Wednesday, January 16, 2013

No Baggage to Carry


I carry absolutely no William Faulkner baggage, with the exception of the slide show and the interesting comic at the end of the syllabus. Now, I am slightly terrified as I was hoping for some good reads. Apparently from what I am learning, I will be downloading a dictionary app to my phone. As far as his drinking, I can actually understand it if he started drinking while he was writing. I too, write a bit more or feel more inspired by the spirits at times. Since I have no prior experience with his works, I read thirty pages of Faulkner's book, The Sound and the Fury. This is what I have learned thus far; Faulkner is very abrupt in his transitions (this is an extreme understatement), also, his characters are not well-defined at the beginning of his story (you have to read the text and glean clues from it who the characters are). I am still confused as to who Luster is, I have Caddie as sister and some of the others figured out, but it has taken a good many pages to learn this information. If you read it and keep up with his transitions and Rain Man point of view, I think it is not so bad so far. Oh, and my first strange word was "ahun". On page 6, he mentions an "ahun gate". I looked it up and still don't know, I am assuming he means iron. He does leave mystery in his text as I am still waiting to find out about a few things, he hasn't gotten around to explaining at all. I am starting to wonder if this is going to become a pattern throughout the text. I am slightly intrigued and am excited to be here and looking forward to the course!
Esther Millette

2 comments:

  1. I've seen more pronounced transitions in off-white paint swatches at Lowes than in Faulkner's novels. It is interesting to see where he is going with all these people in Beny's life, perhaps he uses a simple mind to allow us as readers to judge their morality.

    Only time will tell--or maybe it won't given Faulkner's tendency to leave more questions than answers in his stories.

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