Jorge Semprun sur Faulkner

de "L'écriture ou la vie"

- Vous m'avez parlé de Faulkner, d'Absalon! Absalon! Le roman se trouvait aussi dans la bibliothèque de Buchenwald... Vous l'avez lu en allemand.

- Voilà, lui dis-je. Faulkner, vous savez le goût que j'en ai. Sartoris est l'un des romans qui m'a le plus marqué. Mais Absalon! Absalon porte à l'extrême, de façon obsessionnelle, la complexité du récit faulknérien, toujours construit en arrière, vers le passé, dans une spirale vertigineuse. C'est la mémoire qui compte, qui gouverne l'obscurité foisonnante du récit, qui le fait avancer... Hemingway construit l'éternité de l'instant présent par les moyens d'un récit quasiment cinématographique... Faulkner, quant à lui, traque interminablement la reconstruction aléatoire du passé: de sa densité, son opacité, son ambiguïté fondamentales.

The Mansion

What's that famous, corny line at the end of the movie Casablanca? We'll always have Paris? While that actually is true for me as well, I'll also always have Faulkner. I finally succeeded in reading the third installment of his Snopes trilogy, The Mansion. While clearly not up to par with the other two (The Town & The Hamlet) or his classics (Absalom, Absalom & The Sound and the Fury principally, but also Light in August et al), it is still a helluva book. I will not go into detail on the story, that is not what Faulkner is about for me. He's a master of speculation, of philosophizing, of life's misery, hope, vanity, and - in his world view in any case - inevitability. The contradicting thing about Faulkner is that his novels can only take place in the South, in the deep South, in Mississippi, Memphis, but that they are as universal as it gets at the same time. There is no one quite like him I believe.

Mosquitoes

Slowly but surely I am working my way through the Faulkner canon. Now Mosquitoes, one of his earliest novels, only the second one published in fact. Eve more so than Faulkner's third novel Sartoris it is clear that Mosquitoes was not written by the author that found his voice in his later works. There are hints of it here and there, the philosophizing and theorizing on what happened and why. Yet, for the most part this Faulkner is much less of what makes him himself and so mythical later on. Much of the book is based on dialogue for example and not the extended reported dialogues or monologues of later books that allow for so much more twisting and turning within the protagonists' thought processes.

What was striking about Mosquitoes, negatively I dare say, is the portrayal of women which Faulkner proposes here. First of all are most of his active characters (Quentin Compson, Thomas Sutpen, Lucas Beauchamp...) men of course, women are objects only in most of his writing. Here they remain objects while being actors also. This, from a feminist point of view, leads to a deplorable portrayal of women as selfish, vain, really kind of stupid and erratic. There might be one, semi-sensible woman part of this novel, yet she of course is alone and desperately looking for a man, any man really. The starkness of this portrayal is really quite ridiculous from today's point of view and Faulkner being Faulkner I cannot hold a grudge against him for It. Yet, it's too blatant an issue in this novel to ignore it. Men in a way are not necessarily portrayed as better human beings, but rather as failed yet intelligent ones. That means where the women don't think and act stupidly, men do so as well but against their better judgement.

Mosquitoes thus is mainly of interest as the early work of a great writer who has penned an interesting novel not yet on the level of where he will be a few years later. Stemming from the pen of anyone else, this review would focus more onto the novel's strengths because it is a beautiful read still just overshadowed by what was too come.

Finally, a completely baseless hypothesis. I wonder whether Sartre's Mouches were inspired (for the title alone) by this novel. Ever since I read Le Sursis, I've mentally associated the two and it would seem to make sense for Sartre to turn the constant annoyance of the mosquitoes in Faulkner's novel to a play of his own. Or maybe not, but somehow it made sense when I came up with it.

Sartoris

I work too much. No time to actually write much here. I apologize. In related news, I've started writing short sentences. Well, I hope that's something I'll shake again.

I started my time back in the US off with another Faulkner novel I had had lying around for quite a while, Sartoris. It was one of the first he wrote and the very first to introduce the world to Yoknapatawpha County and its main city, Jefferson. Considering it might not come as a surprise then that it is not his strongest novel ever. Absalom, Absalom, The Hamlet, or The Town clearly are in a different league. Yet, if you are not choosing Sartoris as your introduction to one of the greatest writers ever (I'm trying to be objective here, that's why I added 'the one of the' part), it is still a very good book.

In a way it sometimes feels as if Faulkner is testing what he explored in further detail and fashion in his later novels. We are introduced to a Snope (it's not Flem), the Sartoris family and Jefferson life and history in general. Without going into detail I also had the impression that Faulkner tested out some of the descriptive technique which make reading him so fascinating and complicated in this book.

In a few words only, Colonel Sartoris is a legendary founding figure of Jefferson. Faulkner portrays his sister, son and great-grandson, who in Southern - or should I say Faulknerian - fashion fail to live up to their ancestor's celebrated past. The way the South never managed to live up to its billing after reconstruction. How does one reconcile a self-perceived history with a miserable and poor present?

What was fascinating to me, was how Faulkner's portrayal of his - secondary - black characters differed from those who appear in his later novels. He does of course have strong black character, Lucas Beauchamp et al, which is something Sartoris is not blessed with, but instead one black character coming back from the war here actually puts into question blacks' subordinate role in the South in a (semi-)provocative manner. It seemed a bit different.

What does that leave us with then? Clearly that I need to read through the rest of Faulkner's novels and then pick up again those which I read a long time ago. He's worth it!

Requiem for a Nun

"The past is never dead. It's not even past." This might be a reminder to some Germans trying to leave Germany's pre-1949 history behind, or French ignoring the evils of colonialism, or in general anyone pretending their history doesn't matter anymore since it is (too far) in the past. yet, it is by William Faulkner as always talking about the South or more specifically his heroine's, Temple Drake, past. Requiem for a Nun (I feel like there aren't many of his books that I haven't read yet by now, and I am already looking forward to re-reading some of the ones I read a long time ago) is a bizarre novel (maybe something that Sartre would call anti-roman) in a play. Or a play in a novel. Faulkner tells the early story of Yoknapatawpha County in a novelized form, while telling us of a (white) mother's quest to liberate the (black) killer of her infant daughter her uncle(-in-law) serving as facilitator of this attempt. Faulkner aficionados will be familiar with most of the main characters (Temple Drake from Sanctuary, Gavin Stevens from all over the place, Gowan Stevens, but also the early population of Yoknapatawpha County, Sutpen, Compson, Ratcliffe (whose name will become Ratliff over time, Satroris...) and the combination of a historical novel and a modern play, one interrupting the other, makes for early incomprehension of the reader. I feel having read Sanctuary, already knowing Gavin Stevens and most of the characters from Yoknapatawpha's early days enabled me to appreciate the text much more than someone without this knowledge would have been able to.

What else can I say? I love Faulkner's writing, not merely because it is convoluted and takes forever to get to the point, not even because it twists and turns within one single sentence, maybe not even because his topics elicit a hard to understand pleasure in German middle class kid - what is my relation to the American South after all? what have I to do with racial relations from the early 19th to the middle of the 20th century - not just because his body of work has to be seen as one with interlinks between his novels and characters occurring constantly; no, his writing satisfies me through its intricacies, its long-winded sentences which seemingly never come to an end and which embody a Southern life style which move slowly, rejects outside influence and is willing to fight against it even when it might share the outside's intended goals. Read it, especially if you want to know why Jefferson is called Jefferson, I won't tell you.

Pylon

Faulkner once more. I am not sure how many books of him I haven't actually read yet. Maybe 3, 4 even 5. In any case, I am not too worried about having gone through all of them relatively soon, simply because most of them have as many layers of understanding that rereading them will be a pleasure.

Pylon most definitely is not one of Faulkner prime novels. He apparently wrote it while taking a break from Absalom, Absalom, in order to relax in a sense then. It is the first novel of his I read that does not take place in Yoknapatawpha County.

Pylon is based on a very simple story line. A journalist working in a fictionalized New Orleans (New Valois) is sent to cover an air fair outside of town. This introduces us, the reader, and him, the journalist, to the world of barnstorming pilots. Men who live from their planes, who risk their lives for a little prize money and who never earn enough to know where they will be sleeping that night or tomorrow. In this specific case the journalist (who does not have a name in the novel) stumbles over a family of sorts, that battles out this kind of life together. A pilot, a parachute jumper, a woman who is married to one but sleeps with both and her son whose father might be the one or the other and a mechanic with a penchant for alcohol. The journalist becomes deeply involved with this menage à trois ultimately leading to disaster.

Faulkner hurried this novel through. Some of his sentences lack in logic and sometimes words simply are misspelled, but the novel still offers glimpses of his wonderful, convoluted writing style. I can only recommend reading him, maybe not starting out with this book.

The Town

The second part of the Snopes Trilogy (read my review of the first part) allowed me to delve deeper into Faulkner's universe, into Yoknapatawpha County. Cross references in other books make more sense now, especially Chick Mallison and his uncle Gavin Stevens who both appear again in one of my favorite Faulkner novels Intruder in the Dust become more well-rounded characters. I enjoyed the book thus as a Faulkner enthusiast, I was happy to welcome back Ratliff and the indomitable Flem Snopes, yet I would refrain from recommending this work to anyone looking for an introduction to Faulkner.

Granted, his prose is once again of course magnificient, his sentences are wonderfully convoluted and the occasional re-reading is a necessity. The story also runs along smoothly, and offers enough suspense (not in outcome, Faulkner rarely provides that, but in how things arrive to be that way) to keep to reader attached to the book (except of course if he has as much work as me). Yet, for some reason that I cannot pinpoint quite well, The Town will not be one of my favorite Faulkner novels, easily being beat by The Sound and the Fury, the aforementioned Intruder in the Dust, Go Down Moses, and Absalom, Absalom.

The Reivers

Can I even say anything about Faulkner anymore? I love the way he phrases his sentences. I love his stories, his protagonists who in all their faults are so human. While the Reivers is not up to par to classics such as Absalom, Absalom it is nevertheless a great book and in the opus of virtually every other author would have to be considered a classic. A boy, a black servant and a white no-good steal a car and go off to Memphis. I have to admit that I prefer it when Faulkner deals with subjects that lie further in the past than 1905 - the time when this novel is set. Nonetheless, I can only preach to anyone who has never read Faulkner to get one of his books. I read this one in about 3-4 days and thoroughly enjoyed it.

The Hamlet

I am in a transient living situation right now, which means I haven't set up my harddrives here, which translates to there being no title songs for a lil...

Apart from that I had a nice and relaxing vacation in Italy and finally got around to read a couple of books again - if not as many as I would have liked to. I will post on these books over the next few days.

The first one I read was The Hamlet by William Faulkner. This actually might be the hardest one to write anything about. Just saying it is by Faulkner seems to be enough. He is hands-down one of the greatest writers - if not the single greatest - I have ever read. The Hamlet he wrote in 1940 and it describes Flem Snopes beginning rise to power in Yoknapatawpha County. It is the first part of a trilogy about the Snopes family in general. In a way I guess it could be described as vintage Faulkner containing pre-marital sex, violence and even bestiality. Yet, these outbursts of the ugly side of life is not what Faulkner focuses on, rather it is the ruthless rise of Flem Snopes who slowly takes over Frenchman's Bend.

Flem in a lot of ways resembles the carpet-bagger who comes in from the North and through his bold and ruthless measures overpowers the naive locals, only that he himself alos comes from a poor, white sharecropping family. The only individual capable of putting up any kind of resistance to Flem is Ratliff. He also is a successful and scheming dealer and wheeler, but he always stays in the limits of Southern courteousy, thus limiting himself in his actions against Flem. If Ratliff can be taken as a symbol for the Old South then and Flem as one for Modernity arriving in the backwaters of Mississippi, it should be quite clear who will win in the end.

This in itself is nothing new for a Faulner novel. They all seem to deal with the vanishing of the Old South. Yet, they do so in manners and stories that differ a lot from each other and Faulkner's eloquence and powerful imagery ensur that the reader (read: me) is always grasped by the unfolding events. While it is clear that in a Faulkner Pantheon The Hamlet need not be included and that for the uninitiated reader I would propose to start out with Absalom, Absalom or Intruder in the Dust, this, like all of Faulkner's novels really, is a very intruiging and interesting book that I would recommend anyone to pick up if the see it anywhere. I know that I will get myself the latter two books of the trilogy when I see them somewhere and my reading schedule and budget allow for it to happen.