Absalom, Absalom!

示された表紙と同じ本を受け取りました。嬉しかったです。ありがとうございます！

Appalling print quality. Impossible to read. No way to enjoy. Cheap publication cutting corners with print costs.

My title is controversial, I'll admit, but after close consideration of the other major candidates (and I don't exclude great novels that have come to be considered unworthy of academic "canonization"), and after teaching it (or attempting to) on three separate occasions, this is not only the Faulkner work but the single American novel that remains in tenaciously ensconced in consciousness, continually vibrant, informing the reader about him or herself as well as American history past and present. But even on the two occasions when I taught a class that "seemed" incapable of staying the course, students continued to remain attentive, practically insisting I tell them the story through a teacher's "translation." Also, Faulkner's short story "Wash" can be very useful in conveying the fate of Thomas Sutpen in concise, clear terms that do no serious injury to Faulkner's narrative idea and thematic purpose, especially in the novel's last half. The following analysis is necessarily dense and a trifle abstruse, at least initially, for an author whose primary "ostensible" subjects are language and race, but if the reader simply approaches the story as a good yarn--perhaps with the aid of a bare-bones break-down or outline at her side-the novel should prove highly accessible--admittedly difficult at times, but it's an "earned difficulty," repaying the reader many times over for the investment of time and work (I've never subscribed to the notion that reading literature has to be "fun." Moreover, it's hard for me to believe that those readers who complain about the "Absalom's" difficulty have as yet tackled the work most often used to represent Faulkner--"The Sound and the Fury.") As physical beings we exist in that spatial-temporal order designated as "nature." But as humans we also exist in an exclusive realm of "consciousness," which might be described as a vast, collective energy field made up of the signs, i.e. "language," by which we try to make sense of existence. This field is beyond the grasp of any of us, not only its vast and oceanic proportions but its dynamic, protean flow resisting ownership by a single instance of consciousness. Perhaps one individual has tapped into this immense reservoir more completely, directly, and vitally than any other--William Shakespeare. Who else even comes close to harnessing the stream and containing the flood long enough to permit the rest of us some sense of its unlimited potential? Despite the Bard's uniqueness as the fountainhead, the matrix, the mother of modern Western consciousness (I tend to agree with Harold Bloom's assessment on this point, at least), a handful of succeeding language-bearers have proven capable of tapping into the same source. In American literature, and certainly literature of the 20th-century, Faulkner is the chosen one, the Promethean genius who affords the rest of us an opportunity to ride the stream. As a preceding reviewer has suggested, there's no way to summarize "Absalom, Absalom!" without misrepresenting it. The "themes" are the mere toeholds Faulkner offers to readers who try to mount the surfboard and stay with the churning, changing syntax and shifting referents of his 500-word sentences long enough to reach the beachhead. Even getting thrown (which is inevitable on many of the more torrential tidal waves) is, to say the least, a heady if not visceral and energizing experience. Despite the unique achievements of "As I Lay Dying," "Sound and the Fury," "Light in August," and "Go Down, Moses," this is Faulkner's most impressive and most rewarding novel. It's likely to frustrate, but don't quit on it. It's capable of paying more dividends than perhaps any other American literary work. Compare Faulkner's story about Thomas Sutpen and his "Grand Design" to any similar stories about the "American Dream"--by Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Wolf, Steinbeck--or to any of the subsequent writers said to be "Faulknerian" in their style. The others are suddenly diminished, and the singular achievement of this Southern, uneducated, probably possessed, alcoholic becomes all the more remarkable. in many respects, Faulkner's narrative structure is closer to Orson Welles' in "Citizen Kane" than that of his literary contemporaries or forbears (though Browning's "The Ring and the Book" adapts a similar technique of gradually exposing what is true through ever tighter circles drawn by a succession of different narrators). Most of us would do well to write more simply and concisely ourselves and to bring suspicious minds to verbiage that seems disproportionate to its actual content and meaning. But there's no need to be suspicious of Faulkner's story or storytelling style. Simply trust it. The style and meaning are a match, a perfect fit. Faulkner's meanings about the tragedy of a "grand design" gone wrong become significant because of our underlying sense of one that is going right. As others have pointed out, the novel can be read as an allegory of the rise and fall of the Old South. But it's at least equally absorbing in its probing into the recesses of individualized human consciousness. Much has been made of Faulkner's psychological portrayal of Addie Bundren through her sole monologue in "As I Lay Dying." But it quickly pales when compared with the unexpected yet exquisite and supremely rewarding journey into the psyche and heart of Rosa Coldfield, who is suddenly transformed from caricature into a woman of infinite complexity, possessing depth commensurate with her heart's capacity for desiring. As for the novel's heart, it's as big as its creator's--compassionate, humble, loving of all creatures born equal under God. A key question posed by the story is: what is the difference between the "illegitimate" offspring of a white plantation owner/black slave relationship and the "despised" child of an octoroon? The answer to that question is one of the novel's great epiphanies, a moment in which the reader recognizes his own place in the narrative and is one with Faulkner's world. It's an insight that is better "earned" than explained. After seeing so many of Faulkner's characters paralyzed, crippled, and destroyed through stubborn, incestuous adherence to the pure and abstract ideal of achromatic "whiteness" (not simply Southern supremacists like Sutpen and Old South reactionaries like the Compsons but Northern Puritans like Joanna Burden), the reader suddenly apprehends Faulkner's profoundly simple moral lesson: "blackness" is humanness.

Complex but very rewarding. If you can work your way through and beyond the first chapter the effort brings rewards, and a second reading brings yet more. Southern Gothic at its best.

Mon premier Faulkner. Un style bien à lui mais un grand écrivain. l'histoire de la reconstruction d'une histoire, celle d'un homme, construite autour du témoignage de différents personnages. Très bien écrit, facile à lire (par contre lire avec un 'ternary rhythm').