Faulkner? In Texas?

Why anyone would question the geographical of where the Faulkner class resides seems a little strange to me. Ok, a lot strange. Tabling my own personal feelings about Faulkner for a minute (or an entire semester), the man's work embodies the universal paradox. By writing specifically about life in South post-Reconstruction, Faulkner hits on several universal themes such as race relations, poverty and the disparity of wealth, women's rights and their in modern society, and mental health to name a few.

To deny the "universality" of Faulkner's work is to shut oneself out from the uncomfortable realities presented  in those works. The fact is the setting in his novels and short stories could be anywhere; whether a rural county in MS. or a slum in urban New York City, the characters in Faulkner's stories crop up anywhere and everywhere.


Despite some folks perceptions that backwards, despotic (even sadistic) policies are exclusive to the South, everybody in the United States--and probably the entire Western world--could recognize instances of the exact same themes rearing their heads from Seattle to Miami and all points in between. This notion that Southern Literature is exclusively for Southerners is inherently false.

Faulkner: Everybody Got Time for That!

Faulkner uses and treats time like a wishy-washy person deals with a meal:

He may start at the main course, but you immediately jump to another food because who really wants to eat cold side dishes right? But then the person realizes that he or she  does not appreciate the sides as much as dessert, so he or she decides that they want to grab the dessert and nibble on it a bit; it is sweet, but it is still not as satisfying as either the main course or the appetizer. You go back to the appetizer, which ended up getting to you the same time as the rest of your meal, because whoever is expediting at the restaurant is new and really stressed out because they got in a fight with their girlfriend over an episode of “The Walking Dead” (am I getting too deep into this metaphor?) Long story short, the wishy washy person jumps from plate to plate, getting a better feel for the meal as a whole, but said person does not appreciate any of the individual plates until the large meal is complete. The wishy washy person may not have appreciated the constant shifting of tastes and textures, but once the meal is complete, that person feels more satisfied than ever before. The person may have had to use a lot more effort to finish the meal, but he or she feels a lot more rewarded for doing so.

The point of all of this is that despite the fact that Faulkner uses time in a non-linear fashion, his stories and novels are legendary. We as readers are treated to flashbacks, flash-forwards,  and just flashes of specific periods of time, but by the time we reach the end of the beginning or the beginning of the end, you appreciate the journey.

(Still don’t like As I Lay Dying though)

Faulkner And Time: Confusing, or Good Storytelling?

Faulkner likes to mess with time quite a bit. From the morass of memories that was The Sound and the Fury to A Rose for Emily, he makes very odd jumps through time, seemingly at random.

OR ARE THEY?!?!?!?!

Ok, probably nothing too sinister about it, but it is an interesting way to tell a story. It does kinda keep you reading, if only because you want to know what direction Faulkner is trying to take the story. If we accept the theory we discussed in class (the one about multiple people telling Emily's story) then I could be a way to show that people are trying to 'put in their two cent's worth'. If instead we stick with the 'lone storyteller' theory, then it could simply be a way to keep the reader (or listener) interested.

While this theory works for A Rose for Emily, it doesn't work too well for The Sound and the Fury, unless you go back to my first theory. Multiple people telling a story, or rather, remembering things in a disconcerting way, is still an interesting way to tell that story. If nothing else, it keeps the reader reading on. After all, sometimes things are extremely annoying to read, but we keep reading in the hopes that it will all make sense at the end.

Just my thoughts, take 'em or leave 'em.

(I know, I'm not making sense, just think on it, and you'll probably get what I'm trying to say)

faulkner to texas

I think that Faulkner does translate in Texas.  Although his writings take place in Mississippi, I feel like that his use of Southern Literature is a prime example of the Southern archetypes.  Texas doesn’t seem too much like Mississippi, but southern traditions go hand in hand in the south.  For example, their views on the help around the house, I feel like would be the same in Texas.  Another thing that translates to Texas from Faulkner, is the tradition to uphold the family name.  Just like in The Sound Of The Fury , Caddie’s promiscuity gives the family a bad name.  Texas is very conservative and I feel like this would apply to southern tradition here.  Another important southern tradition that I noticed is that religion is  very apparent in his books and short stories.  Texas is a very Christian state. 

All in all I think that Faulkner does translate to Texas, because Southern Literature is a very important genre in Literature.

Messing with the Fourth Dimension

Leave it to Faulkner to manipulate yet another dimension for his reader. Not even time is sacred. His weird obsession with time is apparent in the Quentin section of The Sound and the Fury. The ticking of the watch, the continual reference to gears, the statement that Death has no sister followed by the equally powerful statement that neither does time therefore equating time with death. He does it all the time! It’s an endless collage of time imagery, ticking, gears and the constant awareness that time is short. It makes the reader feel it too, the ticking away of their own breath and their own sense of time being stripped away. It’s rather unsettling. After Quentin you think that you’ll never have to feel that weird manipulation of time ever again, but of course, you would be wrong.

            As I Lay Dying is just as stressful. Time drags in this novel. It’s as though Faulkner has sucked the reader into this miserable ride along with the Bundrens, to trudge through all of this ordeal with them. Time seems to drag, reading the novel starts to feel like running through molasses- painfully slow.

            Faulkner seems to have a fascination with the passage of time and individual perspective on the reality (or lack thereof) of time. It isn’t really measured by the ticking of a watch in your pocket, because if that were true you wouldn’t feel like you had aged fifty years trying to get through the Bundren family trip to bury Ma. Faulkner truly does take the perspective of chronology and bend it, bringing the reader to question the nature and reality of time itself. 

Faulkner & Time

Faulkner’s obsession with time…

Time is everything or so they say. Time is something you can never get back. Time is ongoing. Time can pass slowly or time can go by quickly. Everything in life relates to time. “A time to be born, a time to die…” “We’re late, hurry up!” called my mother. This scene occurred each day as four of us girls competed for the only bathroom in the house. Time was not going to wait while we combed each hair into place.

“Hurry up, we be late!” I call this to my own daughters each day. My mother’s obsession with time has become my own. I constantly struggle to make it on time to my 8:00 a.m. class. William Faulkner also had siblings. Being the oldest of four boys, I am sure he must have had his share of the last minute rush to get out the door.

In The Sound and the Fury, Faulkner emphasized how time can haunt you with the constant ticking of the clock. Even after Quentin had broken the hands of the heirloom watch, the watch still ticked on. Time was passing whether Quentin wanted it to or not. The only way Quentin could stop time from ticking was to stop his heart from ticking.

I would agree with Faulkner, time is an obsession. Life is short. From a bright sunny day when you were a kid, to a time with a 10 page paper due, time may seem to drag. When you look back ten or fifteen years from now, any time in your life is merely a brief stop on the journey of life.

 

Reading Faulkner in Texas vs. New Mexico

I feel like reading Faulkner in Texas translates in a far different manner than when I read it in school in New Mexico. In Sociology we have been talking about culture shocks and that was definitely a factor in relocating my education to Texas. One of these culture shocks was the fact that in New Mexico there is not as much of a population of African American people, however, I feel that those who live in New Mexico are much more accepted in the Hispanic and white populations. I feel that the society there is more inclusive of them than they are here in Texas because although there is no racism that I’ve observed in Abilene the racial groups usually hang out separated. Like the African American population of students usually sit and eat and spend time with those of a similar background and color as compared to the white and Hispanic populations that also stay to their own. This was never really a separation at my high school or any institution I attended in New Mexico. There is ,however, the fact that there might be less racism here in Abilene than in the rest of Texas. I know that there were cases of racism that I heard about in New Mexico, but I have not come across this issue here in Texas. In fact the usually negative term ‘nigger’ is used more casually here in Texas where in New Mexico it was hushed and anyone who said it admonished. So I believe that the material covered by Faulkner has many southern motifs and values which correlate much more with Texas than where I grow up. So I would definitely say that because of the racial material covered in Faulkner reading it in Texas is much different than reading it elsewhere just because of the distinctions in society that I am surrounded by here.