[strike]Leaving[/strike] Left town for a couple of days.

[alfredo_buscatti]

"The Sound and the Fury" is stream-of-consciousness, but I don't believe any of the rest of his novels are, and I wouldn't say that his other novels I've read are, either. However, as above, the syntax is pushed hard, and that may give similar difficulty.

 

[monbla256]

"The Sound and the Fury" is stream-of-consciousness, but I don't believe any of the rest of his novels are, and I wouldn't say that his other novels I've read are, either. However, as above, the syntax is pushed hard, and that may give similar difficulty.

THIS and I think ya have to be from the South and raised here to "get" him.   

 

[alfredo_buscatti]

"The Sound and the Fury" is stream-of-consciousness, but I don't believe any of the rest of his novels are, and I wouldn't say that his other novels I've read are, either. However, as above, the syntax is pushed hard, and that may give similar difficulty.

THIS and I think ya have to be from the South and raised here to "get" him.   

I never considered that I was operating under a regional deficit. Though I believe I understand who the characters are based on what they do and say, and what others say about them, I'm sure I'd understand them better if I were Southern. But then again that wouldn't be enough. I'd have to be Southern, poor and living in the vestiges of an agrarian society about to be overwhelmed by an enveloping, nondescript commerciality, featuring a mall on every corner; an architecturally vapid brainlessness whose physicality demonstrates a barren culture that worships money.

I could could go on but will spare you.

 

[Kyle Weiss]

:fpalm:

Y'all have a funny way of not being able to separate "didn't understand" with "didn't prefer."  

Here, I'll counterbalance it a little:  I probably understand Faulkner's writing more than any of you.  Do you believe that?  It wouldn't matter anyway.  His life, his tastes, his thought process, it makes sense to me.  His output is irrelevant, it's just a matter of the teller telling the tale.  One craftsman of words is always going to be critical of another.   That's the nature of knowing what one does, and where he lay in the scope of things.  His writing, and any writing, I cannot in good conscience say enlightened me or inspired me when it simply doesn't, that'd be disingenuous.  I respect the hell out of the man.  I also respect Hemingway and Steinbeck.  You won't catch me with one of their books under my arm, either.   I also won't be smoking Royal Yacht or Haddo's Delight any time soon.  :lol:

Locale also gives way to time period--none of us can "get" an era as much as we can imagine, because we weren't there. Does even that matter? Nope. The teller of the tale, that's his job. If he writes in a contemporary way of the day, will it withstand the test of time? Mark Twain sure managed to stay relevant, if you ask me. He lived everywhere, considered many places home. Nevada, the south, Europe...he lived in a time period foreign to all of us. Good storyteller, that one.

If books were still lauded and and appreciated as bastions of intelligence, entertainment and discovery for people like they were back in Faulkner's day, or had I been born in the early 1900's rather than the 1970's...I would have had a writing career without question.   Hardly anyone reads anymore, let alone appreciates good books (mostly talking from my generation's standpoint, mind you), so guys like me have to rely on other means to get their upwelling of words out.  

Kind of a waste, but there it is.  How lucky guys like Faulkner and his kind were to be able to do as they did.   So I can be a wannabe and an appreciator (or in this case, non-appreciator :lol and emulate a hero.   He just preferred to save blondes and I prefer brunettes.   :heart:

8)