Absalom, Absalom!

Absalom, Absalom!
by William Faulkner
read: circa 2001

This was the last book I read for the English class I took in college.  I had procrastinated in the finals period and I was facing down the barrel of a 10-page paper due in 48 hours ... and I was only 50 pages into Absalom, Absalom!  There was nothing to do but start reading.  I sat in my bed and read.  I got tired and moved out to the couch outside my room and read.  I got sick of that and I went to the library and read.  I didn't quite read the book in one sitting, but it was pretty close.

There are books where reading it in that fashion would be a travesty, but Absalom, Absalom! was not one of them.  Sure, I'm sure there are subtleties I would pick up on in a more careful re-reading, but blazing through it in such a fashion gave me a great feel for the book.  I noted previously that one of the class' themes was the "voice" of the novel.  Absalom, Absalom! is told as oral history.  The entire book is basically a half-dozen dialogues, as Quentin Compson has a series of conversations with various people to try to determine what happened to Thomas Sutpen.  Some of those get nested; at one point Quentin is talking to his father, and Quentin's father relates a conversation he had with his father, which in turn features a conversation Quentin's grandfather had with Sutpen directly.  The way the novel is constructed, I argued in my final paper, mimics the oral tradition of the South.  The basic story of Sutpen is repeated throughout, filling in more details each time, just as the traveling bards would repeat stories in ye olden times.  The story is passed down from Rosa Coldfield and Quentin's descendents to Quentin.  As a result, Absalom, Absalom! is not only about the themes of Southern racism and the dangers of hubris, but also a primal quest for truth and understanding.

There are very few books that I can say changed my life, but a couple weeks after I handed in my paper my sister and I drove up to a family house in Maine.  There I found photo albums and genealogical information on my own family history.  Memories of my ancestors, whether I knew them or they died before I was born, stay with me wherever I go.