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/lit/ - Literature

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20132299 No.20132299 [Reply] [Original]

I heard he had great prose. Which book of his is the most beautifully written?

>> No.20132395

'Absalom, Abslamon!' There's nothing quite like it. Spellbinding, to say the least.

>> No.20134604

>>20132299
Can't go wrong with his "big 4": The Sound And The Fury, As I Lay Dying, Light In August, and Absalom Absalom

>> No.20134645

>>20134604
Which books to read so I wont have to deal with the stream of consciousness thing? I'm ESL, Light in August might be one of them IIRC

>> No.20134681

>>20134645
Not the person you asked but 'Light in August' is his most accessible IIRC. But I recommend you do 'deal' with the 'stream of consciousness thing' because it's mesmerizing and fucking beautiful in parts.

>> No.20134697

>>20132395
2nd

>> No.20134706

>>20132395
This

>> No.20134742

>>20134645
Honestly if you're ESL and not entirely fluent I'm not sure Faulkner is a good choice. He plays linguistic games in many of his books that even most native English speakers find confusing. Light in August is his easiest book, as other Anons have said.

>> No.20134779

>>20132395
fpbp
AA has amazing modernist prose but the detective plot makes it distinctly postmodern. one should be cautious with the "corrected text" versions as i believe they ruin the appendices that are extremely important to understanding the american canon.
>>20134645
As I Lay Dying is approachable and a good way to adjust to the stream-of-consciousness: compared to AA, which is almost entirely stream of consciousness in style and have large portions where the narration is purposefully (nearly) unidentifiable; compared to The Sound & The Fury which has one of the most brutally difficult openings to a novel I've come across thus far.
~
it almost makes sense to read faulkner's novels backwards sometimes, someone described reading faulkner as 'driving a car while only looking at the rearview mirrors'

>> No.20134785
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20134785

>>20132299
Absalom, Absalom! as others have mentioned has his best prose.
But in my opinion the best part of Faulkner isn't his prose. It's his ability to place you into the shoes of very misunderstood or unfortunate or damaged people and see the beauty and the despair they see and empathize with their plight as human beings. For that, The Sound and the Fury and Absalom, Absalom! are the best. Barn Burning is a great short story, as is The Bear. Don't let the stream-of-consciousness stuff scare you. It's not that difficult; you just need to approach it as a task that you may have to spend time to parse, as you do with many great pieces of literature.

>> No.20134893

>>20134779
>someone described reading faulkner as 'driving a car while only looking at the rearview mirrors'
That was Sartre, who in my opinion misunderstood Faulkner (or at least was too eager to synthesize him with the groundbreaking new work of Heidegger). The essay is in the Norton Critical Edition of TSATF. Faulkner's best work deals with the shattering of the Southern identity in the aftermath of the Civil War (and the historical events that follow).

Sartre complains that Faulkners' characters have no sense of the future and, if memory serves, only a hollow sense of the present, leading to the metaphor that they look out the back of a vehicle as it drives away. For Quentin and his father, it's an accurate characterization; they see nothing in the present or future. Despite Quentin's best efforts, he is unable to cope with the obsolescence of the Southern values and morality, and with the sad remains of his family. It meshes less well for Caddie, her daughter, and Jason, who are able to cope with the reality of the desolation of the South (or just don't care about it) but find their essential ruin in the vacuum of a suitable alternative; they have a present but it is unguided. Perhaps insofar as that is true they do not conceive of a future, and maybe that's what Sartre is referring to. I have to read the essay again, it's been years. But I remember coming away from it being very disappointed on my original reading.

>> No.20134950
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20134950

is it really a good idea to read Absalom, Absalom before Sound and Fury?

>> No.20135006

>>20134950
No, read the big 4 in their publication order.

>> No.20135038

>>20134779
You have no idea what post modernism is.

>> No.20135087

>>20134893
i'll look into that essay again. thanks for the sauce
>>20135038
help me understand. i thought faulkner was the pre-cursor to postmodernism and some of the most acclaimed american authors after 1950 (like morrison or mccarthy) are clearly, heavily influenced by faulkner.