I never intended to write a blog post, but this is a personal blog as well as an anime blog, and I believe I have something to say.

I didn’t really want to write here: I initially planned to write a review on Amazon about Absalom, Absalom!, the novel I just finished reading, but they had a new policy disallowing reviews unless people bought from them. For shame. I know that for many people Faulkner is difficult: he’s very difficult for me, too. I think I possess, however, something that most people do not have when it comes to reading: I have patience (yet also haste). The Sound and the Fury took me four tries to finish, but I finally did complete it. Absalom, Absalom! was the same experience.

I’ll just be posting the cool book covers

It was about a year or two ago when I tried reading Absalom, Absalom! – I had just finished The Sound and the Fury and I had this cockiness and inebriation that accompanies a notable accomplishment. I was unable to finish it of course, because Faulkner cannot be read when one has other things on his mind. He writes in a circuitous, serpentine fashion that one must have immense concentration on his works to somewhat understand it. I vowed to read it once more when I could purchase the book for myself: that time arrived the previous week, and I no longer had classes since Saturday so I started reading it once more. I vowed to finish it without dallying around, and so I did just a few minutes ago: I postponed everything, including my deserved anime marathons just so I could finish it, and I finally did.

Part of me wanted a challenge; part of me wanted that praise that one gives oneself if he’s done something admirable; and part of me is just elitist especially with regard to literature: I read classics not only because they’re classic, but they must have done something to be called so. Absalom, Absalom! seemed to fulfill all those desires of mine, and so I gave it a try.

I was blown away. At its first pages his electric diction and lengthy sentences amazed me (unlike some fakers out there) to the extent of me wanting to sleep with his brain (as Daniel can attest). It waned down, however, because just as too much beer gets you drunk, too much length becomes soporific. I abstained from the novel for a few days and decided to build up my mental fortitude before finally trying to finish it, and this is what I exactly did. I read ‘quickly,’ reading all but sixty pages of the novel these past two days, because you can never be truly speedy or fast with Faulkner.

I wrote this blog post because I simply wanted to talk about Faulkner. While I very well know this won’t invite comments and will probably have people accusing me of being pretentious, Faulkner did win the Nobel Prize and I know it’s not only me who appreciates what he wrote. He may have written in a manner difficult to most readers, but this difficulty is one of the things that elate people who finally complete any of his works with plodding and trudging through his complex styles.

I love how he prefaced all of those time-skips that are found right now in cinemas and even anime. I love how he introduced to readers another way of appreciating literature: I believe he was one of the fathers (if not the father) of the idea of the reader as an active participant: the reader as puzzle-solver, not the reader as passive observer. While some people, like Raymond Queneau involved their readers a lot more, Faulkner was the intermediary between those who wrote to sate their readers and those who wrote merely for themselves. He is understandable as long as people give substantial effort in deciphering his works, and it is this code-breaking that makes reading him all the more worthwhile. (There is little pleasure in re-reading him, however, once one has pieced through his intricate plots.)

Here’s the version I read

Reading Absalom, Absalom! like his other novels is an experience. It is very easy to drop any of Faulkner’s works, because they are difficult. However, it doesn’t really do well to spoil oneself – much more can be gleaned from experiencing the pain of peeling through the onion because the eureka moment then becomes a lot more rewarding.

I’m done. Thank you for reading.

P.S. I really want to know, and I’ve posted somewhere, but even they ignored me: if you’ve ever read Faulkner, which do you think is his greatest masterpiece: The Sound and the Fury, or Absalom, Absalom!? I think The Sound and the Fury blazed a trail and had a greater effect on the world of literature, but I’d appreciate for other answers.

Tags: Books, Ranting, Serious

This entry was posted on Monday, May 26th, 2008 at 12:49 am and is filed under Books, Ranting, Serious. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.