Inspired by this thread. Faulkner is the author I desperately want to read, but I have just never been able to get very far. I get so involved with the language I lose all sense of plot, and forget about picking up any nuances. It can’t be as hard as I’m making it, can it? Is there a best choice to start with?
I’m a huge Faulkner fan, but I wholly understand how irritating and unfriendly he can be to read. Though I have a literature degree, I like Faulkner for the master storyteller he is rather than for the Joycean technical goofball that grad students love and real people can’t stand.
My suggestion to you is to start with Go Down, Moses - it’s a novel with a central theme that’s broken up into about five or six mini-novels based around different characters. It’s very light on the wordy stuff and is positively huge on the raw storytelling and compelling characters. My only caveat is that the actual character relationships and lineage can make your head hurt, so read it with a copy of this family tree in hand.
I think of “Go Down, Moses” as the portable Falukner - it’s a Yoknapatawpha book, and the characters and locations turn up in many other Faulkner works. From there, check out The Reivers, which is basically a sequel, and then move on to Light in August. At that point, you’ll be ready to dig deeper into the guy’s catalogue.
I’d avoid The Sound and the Fury and Absalom, Absalom at the beginning, though they’re his most lauded books - they’re simply too dense and weirdo for the curious and tentative reader.
Thanks VC03, I’ll take that advice.
If you want a Faulknerian plot without the language barrier, I recommend Graham Swift’s Waterland. My high school English class on Faulkner started with that book and then moved on to Absalom, Absalom, A Light In August, and The Sound and the Fury. He’s an incredibly skilled author, but I thought the subject matter was extremely mature for high schoolers, and VCO3 is not kidding about how bizarre they get. I’m going to take VCO3’s advice and try the books in his recommended order again now that I’m almost twice the age I was then.
…“you’re my only hope…”
Perhaps some of the short stories would be a good entry point? (We read a bunch in high school, but the only one I specifically remember is “A Rose For Emily.”)
No they wouldn’t be… I learned to hate Faulkner much more from his short stories than his other stuff, and I’m from Mississippi. I’ve been to his house and lived in Oxford for 5 years. While I’m proud that what other people consider to be great work, originates from my state, I also have to say that all of the folksiness does very little for me as I grew up being so sick of people trying to preserve it.
My recommendation would be to read **As I Lay Dying **-
- It is brilliantly written - considered one of his Big 4, along with Sound, Absalom and Light in August
- It is short
- It touches on Faulkner’s penchant for technically complex writing without being obscure, like, say Sound & Fury where the first part of the book is narrated by a person who is mentally slow. In the case of Dying, each chapter has a different narrator from the main group of characters, but you can get a feel for the voices
- It perfectly encapsulates Faulkner’s essence - a love/hate relationship with Southern white trash. His entire *oeuvre *is written about this group, so he must feel a tight link with them, but the humor and contempt with which he regards them, and the base morality he imbues some of them with, is cutting satire and commentary.
Read it and you can feel good that you read one of his heavy hitters and develop a real opinion about his general approach…
My $.02
I second WordMan’s recommendation of *As I Lay Dying * as a brilliant but somewhat accessible Faulkner novel. You’ll really appreciate how groudbreaking he was when you read his changing character perspectives. It’s a deep work about family dysfunction but you don’t have to be a grad student armed with charts and guides to get through it, which frankly, you do sort of need to get through The Sound and the Fury.
I was lucky enough to take an entire grad class on the novels of Faulkner. The prof was a real Southern gent type, and he guided us through TSatF. I wonder if I still have his story map; if I do, I’ll look at it and see if I can scan it in for you or something. It was really helpful in following the many chronological jumps the story makes.
In any case, *As I Lay Dying * is my favorite novel of all time and my nominee for Great American Novel. Worth getting through, and it might inspire you to read further.
That is very nice of you, Rubystreak, thanks! I think my wife has a copy of AILD so I think I’ll start with that.
VCO3, your post has inspired me to go put Faulkner at the top of my “to-read” list. Thanks.
Just for another take on things, I found As I Lay Dying tedious but I loved Light in August. Joe Christmas and his adoptive family, the Rev. Hightower, Byron Bunch – wonderful, fascinating characters. The plot is interesting, the writing is clear but lyrical, and some of the imagery is amazing. (I’ll never forget that description of the photograph of Hightower which appeared in the newspaper…)
The Sound and the Fury is another great one, but I wish I had read the first chapter last. I almost didn’t make it past the first few pages.