Very likely the most important American writer of the 20th Century. At least the first half of it. Ranks alongside the greatest writers of that period; Proust, Joyce, Broch, Woolf, Musil.
Very likely the most important American writer of the 20th Century. At least the first half of it. Ranks alongside the greatest writers of that period; Proust, Joyce, Broch, Woolf, Musil.
He is called the Southern Joyce, that was what caused me to shun him. There is only one Joyce and there is only one Proust. All the rest are cheap imitations.Originally Posted by Morten
"The farther he goes the more good it does me. I don’t want philosophies, tracts, dogmas, creeds, ways out, truths, answers, nothing from the bargain basement. He is the most courageous, remorseless writer going and the more he grinds my nose in the sh1t the more I am grateful to him..."
-- Harold Pinter on Samuel Beckett
I have two books by Faulkner, but from the way people here talk about him, I must say that I'm quite intimidated to read him.
I'm the patron saint of the denial,
With an angel face and a taste for suicidal.
Hi, and hello.
I just wanted to mention, that I don't recall Faulkner ever calling himself the southern Joyce.
That would be a statement made by a critic, a teacher, or some other person who was not the man itself.
Seems unfair to judge the work of a man who was considered by many as the greatest American novelist because of an appellation laid down by a third party.
Mostly, the term cheap imitation seems terribly unfair taking into account your self proclaimed lack of experience with his work.
Note: This is my first post. Hello to all.
Note 2.0: I'm not a huge student of Faulkner's work. Loved As I lay Dying and some of his shorts, but I'm by no means an expert.
Haha, how I feel your pain, the very same thing happens to me!
Faulkner is my favorite author of all time. His works are inspiringly beautiful and incredible. I have tried to read everything by him that I can, and have two collections of his short stories. I have also read a few biographies. He is THE MAN!
McCarthy was, in fact, inspired in part by Faulkner. McCarthy borrowed Faulkner's idea of being "above grammar," and he admitted that he considers The Sound and the Fury one of the best four works in literature (his favorite being Moby Dick). McCarthy used Faulkner's idea of writing out of a single image, and allowing the image to tell the story. Has anyone read The Road? Very clearly, he studied Faulkner's form, without chapters, quotations, just dialog. Parallels Quentin's section from The Sound and the Fury. The occasionally overlap in subject matter, but McCarthy took more from Faulkner's form and style than story or plot, or even characterization. Both are incredible writers.
Faulkner's work isn't too hard, depending on what you read. The Sound and the Fury can be infuriating, especially if you are just trying to read it without any extra material. But it can be done. Books such as Sanctuary and A Light in August are a little more straightforward. Reading Faulkner is like staring at a painting really up close so you can't see the whole picture, only the brush strokes, and slowly zooming out until you get the big picture. He paints with his words, so instead of reading the words you "digest" phrases and images and you are given an image. It can be a little intimidating at first, but within 30 pages you should have the hang of it.
Faulkner the man was pretty incredible too, and drank a lot, as everyone knows. However, he was strictly against mixing drinking with writing, since he considered literature a high career. He wrote sober, which is a common misnomer--a lot of people are under the impression he drank to unleash creativity, but he adamantly rebuked this notion. Instead, he drank to escape his financial/love problems, and wrote to ease his mind. It was like another drunkenness when he was writing. But he never mixed the two.
Even though Faulkner was pretty poor (bought too much booze, and then drank because he had no money) he never wrote for money, because he thought that this would dilute the importance of his work. The only novel he ever openly admitted was a "cash-in" was Sanctuary, but it's still pretty incredible. As a result, it's a bit easier to read, though VERY CREEPY.
Ok, I'm done with my rambling, but needless to say I LOVE THIS MAN.
"Memory believes before knowing remembers."
--Faulkner
So, you shunned him because he was compared to Joyce? That's odd. He is nothing at all like Joyce. There are parallels in style, yes, but that's it. He is not a Joyce imitation at all.
Just a word or two Miss Moose about Faulkner's attitude towards race would be in order. I agree,Faulkner is a fine, original, endlessly readable writer, but I do have misgivings over his views and presentation of race. McCarthy's work has some similarly questionable aspects: in his presentation of Native Americans, in his utter disregard of female significance to both personal and public history; and some of his Mexicans are suspiciously near to stereotype bandidos. However, Suttree stands apart and above all else he has published, a generous and warm novel rich in thought and compassion.
You're confusing author and narrator, dangerously I'd say.
Faulkner created narrators that used racial epithets for the purposes of realism and thematic issues. How could Faulkner discuss racial conflict in the south in the early twentieth century accurately and intelligently without using the language that was used in that time period. In terms of presentation of race, if you're faulting Faulkner because, normally, black people in his work are depicted as servants and as having little education, then you need to step back look at a broader context. Faulkner is not saying "All African-Americans are inferior to White Anglo-Saxons and I am depicting them as such", he is saying "Historical forces created a situation where a majority of White Anglo-Saxons erroneously believed themselves to be superior to African-Americans and this is the damage it caused." Faulkner consistently showed African-Americans as better than racist characters, such as with Dilsey at the end of The Sound and The Fury, where she is shown to be morally and ethically stronger than the Compson family.
It's the same with McCarthy. You say you have misgivings about his depiction of Native Americans in his work, but you need to see that works such as Blood Meridian were praised for depicting both White Anglo-Saxons and Native Americans as violent. McCarthy isn't criticising a specific race of people, he is criticising Humanity in general.
You're criticism of his glossing over "female significance to both personal and public history" is a bit silly. You could make the same criticism of nearly 90-95% of all the writers who have ever lived. Every writer is not obligated to discuss the role of women in human history. Some chose to do so because it interests them; others chose not to because they are interested in different themes. McCarthy's work is about violence and evil. Faulting him for not finding room to discuss the role of women more is being a bit pedantic.
In your criticism of McCarthy's supposed "stereotyping" of Mexicans, I'll again say you're confusing author and narrator.
Narrators, even if they are in the third person, can be a composite of social norms, beliefs, opinions, ideologies etc. found in the novel's setting and time period. If a narrator uses racial terms or stereotypes, that does not mean the author is inherently racist or bigoted. The author is framing an atmosphere where race is an issue and where the reader examine how it is discussed.
McCarthy constantly plays with the Western genre and with the stereotypes created as a result of it. He is trying to show us how stereotypes imprint themselves in our culture and how hollow they really are.
Faulkner did not create those racial epithets; McCarthy did not create those stereotypes: History and society did. And both these writers are not attempting to perpetuate those epithets, presentations and stereotypes. They are building a frame of commentary around these issues.
Last edited by Lambert; 03-25-2008 at 11:29 AM.
Beyond the author exist the culture and its ideology; Faulkner was a product of his time, place and its ideology - white aristocratic superiority with a genteel paternalistic outlook.
McCarthy is, unfortunately, an unreconstructed phallocentric.
Both are guilty of ignoring radical solutions; judgement of their negligence is absolute..if you're caught speeding, no excuse others were also.
That's complete relativistic nonsense, and you know that. The fact that you can't see an author and a narrator as two completely separate entities, and know that the latter is a carefully constructed rhetorical device moulded by the former, shows that you have no idea how to read literature.
I never got the impression that Faulkner was a racist. On the contrary, I've always seen his stories, particulary a novel like "Light in August", as being a commentary on racism in the Jim Crow era south.
*cough* Hemingway?
I've only read As I Lay Dying a couple years ago. I'll admit I had to resort to SparkNotes cause just reading it on my own I couldn't make head or tail of it; I just thought it was weird and confusing and made no sense, but when I read through the SparkNotes it became a lot clearer. If you're going to read Faulkner I would suggest reading it with some sort of guide that will point out the details and subtleties that you're going to miss (and you WILL miss them, sometimes you might even miss the entire plot and be completely baffled as I was) on first reading. I bought Light in August last week but I don't think I'll be getting round to it for a while, I've still got lots of other stuff on my list.
Last edited by superunknown; 03-25-2008 at 02:16 PM.
"In the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotine."
- Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
You shouldn't have any trouble with "Light in August". Faulkner doesn't use stream of conciousness or anything like that in that one. It's pretty much as straight-forward as anything of his that I've read.
Faulkner racist? Are you kidding. If anything he was anti-racist, and the fact that he donated a large portion of his nobel-prize winnings to support African-American scholarship funds proves you are, a) a mediocre reader, and b) a pseudo-political complainer who talks without the facts. That's like calling Harper Lee racist, or Mark Twain, or even Walt Whitman.
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