Book Review

BOOK REVIEW

ABSALOM, ABSALOM!

By William Faulkner

Reviewed by Stephen Wilson

 

Published  by Vintage, 2005, London.

 

           "Once I and two of my friends were camping out in the remote wilderness.

            We had pitched our tent and lit a camp fire on what may have been a battlefield of the American Civil war. Then we heard this strange singing by a woman of a song in very old English similar to the King James' Bible in old archaic English. The singing was very sad and it came closer to us right up to and around a camp fire. We could feel it getting colder and colder.

            I´m thinking she was singing Dixie Land, but sang it with a sense of utter despair and hopelessness. It was as if she was mourning something terrible. Maybe she had lost her lover in a battle. My hair stood on end and I felt a terrible chill climb up my spine. We checked whether someone had left the radio on, but it was off and nobody was walking around outside," narrated Daniel Ogan to me in Moscow while we were telling each other about our experiences with ghosts. 

              It was a strange story. The ghost of the woman, who may have lost her lover in the Civil war, was a ghost that could not get over an event that happened over a century ago. This ghost was a prisoner of the past. How could this be? Then when I later read William Faulkner's novel, 1936, 'Absalom, Absalom?' It made a bit more sense. The novel helped me understand not only how we can become prisoners of the past, but the nature of evil in a way which no work on psychology, philosophy or religion could convey. The novel also helped me grasp the despair and devastation following the wake of the Civil War as well as rudely reminding me of the old Scottish heritage where one is expected to fight for his reputation should he be insulted. If someone offended you at school you'd go into the woods and fight. Although I'm fascinated by the American Civil War, I think the main reason for reading this novel is the haunting beauty of Faulkner's style. The lyrical melody of this prose haunts you. It reminds you that the people of the South don't just speak English but sing it. And they sing it potently, poetically and powerfully!

 

            Unfortunately many first time readers find reading Faulkner tough. It is a hard read. Critics claim it is too complex, too confusing and ambiguous. The narrative becomes jumbled by going to and thro and the style makes readers weary. The stream of conscious method which is supposed to reflect a character's long chain of thoughts can put people off. Readers often give up. But I think readers should show the fortitude of patience and not hurry it. They should not be disconcerted if they can't fully understand everything. If you don't understand it all then join the club. But the hard read is well worth it.    

 

            I like this work for the following reasons. Some of the amazing characters are just unforgettable. The book opens with two characters, the students Quentin Compson and Shreve, attempting to unravel and make sense of the rich family slave owner Thomas Sutpen, whose rise and fall is full of scandal, and shocking events which still haunt the family. In the first chapter we are introduced to a very bitter, cold and implacable Rosa Coldfield who still holds a grudge against her

dead Brother in Law Thomas Sutpen who she blames for the whole misfortune of two families as well as a horrific murder done to prevent a marriage between his daughter, Judith Sutpen, and his son, Charles Bon. Bon's brother and best 

friend Henry Sutpen, after warning him not to marry his sister to prevent the sin of incest, murders Bon when he attempts to cross over the threshold to claim his bride. Rosa Coldfield can't forgive Thomas and his son Henry for ordering this deed after fifty years. Rosa Coldfield reminds you of Dickens' eccentric character in Great Expectations, Miss Havisham, who never takes off her wedding dress and is still bitter about being jilted by her lover. Only Rosa has worn eternal black for 43 years for inexplicable reasons. Her hatred and bitterness are not just directed against Thomas Sutpen, but the whole North who she blames for destroying the South. She tells Quentin, "because you are going away to attend the college at Harvard they tell me,' Miss Coldfield said. "So I don't imagine you will ever come here and settle down as a country lawyer in a little town like Jefferson, since Northern people have already seen to it that there is little left in the South for a young man." {page 9}

 

            Rosa Coldfield and Quentin are often described as 'ghosts' imprisoned in some past where they are not developing their personalities. Instead they are often brooding and reflecting rather than living life to the full. His student friend Shreve, despite being an outsider, grasps this fact. In the last chapter you hear him complain in a very moving way that:

           "Wait, listen. I'm not trying to be funny, smart. I just want to understand it if I can and don't know how to say it better. Because it is something my people have not got ... We don't live among defeated grandfathers and freed slaves [or have I got it backward and was it your folks that are free and the niggers that lost?} and bullets in the dining room table and such, to be always reminding us to never forget. What is it? Something you live and breathe in the air? A kind of vacuum filled with wraith-like and indomitable anger, pride and glory at and in happenings that occurred and ceased fifty years ago? A kind of entailed birthright father and son and father and son never forgiving General Sherman, so that forevermore as long as your children's children produce children you won't be anything, but a descendant of a long line of colonels killed in Pickett's charge at Manassas?"

           "Gettsburg", Quentin said "You can't understand it. You would have to be born there. "  {page 361}            

            The Irish poet Seamus Heaney once wrote, 'Is there life before death?' And those words might be applied to many of the characters in Faulkner's novel who are imprisoned by their convictions and all pervasive past inheritance.

            Faulkner does not just use great rhetoric and drama from a duel of words, but can describe an oppressive atmosphere in the description of air and smell.

            We hear about 'a dim hot airless room with the blinds all closed and fastened for forty three Summers ' or an 'iron air'.

 

            One of the main heroes of the book, Thomas Sutpen, after being humiliated by a negro servant who refused to accept his message at a mansion and told him to use the backdoor, is determined to become rich and powerful so that he won't suffer such insults or humiliation again. So he suddenly turns up in land near Jefferson, with twenty slaves and an architect and ruthlessly builds a plantation through cheating a local Indian out of land, borrowing money in a false credit scheme as well as marrying a local woman to obtain respectability.

            Although he attains great success, the sons from his former family return to haunt him and even try to marry his daughter.  Throughout this narrative we hear different

versions of Sutpen, who is often inscrutable. To say Rosa demonizes him must be an understatement. In one narrative he is called 'the Demon', 'the Ogre' or 'Wraith'.

            But we later learn that Sutpen has redeeming qualities such as a sense of honor, courage, single-mindedness and never derides or condemns his past wife.

            Rosa Coldfield portrays Sutpen in almost  supernatural and mythological terms:

            'It seems that this demon - his name was Sutpen-{ Colonel Sutpen}-Colonel Sutpen.

            Who came out of nowhere and without warning upon the land with a band of strange niggers and built a plantation-tore violently a plantation, Miss Rosa Coldfield says}- tore violently, and married her sister Ellen and begot a son and a daughter which {without gentleness begot, which should have been the jewels of his pride and the shield and comfort of his old age, only -{Only they destroyed him or something or he

destroyed them or something. And died -and died ....' {page 9}

 

            How people looked back and explained how the Confederates lost the Civil War is intriguing. Some characters attribute the defeat of the South not to the superior numbers and later military strategy of the North, but by God's wraith against the South for not practicing the old virtues and ceasing to be 'gentlemen'. Poor Sutpen is viewed by Rosa Coldfield as epitomizing this decline in the virtues which led to

the defeat of the South.

            The scenes where Faulkner describes the two sons of Sutpen retreating during the Civil War are brilliant. You can feel the desperate suffering of the retreating soldiers who lack sleep, decent food and fight barefoot. For people eager to understand the American Civil War this book is a must.  

            One view is that all Charles Bon wanted was not any wealth or money, but simply recognition from Thomas Sutpen, that he was his son. When the inept Thomas Sutpen refuses to do this, Bon decides to disobey the warning not to marry Judith and a terrible tragedy unfolds. Is Thomas Sutpen against Bon marrying Judith because of his incest or the fact he has negro blood? The ugly face of racism is never far away from Faulkner's novels least of all in this work.

 

            There is often no clear cut standard interpretation of events in this story. But the last chapter is superb drama as the main characters discover that Henry Sutpen is still hiding in the mansion as a fugitive on the run at the mansion and Rosa Coldfield enters the mansion with her umbrella and an ax. This happens in 1910 after the murder in 1865!

 

            This book deserves the attention of all serious students of English literature. It can be read to gain insights into many facets of our lives. But you need a lot of patience and effort. But whoever adores poetry can't deny the lyrical beauty of this novel!