel between Sutpen's cause and that of the South - because his seems to be not that of a southerner, but of an outsider...but I suppose that each Southerner had his own individual story to tell too. We need to find the common denominator! How are Sutpen's desire to fix the system for future generations and that of the Southern cause the same?
Charlotte, please, oh please put in all that you have...as it is all part of the same puzzle that Faulkner has spread before us! You just don't know how helpful your summaries are! But don't scare me with talk of Finnegan's Wake - or I'll never get through this one!

Joan---The passage you cite about Sutpen coming to the realization that he would have to do something to right wrongs not only for those to come but for the dead is one that he had at fourteen when he was stopped at the door by the Negro butler and told to go around back. Remember that his father hated blacks and got into fights with them.

Subconsciously, Sutpen (14) has to be aware that his father considers blacks to be below them, but here at the door of the big house,the black man is all dressed up and has the authority to send the boy Sutpen around to the back door.

Prejudice is always strongest coming from the group just above the group that is being looked down on. Sutpen's family is from the hills of West Virginia, hillbillies as it were. The father drinks and the sisters are big lumbering stupid cows (as seen by Sutpen after being turned away at the door). So, although he does not know it, young Sutpen is in the class of people to be sent around to the back. That a black man can do this to him makes it all that much worse.

Once the young Sutpen returns to his home, he sees the shack as he never has before (having lost his innocence):

"the sagging roof whose missing shingles they did not replace but just set pans and buckets under the leaks, the leanto room which they used for kitchen and which was all right because in good weather it didn't even matter that it had no chimney since they did not attmpt to use it at all when it rained, and his sister pumping rhythmic up and down above a washtub in the yard, her back toward him, shapeless in a calico dress and a pair of the old man's shoes unlaced and flapping about her bare ankles and broad in the beam as a cow, the very labor she was doing brutish and stupidly out of all proportion to its reward: the very primary essence of labor, toil reduced to its crude absolute which only a beast could and would endure. . ." 190-1

Sutpen finally decides that in order to "beat" the white man in the big house, he has to have everything that man has---"So to combat them you have got to have what they have that made them do what he did. You got to have land and niggers and a fine house to combat them with. You see? and he said Yes again. He left that night. . .He never saw any of his family again. He went to the West Indies." (192). And thus begins Sutpen's grand design. It always reminds me of Jay Gatsby's dream of winning Daisy by having lots of money and throwing big parties. In a way here, we are talking about the American Dream.

And now to prepare classes for tomorrow. The first book we are reading in the freshman class is Angela's Ashes, and I have never taught it before.

Charlotte- - I always enjoy your notes. If you have time, please put them in even though we are also working on another chapter.

Mary

Faulkner tells how the boy and his father who were turned away from the front door by the black butler, got their revenge in the short story Barn Burning. I bet Mary will remember it. It's an excellent story and much easier to read than AA.

Will work on Chapter VI and post soon.

Charlotte

Charlotte---That's right! Different people, but the same situation. I have taught "Barn Burning." At least the little kid runs away from that miserable family, having apparently come to the conclusion that it is wrong to burn barns.

Mary

Joan, I agree with a comment Charlotte made a while back. Let's keep on reading the challenging books. An easy book doesn't need any discussion.

Joan---And you know I am going to vote for difficult books so that I will have you fine folks to discuss them with.

Maryal

HAHAHAHAHAAAAAAHA! Am I outnumbered?!

Here's something I just came across while looking for something else...made me laugh!

Yes sir. You can be more careless, you can put more trash in [a novel] and be excused for it. In a short story that's next to the poem, almost every word has got to be almost exactly right. In the novel you can be careless but in the short story you can't. I mean by that the good short stories like Chekhov wrote. That's why I rate that second — it's because it demands a nearer absolute exactitude. You have less room to be slovenly and careless. There's less room in it for trash. William Faulkner

Back shortly...

Joan----As the vote stands now, you are outnumbered, but there is hope since not all have voted. I love that Faulkner quote.

Absalom, Absalom - Chapter VI - January 11, 2000

I started on this chapter ahead of time a while back, had to withdraw it because I was way ahead of you all. Now I am far behind. Will start in the middle where I left off. Now I see that there was a second octoroon and child with which Bon was involved. So you were right all along.

I have the Modern Library edition which was published in 1993 and am starting on p. 196. This is an extremely difficult chapter and I find I have lots of questions. Mr. Compson is telling about the tombstones which Sutpen had been able to get through “a seacoast so blockaded that any cargo was refused, except ammunition.” Quentin imagines the starving shoeless troops looking back at the ship which had so much precious space filled not with bullets or food, but inert carven rock. For the next year the stones rode in a wagon behind “starved gaunt men and spent horses knee-deep in icy mud or snow, through the Tenn. mountains and into Miss.” How did Sutpen get away with it? He was a Colonel, but was he really behind the cause for which he fought?

What do you think of the passage where Mr. Compson talks about women? It begins “Yes. They lead beautiful lives--women. Lives not only divorced from, but irrevocably excommunicated from all reality.” It goes on in my book, bottom of p. 199. Didn’t this raise any hackles on your part?

There is a beautiful passage about the octoroon on p. 201 where the octoroon is described as if she was created by the artist Aubrey Beardsley. For anyone who has seen Beardsley’s work in the Art Nouveau style, Faulkner has certainly created a word picture true to what the artist tried to show.

And what about Clytie? Why did she appoint herself to be guardian for the boy and prevent him from having any other human contact. The result was that Etienne started trouble with the Negroes and appeared handcuffed in court. Did he feel he was following Sutpen’s example of fighting with them? The Negroes see him as a white man. The judge cries out “What are you? Who and where did you come from?” Quentin’s grandfather gets him out, quashes the indictment against him, gives him money and tells him to disappear. “Whatever you are, once you are among strangers, people who don’t know you, you can be whatever you will.”

Later, Mr. Compson who believes Better that he were dead, better that he had never lived learns through the country grapevine that Etienne has married a coal black, apelike woman and returned to live in the town. He has been beaten wherever he went. He and the woman have produced a child. And there is a letter which Judith brought to Quentin’s grandmother to keep. Quentin’s thoughts are in italics: Yes I have heard too much. He imagines how Judith now looks and believes: Nothing matters but breath, breathing, to know and to be alive. And the child, the license, the paper. What about it? That paper is between you and one who is inescapably negro; it can be put aside, no one will anymore dare to bring it up than any other prank of a young man in his wild youth. And as for the child, all right. Didn’t my own father beget one? and he none the worse for it. We will even keep the woman and the child, if you wish.

She tells Etienne to go into the North to the cities and be whatever he wishes to be . He tells her, “No Miss Sutpen.” She tells him to call her Aunt Judith, but he goes back to his wife. and back to “ where he had crucified himself and come down from his cross for a moment and now returned to it. He goes back to farm shares of the Sutpen plantation. bought from Judith. Three times he appears in town (Isn’t this the number of times Jesus appeared before his disciples?) He gets beaten up and his wife comes with a wagon to carry him home. He gets yellow fever and Judith moves him into the big house with her so she can nurse him. Judith dies from it, as does Etienne. Clytie raises the child for the next 12 years and saved the money to finish paying for the tombstone. Judith had written what was on her tombstone, but Rosa had ordered it. Quentin reads it and remembers what his father said about the beautiful lives women lead. (p.220) Judge Benbow had appointed himself Miss Rosa’s guardian, since no one else had taken responsibility for her. Neighbors leave her baskets of food, which she eats, but declines to admit she is a pauper. Judge Benbow would use casual negro boys passing the house, ordering them to rake her lawn. They did it, knowing they had no alternative and would not be paid. Benbow paid Rosa’s expenses with his race horse winnings.

Shreve says Quentin knows all this, having absorbed it as children do when 4 or 5 boys went to the house to see if it was haunted. The house had been empty for 26 years. No ghosts had been reported till the family from Arkansas tried to spend the night there. Something happened which made them get out of there fast. Luster (who appears in The Sound and the Fury as a boy) takes Quentin and his father to the house, but would not go in. He had been with the boys when they had gone to the house. and seen the old woman who looked ten thousand years old. It may have been Clytie who spoke with a white woman’s voice.

There was a “Bright-colored boy” who lived with the old woman and worked in the vegetable patch. That was Jim Bond who knew nothing of his own past and wouldn’t have cared if he was told he was a descendant of Charles Bon. He and the old woman had lived in the cabin behind the house for 26 years as Shreve remembers what Quentin had told him.

There was nothing in that house, nothing to attract prowlers, yet Shreve reminds Quentin that Rosa believes that someone is hiding out there. Quentin says it was Clytie or Jim Bond, but Rosa denies this. Quentin has told her that everyone connected with the story was dead. Shreve wonders why he went out with her on that 12 mile ride at midnight. He asks what it was, but is so confused that he concludes the chapter by saying, “Wait. For God’s sake wait.”

Charlotte

Charlotte! Thank you so much for Chapter 6 notes!!! I just came in and found them this minute, will print them out and come back later after digesting them ...with breakfast. You will all be happy to hear that Cholly is safely back from his New Year's cruise...writes that he is "hopelessly behind" (join the club)- has only read through Chapter 6. I responded to him that we were just on 7 anyway, and now your notes on Chapter 6 should make him feel right at home!!!

Also, thank you so much for the Burn Burning reference - spent some time searching the web for an electronic text last evening without much luck, but located an old dog-eared anthology in my son's room. The story is only ten pages long - will read it later today (provided I finish all my "chores".)

I did read the first 2-3 pages though, and see that it is the same story! Here is the boy (named Colonel Sartoris Snopes) learning of his father's prejudices... Early observations of a parent's prejudice make strong lasting impressions, don't they?

Maryal, thank you so much for that "loss of innocence" post. My mind is wrapped around this whole idea of innocence...was young Sutpen's innocence lost when he learned or became aware of ...and accepted his father's prejudice...or when he became aware of his own family's circumstances compared to other white folk?

The "descent" from the mountains of "West" Virginia to the flatlands of Mississippi was a carefully chosen image, I think. In those mountains, the only people of color he had ever seen were Indians...and "it had never once occurred to him that any man should take authority or warrant to look down at others, any others"

On the "descent" to Mississippi, they stop frequently at the taverns and wait outside for the father they depend upon for survival...and the first black man he ever saw, carries his father out the door...throws him out.... Is he a bouncer of sorts? Or is this a Negro tavern that his father unknowingly enters? Whatever the situation, young Thomas first sees a black man in a position of power or control over his father. First impressions...br>

As they "descend" into Mississippi, he sees

"the country flattened with good roads and fields and niggers working in the fields and white men sat fine horses and watched them...regiments of niggers with white men watching them....

That's the way he got it. He had learned the difference not only between white men and black ones, but he was learning there was a difference between white men and white men.
The man who owned all the land and lived in the biggest house he ever saw...but he didn't envy the man..."

Now is he still innocent at this point? I think so. I think he hasn't put himself, his own family into the equation, until the day his father sends him to the front door with the message, and he encounters the condescending Negro (wearing shoes!) who sends him to the back door.

"Running, not crying - to the woods. Because he couldn't get it straight yet. His trouble, his impediment was innocence."

Still innocence...until he takes a hard look at his family - and the state to which they have "descended"...and realizes that he has to "fix things" for all the Sutpens to come...

Now, I don't think he learned prejudice, as in bigotry and hatred toward black folks.... but rather that he learned he needed respect - which comes from wealth and power ...which would require the hard work of the "regiments" he has seen in the fields...and so he goes to the West Indies...the boy who had never seen a black person in his life in West Virginia, goes where he sees pictures in a book of "regiments" of dark-skinned people to start to make things right.

Is this the answer to his question to Compson, "where did I go wrong"?

Is this what led to the eventual downfall of the South - the economy based on the labor of the "regiments" of a people, considered inferior, considered as farm animals instead of human beings...used with the sole purpose of making a small number of white men superior to other white men? What do you think...? And can you understand why this misguided, no - unguided young boy reached the conclusions he did, based on what he saw around him?

Joan---Do read "Barn Burning." It has the Snopes on center stage. The Snopes family rolled down out of the hills somewhere and came to Jefferson. At first they hold lowly jobs, but some of them managed to work their way up. As soon as one Snopes gets a little ahead, more Snopes come to live. They seem to be endless in Faulkner's books, sort of like mice or grasshoppers. The Snopes family contrasts with the Sartoris family. The Sartorises are the landowning aristocrats of Faulkner's world. But they are on their way out, and the Snopes are rising. There's a trilogy devoted to the story of the Snopes family--The Hamlet, The Town, The Mansion. The first one is especially good and probably would have been a good place to start.

More on the innocence of Sutpen later. I am at work and have to do some. One class down, two to go.

Maryal

Maryal: I really love that name better than plain Mary, so I guess Joan and I are sticking with it. I have the trilogy, read the books to learn about Faulkner. The Snopses are a very unpleasant family, but of course I don't remember much else about them. Would have to read them again. My favorite Faulkner is The Sound and The Fury--loved the stream of consciousness method as used with Benjy.

Charlotte

In front of the State House in Boston is a sculpture which shows troops with negro features and a white man astride a horse. I could never find out what it was till many years after I left the city. They were black soldiers who had enlisted in the North to fight the Confederacy.

It was the same attitude which kept me ignorant of the man for whom our elemtary school was named. He was William Lloyd Garrison. They never told us he was a famous abolitionist who was dragged through the streets of Boston by an angry crowd.

Boston in the thirties was a bigoted town which banned books and Broadway shows and had long forgotten the Emersons, Thoreaus and Alcotts of Concord and Lexington.

After World War II the baby boomers turned things around and made Boston the interesting cultural area it now is.

Charlotte

Charlotte---Ok then, I'll be Maryal. I was Maryal in college (my middle name is Alice) and then Mary after I married, so I guess it's time to be Maryal again. My college roommate insisted on coming up with a better name for me because we had to WEAR our names for a month on cardboard placards we wore around our necks. So Judy came up with Maryal, and I liked it.

About those black Mass. troops---that was the Massachusetts 54th Infantry, the first black unit to be organized by the Union. It was led by Robert Gould Shaw. The excellent film,Glory(1989), tells the story of the 54th. Stars Matthew Broderick, Denzel Washington, and Morgan Freeman. The memorial in Boston was created by Saint-Gaudens who also did the famous sculpture of a seated figure for the grave of Henry Adams' wife, Clover, which is in Rockcreek Cemetery in Washington, DC. Now all I need to know is how to set up a link here, and I can provide a picture for all to view. I have been told before how to do this, but I have forgotten because I did it only once. I have to do something about five times before it sinks in.

Maryal

Joan. Your method of reading these “Great Books” which I applaud, I admire and I champion as THE way to go – it’s such a pleasure to take them slow and really savor them – may have backfired with this one. By that I mean, WF set some traps for the reader, for the discerning reader….and by reading this way – we were more likely to fall into them perhaps? Well, it’s just not fair!! Struggled through Chapter 6 and I’ve got about half way through Ch 7. Ch 7 reads much easier, there’s a lot of filling in of the why’s – although the why’s can still be argued endlessly. As Mary says,”the scene [or should we say Chapter] of him being sent around to the back door which causes him to understand for the first time the difference between classes of people is wonderfully done.” You’re right this is REAL CLASS CONSCIOUS. And Faulkner seems to have a real handle on FATE and DESTINY. Anyone who uses the phrase : “the instant which Fate always picks out to blackjack you” has got to have had some serious arguments with the Gods. And not New Testament Gods either – Gods that are a little sinister perhaps, Gods that would as soon have you Fall as not, Gods of Retribution. Gods who might enjoy the fact that as Man revels in the peak, “the beginning of the falling” has already begun. This is terrific stuff. This is a real studied self-awareness to which we become privy. This is certainly Sutpen’s best defense – his own clear understanding of his motivations – and his most fervent cry for compassion. I’m stopping here to continue my reading (here and elsewhere). I’m also stopping at the point where Joan poses the question of “innocence and amazement” – I did have trouble with the “innocence” part. Must read the posts about this carefully…hopefully my understanding will be unleashed!! Back soon (relatively)

Maryal:

Love to call you that. I was amused by the fact that you have to do something 5 times in order to remember it. Me too, but maybe more than five. Of course I knew about Shaw and St Gaudens, but I had a senior moment and forgot the facts during the writing.

Another senior moment: We visited St. Gaudens home in Mass. and saw perhaps another copy of the sculpture he created of Henry Adams wife, who I think committed suicide. I remember the statue clearly. She wears a scarf on her head and her face is not clearly revealed, but I can't remember the facts.

Also saw the movie which was excellent, but we see so many movies I can't remember that one either. Wish there was more room in this old head.

Charlotte

Charlie:

Glad to have you back. Chapter 6 was a lulu, but 7 is much easier. I'm halfway through. Faulkner certainly points out how important early influences are in determining the course of our lives. The boy was only 14 when the incident happened. He never forgot it and it directed the whole future course of his life. If he had been a more sensitive person he would never have repeated the very much more serious trauma by refusing to acknowledge his own son. The result succeeded in completely wrecking the life of his grandson. What is the cliche about the sins of the fathers? They are handed down through the generations.

Charlotte

Welcome back, Charlie, good to see you.

Charlotte---the having to do things five times before I learn them has been true ALL my life. I don't know why. Yes, Clover Adams, who was severely depressed after her father died, swallowed photographic chemicals and killed herself. What a way to go! Adams never remarried, and he says nothing of his marriage in The Education of Henry Adams. Saint-Gaudens seated figure is robed and hooded and it really can't be determined if it is male or female. I have looked at it up close. I'm going to find out how to make a link here so anyone who is interested can see it. http://www.findagrave.com/pictures/5.html

Eleanor Roosevelt used to sit on the bench facing this monument when she was having such trouble with her marriage.

Maryal

OK, I finally found a relatively good photo of the Robert Gould Shaw memorial. You can click on various parts of it and magnify.

And now I really do have to do some real work.

Here's the link to the Shaw memorial

http://www.nga.gov/feature/shaw/home.htm

Maryal

I am reading your posts and itching to comment, but we moved to a new server today and lost a whole bunch of graphics and files ...all time and energy has gone into their retrieval. Will be back tomorrow morning, I hope.

Later!

Now that we are on a new server, do we have to paint the walls and put up new shades and curtains?

Puff, puff. Finished with Ch 7 now. Must go find Charlotte’s notes…. Random thoughts here as I read past posts, new for me – nostalgia for ya’ll.

What is it that Sutpen, the child, sets out to fix? One would like to think the inequities of class on a broad scale. But of course, he’s a child. He seems to set out to “fix things right”for himself only – so that the affront which he perceived would never happen again. Not only to himself, nor to his sons, his descendants. I don’t see, or I fail to see a broader link here. Isn’t this just personal and not universal? Ok, Maryal's post and Joan’s thoughts on this loss of innocence. Brilliant! Helped me understand his loss of “innocence”- his innocence as related to his place in the world – his class. Thank you so much.

Interesting quote Joan posted about short stories from Faulkner. Surprising too. From the bios, I had got the impression that WF resented having to write short stories for the magazine income only a little less than he resented having to slave away in Hollywood…

Charlotte on Ch 6 – You put in a quote from WF about women leading lives divorced from reality – I’d have to say that these kinds of sentiments are not unexpected from WF. There are a number of them, sprinkled throughout. I do think they perhaps stand out more, having read the bios first. They’re kind of expected.

Charlotte – you also mention Beardsley. I once, dabbling in art as a student, painted a whole wall in a place I was living – a copy of Beardsley’s Isolde. What a wall that was!!

Maryal, I don't know about the curtains, but we must get something up on these walls...

I think we should leave that to Chollie--

Go Chollie! Will stop in in the morning to see how we're doing! The missing graphics for the Hoving Art discussion and the "Good" War have been retrieved, so I will get some sleep tonight!

Later!

HAHA!! That's IT, Joan!!! People thought it was....unusual!!

Maryal:

Thanks for the photo of the St. Gaudens sculpture. I used to pass it almost every day at the end of Boston Common, during my fruitless job hunt in the late thirties. I think Shaw assumed command of the troops when he was under age 25. Later he died, perhaps by suicide, and was buried in a common grave.

Cholly:

Beardsley's prints during the Art Nouveau period have special appeal for me. I've been looking at them for years where I put them up inside the glass doors of a household cabinet. Will check out the Isolde print. I am reminded of my Berkeley son-in-law who decided he could do a Jackson Pollock. He did it on canvas. It looks authentic. They took it with them wherever they moved. It now adorns a long wall in the house they've lived in for more than 12 years. I'm sure it startles new friends.

Charlotte

Cholly:

Joan put in the clickable after I'd checked my book of B's drawings. Oooh I thought--a student's typical reaction to B's outrageously sexy approach. Was surprised to find that Isolde was fully dressed even to the hat and buttons at the hem of her skirt. Quite a job for an amateur artist. Much more difficult than trying to reproduce a Pollack. Next time put it on canvas.

Charlotte

Speaking of Beardsley, I have recently cleared out all my art books and given them to an elementary school for their library. I had a couple of Beardsley books and I thought I should tear out the pornographic prints because they would not be suitable for a children's library. As I began tearing out the unsuitable pages, I found there were so many of them that I ended up throwing the books away. Somehow, his pornography seemed more innocent than today's pornography though.

Charlie that's a good question, no, a great question! What was the boy trying to "fix"? Was it for a selfish reason? And we have a job to do here! We have to put our collective greying heads together to figure out how Sutpen's story is a "song of the South"...Did the South go to war for selfish reasons? Was the South "innocent" as the boy was innocent?

Shasta, good, you are here. Will you tell what you know about life in the South - following the war. Part of the US again...but I'm not so sure how much aid went into its "reconstruction"??? I imagine the Post-War South as devastated...in amazement - not to recover again for another 100 years... asking........What had it been about? "What were we trying to fix?" "Where did we go wrong?"

First the boy...remember, he's innocent. He hasn't ever seen a black man before he reaches Mississippi! He's from West Virginia, ...Everyone was white and equal, some a little "luckier" than others. Shreve corrects Quentin twice for saying "West" Virginia (was this because "West" Virginia seceded from the Union, the rest of the state did not? Sutpen was a part of the South and the southern mind-set from the very beginning) After his experience on the descent from the hills to Mississippi, he realizes that his family is at fault somehow. The white man is supposed to be superior to the black man, but the black man is actually superior to his family. His family must improve. He must do something about this so that he and his descendants are once again part of the superior class- because that is how it is supposed to be, isn't it?

Is this thought process where he went wrong?

But where did the South go wrong? Slavery? If one is from the North, the war was all about slavery. If one is from the South, it's not that simple....slavery became an issue after the war began... And it is interesting to me that Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation in 1862 called for the abolition of slavery only in the Confederate States, not in Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, where it continued...

We know that class consciousness was a big part of Sutpen's motivation and that to learn he has a child with even a drop of black blood destroys his plan to restore his family to a superior position. So, I would say that Thomas Sutpen went wrong in his initial plan to improve his social position...by using slaves to build his wealth...But what should he have done instead? What other plan was available to the boy?

The South...had an agrarian economy...lots of fertile land. Was it the greed of a few that led to the importation of slaves in great numbers? Is that where the South went wrong? My husband (advanced history degreed) tells me that at that time, only 20% kept slaves in the South..So what was the Southern cause...certainly not greed or the preservation of slavery...?

Charlotte, I puzzle over Sutpen's ability to get those heavy tombstones through the war zone..an amazing feat...and am puzzled by your question about his commitment to the "cause"....the second reference in a row to his selfish motivation!

Time ran out...

Later!

.

and some still do today that the War was fought over State's Rights, not slavery. Very few Southerners, as your husband points out, Joan, actually owned slaves. And to my surprise, I have recently learned that there were Southern free Blacks who owned slaves.

I think you may have a misconception about West Virginia being all white. One of the most famous Blacks in post-Civil War History, Booker T. Washington, was a native of West Virginia. I can't remember if he was born free. His mother was a freed slave, I believe. There were other Blacks, slave and free, in the territory which became West Virginia in 1865. I don't see how Sutpen could have no concept of Black people even though he was born in the hills of West Virginia. He had the encounter with the Black house servant in Virginia, not Mississippi.

Many Southerners remained bitter toward Negroes in the aftermath of the War because of Reconstruction and the Carpet baggers from the North. In most southern states, Blacks with little or no education and white scoundrels were placed in charge of the reconstruction of the South. Unfortunately, this led to repression of Blacks when Southern whites finally returned to power. It seems a terribly long time ago to me, but there are those, both Black and white, who retain resentment, fear, and prejudice because of that terrible time. Sue

I'm not the right person to ask about the Civil War, because it never has made any sense to me. Obviously, an economy based on slavery cannot afford to give up its slaves. But since only a small percentage of the population owned slaves, what were the rest of them fighting for? Were they just loyal to their homeland? Did they think they were defending their homes against an intruding enemy? It always seemed to me that the Civil War should not have happened. There should have been a gradual freeing of the slaves as the economy adjusted to free labor. It seemed to me a stupid, quixotic war based on a lot of hot-headed romanticism. But then I have no patience with any kind of war. I think they are all stupid, barbaric, and without justification.

Faulkner tells us that TS was born in the hills of what was to become West Virginia. Where the only colored people were Indians. Where there were actually men who owned land and other men worked for them!! And not only owned land but owned objects - things. And that people who owned these things tended to look down upon those who did not own these things. And that the owners of these things supported each other in this attitude. Not only that, but the people who did not own these things ALSO supported the down-lookers in the "down-looking”even as they knew they’d never own these things themselves.

TS came from a place where, since the land “belonged to anybody and everybody” – well, what was the point of ownership? No point either in “owning” these things, these objects – since to accumulate things served no purpose. People had what they could consume, or trade for other things which they could consume. So TS was a true Innocent - an Innocent UNAWARE of his Innocence. He couldn’t conceive of a place with “a people living on it all divided and fixed and neat because of what color their skins happened to be and what they happened to own.” Couldn't conceive of a place where a handful of men had such a power over others (“the power of life and death and barter and sale”). Couldn’t conceive of a place where men performed for others those simple day-to-day tasks that men had always performed for themselves. Oh, he’d heard tales as a child but they made no sense. And when, as a boy, they made sense, they had no meaning for him since they were nor of his experience. And when he became a youth he became curious only perhaps to see such a place – but “without envy or regret” since it was not his place – the pace he was born into – born into by accident or luck or fate or whatever you wanted to call it. And whatever you called it left no room for envy or regret. It just was. It was not his world. Until the day they walked down the mountain. Their journey seems a journey not only of distance but of time as well. Into the present (1820’s) South. It’s at once a journey back and a journey forward for the family. A journey of days and months, of miles and miles, from doggeries to hamlets to villages to towns…..from a land of no ownership to men sitting on “fine horses” overseeing other men working the land for some other (unseen) men.

It was his humiliation at the "front”door that forced him to see – to become aware of – his Innocence. Isn’t it dangerous to base your plan, your design, on “the shifting sands of opportunism and moral brigandage.”? As the South did? For when the sand shifts….well, Fate has a way of blackjacking you, to paraphrase WF.

TS tells Colonel Compson that there was something about a man’s destiny
(or about the man)
that causes the destiny to shape itself to him like his clothes did,

So Sutpen's DESTINY shaped itself around his
*INNNOCENCE
*PRISTINE APTITUDE FOR PLATFORM DRAMA
*CHILDLIKE HEROIC SIMPLICITY

Thus the MAN shapes his DESTINY – wears it to fit himself. A man’s FATE is merely the DESTINY that he has SHAPED for himself. The SOUTH’S FATE was merely the DESTINY that it had SHAPED for itself.

Charlie:

About a man shaping his destiny as his clothes did: I'll never forget James Agee's description of the overalls the men wore in Let's Now Praise Famous Men. Don't remember the exact words, but the clothes had shaped themselves to the men's bodies. They had worn them so long that they had become personal, like shoes which shape themselves to an individual wearer's feet so they can never be worn by anyone else.

Charlotte

Just now, this very moment, as I begin to write this post, I understand Shreve's importance...and I find I am subconsciously aligning with him in his attempt to understand the South - the mind-set, the cause. My Northern upbringing has taught me to reach certain one-sided conclusions which cloud that understanding. I have become Shreve, the outsider, unbiased, fascinated - trying to comprehend what Henry/William Faulkner is revealing about the Sutpen and the Southern devastation...(More about this "half naked, pink-chested, cherubic" Shreve another time)!

Charlie! Brilliant! Yes! The link between Sutpen and the South....and their DESTINY - so simple a concept actually...but when you can step back from it, as a Shreve it all comes down to the simple fact that MAN (MEN) shapes his own fate by the choices he makes, which become his DESTINY. Sometimes man has the best of intentions (innocence), but makes one flawed decision in the plan to fulfill his goal and it is that fateful flawed choice which will devastate the overall plan.

Sue puts it better than I ...the South voted for secession with the best intentions...to be free from Northern dominance...crippling tariffs and a trade policy which favored the industrial North...States' rights were more important than allegiance to the unfair policies of the Union. But the flaw that was to provide moral outrage and momentum to the Northern cause was the fact that the Southern economy had been based on slavery...a tragic flaw, a devastating flaw - which destined it to ruination! (I'm beginning to think and talk like Shreve!!!)

Shasta asks a good question.. a small percentage of the CSA were slaveowners...what were the rest of them fighting for... Homeland? Yes, they were fighting with good intentions...States' rights...freedom from the oppressive, unfair policies of the North...innocent of the flaw, but the flaw was there...in their blood, tainting them, tainting their cause and ultimately dooming it!

Okay, here's another question for you...

At what point did Thomas Sutpen realize that his grand design was flawed? And maybe even doomed to failure?

I won't even ask that same question of the South...but would be interested in hearing your thoughts on it anyway...

Chollie "*PRISTINE APTITUDE FOR PLATFORM DRAMA"- that's YOU my man! Need it! Love it! Platform drama, INDEED!

Good morning, Charlotte! Your post reminds me of blue jeans too...shoes and blue jeans take on our shape, don't they!

Have a good day!

Robert E. Lee is usually held up as an example of someone who was “innocent of the flaw” as you put it, Joan.

The question: “At what point did Thomas Sutpen realize that his grand design was flawed? And maybe even doomed to failure?”
TS had at least an inkling that he was doomed to failure when Henry brought Charles Bon home – this Charles Good whom he had named. When he realized that, indeed, this was the face…..he “knew that there are situations where coincidence is no more than the little child that rushes onto a football field to take part in the game and the players run over and around the unscathed head and go on and shock together and in the fury of the struggle for the facts called gain or loss nobody even remembers the child nor saw who came and snatched it back from dissolution…” and here was that “forlorn nameless and homeless lost child came to knock” at his door…”AND NO MONKEY-DRESSED NIGGER ANYWHERE UNDER THE SUN TO COME TO THE DOOR AND ORDER THE CHILD AWAY.” Le jeux sont fait. He could actually feel and hear his plans “come down like it had been built out of smoke, making no sound, creating no rush of displaced air and not even leaving any debris.” He knew he had made a mistake. His problem weas finding out what that mistake was. THAT was the question. He still believed that he could rectify that mistake and put his plans right.

And if Sutpen didn't know when Charles Bon came for Christmas, it is implied that he found out for sure who he was when he went to New Orleans. Sutpen, like King David, has too many sons.

The story of Sutpen and his grand Design is very old testamenty to me--he wants to found a dynasty. This is his plan right up to the end when he tries to get Miss Rosa to agree to produce a male heir before they marry. When Millie produces a girl, she is rejected out of hand. Sutpen, like Gatsby, believes that he can reinvent himself if he just tries hard enough. He is also a ruthlessly logical man, and he just can't figure out where he went wrong since he has done everything according to plan, at least the way he looks at it.

Maryal

Yes. He seems so 'intellectual' about solvng the problem: where he went wrong. Never thinks to look in his heart. He's devoid of..... spirit?? Is this amorality??

Maryal:

Right on! Sutpen can't figure out what went wrong when he did everything according to the plan the way he sees it.

I just finished reading The Green Mile and saw the movie this afternoon. Have to get back to Chapter 7 soon.

Charlotte

the grand design was flawed or even doomed to failure?

Robert E. Lee realized this when South Carolina seceded from the Union. Others learned it at Appomatox and Gettysburg. The women realized it as they were forced to live in poverty because of the conditions of the war. It was further realized when their fathers, husbands, and sons did not come home from the War.

Lyndon B. Johnson realized it when he pushed the Civil Rights legislation through Congress.

Rosa Parks realized it when she remained in her seat on the bus in 1955.

Martin Luther King, Jr., realized it when he was asked to lead the Montgomery bus boycott and subsequently became the leader of the Civil Rights Movement.

What a pity that there are many living on January 16, 2000 who do not yet realize it. Just read your newspaper about the Confederate battle flag flap in South Carolina or here in Alabama.

Faulkner had mixed feelings about it, but he did stimulate our thinking, didn't he? Sue

Sue---Yes Faulkner brought up the questions. Very brave of him, I think, considering the times. I liked your post.

Charlotte---I saw The Green Mile (didn't read the book). Thought the performances were very good, and I like the mouse.

Maryal

Maryal:

The Green Mile is being discussed in BC Online. Look into it. It's much more simple than AA. I'm not sure I will have much to say about it.

Charlotte

Well, I have finally gotten around to "Absalom"! Started last night and am about halfway through Chapter III, and have read all your discussion notes up to that point. I haven't cheated and read ahead, although I did sneak a peek at the chronology at the end, so I know Charles Bon was Judith's half-brother. The discussion has definitely helped me see more in the novel so far than I would have seen on my own. I see you are almost finished; I'll have to hurry if I'm going to catch up.

I have to tell you all, a post of Ginny's from Nov. 22 has given me an amazing (one of WF's favorite words) insight. She said:

"When I first came South I was bemused by the different sort of conversations. There is a courtly mannerism present in all conversation, but you never really know what the other person is thinking, nothing is all laid out. ... Since the conversation is slower and more courteous, individual words take on much more important meanings than they do in other parts of the country. ... It's simply a different way of communicating and once you master it, you understand where the other person is coming from.

"But it does have its pitfalls, one major one being the reaction to the off or chance word and the high propensity to take offense at the slightest imagined slight."

I grew up in a small community just outside Kansas City, Mo. (it's all part of the city today). My friend Marion's family moved to our village from Arkansas, and Marion joined us in the second grade at our three-room elementary school. Marion's parents were definitely southerners, or at least her mother was. My folks came from farming communities in the midwest (Kansas, Minnesota, Iowa).

Marion and I grew up together and apart from the normal minor spats of childhood, we were good friends and did everything together. However, when we were juniors in high school, I said or did something that offended Marion deeply. In a telephone conversation, she told me our friendship was over. She would not tell me what I had said or done; she said I knew perfectly well. But I did not. I had no clue. No one else would tell me, either.

The next spring Marion wrote an apologetic note in my yearbook: "Sometimes I think my high temper gets me in trouble. I really do like you. Always have." We made up, to my intense relief. I don't remember how long we had been estranged, but it seemed an eternity to me. She never DID tell me what I had done wrong; when I finally worked up the courage to ask her, many years later, she said she couldn't remember. I was a bridesmaid in her wedding in 1958, and we stayed in contact and were good friends until she died from a sudden, massive heart attack on Memorial Day in 1997. With that one brief interlude, we had been friends for more than 50 years, and I realized after she died that some of the very best times we had together had been within the last 10.

Ginny's point about southerners reacting to "the slightest imagined slight" gave me a sudden flash of insight. Marion came from that southern culture, and even though she moved north at age 7 or 8 and grew up with the rest of us, her mother's influence was strong. I remember now that she often thought *I* ought to be offended by something someone else had said or done, which I hadn't taken personally at all. As close as we were, there was that cultural difference between us, and it was more than just the fact that she persisted in calling a dishtowel a "cuptaal." I knew she had reacted to a slight I hadn't intended, but it hadn't previously occurred to me that there was any basis for it other than what seemed to me an unreasonable tendency to take offense at nothing.

As long as Marion and I were friends, and as much fun as we had together in our later years, and as profoundly as I miss her today, I guess I never QUITE forgave her for that incident in 1953. Maybe now I can. I can blame her mother!!

Katie!. You made it! Welcome! I am so impressed with you! I don't understand how anyone can race through these tangled paragraphs! Three chapters! My word! Now, you just take your time. We have an ever-expanding schedule in Great Books...as long as it takes is our motto. You simply can't race through Chapter 6! Well, I take that back! Maybe you can!

Your point is well-taken from your endearing account of the misunderstanding with Marion. Don't you hate that - spending a lifetime trying to puzzle out the reason for a person's actions and that person just doesn't remember at all! I have about a half dozen unsolved mysteries on my slate... I don't lose sleep over them or anything, but every so often, I take them out and puzzle over them... I'm wondering if you and Marion had any more similar experiences - or maybe you caught on to the subtleties of the language? Cuptaal...I like that! I wonder if Ginny has learned that one...

There's a lot here in Absalom that will never be answered. And even if he were here to tell, WF would choose not to -(but more likely because he doesn't know or remember why he wrote it!) Maddening!

"Am I going to have to hear it all over again...I shall never have to listen to anything else but this again?"

Quentin, the Southerner asks this of Shreve, the foreigner...will anything but this War ever be talked about in the South...???Sue your post was right on! Your rat-a-tat-tat examples lead us right up to today with the march of 50,000 on the South Carolina capitol...the South still doesn't understand, just as old Sutpen still doesn't understand the flaw in his design...even after he has forced his son to kill his brother. He insists in his attempt to produce another "worthy"son. I've wondered why Henry is out of the picture. Henry could still give him the grandson with the Sutpen name. But Henry is a fugitive now...ironic- Sutpen loses his heir because he forces him to become the murderer of his first-born son!. Talk about biblical, Maryal! This is Absalom!

Why didn't he just tell Judith, and protect that precious heir of his? Why? Why? Because he would have had to tell Judith that her brother was...octoroon - like Clytie. Wouldn't that have been a wiser choice, though?

But he didn't. He told Henry.

"He knew what Henry would do and counted on Henry doing it because he still believed that it had been only a minor tactical mistake, and so he was like a skirmisher who is outnumbered yet cannot retreat who believes that if he is just patient enough and clever enough and calm enough an d alert enough he can get the enemy scattered and pick them off one by one. And Henry did it."

Does this sound familiar?

Sutpen asks Compson where he went wrong...when faced with the decision of what to do about Bon and Judith.... Grandfather tells Quentin

"He had never learned how to ask anybody for help or anything else so he would not have known what to do with the help if Grandfather could have given it to him."

I find this so very poignant...it illustrates just how much of a loner Sutpen is and has been all his life. He has no idea where he went wrong. He only knows that the grand design is not turning out the way he planned. Amoral, Charlie? His only moral code seems to be the grand design, doesn't it? His moral code will not permit him to remain married to his first wife. His moral code will not permit him to allow Judith to marry Bon. His moral code does not allow him to love. Who does he love? Henry, maybe? Nah, he wouldn't have used Henry like that if he loved him... He doesn't know what love is...Eureka!!! There it is! The flaw!

"Am I going to have to hear it all over again...I shall never have to listen to anything else but this again?"

Quentin, the Southerner asks this of Shreve, the foreigner...and it seems that this War will be continued forever in the South...Sue your post was right on! Your rat-a-tat-tat examples lead us right up to today with the march of 50,000 on the South Carolina capitol...the South still doesn't understand, just as old Sutpen still doesn't understand the flaw in his design...even after he has forced his son to kill his brother. He insists in his attempt to produce another "worthy"son. I've wondered why Henry is out of the picture. Henry could still give him the grandson with the Sutpen name. But Henry is a fugitive now...ironic- Sutpen loses his heir because he forces him to become the murderer of his first-born son!. Talk about biblical, isn't it? This is the story of Absalom!

Why didn't he just tell Judith, and protect that heir of his? Why? Why? Because he would have had to tell Judith that her brother was...octoroon - like Clytie. Wouldn't that have been a wiser choice?

But he didn't. He told Henry.

"He knew what Henry would do and counted on Henry doing it because he still believed that it had been only a minor tactical mistake, and so he was like a skirmisher who is outnumbered yet cannot retreat who believes that if he is just patient enough and clever enough and calm enough an d alert enough he can get the enemy scattered and pick them off one by one. And Henry did it."

Does this sound familiar?

I do not have the book but can understand Absalom as I seem to have read the story in the bible will have to check it out and I am keeping up on the posts and enjoying it all.

In the early 1960's I worked as a legal secretary for a small firm on Wall Street in New York City. I answered my boss's phone and screened his calls. In those days, bosses had their secretaries get their counterparts on the phone, so you had to call the person your boss wanted to talk to, and then play that little one-upmanship game with the other party's secretary. The secretary whose boss comes on the line first loses <G>.

Of course, we don't do that any more. We bosses have direct lines and answer our own phones. I got to be a boss in the early 1980's, too late to ever have a secretary who would screen my calls! (Now I don't even have a secretary. I have an executive assistant.)

Anyway, one day I got a call from a secretary with a broad southern drawl who said she was calling for "Mr. Daal." Dumb me, I asked her to repeat the name a couple of times and still didn't get it, so I had to ask her to spell it so I could tell my boss who was calling. "D-o-w-e-l-l," she said irritably. Well, of course, I knew Mr. Dowell perfectly well. And it occurred to me afterwards that I SHOULD have understood her the first time, because Marion had ALWAYS called a dishtowel a "cuptaal," and I knew what she meant!

that the South still doesn't understand. For accuracy's sake, let's agree that some people who live in the South still don't understand. I don't want to legitimatize their ignorance by identifying these unthinking, insensitive people as the South. I like to think the South is made up of lots of different people with differing ideas and behaviors. Some of us actually welcome change. We are not all Sutpens and Snopes. Sue

P.S. Charlie, I am not offended by Joan's post. I just want to clarify the language. Sue

Of course I should have chosen my words more carefully when dealing with this highly sensitive subject matter. And afterall, there were 50,000 folks out in the street yesteday in front of the capitol building...and I thought I mentioned all of those folks that you mentioned in your excellent earlier post, Sue, who understood over the past 100+ years since the war. I should have said Sutpen still didn't understand, or he would not have persisted with the young Milly to produce an heir...he already had Charles Bon's young son...
And there are still those in the South who are unable to accept the black man as equal...

Sorry...

Katie, am just amazed and grateful, thank you for that post, it made my day. Told my husband that it was so nice that somebody actually remembered something I said, and from November, too!! That made my day!

I am so glad to see you back!

Ginny

Joan, you mentioned something that I was wondering about too. Why did Sutpen leave it up to Henry to kill Bon? Why didn't he take care of the problem himself and leave Henry out of it? After all, he was the one who created the problem, so why should Henry have to resolve it for him? All he really had to do was tell Judith, "You can't marry him; he's your brother." Or else tell Bon, "You're my son; you cannot marry your sister." Bon himself said later that he would have gladly gone away and left them all alone if only his father had acknowledged him.

Ginny, I don't want you to get TOO much of a swelled head <G>. I didn't remember your post from November. I just read it for the first time yesterday, as I went back through the early part of this discussion in lieu of Cliff's Notes.

hahahah, Katie, trust me, for anybody to notice anything I said any day is a thrill! hahahahahaha

ginny

Katie - say, there's an idea. A SN Great Books series would blow Cliff Notes out of the water!!!

Chapter 7 - 1/19/00

I have been puzzling over this chapter for a long time. All through it Faulkner calls it innocence. I think a more appropriate, perhaps more harsh, word would be ignorance and the need to learn and grow to knowledge out of that ignorance. Up in the mountains, which was so apart and ignorant of how other people lived because of the lack of roads into the area, Sutpen knew only one kind of people and one way to live. When he came down out of his aerie. he learned that there were two kinds of people--blacks and whites. What made the difference to his 14-year-old mind was the difference in the color of the skin. Also that most of the whites owned property. That made them different from the poor whites who owned practically nothing. Most of the blacks were poor slaves who were not allowed education, which meant that there was no way out of their poverty. This kept them in dirt and squalor and below the level of the whites.

The whole chapter is devoted to the deep hurt inflicted on this young boy. It comes out of the very heart of the author. Knowing his background, as a result of study of biographical information, we can understand Faulkner’s swashbuckling attempt to raise own his image in the eyes of the community. However, in this chapter he puts his ideas into the mind of the young boy. At this early age, he decides to create the design which will give him the property that will make him acceptable to the other whites who wear fine clothes, ride elegant horses and live in fine mansions. How he get these things is unimportant. There is no concern for morality or the rights of others.

Is this not evidence of some of the problems of the South? Granted that there were and always have been Southerners, both blacks and whites, who deviated from the norm, but isn’t this what’s behind the battle for states rights and the insistence of the South to determine it’s own life and destiny. It is EDUCATION that’s needed to ban the IGNORANCE that Faulkner calls INNOCENCE. And it’s the demand for acceptance of the humane rights of others which is what is needed in the South, as well as in the rest of our country.

Charlotte

Lots of good ideas that I have missed. This discussion is way way above the level of Cliff Notes, and I think we should all publish it and get rich. Students prefer to wade through the turgid prose of Cliff Notes rather than encounter the real voice of the novel. I thwart them in their attempt to substitute for the real thing by having them write on topics that are not covered in Cliff Notes.

I think you're right, Joan, Sutpen knows nothing about love. He had a Design and a plan to make it come true, but a person is either convenient for his design or is not. He relates to people about the same way he related to that rifle owned by the other man.

Furthermore----Sutpen does not know how to ask for help. He is going to do it all for himself. People who can't ask for help are the most needy among us because they don't understand that they are a part of the human race. They also don't understand that most people really like to help another person if they know what to do. I don't know many people who would say no to a friend who said "Help me."

Notice also that somewhere way back--was it the first chapter, maybe the second?--Quentin's grandfather was referred to as the closest thing to a friend that Sutpen ever had.

Sutpen reminds me of the alcoholic who tells his wife to go away, and then his son, and then his daughter, and then his friend. One morning he wakes up all alone and says to himself, "Where did everyone GO?"

Maryal

I'm into Chapter V - trying to read the posts only up to that point! Just a few miscellaneous observations...

Long ago, in a galaxy far, far away (actually, along about Dec. 1), Charlotte said:

"I must say it’s difficult to swallow the use of the now banned N word, as well as the bigoted attitude towards the blacks. But I guess we must overlook it as we overlook bigotry in the work of other great artists like Eliot, Joseph Conrad, Ezra Pound and even Shakespeare. These writers were , after all human, and subject to the mores of their time. It is left to us, who we hope are more enlightened, to see and perhaps overlook their failings."

I agree, but I would go farther. I believe Faulkner puts the "N" word in Mr. Compson's mouth, but as narrator, he uses "negro," which was as polite in his day as "African-American" is now. How could you write dialogue for these characters without using the language they would have used in real life? In fact, it seems to me that WF is extremely cautious in his terminology, considering when this was written. When he uses the "N" word, he's just telling it like it was. And I fear many of us would be shocked if we knew how many people (NOT African-Americans) still use it today, among themselves.

There is a lot of hooraw, every so often, about Mark Twain's use of the "N" word in "Huckleberry Finn." But that was the word Huck would have used, without the slightest intentional malice, just the normal language of his time and place. A major point of the story is Huck's recognition of Jim's essential humanity, a thought that would never have occurred to him if he hadn't floated down the river with the escaped slave. It is silly, and misses the point, to complain about Twain's use of the word.

As to marrying cousins ... I believe marriage between first cousins is legal in many states today, particularly southern states. Half-brother and sister, I believe, would have been illegal anywhere, but is there anything morally wrong with it if the parties have no idea they are related? Yes, there is a genetic risk, but you can't help that if you don't know about it.

My late husband's grandparents emigrated from Norway in 1879 and settled in Wisconsin. His grandmother's first husband was a fisherman who was lost at sea before their daughter, Trina, was born about 1873. Then she married my husband's grandfather, Peter. When Peter and Anna decided to come to America, Peter refused to pay for Trina’s passage, and Anna refused to go without her. The problem was solved when Anna’s brother, who also was coming to America, offered to pay for 6-year-old Trina’s passage with the understanding that when she grew up, she would be his wife. Trina did marry her uncle when she grew up, and we keep in touch with some of the cousins who are their descendants. It was a source of humor in the family ... Aunt Trina was her own children's first cousin, because they were her uncle's children. And you can go on and on.

So ... the south is not the only place in the U.S. where people married their relatives!

Maryal, is this a snow day for you? I think you are off today, anyway, aren't you? Isn't it lovely? I've left the Christmas lights out on the azaleas for the snow...and this morning it was worth the wait...to see them twinkling out there on tufts of white snow..it was so quiet...muffled and peaceful. Lovely.

...Yes, I agree, Sutpen could not accept help from anyone. Because he didn't understand love or friendship. Without understanding love, you can't give or take anything without suspecting the motives of others! He had no friends or lovers...Compson was as close to a friend he had...and Quentin repeated that as recently as Chapter 7..."Grandfather was the only friend he had." When you mentioned that friendship, I knew I had read it recently and went to look for it in Chapters 7 & 8. Don't you just hate trying to find something that you read in these pages? Near impossible...I almost gave up, but it jumped out at me on p.286!

The snow today reminds me that we are not in the South, but in the North in Absalom, and my thoughts are back in that Harvard dorm , above "the frozen empty quad"...the two boys staring at one another in that cold , tomb-like room where there was "now not two of them, but four, the two who breathed not as individuals now yet something both more and less that twins." Lst's look at this and the relationship between Shreve/Quentin and Charles/Henry, shall we?

Enjoy the snow...more is on the way this weekend...Sunday night! Maybe you'll get your "snow day" on Monday!

Katie whenever I see that "sunny San Diego", my heart misses a beat, as my fair-haired boy has transplanted himself to your part of the world in search of adventure and a fresh start. If you see him, you'll recognize the lost look in his eye, with his chocolate Lab at his heel...mention Robert E Lee to him and watch his face light up. The man has been a life-long hero to this Virginia boy...for his fierce loyalty to family and the State...not a thing to do with racism - he'd be quick to point out that the man held no slaves...as Grant did! RELee's birthday was yesterday...Oh, Andrew said he had to read Absalom in college and didn't like it...but added he never liked anything he had to read. This boy is a voracious reader ...and loves some of Faulkner's other works, especially Light in August.

You know, I never noticed that our omniscient narrator uses the Negro term...Thank you for pointing that out, Katie! The benefits of having someone in the rear guard, sweeping up and tidying everything we missed! I agree with you - the term, nigger as used here is a very important part of the story - and true dialog sets the scene, not only the language, but leads us right into the mind-set of the antebellum South.

On Monday, (MLK day and also the day of the march in South Carolina), I caught the end of a TV interview with an Afro-American man who passionately raved about the greatest writer our country ever produced, William Faulkner...and how his writing contributed to the understanding of the black cause. I thought that was very interesting and wish I had been tuned into the interview earlier...

About incest -
_ I think the fact that some Southern states permit marriage between first cousins has led to the belief that incest is also prevalent...

"Is it incest if the two do not know they are related?" That's an interesting question...I looked up incest and the definition indicates that incest is either sexual relations between relations not permitted by law OR by custom.

Henry certainly understood that relations between brother and sister were morally wrong...
"All his heredity and training(Methodist) had to rebel against this (incest) on principle."

Wow! His feelings for Charles Bon were that strong that he wanted Bon to marry his sister anyway. So much for his strong moral character. Do you understand the power of this attraction?

Now for old Sutpen, incest was not even an issue to be considered. His moral code was his grand design...which would not permit any man with a trace of tainted blood to marry into his family - to produce a grandchild...any more than he could have remained married to his octoroon and recognized Charles Bon as his son! Even if no one knew about it but himself!

Katie, I marvel at the way you are able to gallop through these pages! A warning, though! Chapter 6 is a BEAR!

s

"A warning, though! Chapter 6 is a BEAR!" Uh-oh. I think Chapter *5* is a bear. I liked Miss Rosa's narration in Chapter 1, but in Chapter 5 she just goes ON, and ON, and ON, only occasionally hitting a significant point.

At the point where I am in the book, none of the characters (other than Sutpen himself) appears to know that Charles Bon is his son. It appears that Henry killed Charles to prevent the marriage, not because of the incestuous relationship or Bon's 1/16 negro blood, but because of Bon's relationship with the octoroon woman in New Orleans. In other words, I haven't gotten beyond the "apparent" reason for the murder.

On the morality of unwitting incest ... rats, I'm having a senior moment here, what is the name of the Greek king who unwittingly marries his mother (HER name is Jocasta, I remember THAT) and is punished by the gods? In fact, we use his name to describe the sexual attraction between parents and children. And I know it perfectly well, it's just buried under something else on my mental hard drive <G>. But HE was innocent, in the sense that he had no idea she was his mother.

Katie---I think Chapter Five is the hardest one in the novel. After that, all is clear sailing for me, but there is obviously disagreement on this issue. I don't guess anyone will argue that this novel is easy in any chapter!

Maryal

Katie, I enjoy your digressions. I especially enjoyed hearing about your friend and her cuptaals. I've never heard that in my neck of the woods. My father, who came from New York, called them tea-towels; and my mother, who came from Louisiana, called them dishrags. Marion probably came from a more elegant family than I did. But surely you haven't forgotten the old Oedipus complex!

Shasta---No,no,no. We had both "tea towels" and "dish rags" in our house when I was growing up. The tea towels were used for drying dishes and the dish rag was used in the dishwater to wash the dishes. My mother was from North Carolina, my dad from Maryland so heaven only knows where they came up with the names!

Maryal

Yes, five was the bear! But it wasn't till Chapter Seven that I felt we were getting somewhere! Katie, there's another reason, beyond the octoroon wife, beyond the incest problem that Henry cannot tolerate the marriage...will wait for you!

Charlotte, you've had me thinking about the difference between INNOCENCE and IGNORANCE...and I have to admit I 'm not coming up with much!

I do see that education, a presentation of facts, can take away one's innocence...one's lack of awareness that a situation exists...but don't see much progress to date - over 100 years later - of education over "ignorance", if that is indeed what is causing the South's deep-seated resentment of Northern domination and desire for states' rights...How can education change that? Who are the educators? We need to talk!

If Chapter 7 explains Sutpen's "innocence", Chapter 8 presents Charles Bon's. Surely it is innocence that leads him to believe that Sutpen will acknowledge him, even privately? Shasta asks the two really important questions here, I think...

~Why wasn't Sutpen able to acknowledge his son - even privately?
~Why did he sacrifice Henry, his heir, his only chance to accomplish the grand design? Did he really believe that Henry had it in him to do the deed?

RE: Innocence and Ignorance----If you think about it, the two are closely related. We call young children "innocent," but really they don't know very much and thus are not compromised with knowledge. Innocent is a much better thing to be than ignorant, though, perhaps because the opposite of innocent can be guilty. But I think that Sutpen's "innocence" was really a lack of knowledge about anything very much beyond the hills of West Virginia. In other words, he was ignorant.

Sutpen cannot acknowledge Charles Bon as his son because he has settled that matter. In paying off his first wife, he has closed the books on that part of his past. Remember this is the man who walked away from his family when he was 14 and never saw any of them again.

The thing I have always wondered about is how on earth Sutpen learned--after his first wife had the child--that she had a touch of black blood from somewhere or other. She certainly looked white. We know that Charles Bon looked white since he was a student at the University of Mississippi and could not have been admitted had he looked black in any way. We never find out what Sutpen found out about his first wife or how he found out. I figure that someone would have to have told him. But I cannot figure out who would do that.

Maryal

Oedipus, of course! Thank you, Shasta!

Joan and Maryal:

I think Ignorance is a much harsher word than Innocence. I think WF's choice of innocence is a weakness on his part. He did not want to be too condemnatory.

I'm off to look up both words in the dictionary to be sure.

Charlotte

Okay, here it is from my Webster.

Innocence: Freedom from guilt or sin through being unacquainted with evil. Blameless.

Ignorance: The state or fact of being ignorant
Ignorant: Destitute of knowledge or education

I stand by my original claim that WF was being easy on the sins of the South.

Charlotte

Maryal...yes, I agree, Sutpen can not acknowledge his son. That would admit the flaw in his grand design...to which he dedicated his entire life. No! He must preserve what he has...and act to prevent Bon from destroying that plan.

So we are told, he plays his trump card. He gives Henry the information that he is certain will cause Henry to stop the marriage. In this, it seems Henry is a true Sutpen - Henry, who has been able to this point to accept the incest, will find intolerable the idea of mixing blood & the possibility of Judith's child/children with Bon's tainted blood. But does he think that Henry will go so far as to kill him? I cannot believe that! That would doom Henry for the rest of his life and put an end to the grand design! And why did Henry kill him, instead of telling Judith - or at least telling Bon that he was going to tell Judith!

Charlotte,

It was most likely as difficult for WF to face the shortcomings of his Southern upbringing and experience - as it was for Henry Sutpen. He is in total agony as he tries to grasp "what went wrong" in the South and explain it to Shreve - especially in Chapter 8! Shreve has to jump in and help him, to the point where he actually begins to tell the story - more objectively than Henry is able. It is difficult for Faulkner, but he seems to be attempting to face the errors, but the best he can do is maintain innocence! Keep in mind that this was written over 50 years ago - and this was considered to be quite a breakthrough in the thinking, the attitudes in the South - What might seem "easy" to us was not "easy" for this Southern writer...it seems to me!

You feel the solution is education. Let's go back to Faulkner's time...early 1900's - and think about that. Who would have been his teachers? The South has not come near recovering from the War. Bitter resentment toward the Northern "conquerors" and the freed blacks, constant reminders of the destroyed system that had driven the economy and provided for their very existence. Who were the teachers that would overcome this "ignorance"? Northerners? Or bitter, discouraged Southerners? More than likely, the teachers were bitter discouraged parents. Education is an easy panacea from where we sit today looking back in time...No, I don't think Faulkner went easy on the South when you consider when and where he was coming from!

Absalom, Absalom - Chapter 8

It’s the last two chapters where everything becomes clear. They are the most compelling of the entire book. Rosa’s story is driven by bitterness, Mr. Compson retells what he has learned from his father. It is for Quentin and Shreve to find out what actually happened.

It’s difficult to discuss this without revealing the denouement, but I’ll try. Bon was willing to marry Judith in order for his father to acknowledge him by telling him that he, Bon, is his son and therefore cannot marry his sister.

Henry’s attitude is reverse. He is willing to go along with incest, but considers that allowing anyone with a drop of negro blood into the family is the greater evil. He believes this is why he must kill Bon. We learn here also about the lawyer who was managing the octoroon’s affairs--his manipulating the money to his own advantage. We also learn of the playboy existence led by Bon which led him to college belatedly at the age of 28, which meant that his seniority and sophistication made him an object of adoration by 18-year-old Henry.

It is here that Faulkner quotes the Absalom story, which explains that Sutpen realizes “it wasn’t going to be the old man “who would have to pay the check,” but his sons who should do the paying, because that’s the way it was done in the old days.”

We also learn here that it was Henry not Bon who was injured in battle. And we are told of Bon’s heroism in carrying Henry on his back to safety.

And here in Bon’s words, Faulkner gives us the most searing statement of what happened to the Confederate army that I have ever read:

“It won’t be much longer now; and there won’t be anything left; we won’t even have anything to do, not even the privilege of walking backward slowly for a reason, for the sake of honor and what’s left of pride. Not God; evidently we have done without Him for four years, only He just didn’t think to notify us; and not only not shoes and clothing but not even any need for them and not only no land nor any way to make food, but no need for the food, since we have learned to live without that too; and so if you don’t have God and you dont need food and clothes and shelter, there isn’t anything for honor and pride to climb on and hold to and flourish. And if you haven’t got honor and pride, then nothing matters. Only there is something in you that doesn’t care about honor and pride yet that lives, that even walks backward for a whole year just to live; that probably when this is over and there is not even defeat left, will still decline to sit still in the sun and die, but will be out in the woods , moving and seeking where just will and endurance could not move it, grubbing for roots and such--the old mindless sentiment undreaming meat that doesn’t even know any difference between despair and victory.”

What I still don’t get is the pursuit of the architect whom Sutpen didn’t pay for two years. Can anyone explain this?

Charlotte

Charlotte--I agree. The last two chapters are where it all gets very exciting indeed. By this point Shreve is really drawn into the story and keeps wanting to tell it, to have control over it, to make it make sense. Notice that Shreve invents the lawyer who is is managing the money. I also love the very end of the novel where Quentin reveals his own ambiguity. But I won't ruin it.

The French architect scene serves two purposes, It think. It allows Sutpen to have some time to talk with Mr. Compson (grandfather) and it provides comic relief. If you read it again, I think you will see the comedy--all these men hunting down that little architect with dogs. And he leads them on a merry chase before they finally get him. It's like a poor man's fox hunt. It's also a reversal of the story of the escaped slave who is hunted down. Here the slaves do the hunting.

Maryal

Someone said much earlier, was it you Sue - that the 20 wild Haitian natives and Sutpen could not possibly have had any architectural know-how to build Sutpen's grand mansion...(with the big impressive front door)...To me, that idea emphasizes the key role of that poor architect in the realization of the Sutpen design. He had to stay till the thing was completed. There was no money to pay him. He was a prisoner and must not be allowed to escape. Yes! Comic relief! I remember thinking at the time that the scene would lend itself to film. Now, did someone say earlier that there has been a film version of the novel? Once we finish reading the novel and know what really happens (or think we do)...and that time is coming soon...it might be fun to see how it was produced on film!

Charlotte! Why do you think that murder was the only option that Henry had??? Is that what old Sutpen thought would happen when he played the race card and revealed it to Henry? Did he think that Henry would murder Sutpen? That he had it in him to murder him? Or did he think that Henry would take the information and act to make Bon leave???

...not to get off the motivation questions, and not to belabor the point, but...

What exactly are we talking about when we talk about the "sins of the South"? Slavery? Slavery was and is an abomination..but it wasn't really a Southern sin, was it? Sutpen, Henry...Faulkner...Southerners were all left puzzling in the devastation about what went wrong...It's not a simple answer, I don't think.

The South had slaves, the North had slaves...it was a commonly accepted practice at the time. Perhaps EDUCATION could have intervened...Churches - the pulpit could have pointed out the abomination against humanity that was commonly practiced. Did they? Maybe. But slavery continued, nevertheless.

More slaves in the South than in the North...well, yes, it had an agrarian economy, so it made sense that there were more slaves in the South.

But the War was not about slavery when it began. The war began to preserve the Union...the South chosing secession rather than submit to the increasing demands from the industrial North - rising tariffs in particular. That's what the South was fighting for. That's what the South lost...liberty.

Slavery was a common practice in the country before the War - Delaware, Maryland, Virginia - all had slaves. Ulysses S. Grant kept slaves. (Robert E. Lee did not.) It wasn't until two years after the start of the War that the Emancipation Proclamation was issued...the North determining that the Southern economy depended on slaves...Now the South was continuing the fight for the right to secede from the North, but also fighting on the morally indefensible slavery issue.

What were the "sins of the South"? How were they different from or worse than the slaveholders of the North? Only a small percentage of the Northerners kept slaves? Only a small percentage of the Southern population were slaveholders.

Not trying to argue or restart the war...just trying to understand, as were Faulkner and Henry...where did they go wrong?

I'm almost through Chapter VII and have spent the morning catching up on your posts up through that Chapter. I can't tell you how grateful I am for Charlotte's and Nellie's analyses.

One comment from a ways back ... I, too, like the repeated image of Ellen as butterfly. At some point, some narrator (I forget which one) compares her to a Beardsley print. That gives us a vivid picture of her. Here's a link to some Beardsley drawings:

http://www.glyphs.com/art/beardsley

Joan, I disagree with you about the origins of the Civil War. While slavery was not the ONLY issue, by any means, it was in fact the MAJOR issue. There was no slavery in the North. Slavery was illegal in the northern states, and the slave states were anxious that as the nation grew, they should not be outnumbered. You may recall the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which admitted Missouri to the union as a slave state and Maine as a free state at the same time, coupled with an agreement that the Louisiana Purchase territies be divided between slave and free at the latitude of 36 degrees 30 minutes. The question was re-opened with the admission of Texas as a slave state in 1845, and the acquisition of vast territory in the Southwest as a result of the war with Mexico in 1846. Southern senators barely defeated the Wilmot Proviso that would have excluded slavery from all territory acquired in the Mexican war.

In 1848 there were 15 free states and 15 slave states. The South could block, in the Senate, any threat to the legality of slavery; but if only free states were admitted in the future, the South would become a helpless minority. When Lincoln was elected President, the southern states knew they had lost control of the national government, and that slavery was doomed if they stayed in the union. So they seceded. Of course, that didn't necessarily mean war; the North could just have let the southern states go their own way. But northerners argued that allowing the breakup of the Union would ultimately lead to complete disintegration of the federal system. So Lincoln maintained the federal garrison at Ft. Sumter in Charleston Bay as a symbol of federal sovereignty ... and the Confederates attacked it, setting off the war.

Tariffs were an issue, but they divided parties and interest groups in both North and South. There were advocates of industrialization and protective tariffs in the South, and millions of farmers who supported low-tariff Democratic majorities in many Northern states. If the issue had really been tariffs, some of the midwestern states would have joined the South.

The importation of slaves became illegal in 1808. If Sutpen brought his "wild negroes" from Haiti, he did so in violation of federal law.

MacKinlay Kantor, a civil war historian who wrote the wonderful novel about the Andersonville prison, in 1960 wrote a little book entitled "If the South had Won the Civil War." It might be a predecessor or harbinger of the "what if" approach to history that has gained some academic acceptance in recent years. In Kantor's "what if" scenario, slavery falls of its own weight and is outlawed in the Confederate States of America in 1885. North and South (and Texas, which splits off as a separate country after the Civil War) begin reunification talks in 1960.

Here's some food for thought about the "sins" of the south ... this comes from an entry in the "Reader's Companion to American History," edited by Eric Fonar and John A. Garrity. The civil war discussion was written by James M. McPherson.

"What explained the growing Northern hostility to slavery? Since 1831 the militant phase of the abolitionist movement had crusaded against bondage as unchristian, immoral, and a violation of the republican principle of equality on which the nation had been founded. The fact that this land of liberty had become the world's largest slaveholding nation seemed a shameful anomaly to an increasing number of Northerners. 'The monstrous injustice of slavery,' said Lincoln in 1854, 'deprives our republican example of its just influence in the wold -- enables the enemies of free institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites.' Slavery degraded not only the slaves, argued Northerners opposed to its expansion, by demeaning the dignity of labor and dragging down the wages of all workers; it also degraded free people who owned no slaves. ....

"Proslavery advocates countered that the bondage of blacks was the basis of liberty for whites. Slavery elevated all whites to an equality of status and dignity by confining menial labor and caste subordination to blacks. 'If slaves are freed,' said Southerners, whites 'will become menials. We will lose every right and liberty which belongs to the name of freemen.' The fear that emancipation would degrade whites to the level of black slaves explains why most of the Southern whites who owned no slaves (70% of all whites) supported the institution. They agreed with slave owners that slavery must be allowed in the territories, for such expansion might increase their own chances of acquiring slaves."

Think of Thomas Sutpen, as a young boy raised in the "poor white" milieu of the mountains, turned away by a black slave at the front door of the planter's home and told to go to the back. The idea that blacks must be kept down so that whites have somebody to be better than runs very deep in some segments of American society -- in the north, it should be said, as well as in the south, but probably more pervasively in the south. As Gilbert & Sullivan observed in "Gondoliers," "When everybody is somebody, then nobody's anybody!"

I think william Faulkner believed that in this country, humankind had a new chance---America was the new Eden--and all they had to do was take care of the new land and not commit major sins. I think he saw what we did to the Indians as well as the whole system of slavery as major sins, committed by all Americans, not just Southerners. Let's not forget that there were Northerners involved in the slave trade and most white people mistreated Indians, lying to them, signing false treaties and so forth. There is also the sin against the wilderness which you see most clearly in Go Down, Moses.

Maryal

Katie Jacques:

Thanks for your great, discussions of the history. Also: I especially enjoyed the link to Beardsley. He was really a great artist. Too bad he died so young at age 25. I have some of his drawings from his Art Nouveau period, glued up on sections of a glass-cabinet door and have been looking at them for more than ten years. (My very considerate painter did not even damage them when he repainted the door.) Unfortunately the link gives only a hint of the AN style, but it is really lovely. All curves, as opposed to Art Deco which was geometric and and straight lines. Of course I didn't use any of his priapic illustrations, which were quite shocking in his time, as well as in ours.

Sutpen's design was to make up for his experience of rejection by the black slave at the white man's door. I think he failed because he didn't realize what he was doing when he did the same thing, but in a far more serious, tragic manner. In rejecting his son, Bon and perhaps unwittingly turning other son Henry into a murderer, he lost his chance of building a dynasty. All he was left with was his property, his hundred acres and his home filled with carpets and elegant furniture. Then the war took all that away.

Charlotte

Charlotte, yes! Thomas Sutpen based his plan on what he observed of the Southern way-of-life when he came down from the mountains of West Virginia. He thought this was the world order, as it was widely accepted. In a way, it was! I think we are getting a bit closer to the reason the disclosure of the trace of Negro blood in his wife and son was incompatible with Sutpen's plan to acquire respectability...

But it still takes quite a leap to understand why the miscegnation was worse than incest to Henry. The strength of his feelings, his love for Charles Bon and desire to have him marry into his family was so strong that he was willing to go against his moral convictions and commit this great sin in order to keep him in the family. But to allow him to marry Judith knowing of his ancestry, his octoroon mother was as unacceptable to Henry as it was to his father. And Henry was never turned away at the door by a black man...in other words, he was never traumatized as was his father. Henry was simply the result of his background and experience...and this mixing of blood was such a threat and abomination - far worse than the sin of incest! He would have to give up his dream of having Bon in his life - and this need to eliminate Bon was stronger than his feelings for him.

But why did he have to kill him? Why not simply tell Judith? Because he knew that it would not matter to Judith, perhaps? Did he fear that Judith would marry Bon anyway? Would she have - from what we know of Judith? Or did Henry promise his father not to tell her? I sense that it was the first...

Or was it a crime of passion? Did he realize that it was up to him to stop the marriage but he just couldn't imagine life without Bon and the only alternative was to kill him?

I think we, like Shreve, have enough information here to answer some of these questions - but even if we don't, we certainly come closer to understanding the depth of passion centering around the racial issue . .

Henry is more difficult for me to understand than old Thomas Sutpen...

Katie, I really don't think that the young Thomas needed a place in the pecking order at this point...I think this was his "innocence" - that he had never stopped to consider one people superior to another, until he experienced the condescension by the black servant. Hurt pride? Being treated as if he were trash...by someone with dark skin, when he had seen the white masters over legions of dark-skinned people in the field? He's beginning to form a way of thinking that will take away his innocence of the fact that skin color does not determine a man's worth. He's beginning to think like the white landholders of the North and the South since the beginning!Maryal, your mention of Indians brings to mind the fact that the only "colored people" young Thomas had ever seen before coming down from the hills, were Indians..."and you only looked down at them over your rifle sights!" He did learn something about non-whites in the beginning then. They were uncivilized and less than human, and therefore, were not to look down on him. That attitude was to prevail.

I am not surprised that Thomas Sutpen brought in the "WILD", (uncivilized, less than human)negroes illegally from Haiti. Everything he did was to fulfill his life's ambition, the grand design...and that almost always meant illegal or immoral...his ...It was all for the "cause"...those Sutpens who went before and yet to come...

Shreve listens to all that Quentin knows and then takes it from there, filling in the blanks. Katie, I was attempting to be a Shreve and look at the South that produced a Sutpen, a Henry and a Quentin...just as Shreve would have done- back then...when things were not as morally clear as they are today, nearly a century and a half later! And the "sins" of the South, which many Southerners to this day will deny - they can defend in as much detail as the writer of historical fiction will interpret the Northern viewpoint,..that this "War Between the States" was not about slavery, but the desire for economic independence (which did happen to include the right to keep their slaves). They really believe(d) that!!! Most of them did not hold slaves and nowhere is it clear that those who did not had plans to own slaves themselves. But they knew their own way of life was being threatened by the richer North, determined to squash their economy. Quentin believed that too - which made it difficult for him to understand exactly what went wrong with the South's "grand design."

No, I didn't mean to say that the North still kept slaves at the outset of the war...did I say that? The states to the north, (but south of the M-D line), the border states of Delaware, Maryland and Virginia...who voted against Secession, and thereby remained part of the Union, were allowed to keep their slaves throughout the war...the Emancipation Proclamation only pertained to the slavery of the Confederacy. That's what Shreve would have heard from Quentin, that would have explained Quentin's and the South's difficulty in comprehending where they "went wrong". It was not clear that it was wrong to keep slaves. Since when, they would ask? It is the Sutpen story that is forcing Quentin's awareness of the flaw of the design, the South's design, that is.

Have you ever heard it said that to many in the south, the war is not over...this is merely a lull in the battle? Those same Southerners who resent the north would not dream of wanting to reinstitute slavery, but they still deeply resent and dislike Northerners righteous attitude of superiority!

Well! I finished the book this morning, about 5 a.m. And I have read all the posts in the discussion up to this point. So I have caught up, finally!

In fact, I guess I'm ahead for the first time, since it appears we are still on Chapter VIII.

Perhaps now is the time to bring in "Slaves in the Family," journalist Edward Ball's report on his research into the origins and descendants of the slaves that were owned by his ancestors on rice plantations upriver from Charleston, SC. One point he makes is how terrified the outnumbered whites were of their black slaves. I think that accounts for a lot of the passion of Southerners, whether slaveowners or not. Whites who did not own slaves (a large majority of the white population) were just as fearful as slaveowners of a general Negro uprising.

You are right, Joan, that not all the slave states joined the Confederacy, and that the Emancipation Proclamation did not free the slaves in the states that remained in the Union. Areas of the South that were occupied by Union forces at the time also were not covered. However, slavery was abolished everywhere by the Thirteenth Amendment just two years later, in December, 1865 (after the war).

Slavery did exist in the Northern states at the time of the Revolution, but had been outlawed in all but the Southern states by 1804. It was probably on its last legs everywhere, ironically enough, at the end of the 18th century, but was revived in the South by Eli Whitney's invention of the cotton gin. That removed all doubts of the economic value of slavery in the South.

It's obvious, too, that the northern and western territories/states in many ways treated people of color worse than the Southerners did. One of the defenses of slavery is that unlike industrial workers who are cast out when they are sick, injured, or aged, slaves were cared for and protected for their entire lives, not only because they were valuable property but because they were in a very real sense considered part of the owner's family. The North doesn't have a lot to brag about when it comes to treatment of people of color.

Going back to Chapter VII for a minute ...

I know it has been discussed before, but I can't figure out the story of the death of Thomas Sutpen at the end of Chapter VII. From something earlier in the book (which now I can't find ... wish I had the text in electronic, searchable form!), I thought Sutpen had killed Milly and the baby, before Wash killed Sutpen with the scythe. But as Quentin tells the story, Wash killed Sutpen and then WASH went back into the cabin and killed Milly and the baby, while the sheriff waited outside with Sutpen's body.

What am I missing?

Katie! You have finished! That is super.... I'm working on another project, but we are due to finish Chapter 9 and the book this week!

Don't you just hate to search for something in this book? This is the first of the Great Books we have read that was not available on-line...and the first where we really needed the abilitity to search the text! What happens to me when I'm looking for something, I start re-reading whole passages...and keep coming to the same conclusion. I've got to read this book all over again...and watch for the clues and bits of important information I failed to pick up on during the first reading!

My memory tells me that Sutpen made the snide remark about the mare in the stable and turned his back on Milly and the baby - and Wash killed her right before he was being taken away for killing Sutpen? Will check later...we've got to get everyone in on this final week! A party out in the barn at Sutpen's Hundred!

Katie---Congratulations for catching up. I am working on memory here, but I believe that Wash Jones kills his daughter and grandaughter. Sutpen rejected Millie because she did not have a son. If she had had a son, he says, like his prize brood mare did, he would have given her a home, and presumeably, his name. Wash completely loses it, kills Sutpen with a scythe and also the daughter and baby.

Pat----oh, yes, it is very hard to find anything in this novel. I have a wonderfully marked copy that I teach from--and will check the Wash Jones stuff in on Wednesday--and EVEN THEN it is sometimes hard to find a particular section.

Maryal

In today's Montgomery Advertiser there is a short article about William Faulkner's home, Rowan Oak. The state of Mississippi runs it as a museum, but it is badly in need of repair due to moisture inside the home (We all have mildew problems down here).The cost of the work could run to $1,000,000. So far the state has only coughed up $500,000. His daughter has threatened to remove the papers to Virginia to save them, but apparently is waiting to see if this first $500 thou and the promise that the legislature will come up with more soon. What a Pity. Sue

Sue, shall we start a SN collection toward saving Rowan Oak? It's funny you should mention it because I have another old newspaper article...from the book section of the Washington Post...Ambrose Clancy became a pilgrim, visiting writers' retreats and then wrote this article on five of them. One was Rowan Oak..a nice photo of the study room....here's what Clancy said about it...

..."set in acres of old woods on the outskirts of Oxford, Miss. Built in the 1840s - a good example of Southern aristocratic architecture, the kind of house a well-to-do planter, with ideas about columned Greek temples would design. Here Faulkner moved in 1931 to pursue his dual obsessions: creating literature and living in the 19th century...('in Faulkner's best work the tense of hope is always in the past'.)
The monolithic heat in a place of cotton and soybean fields, kudzu and 'alluvial swamps threaded by black almost motionless bayous and impenetrable with cane and buckvine and cypress and ash and oak and gum' allows you to understand the inspritation for that magnificent thicket of a style that the readers of the world cherish.
Inside it was dark, airless, claustrophobic. It seemed the place was not well cared for. But upstairs in the half-light of the author's study, a small group of people smiled in wonder at something written on the wall. It was the plot of A Fable that Faulkner had put there to keep track of his novel. There were two young Frenchmen happily whispering, a couple of Russian scholars taking notes, and a young woman from Louisiana and her 10 yr. old daughter, both tracing, as if it were tomb hieroglyphics, the authors list of characters, scenes, dates.
It was easy to see why we were here. We were paying respects, expressing gratitiude, Outside was the landscapte magically made legend and here, in this room, was where it had been done."

The recent snowstorm here has delayed our discussion of Chapter 9, the final chapter! I do want it to be something special as we come to the end of a remarkably unsettling, thought-provoking novel...and man. Will be working on it and sending out special invitations to a barn dance at Sutpen's Hundred this week. What? NO! The barn didn't burn did it? So? Y'all come!

Earlier Maryal_O said "Shreve is really drawn into the story and keeps wanting to tell it, to have control over it, to make it make sense." Shreve, the outsider, the Northerner.... Isn't it interesting that the "outsiders" among us approach this story with much the same sort of desperation to make sense of it. The same sort of desperation that Charles the Good felt in his need for recognition. The Southerners among us smell the wistaria a little more immediately, perhaps...

Faulkner's continual use of the four then the two then the four and so on - this Charles-Shreve and this Henry-Quentin is certainly fascinating...coupled with the time leaps that are made throughout Chapter 8...coupled with the scene shifts from North to South. Faulkner is up to some magic here and again I sense an inevitability (in the frozen December ruts) about the destiny which was preordained by the acceptance of certain patterns (like the "absolute caste system"). “So that now it was not two but four of them riding the two horses through the dark over the frozen December ruts of that Christmas Eve.”

I'm tunin' my fiddle...

Did anyone else see the program in the PBS "Culture Shock" series on "Huckleberry Finn" last night? It was very well done, and thought provoking. Should the book be allowed as REQUIRED reading in public school literature classes, considering the persistent use of the word "nigger" and, perhaps even more disturbing, the stereotypical portrayal of Jim in the early part of the book?

I have always thought the objections to use of the book were just silly. The whole point of the story is Huck's gradual recognition of Jim's essential humanity, and his acceptance of Jim as a person like himself. For a "white trash" boy of his time and place, that is a powerful epiphany. One could not tell the story without using the "n" word and portraying the slave as he would have been seen by Huck and his contemporaries.

And yet ... when a young girl says "It's not just history, I hear that word at school every day" (and obviously it's directed at HER), I can't just write that off. (That girl, as I recall, was in a class that read the book and liked it in the end, but she was explaining why she had a lot of trouble with it in the beginning.) And the woman who was arrested for appearing at a school board meeting to further protest requiring of the book -- I can't say her feelings are not real or important.

Anybody else see it? What did you think?

No, Katie, didn't see it. "It's just history" is how such attitudes appear to many - the same as the War..Just history. So why not get on with it?

But history lives on..in all of us - in varying degrees, of course. As Charlie points out - "The Southerners among us smell the wistaria a little more immediately, perhaps..."

There was one passage that struck me in Chapter 9

"...they had to use picks to break the earth for the grave yet in one of the deeper clots...an earthworm doubtless alive when the clod was thrown up by afternoon it was frozen again."

Frozen, but still alive...

I have a question about that letter...was this burial in the frozen earth supposed to be in the South...or North? Or anywhere?

Katie---I didn't see "Culture Shock" but I will look for the rerun. Our PBS channels (we get three) will have it on the schedule somewhere, I'm sure.

I have taught Huck Finn, but I am a college teacher and I hit the language problem head on and in the beginning. We talk about the word "nigger" and its use through time. Generally there are several black students in the class. We also talk about people who are black using the word themselves and how that is OK, but it is definitely not OK for nonblacks to use it. I encounter the same problems when I teach Faulkner.

I think that Huckleberry Finn probably should not be taught before ninth grade. At that point I think the kids are old enough to understand history and changing customs. I also have some doubts as to whether all teachers will know what to do with it. But that is pure speculation.

Maryal

We did see this program last night and found it slow, but fascinating. I can understand the feelings of the mother of the young girl, but I feel that she didn't really understand the novel. There is no excuse for banning it as required reading. It can be well handled by a sensitive teacher at a higher grade level.

A similar situation occured in Cherry Hill, N. J. Here the parents and the school got together and resolved their differences. The book was not removed from the curriculum, but it is taught with compassion.

For further details on the case, go to the PBS website and click on Culture Shock.

Milt

I felt sorry for this young, single mother who was trying to do the best for her child, but if she is a teacher as she says, something has been lacking in her education.

As the black novelist, David Bradley, said on the program:

"If the word 'nigger did not have meaning today, we wouldn't care if it was in Huckleberry Finn. The hurt is that it still does have meaning. The hurt is that what happens in the playground is reflected in the book, not the other way around."

The reporter who noted this says that Bradley makes what may be the most crucial distinction in any discussion of banned work. Art that reflects social injustice and vile behavior is not the cause of it. That distinction is still conspicuously missing from most recent discussion of violent movies and video games. Mr. Bradley's observation leaps out of the flat surface of "Culture Shock" like an epiphany.

Charlotte

My important message about the state of the South after the Civil War seems to have been lost, so I will type it in again:

p. 364 in my book:

Bon says to Henry ‘It won’t be much longer now and then there won’t be anything left; we won’t even have anything to do left, not even the privilege of walking backward slowly for a reason, for the sake of honor and what’s left of pride. Not God; evidently we have done without him for four years, only He just didn’t think to notify us; and not only not shoes and clothing but not even any need for them, and not only no land nor any way to make food, but no need for the food since we have learned to live without that too; and so if you don’t have God and you don’t need food and clothes and shelter, there isn’t anything for honor and pride to climb on and hold to and flourish. And if you haven’t got honor and pride, then nothing matters. Only there is something in you that doesn’t care about honor and pride, yet that lives that even walks backward for a whole year just to live; that probably even when this is over and there is not even defeat left, will still decline to sit still in the sun and die, but will be out in the woods, moving and seeking where just will and endurance could not move it, grubbing for roots and such--the old mindless sentiment undreaming meat that doesn’t even know the difference between despair and victory.’

Hello all: first let me say how much I enjoy reading what everyone has to say about the book, and about the Southern states in general. Second, let me apologize for not participating that much. I find for me that this is a hard book to discuss -not necessarilly because of the subject matter - but more because of the way it is written; it is so hard to find a piece of writing back again. I usually have the book with me while I post, to refresh my memory on what I want to talk about.

Not to say that I do not enjoy the book. I think it is beautifully written, and to me filled with pictures rather than words. Reading Absalom is more like going to a movie than just reading a book.

Just a thought on Sutpen's 'wild negroes': they are the total antithesis -if that is the right word- of the black servant who sent the young Sutpen to the back door; the former are naked or dressed in scanty rags, the latter is dressed in neat broadcloth, and is possibly better dressed than many white men. I wonder if Sutpen is using his 'wild negroes' to illustrate to all and sundry of how he thinks things must be as far as the different races go? Or is it simply revenge?

There is the tale of what happened to Sutpen in Haiti during the slave uprising there, and how they -the slaves- tortured him; and because he survived the pain came to admire him. So perhaps his 'wild negroes' are not slaves at all? Perhaps they are with him because in some way they want to be with him?

Just a few thoughts. I'm still poking along in chapter eight -have a few pages to go...

Ah Nellie, so glad you could make it to our grand finale, our barn dance, perhaps a barn-burning before we are through! We can always count on you for a different angle! Yes, Sutpen does seem to be a breed apart - not your typical Southern plantation owner. Everything he does is unorthodox...he doesn't seem to play by the old rules at all. Yet the fact that he brings these dark-skinned people to work on his land- whether they want to be there or no, puts him into the same category as the others...and he must pay nevertheless. Innocence?

Listen to this! BC On-line is discussing now the prospect of reading two books by an author. Would any of you be interested in reading two more Faulkners? Maryal can you suggest two easier works by WF that might appeal to the general readership?

Or are you ready to pack your bags and leave YOKnapaTAWpha County behind for a while?

If so, how about some Steinbeck or some F Scott Fitzgerald - Shaw!!! I think it would be fun to take a breather and join in BC ON-line with one of the GReat Book authors next...what do you think?

Charlotte----I love the passage you have typed for us. Such description of how the losers felt as they "walked backwards", watching always for the enemy as they retreated. The reference to God and having "gone without Him" for four years is, I think, an allusion to Gen Robert E. Lee and his belief that God would decide the outcome of the war. Whichever side won, Lee believed, would be "right."

Nellie---I really liked what you said about reading this book being more like watching a movie. I think of it that way too, as full of pictures that stick in my mind, sometimes moving, sometimes still. I see over and over that scene of Henry and Charles riding up to the house, for example. There are many others.

Maryal

Hi Joan---We are here at the same time

Maryal, do you know if Absalom is available on film? I agree...this book is so full of visual moments...it would lend itself to filming. But perhaps it would be too controversial today?

Charlotte, your post#367 contained the passage that you typed- on Jan. 21. Not lost! We took good care of it!

It's even clearer in Ch. 9 that to Shreve “it's something my people haven't got” and to Quentin, well, Quentin can still “taste the dust”. Always the reminders, the South shall rise again, save your Confederate money boys....“always reminding us to never forget”.

Included among those reminders are the “one nigger left”.

“Of course you cant catch him and you don't even always see him and you never will be able to use him. But you've got him there still. You still hear him at night sometimes.”

We read of Quentin, but I can see Faulkner telling us this story, Quentin imagining the events just as Faulkner imagines them. Telling it one way, then another. Looking through a window at the South - whether it be a window in a dream or an actual window at Quentin's bedside...or “the window's pale rectangle upon his eyelids”. It begins to emerge...“It began to take shape”.

“The South,” Shreve said. “The South. Jesus.”

Joan---I don't think it was ever made into a film although I believe Faulkner sold the film rights.

And the South, why do you hate the South?

I don't! I don't hate it! I don't!

Nope. Like Maryal_O said. No Absalom, Absalom!!

TODAY WE LIVE (1933)...Adaptation of Turn About

THE STORY OF TEMPLE DRAKE (1933)...Based on Sanctuary

INTRUDER IN THE DUST (1949)

THE TARNISHED ANGELS (1957)...Based on Pylon

THE LONG HOT SUMMER (1958)...Based on The Hamlet

THE SOUND AND THE FURY (1959)

SANCTUARY (1961)...Based on Sanctuary and Requiem for a Nun

THE REIVERS (1969)

TOMORROW(1972)...Based on the short story

Also
BARN BURNING (1980)...PBS, Based on the short story

Absalom could be big, done right! Bigger than Gone with the Wind! All you need is Leonardo di Caprio as Quentin! Hahahaha!

So, why does Shreve ask Quentin why he hates the South?

Hi All:

I find it helpful to note the pages on which I find special passages I want to come back to. But I searched for the one for the post, which I eventually had to retype, or more than an hour. The problem was that it was in the body of a post and did not immediately stand out. I think in future it might be a good idea to record the number and date of the post and possibly a word or two about such a significant post as that one.

AS for reading more Faulkner, I think THE SOUND AND THE FURY might be a good one. It is more poetic and once you get the idea of the stream of consciousness technique, easier to read. Also, it predates AA and shows where Quentin is coming from.

Charlotte

Clinton said it last night in his State of the Union Message. I believe that's the way this country is going. It is the only solution when the common humanity in all of us is recognized and accepted whatever the color of our skin or original country of origin.

He also said there will come a time when the whites will no longer be a majority. As for who will lead us: I have an adopted bi-racial grandson. He's brilliant, handsome and no idiot.

Charlotte

Well, I finally found the beginning of the letter that Quentin finishes reading at the end of Chapter IX. It's a letter from his father that he begins reading at the start of Chapter VI. It is Miss Rosa's burial he is describing, and it takes place in Mississippi. It DOES freeze in Mississippi in the winter, after all. (Check today's weather reports!)

I bought a volume of Faulkner novels written from 1936-1940, which includes AA, "The Unvanquished," "If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem," and "The Hamlet," which is the first book in the Snopes family trilogy. I'm already 2/3 of the way through "The Unvanquished," which is much easier reading than AA. It's about the adventures of Granny, the indomitable mother-in-law of Col. Sartoris (remember, when the men of Jefferson went to war, Sartoris was elected colonel and Sutpen was second in command), Sartoris's 14-year-old son Bayard and his slave buddy Ringo, and other members of the Sartoris family and their slaves at the end of the war. Granny in this story is also called "Miss Rosa," which is a little confusing. Obviously she is NOT Rosa Coldfield. She's a great character.

I'm not sure why Shreve thinks Quentin hates the South. Also, I see in the list of characters at the end of the book that Quentin died in Cambridge in 1910 (the year he and Shreve reconstructed the Sutpen story), and someone earlier in this discussion referred to Quentin's suicide (which is not disclosed in AA). Mary, Charlotte, Nellie, Charlie, help me out here. What is it that drives Quentin? The Sutpen story doesn't seem to be a "typical" southern story; Sutpen was different from other planters, and he and his family were destroyed primarily because of his own flawed grand design, and not because of anything inherently Southern. Except, of course, that the world Sutpen tried unsuccessfully to create was a Southern ideal. Was he doomed by the ideal itself? Is Quentin doomed by that ideal? After all, his only connection to the Sutpen family (that we know of) is that his grandfather was Thomas Sutpen's first, and perhaps only, friend in Jefferson. Does Quentin feel responsible for the Sutpens in some way, and if so, why?

Katie----Will write more later when I'm not at school. But basically Quentin protests too much----I dont hate the South, I dont, I dont. Yes he does and himself and his legacy. In chapter one we are told that Quentin feels that he himself is a barracks for all those dead Civil War Soldiers.

Maryal

How about Pinsky's great new translation of Dante's Inferno? I also recall that there is a new translation of Beowolf which just won an award. Does anyone recall any comments on Beo.?

Charlotte

Seamus Heaney just won The Booker Prize for his translation, Charlotte - the controversy being that it beat out Harry Potter books by one vote

Charlie:

Glad to hear from you. Thanks for the info. Seamus Heaney is a great writer. It might be worthwhile tackling him or Pinsky's Inferno

By the way, I put a new poem in the poetry folder, so far no comments. Please look in there. Maybe we can get that folder started again.

Charlotte

I want to thank all those of you who contributed their thoughts as this book was being read...I hope to reread the postings and follow it along as I slowly make my way through Absalom...it truely is a bit hard for me but the postings were such a help! Why do I continue to attempt reading this selection you might ask...well, I am a dumb Swede who likes to stretch my mind at such things...maybe others would choose crossword puzzles...Also many thanks for that poetry reading site...it was a delight to hear the poem actually read over the computer...maybe quotes from books being read could also done???? It is wonderful to hear the actual readings....Take Care! Ann

A few words to Charlotte...the poems are lovely, the Frost and the Pinsky! ...the whoop of the sea!" I'm off for a few days on the beach and will take that with me to memorize and tell to the sea! I haven't felt like memorizing anything in some time!
I have another poem and need some help...Keats on First Viewing the Elgin Marbles...will link it to the Poetry discussion this afternoon...

Ann, so glad you could make the dance while we are all still gathering. Do finish the book! After next week you can find the archived discussion by scrolling to the bottom of the Books & Lit menu page - the discussion will still be open to comment. Just send up a flare if you need help...I think there's a lot of good information within the posts. No matter we'll look for you in the next GB discussion!

Today I am putting the link in the heading of this page to begin the selection process. Will leave the voting chart up from last time for a bit, so you recall where we were at that time. Chollie we have so much to thank you for. I think it helped tremendously that we did the Faulkner biography before we tackled Absalom! Imagine where we'd be if we had to figure where the author was coming from, along with all the other time and narration concerns we were struggling with! Thanks from all of us, Charlie!!!
It sounds as if BC On-line is interested in reading two works by a current fiction author - When is that vote to take place? I've been watching that before consideration of our next Great Book selection. If any of you would like to get in on that, and nominate two books by one author, please click here. If an author considered "Great" (with a capital "G" is selected, we'll all meet there for that discussion in March. If not, we will begin our selection process for the next candidate.

Reading Seamus Heaney's new verse translation of Beowulf interests me .....Will put that idea in the nominations department...

BUT we do have little time to finish up our Faulkner discussion and a bit of unfinished business before we burn this barn.......

Joan - Hope to finish with ideas and nominations of authors by 2/6. Then hold a vote on WHAT AUTHOR the group would like to read (it won't necessarsily be fiction). Then we'll all select the first book for March.....enjoy the beach!!

One more time - an editorial from the Washington Post last week...

A Confederate National Flag
The controversy surrounding flying the Confederate flag in SC shows the best and the worst of both sides of the story...
For 135 years the Confederate flag has been subverted by racists to endorse their bigotry. Not being of African (or Southern) descent, I can only attempt to imagine the feelings that must occur within that community when an image that has come to represent slavery, repression and the denial of basic civil rights is displayed.
But to brand all those who view this image with reverence as being racist is also offensive. Only one in 16 southerners owned slaves at the outbreak of the Civil War. The rest fought to escape a government that imposed high tariffs on the import of manufactured European goods (needed by an agrarian South) and that had a regional voting bloc that imposed laws that benefited the North.
Most southerners fought to execute what their state constitutions had in their charters prior to agreeing to join a "United States of America" - including the right to dissolve the Union any time they chose to do so. Slavery did not trigger the initial hostilities and did not become the defining issure of the war until President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in January of 1863.
Perhaps a compromise could resolve this emotional situation. The South had three national flags during the Civil War, as well as a "battle flag." Many Civil War reenactors fly the original Confederate national flag (the Stars and Bars). This symbol is used to remember the southern heritage without invoking the racism attendant with the battle flag.
Adopting the Confederate national flag could allow one side to remember its heritage, without inputing racism to the other.

Isn't this Faulkner's message in this final chapter? A message of hope that one side will recognize the painful side of slavery, of bigotry and move to avert it, that the other side will recognize the "innocence" of the South, and how hurtful it is to the South to be accused of racism then - and now?

The alternative? Nevermore of peace! Nevermore! Nevermore!

Shreve, the Canadian, the outsider, the non-Southerner is trying to understand - I think we non-Southerners have to try in the same way! "We don't live among the defeated grandfathers, freed slaves and bullets in the dining room table. Is it anger? Pride and glory in the past?"

Quentin answers that you have to come from the South to understand the postBellum "amazement"...but as he tries to explain to Shreve, he becomes more and more confused, facing up to the flaw in the design, seeing the morally indefensible position the South found itself fighting at the end...

Maryal for once I'm going to disagree with you - but not the first teacher I've ever disagreed with! I don't believe Quentin hates the South. I believe he is finally viewing the war more objectively, seeing the results of racial bigotry, realizing the wrong...and is reacting to that - with shock and amazement, but not hatred. Not hatred.

Joan-----Don't mind disagreement at all. I'm used to it

I think when I read Quentin's denial, I always have The Sound and the Fury in the back of my head. Quentin commits suicide at the end of his freshman year. I think some of his trouble was not just with the promiscuity of his sister Caddy and his impotence in saving her but also in the heroic code of the Old South which haunts him and which he cannot live up to.

Have a great time at the BEACH. What beach? Where? May I come?

Maryal

We're off early Friday morning for a few days in Florida, <Maryal...and when we get back, you and I shall have our tea! Unless the ground is still covered with this slippery stuff! You are really getting it this year, aren't you?

Some last words and a few more questions before this fascinating book goes up on the shelf - with all the associated memories. I find these books that we live through together here are very, very special to me. Joyce, Hardy, Dickens, Shakespeare, the Pearl Poet, Homer, gee, who am I leaving out? And now Faulkner! I feel I know these authors personally now - not to mention the wonderful new friends whose minds and hearts come shining through in your posts! I love you all for your open-hearted sharing that makes for such rewarding experiences here!

And to think that we have been fortunate enough to have with us this time someone who is intimate with the author! Maryal, I'm about to ask the question that has been forming through the last several chapters...

I didn't know of Quentin's suicide because he could not handle life in the post-bellum South. I associate Quentin directly with Faulkner...so here's the big question to you, to all of you! >

Did William Faulkner HATE the South?

Maybe the classic love-hate relationship Joan...I think that the ghosts were resented as too demanding.

Chapter 9 - Absalom, Alsalom 2/1/00

It is difficult to wind up this chapter, as well as the end of the story without revealing too much of what happens to those who have not yet read it. Certainly this was a difficult book but that is why we study it together, to help ourselves and each other try to understand what the author was trying to do. James L. Roberts who was the author of Cliff’s Notes says:

“If the difficult sentences retard the reader * * *they are supposed to. It would be dangerous to go too rapidly into the story. If the sentences surround you and envelop you and entangle you in the story, this is Faulkner’s method of making you become a part of the story. And before long, the reader becomes accustomed to the style and becomes , as does Shreve, one of the narrators or one of the participants.”

Shreve who is Canadian and therefore, neither involved with loyalty to either the North or the South, is the narrator who helps Quentin finish the story and come to some conclusion about his own feelings and responsibility for what happened in the South.

In telling Sutpen’s story, Quentin sees that no man can build his legacy by repressing the humanity of others. And in the larger context, he understands that this what happened in the South. It is true that there were other issues like trade and states’ rights, but certainly they were of less importantance than not allowing the blacks education, personal advancement, keeping them in poverty and building an economy based on their labor. And constantly reiterating that because of the color of their skin, they were an inferior race. If you continue to tell people that they are incapable and unable to accomplish anything for themselves, what does that do to the rights of individuals to strive to build a better future and improve the conditions under which they have to live.?

Quentin like Faulkner has been raised and nurtured in his love for the South. He is ambivalent and confused. In telling the story of one individual, Sutpen, he sees that Sutpen’s story may be told many times over and may be responsible for what happened to the South. “I don’t hate it. I don’t hate it. I don’t hate it.” he says. But we know that his continued repetition of the words shows he’s trying to come to some conclusion about his own feelings and his allegiance to his past.

Throughout the book, I found references to Faulkner’s in-born prejudice against blacks and women. This is something none of us can escape when we are raised by adults who hold such beliefs and inculcate them into the tabula rasa with which we come into this world as innocent children. However, this does not deny that Faulkner is a great writer. He, like Joyce, sees the evil, leper-like attitude that exists in the society in which he grew up. They could write about it, but there was very little they could do about it. Perhaps that is one of the reasons both were turned to drink. But all is not lost for those of us who read and think about Faulkner’s work , as well as that of Joyce. Their work will stand forever to expose hypocrisy and inhumane treatment in a cruel, uncaring society, as well as to show the effect on sensitive, thoughtful individuals who question why such attitudes and behavior is allowed to exist.

Joan---Have a wonderful and warm time at the BEACH. And we will have to get together when you get back. I'll think of you lying in the sun or walking in the water.

I think Quentin had a love/hate relationship with the South and I think Faulkner did also. Faulkner lived in Mississippi most of his life but he was set apart from it. Needless to say, the townspeople of Oxford didn't think much of some of the scandalous material he wrote. But there is love there too. In Sound and the Fury, Quentin remembers going home for Christmas his freshman year, how he knew he was home when he heard the first black man say "Christmas gif!" He has been up north with Blacks like the man called Deacon who meets incoming Harvard students at the train station and hooks up especially with the Southerners. Deacon is not like the blacks he knows at home.

Anyway, it's a complicated question, but Quentin lying there in the cold New England dark seems to be trying to reassure himself that he does not hate the South (in addition to loving it):

"I dont hate it," Quentin said, quickly, at once, immediately; "I dont hate it, " he said. I dont hate it he thought, panting in the cold air, the iron New England dark: I dont. I dont! I dont hate it! I dont hate it!

Charlotte Hiya.

One more thing--I find it fascinating that this novel which has had so much repetition in it ends in repetition. Sort of a perfect ending.

Maryal

Yes, a love-hate relationship! Exactly it! Poor Quentin, poor Faulkner poor everyone who finds out that the beloved parent one would die for - has faults. For all the wonderful, lovable characteristics, there is something that is not perfect! What does one do? I don't hate my father! I don't! I don't! But...

It seems to have been quite a difficult struggle for the post-War to come to terms with the New South...over-run by Yankees telling them how morally corrupt they were! I read it took nearly 100 years for the South to lift its collective head with any degree of pride. I'd love to hear from some Southerners on this...on how it is today? Still dusting the bullet holes in the dining room table?

Maryal:

Right you are about the repetition. I love it too. I just wrote a message about present day relationships between blacks and whites, but it just disappeared. I'll have to come back later--too upset that what I wrote just got wiped out.

Charlotte

Charlotte! How is this happening to you? It isn't the first time that you have spent time on posts only to have them disappear! Here's what I would do until you discover what is going wrong - first write the post on notepad or on your Word processor - then SAVE IT - then copy and paste it into the message box. If it gets lost, all you have to do is paste it back in again...

I am fascinated by the warnings Faulkner puts forth in this final chapter, especially:

"they had to use picks to break the earth for the grave yet in one of the deeper clods I saw a redworm doubtless alive when the clod was thrown though by afternoon it was frozen again"

The frozen earth...the South with invasive Northern cold...and the redworm doubtless alive - frozen perhaps, but still there...

Joan, you asked how it is with Southerners today. I've said before that I'm not a good spokesperson for the South, since all this regional nonsense bores me. But I do live in the South and have lived here for most of my life, so I suppose I ought to know something about it. The South is no different from any other place. Bigotry is alive and well everywhere. It seems to be a built-in condition of the human psyche. It flared up with special intensity in the South because of a certain set of circumstances that arose here. It does not die down as it ought to because it continues to be a flaw in the human species. I find it deplorable, but the human animal has a lot of flaws in its nature, and this is one of them. I never think of bigotry as a Southern problem; I think of it as a human problem, just as I never think of myself as a Southerner, but as a human being. We waste our time trying to figure out what is wrong with the South. We have to study human psychology and find out what is wrong with the human species.

Thank you so much Shasta...that needed to be said! From a Southerner. I think Maryal said much the same quite a few posts back...Do you think that Faulkner is saying that? The "amazement", the loss of innocence he's talking about - the universal condition, the response when people (you, me, all of us) realize an in-born prejudice, or feeling that they are in of superiority to others - whether education, language, cultural ...without even realizing it until they confronted with it. Innocence and then - amazement!

February 5, 2000

We don’t want to start the Civil War all over again, but we might find some parallels in Absalom, Absalom, as well as how Faulkner feels about the South. Certainly the devastation wreaked on the South was unforgivable, as the process of war, itself is unforgivable. What is to be gained by killing people, burning homes, preventing the ability to work and produce food, devastating governments and infrastructure. The process continues, even today in Europe which is assumed to be the bedrock of civilization.

Keeping this country together as a single unit, which allows for individual states rights was of primary importance. It means that we are so much stronger than the broken territories of Europe with their separate languages, currency, laws and governments. We are a polyglot society which draws peoples from all over the world and accepts individuals whatever their race, religion or national origin. They are given the opportunity to work hard, raise themselves into the middle-class and become significant figures in our political system. They are coming to us in droves. And it is what is making this country the most important power in the world.

We can see the ambivalence in Faulkner. Raised in the South, he is inculcated with the manners and morals of the South, but he sees the evils that were propounded by repressing another race. He knows about the laws which forbade blacks from learning to read so they can educate themselves and rise within society. He learned that families were torn apart by selling individuals to other distant owners, with no opportunity for reconciliation. He knew of the warm relationships between some whites and blacks, but also of the cohabitation and sometimes rape, which produced a mixed race like no other group which has ever existed before. (In South Africa, for instance, there is no such mixing of races. The blacks live in their own townships, commute daily to their work in white areas and return to their homes at night.)

In our South, it is true that the blacks lived in poor, probably dilapidated cabins on plantation property, but they spent much time in the big house, were surrogate mothers to the children, had their own places within the big house and were permitted to express and implement their own opinions into family activities.

Sutpen’s grand design failed because he assumed that his needs were primary. He refused to acknowledge the needs and humanity of other individuals. Isn’t that what was the basis for the repression of the blacks? Money also was an important aspect of the problem. If a human being is classified as property which an owner has paid to procure, it becomes important to maintain his investment. But even more significant was the fact that the South was an agrarian economy which required the labor of vast numbers of people to keep it viable and healthy.

What happened to Judith, Clytie and Rosa at the end of the war shows that human beings and especially women, who though they had nothing, were able to work together and build a fruitful. sustainable life for themselves. Yet nothing could wipe out the bitterness and hatred within Rosa which still persists between some whites and blacks today. We are still unable to conquer the attitudes fed to us in our innocent early years when all the adults around us were such knowledgeable sources of intelligence and authority.

So it is Rosa who started the story who now ends it. The last chapter is full of fear and forboding and Rosa and Quentin embark on the journey to find the secret of what still exists in the house which now appears abandoned and in a state of disrepair similar to what has often existed in the cabins of the blacks. Quentin, himself, expresses the ambivalence which must also be that of Faulkner. It is a love-hate relationship, which cannot deny the love and support experienced in his early years. Yet, the knowledge gained with maturity makes him hate the structure on which it has been built.

In the last paragraph before the end of the book, Shreve says: “I think that in time the Jim Bonds are going to conquer the western hemisphere.” We must not allow ourselves to accept this obviously racist statement. Survival of the society into which we accept immigrants from countries throughout the world requires freedom to work and to better one’s self. We need to learn to accept differences in others. And EDUCATION is of primary importance

Charlotte