Faulkner is a writer with a very world-wide appeal because of two reasons: 1) He deals with universal themes of suffering, unrequited love, conflict and 2) He created his own imaginary county, Yoknapatawpha, where most of his novels are set. Creating a new territory and making it your own is something that resonates with any writer of fiction. Although the vernacular of the American South is burrowed into everything he does, his work has struck a chord with Latin-American, European and Asian writers. This is because his work has shown them that you can take something very quintessential from your culture and transfigure into a mythologised world of your own making.
Although he does allude to many writers, one does need to recognise intertextual references to understand his writing. This sets him apart from other modernists like T. S. Eliot and James Joyce, whose dense writings often demanded the reader to be well-read in classical literature. Faulkner, meanwhile, is self-referential and acknowledges the own construction of his texts. Sometimes you have to read his books twice to make sense out of them, or a second reading will simply be more enhanced and revelatory. (Just like a second hearing of a piece of music will reveal more to you than the first.)
The staple of any Faulkner novel is a decadent family, living under outmoded socio-political strictures. There is a memorable scene in As I Lay Dying, where a member of the Bundren family walks into a convenience store in a bustling centre. She is barefooted, with an outworn dress and completely unkempt. Having grown up in an antiquated rural environment, she is a stranger to this prototypically modern society. The kind of environment these characters inhabit is one bereft of cars, high-ways or industrialisation. Instead it is a microcosmic society in which the word of the bible is taken at face value, where hierarchical family structures from several decades prior persist, people lack a formal education and blacks are firmly subordinated to white supremacy.
A lot of people quarrel who the better writer is: James Joyce or Virginia Woolf. Whose use of stream of consciousness was better? Many concluded it is Joyce, as he is more fragmentary and we generally don't think in elaborate paragraphs. Yet my own thought processes, I think, more closely resemble Faulkner's prose than Joyce's. If I get over stimulated a whole barrage of ideas stream out. These thoughts tend to be overlong and protracted, but not clearly defined. Several of them, too. Quentin Compson's breakdown in The Sound and the Fury is a masterful depiction of a mind coming to terms with discord. He sifts through his past, but mundane incidents in the present also sway his thoughts. Not only do I find this treatment of thought accurate, once you get caught up in it it's a wonder to read. Though, at times, it might strike you as non-sensical and you might re-read once or twice, there are moments of stark lyricism and beauty.
The characters who inhabit these novels, it must be said, are not mentally stable. (Perhaps it is those with mental disorders who find the stream of consciousness accurate...) They often have extreme pathologies. There are murderers, incestual affairs and the most unusual predilections. Quentin Compson is obsessed with his sister Caddy and by how she was so pure and virginal in her youth. Constant images of her purity come back to haunt him and permeate his thoughts. He cannot come to terms with her later promiscuity. Similarly, there's the turbulent love affair between Charles and Eulalia Bon in Absalom, Absalom!, who are brother and sister (unbeknownst to them to begin with). Certain characters have been so isolated and so deprived of an education that they lash out in the most extreme ways. In Absalom, Absalom!, Wash Jones kills the family patriarch Sutpen and thus ends years of brutal coercion and misery. Joe Christmas in Light in August murders his lover and becomes publicly demonised. He is mentally scarred by the abuse he has received for his racial colour and ruins his reputation after a fit of anger.
Most of these narrators and protagonists are marginal observers. They differ widely as regards intelligence, temperament and social standing. Whether it is the Harvard undergraduate Quentin Compson, the mentally impaired Benjy or an overweight priest, most of these characters do not partake in the dramatic incidents that occur. They rationalise situations, regardless of their command of language. And even if many of the reveries of some characters might be grammatically awkward, now and then they'll knock off a sentence so beautiful it is worthy of Shakespeare. Ultimately, Faulkner is not indifferent to the tragic fate of these characters. This is why he is not a pessimist. He is compassionate for all his creations, even the so-called "idiots" like Benjy and Vardaman. Reflecting upon the plight Joe Christmas endures, one of the more thoughtful character reflects 'Poor man. Poor mankind.'
Finally, I'll consider Faulkner's use of time. His radical use of temporal ellipsis, arguably, certified his reputation as one of the most original writers of the 20th century. One critic noted that perhaps reading The Sound and the Fury from back to front would make more sense on first reading. In Benjy's narration, you can glide twenty years in time within a couple of sentences. As I Lay Dying rotates around fifteen different narrators and therefore has a very detailed and multifarious take on events. One of the thrills I experience upon completing a Faulkner novel - a thrill I previously described as 'inexpressible' - is how you have jumped through so many different moments in time. You are not circumscribed by a single view of events, you are presented with a polyphony of voices and viewpoints.
No comments:
Post a Comment