Absalom, Absalom

best book ever.

Full review here - medium.com/@Dave.Nash.33/how-to-make-a-myth-a-review-of-absalom-absalom-1ad54a192c60#.cv82w3b10

Absalom, Absalom, William Faulkner’s 1936 masterpiece, has an accessibility issue: to make it accessible he must make it inaccessible. Meaning, the novel’s mythic quality make it a transcendent, timeless classic, but in order to achieve that mythic quality, Faulkner must obfuscate his story. To make his story into a myth, which hasn’t been told, Faulkner employs several devices. First, he starts his myth by layering his story, telling it several times over, from different perspectives, leaving out facts, including misperceptions, but adding a little more insight each time.
Faulkner is a poet, this is his epic and he gives his basic story in the first paragraph, Quentin, the main narrator, summarizes the whole tale:
“It seems that this demon — his name was Sutpen — (Colonel Sutpen) — Colonel Sutpen. Who came out nowhere and without warning upon the land with a band of strange n — — s and built a plantation — (Tore violently a plantation, Miss Rosa Coldfield says) — tore violently. And married her sister Ellen and begot a son and a daughter which — (Without gentleness begot, Miss Rosa Coldfield says) — without gentleness. Which should have been the jewels of his pride and the shield and comfort of his old age, only — (Only they destroyed him or something or he destroyed them or something. And died) — and died. Without regret, Miss Rosa Coldfield says — (Save by her) Yes, save by her (And by Quentin Compson) Yes. And By Quentin Compson.”
As the parentheticals indicate, two Quentins exist: one the adolescent, preparing to study at Harvard in 1909, and the other, a ghost of sorts, who belongs to the collective consciousness, who knows no time.


Faulkner forges his myth through several narrators and forms. Typically the narration comes from one character talking to another — Rosa to Quentin, Mr Compson to Quentin, Quentin to Shreve and Shreve back to Quentin. Rosa Coldfield begins the story, for two chapters, on a hot late summer afternoon. She wants Quentin to take her out to Sutpen’s old plantation house that September evening. Although she hasn’t been there in forty-three years, she is adamant that someone is in that house. For most of the next two chapters, Quentin’s father, Mr. Coldfield, adds some detail to the story when Quentin comes home, before he goes back out to pickup Rosa and take her to the old house. Mr. Coldfield is a generation removed from Rosa and the events in the story, at first he seems more objective, but he gets some facts wrong in the end. He’s detached and sardonic. On one hand he views the men of the Civil War generation as bigger and greater then his own and, on the other hand, he views Sutpen’s story as lesson in fatalistic determinism. In chapter five, Rosa comes back to narrate, not later that evening, but in a letter Quentin receives months later while at Harvard. Quentin doesn’t begin fully narrating until chapter six, which also starts with a letter, this one from his father, catching him up to speed about what’s happened between September and December, but Quentin doesn’t finish his father’s letter until the end of the novel. In the meantime, between him finishing the letter and the reader finding out what happens that September night, Quentin re-tells the Sutpen story to Shreve, who also takes a hand at narration and adding detail. For final three chapters, Quentin grapples with what he witnessed in the old house and they both struggle with the myth of Sutpen.

Shreve’s role, is another device Faulkner uses to make a myth out of his story. Shreve comes into the story in the sixth chapter with the simple request that Quentin tell him about the South. Quentin chooses this story to tell about the South, linking it, in allegorical terms, to the whole rise and fall of the South. Quentin doesn’t tell the tale straight nor is this first time Shreve has heard a version of the it from Quentin. To make sense of it, Shreve finds details left out that he, the listener, must provide. Shreve’s drawn in. Faulkner engages not by disclosing the full details of the events in question, but by bringing the reader into the rooms, woods, and roads of these characters. He does this by returning to the same scene over and over, which leads to familiarity. Overcoming his initial cynicism, Shreve takes the first jump in placing himself in the story, soon the reader does too. This style makes for an enthralling read. By design, the reader becomes part of the story, figuring out and filling in the details, grappling with why did it happened that way.
This novel requires time and attention, it’s not something that can be read in two minute intervals, it’s not for scanning or skimming, its paragraphs go for pages; its longest sentence is 1292 words. Faulkner’s flowing style, long sentences, stream of consciousness writing conveys all the perceptions, thoughts, and feelings of a single moment. It enables Faulkner to throw everything he has into each page, put his heart in every paragraph, and make each sentence piece of his soul.
Taking the uninterrupted time to place yourself in the novel, in the myth, will take you to places you’ve never been: like a confederate officer’s tent on a Carolina bivouac in the hard early spring of 1865 having walked backwards for a year, a thousand miles from Oxford, Mississippi; or into the grand library room of Supten’s mansion all decked out with holly and mistletoe for Christmas eve in 1860 — the last time there may have been joy in that house or the whole South; or the grand funeral pyre lit as the ambulance charges up the driveway; or in a posse surrounding the squatter’s cabin searching for the old rusty scythe of the grim reaper; and you’ll never forget taking out on a joyless Christmas day in 1860 in the iron cold through the rutted, frozen, empty North Mississippi woods in-route to the River, and all while sitting in the cold Harvard dorm room where the two boys, fifty years later, Quentin and Shreve, bring the missing scenes to life.


Power of Myth
The power of myth taps into our collective consciousness, and allows us to see ourselves in the story. Like the best parables, myths welcome us to put ourselves in the roles of several characters because the characters are archetypes and reflect our collective consciousness. Myths contain just enough facts to pique our interest, but not every detail is given — so we have to provide them. Providing them further personalizes the myth, it draws us in. The myth interpretation is twofold we are not just interpreting the myth, but we are interpreting ourselves. Since the myth lies in the collective consciousness, it’s our myth too.
This is the power of the novel. Like Shreve and Quentin, you put yourself in the story; there are not two people riding out on Christmas day 1860 or four, but five. This is the genius of Faulkner that he’s able to create a new myth — and a true myth that looks both ways.
Getting The Right Title

The title Absalom, Absalom may present another accessibility issue, while it raises the work to biblical and mythical levels, it also misleads a hurried, less Bibically versed, reader. The original title Faulkner had was The Dark House. If the concern of a title is a summary of all the events in the novel, then this is a fitting title. The Dark House refers to Sutpen’s grand plantation house, around which the action begins and ends. The novel begins in another dark house with Rosa Coldfield and her old fashioned thoughts about how to stay cool in the Mississippi summer, so there is a cute play there.

Without impacting the story, changing the title to Absalom, Absalom gives the novel the mythic quality Faulkner wants. The Bible’s Absalom saga, retold in 2 Samuel Chapters 13–18, has several elements that may resonate in the novel, but the novel is not a reworked version of the saga. For example, a possible relation to the novel comes in 2 Samuel 13: Absalom’s older half-brother, Amnon, rapes his sister, Tamar. Absalom waits two years and then has his men murder Amnon in revenge. That’s not a fact pattern in the novel, there is no rape, no revenge, and no reconciliation with the father in the novel like there is 2 Samuel 15. Further, in 2 Samuel, the rape and murder occurs in chapter 13, but the title comes from the father’s, King David, cry in 2 Samuel 18, which is like nothing in the novel. Almost three thousand years later, Absalom’s myth continues to resonate with our consciousness.

True to its own mythic character, it’s not clear who Absalom could be: Henry, Charles, Thomas, or Quentin — they are all lost sons. In fact the strongest association to Absalom is the South. Here’s the connection with the novel: Absalom reconciles with David for Ammon’s murder, but Absalom continues his insolence, like a petulant, spoiled child he lays the seeds for rebellion against his loving and forgiving father, the greatest king in the Old Testament. David here symbolizes both God the father and that paternal quality of country, a quality of our country symbolized best by the Washington monument.

Far from renouncing his birthright, Absalom attempts to take his father’s throne by force and deception.
“And it was so, that when any man came nigh to him [Absalom] to do him obeisance, he put forth his hand, and took him, and kissed him. And on this manner did Absalom to all Israel that came to the king for judgment: so Absalom stole the hearts of the men of Israel.” -2 Sam 15:3 KJV
With the hearts of Israel on his side, Absalom violently rebels against his father. His father is almost defeated, but eventually the tide turns. Badly routed in the Ephraim woods and retreating, Absalom gets stuck in an oak tree, hanging by his hair after his mule runs out from under him — a compromising position. Despite David telling his generals to deal kindly with Absalom, they murder Absalom, then bury him in a pit, heaping stones upon his grave. Upon hearing the news, David issues one most anguished cries in all of the Bible:

“And the king was much moved, and went up to the chamber over the gate, and wept: and as he went, thus he said, O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!” — 2 Sam 18:33 KJV

The novel’s title is taken from this verse — it’s a visceral lament by father his deceased son.
The South parallels Absalom, the South took up arms in rebellion against the United States. Many of our most prominent founding fathers hailed from Virginia, the South. At the Civil War’s outset, the Union, which they — Washington, Jefferson, Madison and Monroe — fathered, was on the ropes, but the tide turned. The South, retreating and forced into a compromising position was leveled by the Northern generals and buried by the carpetbaggers, like Joab’s men piled rocks on Absalom’s grave — a sign of deep bitterness.

Through the power of the myth, generations reverse and Faulkner cries for the land and a people like a father cries for his son’s tragic death.

Make no mistake, Absalom got what he deserved. So did David, who like all men sinned grievously, Absalom’s rebellion was just a part of David’s punishment for murdering his paramour’s husband. Faulker applies the same stern, Old Testment God treatment to Sutpen and the South.