I just started reading Absalom, Absalom, I'm only thirty-odd pages in, and I'm ready to give up. The plot sounds great, but the writing! Run-on sentence after run-on sentence, each one meandering to the point where he has to add the character's name in parenthesis so you can keep track of who is speaking. If Miss Coldfield is representative of the people in this small Southern town, the inhabitants are just drowning in their past.
Does it get better? I had a couple more titles of his on my request list, but if this is his writing style then Faulkner is not for me.
by saga_of_a_star_world
9 Comments
Don’t be a peasant and keep reading. You’ll get used to it. Otherwise you’ll be stuck all your life reading authors that have similar prose styles.
Easier to start with As I Lay Dying or A Light in August.
Start with “As I Lay Dying”. In my opinion, it’s his most accessible novel. I found it enthralling from start to finish.
People always blame the book instead of their reading ability.
Loved A Light in August, maybe that’s an easier start.
Well, he has a book called “As I Lay Dying” where each chapter is told from a different character’s perspective. The entirety of one chapter is the sentence, “My mother is a fish.” So, he definitely knew how *not* to write run-on sentences. But the book was still insufferable.
I sympathize. I love Faulkner, but Absalom, Absalom was the first book of his I ever read, and that was probably a mistake. It was pretty much unintelligible to me, but I’m glad I came back and read As I Lay Dying because its one of my favorite books I’ve ever read. One day I’ll circle back to Absalom.
This is classic Faulkner, but you started with probably his most dense and least accessible work. I’ve read a ton of Faulkner and learned to enjoy him, but I NEVER would have made it through Oh Absolom Absolom unless I was forced to read it in grad school and had a professor to guide me through it. Faulkner is 100% worth reading, but I would start with As I Lay Dying, or maybe the Sound and the Fury. Or his short stories before attempting AA
The writing style is the point. It’s intentionally dizzying.