/lit/ - Literature

>>21456465
Agreed, and the fact they were comparing Cormac McCarthy to him is an insult to him.

>>21456465
Gaddis was born 100 and 1 day years ago.

>>21456465
what is there to like about him? as a euro, i don't get what's so great about his unsophisticated prose and shallow characters.

Why did he go to shit? He was mining pure gold for a while and then what? He get the writing yips?
>b-b-but The Reivers is good actually
Ok nerd.

>>21456520
>William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury

>American literature, it is often said, has two poles: the conscience-haunted and puritanically repressed novel of “bad” manners, represented by Nathaniel Hawthorne and culminating in James, and the wild and woolly frontier baroque, pioneered by Herman Melville (whose whale ought also to be here), that triumphed in the historical hungers and, far from manifest, destinies we find in Faulkner. His name ought properly to stand here in front of a fistful of titles: Light in August, As I Lay Dying, The Hamlet, and so on. The Sound and the Fury is a little too Europeanly experimental to be ideal Faulkner. Still, it was just this bridgelike quality to which I initially responded. If he wrote in the world of Joyce, he had to be all right. However, Faulkner wrote in another world as well, in the world of the old-fashioned (as well as the newfangled) epic, and his work has that sort of sweep: it is multitudinously peopled, as foreordained as film, as rhetorical as the circuit rider or the tent-pole reformer.

>Faulkner’s career illustrates another thought for the dark: you can take yourself seriously about only one thing at a time. When Faulkner began to take himself seriously as a thinker, his work as an artist precipitously declined.

From William H. Gass' "Fifty Literary Pillars." That last section, I think, addresses your question somewhat.

>>21456513
I only read Light in August, but how exactly are his characters shallow?

>>21456633
he's shitposting anon; we're two replies away from somebody mentioning Nabokov and the whole thread going down the toliet

>>21456465
Ugh he's so hot.

>>21456657
>I imagine that this kind of thing (white trash, velvety Negroes, those bloodhounds out of Uncle Tom’s Cabin melodramas, steadily baying through thousands of swampy books) may be necessary in a social sense, but it is not literature, just as the thousands of stories and novels about downtrodden peasants and fierce ispravniki in Russia, or mystical adventures with the narod (1850-1880), although socially effective and ethically admirable, were not literature. I simply cannot believe that you, with all your knowledge and taste, are not made to squirm by such things as the dialogues between the “positive” characters in Faulkner (and especially those absolutely ghastly italics). Do you not see that despite the difference in landscape, etc., it is essentially Jean Valjean stealing the candlesticks from the good man of God all over again? The villain is definitely Byronic. The book’s pseudo-religious rhythm I simply cannot stand - a phoney gloom which also spoils Mauriac’s work. Has la grace descended upon Faulkner too? Maybe you are just pulling my leg when you advise me to read him, or impotent Henry James or Rev. Eliot?

>>21456858
Nabokov was the OG shitposter. This stuff is fucking gold.

>>21456858
>She was the daughter of one of the ministers, the teachers, in the college. Like himself, she was an only child. He believed at once that she was beautiful, because he had heard of her before he ever saw her and when he did see her he did not see her at all because of the face which he had already created in his mind. He did not believe that she could have lived there all her life and not be beautiful. He did not see the face itself for three years. By that time there had already been for two years a hollow tree in which they left notes for one another. If he believed about that at all, he believed that the idea had sprung spontaneously between them, regardless of whichever one thought of it, said it, first. But in reality he had got the idea not from her or from himself, but from a book. But he did not see her face at all. Ha did not see a small oval narrowing too sharply to chin and passionate with discontent (she was a year or two or three older than he was, and he did not know it, was never to know it). He did not see that for three years her eyes had watched him with almost desperate calculation, like those of a harassed gambler.

Then one night he saw her, looked at her. She spoke suddenly and savagely of marriage. It was without preamble or warning. It had never been mentioned between them. He had not even ever thought of it, thought the word. He had accepted it because most of the faculty were married. But to him it was not men and women in sanctified and living physical intimacy, but a dead state carried over into and existing still among the living like two shadows chained together with the shadow of a chain. He was used to that; he had grown up with a ghost. Then one evening she talked suddenly, savagely. When he found out at last what she meant by escape from her present life, he felt no surprise. He was too innocent

>>21456858
The thing is, I can see where Nabokov is coming from, but he himself isn't that amazing either, and, toe-to-toe, Faulkner is just head and shoulders a better writer than him. To use another Gass quote:
>The funny, comical, side-splitting thing about Nabokovian thing is that Nabokov's novels are frequently formless, or when form presides it's mechanical, lacking instinct, desire, feeling, life (nostalgia is the honest bloodstream of his books, their skin his witty and wonderful eye); ... Nabokov's novels often, especially as described by Proffer and by Dembo's dozen, seem like those Renaissance designs of flying machines—dreams enclosed in finely drawn lines—which are intended to intrigue, to dazzle, but not to fly.
This perfectly (almost to an alarming degree) sums up my experience with Nabokov as a whole, and this experience was solidified when I dug into his series of lectures on other novels. Nabokov is too damn artificial; I read the books he lectured on and then read them a second time with his lecture as a guide, and he reduces all of it, every single book, to patterns. It's all patterns and designs to him. It's hard to describe but there's no life in him. It feels like he tried to bring literature closer to science, to set down some objective facts and measures against which books could be judged, but its all patterns and designs. Going back and reading his novels, especially his early ones, you see that even the emotional moments feel like they're on tracks; all the characters move on tracks, the plot turns and shifts exactly when he wants too. It's all illusions, and like Gass says, its dazzling and intricate and impressive, but it doesn't 'fly.'

>>21456465

>he doesn't know about me

>>21456858
>NOOOOOOO STORIES WITH LOWER CLASS CHARACTERS ARE NOT LITERATURE REEEEEEEE
God, he's so obnoxious.

>>21456916
I've always taken Nabokov's harsh criticism of obviously extremely talented writers as a subconscious recognition of and lashing out at writers who are better than him. Faulkner is a better writer in almost every metric, but he was also a relatively poor southerner who Nabokov likely looked down on

>>21456858
Wow based. Faulkner sucks btw, its good if there's never another writer like him.

>>21456465
Just train an AI with his books. It will be even better than the real thing.

>>21456465
He is out of fashion. His so-called "heir" is much more talented than he ever was.

>>21457481
Not a single post-Faulkner American writer is better than him.

>>21457492
You are just part of his groupie so you wouldn't know.

>>21457500
I have read lots of 20th century American books. Faulkner is America's Shakespeare.

>>21457508
Lmao.

>>21457523
cope

>>21457523
seethe

>>21457524
>>21457540
You are insulting Shakespeare.

>>21457544
Not true.

Why are Faulknerchuds so insecure?

>>21457549
Yes true. Shakespeare was a great stylist. Faulkner as a stylist is a forced meme by his groupie.

>>21457559
Faulkner masters both the human aspect and the technical aspect. He is great.

>>21457559
By the definition of the word, Faulkner is quite literally a prose stylist. Whether or not you think he was a good one is up for debate (he was)

>>21457566
>>21457572
>I have carefully read Faulkner's Light in August, which you so kindly sent me, and it has in no way altered the low (to put it mildly) opinion I have of his work and other (innumerable) books in the same strain. I detest these puffs of stale romanticism, coming all the way up from Marlinksy and V. Hugo - you remember the latter’s horrible combination of starkness and hyperbole - l’homme regardait le giblet, le giblet regardait l’homme.

>Faulkner’s beloved romanticism and quite impossible biblical rumblings and “starkness” (which is not starkness at all but skeletonized triteness), and all the rest of the bombast seem to me so offensive that I can only explain his popularity in France by the fact that all her own popular writers (Malraux included) of recent years have also had their fling at l’homme marchait, la nuit etait sombre. The book you sent me is one of the tritest and most tedious examples of a trite and tedious genre. The plot and those extravagant “deep” conversations affect me as bad movies do, or the worst plays and stories of Lenid Adreyev, with whom Faulkner has a kind of fatal affinity.

>I imagine that this kind of thing (white trash, velvety Negroes, those bloodhounds out of Uncle Tom’s Cabin melodramas, steadily baying through thousands of swampy books) may be necessary in a social sense, but it is not literature, just as the thousands of stories and novels about downtrodden peasants and fierce ispravniki in Russia, or mystical adventures with the narod (1850-1880), although socially effective and ethically admirable, were not literature. I simply cannot believe that you, with all your knowledge and taste, are not made to squirm by such things as the dialogues between the “positive” characters in Faulkner (and especially those absolutely ghastly italics). Do you not see that despite the difference in landscape, etc., it is essentially Jean Valjean stealing the candlesticks from the good man of God all over again? The villain is definitely Byronic. The book’s pseudo-religious rhythm I simply cannot stand - a phoney gloom which also spoils Mauriac’s work. Has la grace descended upon Faulkner too? Maybe you are just pulling my leg when you advise me to read him, or impotent Henry James or Rev. Eliot?
Not a single false statement here. Faulkner's grandiloquent prose itself may not be bad but his use of nonsense metaphors to convey what is unusually the plight of backward southerfolk comes across as overly emotional and makes him look like a chump lol.

>>21457601
>doesn't understand that the prose is meant to reflect the fall of the antebellum south, and decay from the grandiose to the dirty and gritty
Not gonna make it

>>21457601
>posts the same shit twice

>>21457641
>making up nonsense to justify
Not gonna work. South was never ever biblically grandiose, even before the civil war. It's exactly the delusion Nabokov hates.
>>21457650
Still no refutation.

>>21457710
>he doesn't know about the southern aristocracy
genuinely not gonna make it

>>21457728
>southern aristocracy
Oh yes, the world ruling ever relevant southern aristocracy! Bunch of gaseous wealthy landowners don't the chosen people make.

>>21456502
McCarthy is twice the writer.

>>21457879
>McCarthy is twice the writer.
Faulkner could write The Road and Blood Meridian but McCarthy could never write The Sound and the Fury

>>21457891
Faulkner could never imagine something like Blood meridian. The difference in prose and imagery is very accutely visible between the two. You would know if you had read it. Nothing to speak on the philosophical aspect whatsoever. Faulkner was never a thinker while that is one of McCarthy's main strengths.
>McCarthy could never write TSATF
*would never write TSATF.

>>21458010
>*would never write TSATF.
No. He would not be able to, because his prose is inferior to Faulkner's. It's as simple as that.

Faulkner is ultrakino, agreed

>>21458044
>his prose is inferior to Faulkner
Lol. His prose is so much better. The biblical cadence that is cringeworthy in Faulkner is magnificient in McCarthy. There is a reason McCarthy is regarded as a stylist much more than Faulkner is. Besides, TSATF is largely made of stream of consciousness, not descriptive prose you underread newfag.

>>21457891
Deranged opinion. McCarthy writes books over multi decade intervals poring over every detail. Faulkner shucked corncobs for fast cash if you get my meaning.

>>21458175
>Besides, TSATF is largely made of stream of consciousness, not descriptive prose you underread newfag.
No, you just didn't understand what I was saying there retard. If you're not aware, Sound and Fury is not the only book he wrote. I'm aware that large sections of SAF are not traditional "prose", but the other novels and non-fiction that Faulkner wrote show that he had a better both technical and creative grasp and understanding of English than McCarthy has.

>>21456513
>unsophisticated prose
Why do you say this?

>>21458288
>backpedaling now.
Faulknercucks are fucking retarded lmao. I am halfway through Absalom, Absalom! and if these bad attempts to extend sentences is what Faulknercucks mean by 'muh technique' then he is nowhere near McCarthy.
>he had a better both technical and creative grasp and understanding of English than McCarthy has.
Lmao. You can wank about 'technique' and 'creativity' but the truth is that McCarthy's imagery is more vivid, his prose is more aurally distinct and he bends the language more than Faulkner in his descriptive prose. (And no, the retarded Darl sections in AILD is not "descriptive prose"; nor is it beautiful in any sense of the word.)

i like both

>>21458329
The Darl sections are some of the most beautiful parts of the book, though. The earlier section where he sees the stars in a bucket of water at night was gorgeous

>>21458329
>backpedaling now.
>Faulknercucks are fucking retarded lmao
I didn't backpedal at all. I don't think Sound and Fury is the only book Faulkner wrote. There's a reason why you ignored my mention of The Road in the initial post, you know that it's reddit-tier
>>21458329
>And no, the retarded Darl sections in AILD is not "descriptive prose"; nor is it beautiful in any sense of the word.
And this is just you proudly admitting that you got filtered.

>>21458363
You brought up The Road because it is easier to pick on. you couldn't bring up Suttree because you yourself don't believe in what you say then.

As I Lay Dying is his best book and miles better than The Sound And The Fury, the rest of his stuff is flat out bad.

>>21458338
Illegal.

>>21458288
It's okay to admit you like him because he's easier to read. You dont have to pretend that makes his English better, or whatever.

>another I am asserting my opinion as fact thread
Why do I come to this website anymore

>>21458343
I was talking about this one:
>In a strange room you must empty yourself for sleep. And before you are emptied for sleep, what are you. And when you are emptied for sleep, you are not. And when you are filled with sleep, you never were. I don't know what I am. I don't know if I am or not. Jewel knows he is, because he does not know that he does not know whether he is or not. He cannot empty himself for sleep because he is not what he is and he is what he is not. Beyond the unlamped wall I can hear the rain shaping the wagon that is ours, the load that is no longer theirs that felled and sawed it nor yet theirs that bought it and which is not ours either, lie on our wagon though it does, since only the wind and the rain shape it only to Jewel and me, that are not asleep. And since sleep is is-not and rain and wind are was, it is not. Yet the wagon is, because when the wagon is was, Addie Bundren will not be. And Jewel is, so Addie Bundren must be. And then I must be, or I could not empty myself for sleep in a strange room. And so if I am not emptied yet, I am is. How often have I lain beneath rain on a strange roof, thinking of home
The later sections become very repetitive. I don't see the beauty here, you have to be really gulping his kool aid for that.

>>21459364
Tldr merican authots poopoo except maybe steamback

>so fucking retarded that he has to rehash Nabohack quotes to compensate for his lack of opinions on anything since he has the critical thinking abilities of a 6th grader

>>21456465
>be me
>pick up a story collection with dry september, barn burning etc
>like it a lot so I get Light in august next
>magnificent.txt
>order TSATF
>less than 50 pages in I decide I don't care for the obscurity and would rather read something like LiA over this shit
I might be terminally pleb but I don't care, I just want more stuff like Light in august

>>21459305
>it's another objective standards don't real pseud

>>21456858
>Nabokov critique of Faulkner

Let’s not forget that Nabokov tried to write a serious novel (bend sinister) and failed at it so he was pretty much incapable of writing the kind of novel that made other writers famous.

In terms of theme he was often limited to cautionary tales about marital infidelity and hebephilia.

So he had to defend this on some basis.

Disparaging serious writers makes perfect sense when all you write are humorous novels or cautionary tales.

>>21456858
Nabokov was no doubt one of the best at writing elegant prose. But his opinions and taste seriously suck. Nabokov at his core, both in his writing and just as a person, was a huge aristocratic snob and I can see why he clashes with Faulkner so much as Faulkner's writing concerns the sad delusions of the decline and death of an aristocratic society. But at the same time, Nabokov takes this way too far in saying that anything written about the downtrodden cannot be literature, which is just an absurd statement.

>>21457879
Blood Meridian fucking sucks

>>21456973
I think it's telling that he mainly criticizes the subject matter of the author. For example how he dismisses Conrad as a boy's adventure writer, or Faulkner as corn cobby.

>>21460139
t. seething woman

>>21459449
The first Faulkner book I read was Absalom! Absalom! and I fell in love no homo and was encouraged about the power of literature from this book. He was my first favorite author in my teens before I discovered the Russians and holds a special place in my heart. I recommend this book to you if you like light in august.

>>21460540
is there anything as good in his oeuvre as Absalom! Absalom!?

>>21457523
He's right though. Looks like you got filtered.

>>21456465
As a non-American, I can confirm that Faulkner is your greatest righter, followed closely by Melville. He was a genius, the closest you will get to a Shakespeare.

do I see actually engaging and good thread on /lit/?
are all the children celebrating new year's or what?

>>21460063
I think you're overlooking some major Faulkner themes, most specifically the post reconstruction decline of the traditional institutions of the south.

oh sorry you were talking about nabokov. lol

>>21460553
I'm not that anon, but The Sound and the Fury is easily the better work. I'll be the first to admit that Faulkner was a much better prose stylist by the time he wrote Absalom, and there are some beautiful passages in it, but what makes Faulkner great isn't his prose.

The Sound and the Fury has a huge thematic overlap with Absalom, but it's more personal, more focused, and more profound. It is Faulkner's attempt (and failure) to reckon with his cultural heritage which, after the desolation of the South in and after the Civil War, has become not only obsolete and deprecated but universally hated and offensive to the point that it is perceived as a black mark on all of humanity. Faulkner tries and finds himself almost completely unable to reject the values that have caused him so much psychological pain and suffering, even knowing that they are essentially arbitrary and contingent and doomed to cease to exist. In the attempt he hits up against something profoundly human, which is common in one form or another to all men. It is an extended exploration into the Shakespeare "tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" soliloquy that Faulkner gets the novel's name from. In my humble and worthless opinion, the novel is the closest the English language has come to Shakespeare, since Shakespeare.

Thomas Sutpen is explored as (and pretty much is) a mythical character who typifies Southern values and suffers from tragic flaws like a hero in classical mythology. Because we experience the story of Sutpen not from Sutpen himself but from others who betray their own thoughts and values in their recollections we cannot reach that same personal level in the story that we get from Quentin and Benjy in The Sound and the Fury. Yes Quentin returns and fights the same battle that he was fighting in The Sound and the Fury, as does Faulkner (I think this is the primary motif throughout his major works), and he does so in a very similar way to The Sound and the Fury, but it doesn't reach the same personal level as it does when we listen to Quentin's thoughts as he wanders around Cambridge thinking about Caddy and his conversations with his father, and so for me it was not nearly as relatable. Absalom has Quentin dealing mainly with the Southern mythos as such, aware of it, whereas The Sound and the Fury has him dealing more with the power the mythos has over him.

That's the major difference to me. I found Absalom deeply moving. But there are moments in The Sound and the Fury that hit me like a train and blow me away, that make me stop and feel exactly the same visceral feeling that Faulkner must've felt as he agonized over the South, or that Shakespeare had Macbeth feel as gives the soliloquy, and I know that because in some of the lowest moments in my life I've felt it too. That's why Faulkner is so celebrated, and I think across his major works he does it best in The Sound and the Fury.

>>21461005
>Faulkner tries and finds himself almost completely unable to reject the values that have caused him so much psychological pain and suffering, even knowing that they are essentially arbitrary and contingent and doomed to cease to exist.
>contingent
Why do so many people insist on using this word wrong? It's turned into a filler word, but its original definition is just abstract enough to fool people who haven't really apprehended its meaning to think the writer had a point in using it. Not dissimilar to "Epitome".

>>21460139
You sound jewish or female or dare I say both! Yikes

>>21456579
>>21456520
>>Faulkner’s career illustrates another thought for the dark: you can take yourself seriously about only one thing at a time. When Faulkner began to take himself seriously as a thinker, his work as an artist precipitously declined.
That sums it up perfectly. Faulkner was at his best throwing his heart on his sleeve, cutting off the sleeve, and publishing it. Those works are masterpieces. When he began to overthink it we got stuff like the appendix to The Sound and the Fury. Faulkner is one of the best examples I can think of of art speaking through the artist rather than the reverse. His later lectures and interviews and letters can be very enlightening but it's a fact that he never achieved the same level of quality after his early work. Pretty interesting guy.

>>21460740
knock on wood
the nabby niggers and the mccarthy shills are out in full force tonight. stay sharp

>>21461037
> : dependent on or conditioned by something else
> : not logically necessary
> : happening by chance or unforeseen causes
> : not necessitated : determined by free choice
Looks like it fits to me anon

>>21456465
thank god

>>21458329
Totally different from mccarthy.

>>21461037
dipshit plebs thinkin they know how to talk

>tfw you enjoy both Nabokov and Faulkner and see correlations between specific themes that you find particularly enjoyable in your own writing

daily reminder that their wars are not our own.

>>21461294
>>21461037
I don't get it, what's wrong with the use of contingent there?

>>21461300

>>21461314
"essentially arbitrary and contingent and doomed to cease to exist" is just not how contingent is used in a sentence. a correct example of its use would be "The positive outcome is contingent on several factors." It's usually "contingent on" when not used to describe a portion of something (often troops). The way it's used here doesn't seem to suit the sentence at all. how are values "contingent" in the context of the sentence? arbitrary, sure, but grammatically, tossing contingent in there scans very poorly, and adds no appreciable meaning.

>>21456502
How is that an insult?

>>21460139
Still twice better than Faulkner.

>>21461366
>is just not how contingent is used in a sentence.
It is. You're demonstrating that you do not read. Contingent (without qualification) is the opposite of necessary, which has concrete meaning apart from the term arbitrary. Something which is arbitrary might not be contingent, something which is contingent might not be arbitrary. For something to be contingent without qualification is to be derivative and non-essential.

Bump for Faulkner

>>21456465
That’s a good thing though.

>>21461037
Based retard, are you the same guy that got on everybody's case about ennui?

>>21462128
you're mistaken.

>>21462969
>Uncertain because of uncontrollable circumatances
Did you read this retard?

>>21463061
it's a poor use of the word no matter how much you squirm. at best it's a pleonasm, at worst it's a complete misuse.