Subject: Re: Beginning of Little Dorrit
From: Paul Miller (phm@midsouth.rr.com)
Date: Sun Sep 23 2001 - 18:33:16 GMT
Faulkner (who is my wife's favorite!) ---------------------------------------
Really?! Please ask her what she thought of Absalom, Absalom! . I think it is his masterpiece but can find very few people who have even read it. The Sound and the Fury and As I lay Dying aren't chop liver either. Below is my Amazon review of Absalom.
Sutpen's design in Absalom, Absalom! is to strike an egalitarian blow against dynastic society. When he is fourteen years old he knocks on the front door of a mansion and is told to go to the back door. He and his family are poor and just down from the mountains, the many class distinctions of southern plantation society stun him. He forms a life design that he will aquire all that southern plantation owners have, slaves, riches, mansion, wife, sons, and then when some nameless stranger comes to his door in the future, instead of sending him around to the back door, he will take him in and free him and his descendants from "brutehood" as he puts it. The problem is that along the way to this goal he runs over people or whatever gets in the way, the end doesn't justify the means.
This is Faulkner's most difficult novel. He experiments with characters becoming part of telling the story, in fact most of the story is told through four characters, Miss Rosa who was sister in law to Sutpen, Mr. Compson whos father knew Sutpen, and Quentin and Shreve who are college roomates and speculate and imagine parts of the story in their cold, cold room deep into one winter night. Fictions within fictions and well worth the perseverance it takes to read this fine classic novel.
OBSALR: I could see Holden as a Quentin. They both had a concern for the innocence of young ladies, Holden with Jane and Quentin with his sister Caddy in Sound and the Fury.
Paul
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