Reading Faulkner is a lot like doing your laundry — once you do it you just get on with it and you know eventually that it’s gotta be done. But sometimes you’re like “ah man I’m still watching these TikTok reels and this is wayyyy wayyyy easier than putting my dirty clothes in the machine”. And trying to read Faulkner is at times a chore in trying to pick up the book in the first place. Actually, in all honesty, this is true with me and all books that I read. But especially Faulkner. But hey, I’m writing this review which means that I got off my ass to do the laundry eventually.
I’ve read Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha’s novels out of alignment, starting off with Light in August, going to As I Lay Dying before hitting this one. I probably should’ve picked up The Sound and the Fury first because Quentin Compson appeared there first before he became the central sounding board in Absalom, Absalom!. But I don’t think that should matter much, because each work stand on its own stately enough. I think out of the Faulkner’s books that I’ve read so far, Absalom is my favourite yet.
I picked up this book at the same time I’m reading Alex Haley’s Roots, as the two timelines almost coincide and the geography aligns about the same territory. There is something savage about Southern America which brings out the worst of humanity, but reveals so much about our own ugliness that it is impossible to look away. Haley is writing from the perspective of the slaves, Faulkner on the other hand is a white writer who, like Margaret Mitchell, represents the opinions of the day, i.e. racist.
The question of race is often at the forefront for multitudes of Faulkner’s novels, if not all of them. The question of race is often posed to characters who have mixed blood — where do they fit? How are they restricted in their viewpoints? In how others treat them and therefore, how they are able to respond? In Absalom, Clytie and Charles Bon are representative of this racial confusion, and how they are treated in the story by others who rank above and below them only adds to this sense of consternation. For example, Clytie is the gatekeeper of Sutpen Hundred that she had the power to prohibit even a poor white cracker like Wash Jones to set foot inside the house.
And I cannot help feeling that Absalom is an allegory about the South, that the paths that Sutpen took mirror the history of the South — the primitive beginnings, the ambition to make something of oneself no matter the cost, the resort to slavery. Faulkner has always been strongly Southerner, Lee’s surrender in Appomattox an unacceptable part of Southern history. Faulkner was a sore loser in this case, and Sutpen’s feeling of “undefeat” is its manifest.
Sutpen, beaten by long battles on the road, juggling his indecision whether to tell son (Henry) the truth of his relations, having returned home to barren land that is no longer a hundred acres yet the name stuck, he refused to feel the brunt of defeat and was adamant to fulfil his ultimate aim in having a legitimate offspring (a son) despite the twilight of his age. But as Sutpen is the embodiment of the South, he cannot get away from racist tendencies of trying to keep his legacy pure. Purely white, that is.
The South is an ugly, messy place. The massahs will breed with slaves, bearing children. The children will forever be lost. This is a common subject in Haley’s Roots where Chicken George, the offspring of the plantation owner, was born essentially an orphan without a father, or at least a father who would acknowledge him. Sutpen won’t admit Bon as his son as he finds out later that the woman he was married to was of a mixed descent. Race is central to Absalom as it is to Faulkner’s novels, as it is to the South.
But to view the novel only from its racial landscapes, broad as it may be, is to miss the point. Absalom is one of the most complex novels ever written even though Faulkner seldom ever uses words that readers must search in the dictionary — but the sentences are long, the thoughts complex and it pushes the reader to recall the same things that has been mentioned pages before, way before, and compare with what is being said now at this page. It is, like a lot of great work of literature, a frustrating read. You look away once and you may need to start from the last page to hoist back your narrative anchor. But it is an absolutely wonderful read, and I have just bought The Sound and the Fury because I want more of this challenging but ultimately rewarding language.
Sometimes it is even difficult to figure out whose perspective the story is coming from. Miss Rosa speaks with an embittered tone, as an old maid she felt that life has been cheated out of her by Thomas Sutpen, and even after his death she wants retribution. Shreve is a mere onlooker, and we can say that his thoughts are speculations — too distant to the story, yet perhaps the most objective point of view. And Quentin… I really have no idea even at the end of the novel where Quentin sits in the story, even though without his presence, the story cannot materialise.
Read the book with guidance if you need to. Shmoop is always helpful and comprehensive for works with this kind of orbit-inducing gravity. Read it in a quiet room, spare two to three hours each time and give it your focus. Reread the passages which may not make sense at first, but might after you put down your book a little while and give yourself a mini mental hiatus. It will be one of the most rewarding books you read this year, if you’re into this kind of stuff, and it definitely beats doing your laundry.
