BrothersJudd.com

Home | Reviews | Blog | Daily | Glossary | Orrin's Stuff | Email

As I Lay Dying ()


Modern Library Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century (35)

The reasons for conservative denunciation of Freud, Darwin and Marx are pretty self evident, but why is Einstein so often pinned in this same crossfire?  It is not that the Theory of Relativity is, in itself, a social ill.  Rather, the source of the enmity is the misappropriation of a more generalized ethos of relativity by the nattering Left, which has served to undermine the belief that there is such a thing as truth and that it is discernible by us.  The strength of this insidious attack, of course, lies in it's being partly correct.  If you've ever seen Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon, you know the power of the argument that learning the truth can depend on gaining the proper perspective.  But, this said, the danger lies in pushing the argument further and saying that we can never be certain of the truth because we can never be certain that we have achieved that proper perspective.

As I Lay Dying is an early experiment in just this kind of relativistic storytelling.  The story of a group of cracker trash on a six day trek to bury a dead woman is told in a series of 59 interior monologues by family, friends, neighbors and even the corpse.  Nearly seventy years on, this may seem like a pretty minor innovation.  It is not minor at all; the implication is that the traditional single narrator does not suffice.  More than that, it is an attempt to undermine the notion that one person can ever comprehend the (or any) whole story.  Of course, the interesting thing about this argument, as seen best in Rashomon, is that by presenting the story at all, the author (filmmaker) is implying that they are presenting the whole story, an irony that is surely lost on them.  The import of their attack on truth is obviously that, if everything is relative, if reality depends on where you view it from and if history depends on who you ask, then it is impossible to pronounce sets of moral standards for mankind.  Ultimately, God and morality and the viability of laws depend on our ability to say some things are simply true and to make judgments about what is good and what is evil.  Complete relativity precludes this capacity; one man's evil may be another man's good.  This is why Einstein gets tarred with the same brush as the true intellectual villains of the age.

So much for the malignant form of the novel, on to it's diabolical substance.  During her monologue, Addie, our corpse, repeats her Father's admonition that:  "the reason for living is to get ready to stay dead a long time."  This is the essence of Faulkner's existentialist mission here.  The absurdity of death, as symbolized by the rotting corpse, is supposed to demonstrate that life itself is meaningless.  Meanwhile, the eventual institutionalization of Darl, is intended to call into question the entire idea of sanity and insanity in an insane world.  But, once you've denied the possibility of truth, Faulkner is right, everything is absurd.  This is the danger in what he's trying to do.  What, after all, is the point of attacking the very basis of man's existence, unless you hate man and society and embrace nihilism?

This is an anti-human book; not merely bad, but evil.   Burn it.

(Reviewed:)

Grade: (F)


Websites:

William Faulkner Links:

    -WIKIPEDIA: William Faulkner
    -FILMOGRAPHY: William Faulkner (IMDB)
    -ENTRY: William Failkner (Mississippi Writers Page)
    -William Faulkner (Poetry Foundation)
    -BIO: William Faulkner (Nobel Prize)
    -Faulkner at Virginia
    -The Center for Faulkner Studies
    -LECTURE: "I decline to accept the end of man." (William Faulkner: Nobel Prize Speech, Stockholm, Sweden, December 10, 1950)
    -INTERVIEW: William Faulkner, The Art of Fiction No. 12 (Interviewed by Jean Stein, SPRING 1956, Paris Review)
    -VIDEO: Writings of William Faulkner: From Rowan Oak, William Faulkner’s home, the guests talked about his life and his writings, focusing on the Yoknapatawpha County novels (C-SPAN, MAY 5, 2002)
    -VIDEO: Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury: The panel talked about the works of Pulitzer and Nobel Prize winning Southern writer William Faulkner. (C-SPAN, DECEMBER 9, 2001)
    -VIDEO: Shelby Foote on Faulkner: Mr. Foote talked about the writings of William Faulkner and his view of the South (C-SPAN, MAY 2, 2002)
    -ESSAY: AN INNOCENT AT RINKSIDE: NOBEL PRIZE NOVELIST WILLIAM FAULKNER LAST WEEK SAW HIS FIRST HOCKEY GAME. HE WAS SI'S GUEST AT MADISON SQUARE GARDEN, WHERE MONTREAL PLAYED THE NEW YORK RANGERS. AFTERWARD FAULKNER RECORDED THESE VIVID IMPRESSIONS OF A SCENE HE FOUND "DISCORDED AND INCONSEQUENT...BIZARRE...ALMOST BEAUTIFUL" (WILLIAM FAULKNER, 1/24/1956, Sports Illustrated)
    -
   
-ESSAY: William Faulkner’s Last Words & the American Dilemma (M.E. Bradford, September 24th, 2023, Imaginative Conservative)
    -WIKIPEDIA: Absalom, Absalom!
    -ENTRY: William Faulkner American author (Michael Millgate, Encyclopaedia Britannica)
    -ENTRY: Absalom, Absalom! novel by Faulkner (Richard Godden, Encyclopaedia Britannica)
    -ENTRY: Absalom, Absalom! (Encyclopedia.com)
    -AUDIO BOOK: W. Kandinsky reads 'Absalom, Absalom!' (You Tube)
    -INTERACTIVE CHRONOLOGY: Absalom, Absalom! (STEPHEN RAILTON & WILL ROURK, UNIV OF VIRGINIA)
    -STUDY GUIDE: Absalom, Absalom! (Grade Saver)
    -STUDY GUIDE: Absalom, Absalom! (Study.com)
    -STUDY GUIDE: Absalom, Absalom! (Cliff Notes)
    -STUDY GUIDE: Absalom, Absalom! (Spark Notes)
    -ESSAY: How Much Did the History of American Chattel Slavery Shape William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!?: W. Ralph Eubanks on the Connection Between Faulkner’s Fiction, His Longtime Home, and the University of Mississippi (W. Ralph Eubanks, July 29, 2021, LitHub)
    -ESSAY: Imagining the Lives of the Aviators Who Inspired William Faulkner: Taylor Brown on Looking to the Past (Which Isn't Even Past) (Taylor Brown, April 21, 2022, LitHub)
    -ESSAY: William Faulkner’s Tragic Vision: In Yoknapatawpha County, the past never speaks with a single voice. (Jonathan Clarke, Winter 2022, City Journal)
    -ESSAY: Old Rowan Oak: William Faulkner’s Conservatism (Carl Rollyson|September 24th, 2021, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: Faulkner as Futurist: The past is never dead because its meaning is forever changing. (Carl Rollyson, Hedgehog Review)
    -ESSAY: American myths: Demystifying William Faulkner Paul Giles, December 2020, Australian Book Review)
    -ESSAY: William Faulkner’s Demons: In his own life, the novelist failed to truly acknowledge the evils of slavery and segregation. But he did so with savage thoroughness in his fiction. (Casey Cep, November 23, 2020, The New Yorker)
    -ESSAY: Understanding William Faulkner (Mark Royden Winchell, September 24th, 2020, Imaginative Conservatism)
    -ESSAY: The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner: American Ulysses: A perfect novel and distinctive, masterful version of the stream-of-consciousness style (Lucy Sweeney Byrne, 8/15/20, Irish Times)
    -ESSAY: The Many Guises of William Faulkner: As 'The Sound and the Fury' celebrates its 90th anniversary, read about two-time Fiction winner William Faulkner's varied career (Sean Murphy, The Pulitzer Prizes)
    -ESSAY: William Faulkner’s Hollywood Odyssey: The biggest name in Southern lit didn’t spend his whole life in Mississippi (JOHN MERONEY, April/May 2014, Garden & Gun)
    -REVIEW ESSAY: How William Faulkner Tackled Race — and Freed the South From Itself (John Jeremiah Sullivan, June 28, 2012, NY Times)
    -REVIEW ESSAY: What to Do About William Faulkner: A white man of the Jim Crow South, he couldn’t escape the burden of race, yet derived creative force from it. (DREW GILPIN FAUST, SEPTEMBER 2020, The Atlantic)
Perhaps the most powerful of Faulkner’s tellings of the Civil War story is Absalom, Absalom! (1936), a novel structured around Quentin Compson’s own refusal to look away. Although Faulkner insisted that Quentin did not speak for him, Gorra has “never quite believed him.” Quentin’s search to understand why Charles Bon was murdered during the very last days of the war unfolds through his elaboration of successive narratives in a manner not unlike Faulkner’s own. Unsatisfied with each version of the story he uncovers, Quentin looks again, arriving through ever more disturbing revelations at the South’s original sin: the distorting and dehumanizing power of race. It is race that pulls the trigger. “So it’s the miscegenation, not the incest, which you cant bear,” Bon says just before Henry, at once his brother and his fiancée’s brother, shoots him.

    -ESSAY: Faulkner's "Absalom, Absalom!" and the Mysterious Rosa Coldfield (Alicia D. Costello, 2010, Inquiries)
    -ESSAY: Absalom, Absalom! as a Hardboiled Detective Novel: Faulkner's Rereading of The Sound and the Fury (SUWABE Koichi, THE FAULKNER JOURNAL OF JAPAN)
    -ESSAY: From Genesis to Revelation: The Grand Design of William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! (Maxine Rose, Autumn 1980, Studies in American Fiction)
    -ESSAY: Poetic Justice in William Faulkner's "Absalom Absalom" (MANUELA GERTZ)
    -ESSAY: Reading Bon's Letter and Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! (David Krause, March 1984, PMLA)
    -ESSAY: Faulkner's Map of Yoknapatawpha: The End of Absalom, Absalom! (Robert Hamblin, Center for Faulkner Studies)
    -ESSAY: "ABSALOM, ABSALOM!" AND THE NEGRO QUESTION (JOHN V. HAGOPIAN, Summer 1973, Modern Fiction Studies)
    -ESSAY: The Biblical Background Of Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! (JOHN V. HAGOPIAN, January 1974, CEA Critic)
    -ESSAY: An Archetypal Study on William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! (Haihui Chen, Theory and Practice in Language Studies)
    -ESSAY: Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! and Me (Ed Protzel, 6/27/2016)
    -ESSAY: Symposium on Absalom, Absalom! (Richard Ford, Spring 2013, Three Penny Review)
    -ESSAY: William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!: A Narrative of Inexhaustible Word and Unfathomable Past (Djamila Houamdi, IAFOR Journal of Literature & Librarianship)
    -THESIS: Impressions of morality in Absalom, Absalom! (Eric G. R. Stephenson, University of Colorado)
    -ESSAY: The Postmodernist Features In Absalom Absalom English Literature (UK Essays, 1st Jan 1970)
    -ESSAY: Absalom, Absalom!: Story-telling as a mode of transcendence (Richard Forrer, Fall 1976, The Southern Literary Journal)
    -ETEXT: William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom: A Case book (Fred Hobson, editor)
    -ESSAY: Narrating the Indeterminate: Shreve McCannon in Absalom, Absalom! (Jo Alyson Parker)
    -ESSAY: Postmodern Truth in William Faulkner's "Absalom, Absalom!" (Nahid Sharifi, H. R. Rezayee and *Kh. Mohamadpour, Life Sciences Journal)
    -ESSAY: Narrative Voice in William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom (Literature Essay Samples, March 1, 2019)
    -ESSAY: Reflection of History in Absalom, Absalom!
    -ESSAY: Faulkner's Stylistic Difficulty: A Formal Analysis of Absalom, Absalom! (Eric Sandarg, 12-14-2017, Georgia State University)
    -ESSAY: As I Lay Trying: How to read William Faulkner: Advice for reading William Faulkner (Christopher Rieger, 4/26/16, MPR)
    -ESSAY: Ragged, Unkempt, Strange: On William Faulkner: For all the ways it is rife with tenderness, fury and ugliness, William Faulkner’s fiction is stubbornly persistent in its artistry. (Joanna Scott, NOVEMBER 20, 2012, The Nation)
    -ESSAY: Sutpen's Delay in Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! (Robert Yarup, 07 Aug 2010, The Explicator)
    -ESSAY: Nic Pizzolatto on 'Absalom, Absalom!' (To the Best of Our Knowledge: Bookmarks)
    -ESSAY: James Joyce and His Influences: William Faulkner and Anthony Burgess (An abstract of a Dissertation by Maxine i!3urke, July, Ll.981, Drake University)
    -ESSAY: Joyce and Faulkner (Thomas E. Connolly, Summer, 1979, James Joyce Quarterly)
    -ESSAY: The Jim Crow South in Faulkner’s Fiction (Michael Gorra, NYRB)
    -ESSAY: Down Through the Faulkner Bloodline, Pride and Racial Guilt Commingled: Michael Gorra on William Faulkner's Great-Grandfather (Michael Gorra, August 24, 2020, LitHub)
    -ESSAY: You Need to Read Faulkner Right Now but You Might Need a Map: No white American author has ever written so well about the racial complexities of his country, but no author poses more challenges to unsuspecting readers. Here’s a guide (Michael Gorra, Sep. 13, 2020, daily Beast)
    -ARCHIVES: The Faulkner Journal of Japan
    -REVIEW: of Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner (Dave Nash, Medium)
This novel requires time and attention, it’s not something to read in two minute intervals, it’s not for scanning or skimming, its paragraphs go for pages; its longest sentence is 1292 words. Faulkner’s flowing style, long sentences, stream of consciousness writing conveys all the perceptions, thoughts, and feelings of a single moment. It enables Faulkner to throw everything he has into each page, put his heart in every paragraph, and make each sentence piece of his soul.

    -REVIEW: of Absalom, Absalom! (Arthur Hirsch, Baltimore Sun)
    -REVIEW: of Absalom, Absalom! (KC Public Library)
    -REVIEW: of Absalom, Absalom! (Rose Reads Novels)
    -REVIEW: of Absalom, Absalom! (J. A. Bryant, Jr., Twentieth-Century Southern Literature)
    -REVIEW: of Absalom, Absalom! (Michael A. Khan)
    -REVIEW: of Absalom, Absalom! (Literary Corner Cafe)
    -REVIEW: of As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner (Orlo Williams, September 26, 1935, Times Literary Supplement)
    -REVIEW: Of As I Lay Dying (EL Doctorow)
    -
   
-REVIEW: of THE SADDEST WORDS: WILLIAM FAULKNER'S CIVIL WAR BY MICHAEL GORRA (Leo Robson, Bookforum)
    -REVIEW: of Forgotten Conservatives in American History by Brion McClanahan & Clyde Wilson (Stephen M. Klugewiz, American Conservative)

Book-related and General Links:
    -Yoknapatawpha County: William Faulkner on the Web
    -William Faulkner: Life and Works (includes synopsis of Light in August)
    William Faulkner on the Web
    -William Faulkner Centennial Celebration (Vintage Books)
    -THE WILLIAM FAULKNER FOUNDATION, FRANCE
    -The William Faulkner Society
    -Southeast Missouri State University's Center for Faulkner Studies
    -Faulkner's Page: Tour of Oxford
    -William Faulkner: The Myth Of The South (from Let's Find Out)
    -Faulkner and Racism (ARTHUR F. KINNEY, Connotations)
    -Frederick Crews: The Strange Fate of William Faulkner (NY Review of Books)
    -REVIEW: of WILLIAM FAULKNER: AMERICAN WRITER A Biography. By Frederick R. Karl (John W. Aldridge, NY Times Book Review)
    -REVIEW: of William Faulkner: American Writer A Biography By Frederick R. Karl )(Michiko Kakutani, NY Times)
    -REVIEW: of WILLIAM FAULKNER The Man and the Artist. By Stephen B. Oates (Louis D. Rubin Jr, NY Times Book Review)
     -REVIEW: of William Faulkner and the Tangible Past The Architecture of Yoknapatawpha. By Thomas S. Hines (Henry Taylor, NY Times Book Review)
    -William H. Gass: Mr. Blotner, Mr. Feaster, and Mr. Faulkner Faulkner: A Biography by Joseph Blotner (NY Review of Books)
    -Marvin Mudrick: The Over-Wrought Urn REVIEW of William Faulkner: The Yoknapatawpha Country by Cleanth Brooks (NY Review of Books)
   -Terry Southern: Just Folks  REVIEW: of Faulkner's People: A Complete Guide and Index to the Characters in Faulkner by Robert W. Kirk and Marvin Klotz (NY Review of Books)
    -Personal Best (JOAN SMITH, Salon)

Comments:

wtf is going on here

-

- Jan-05-2007, 10:03

*******************************************************

I loved the movie review page for this site. Most of the movies recieved an A rating down to and including a Veggie Tales cartoon. In turn Faulkner, Joyce, Miller and many more get F's for literary masterworks. In another comment I posted i made the suggestion that these fools get day jobs in their local comic book store, however in light of their movie review listings i feel that the local blockbuster rental center may be more appropriate. The noble geeks at the comic shop probably wouldn't be able to stand these assholes.

- brothers dumb

- Dec-04-2006, 15:59

*******************************************************

Yes, your notion that Faulkner telling the story from different viewpoints counts as some sort of disgusting nihilism is truly brilliant--even more brilliant than your idea that homosexuality is "little more than a pose." You are a genius and everyone should totally listen to you and the things you have to say.

This site is not only misguided, but anti-intellectual. Burn it.

- Boris Dudd

- Aug-27-2006, 22:12

*******************************************************

Your opinions are truly foolish. I pray for your enlightenment.

-

- Aug-11-2005, 11:04

*******************************************************

And if oj was referring to Absalom, Absalom! in his accusation that faulkner doesn't address timeless, universal ideas, he need only look to the title. The book is steeped in christian and greek lore and explores the manner in which it is still relevant.

-

- Feb-20-2005, 22:44

*******************************************************

No, you are wrong. Good modern literature tackles timeless truths and problems, but recognizes the powerful forces of the modern era.

"And that may have been when I first found it out, that Addie Bundren should be hiding anything she did, who had tried to teach us that deceit was such that, in a world where it was, nothing else could be very bad or very important, not even poverty." -As I Lay Dying

You don't think this constitutes a universal, timeless moral quandry? The idea that we don't always practice as we preach? What does constitute such a thing, in your opinion?

-

- Feb-20-2005, 22:41

*******************************************************

You've stumbled into the truth there. Modern artists followed modern science down dead ends rather than sticking to universal, timeless ideas. It rendered modern art subjective, temporary, false and forgettable.

- oj

- Feb-08-2005, 07:53

*******************************************************

"I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last dingdong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail." -William Faulkner

Orrin Judd,

You appear to have missed Faulkner's point completely; browsing your site, I notice that you frequently completely miss the point. You need to free yourself of your dreadful political angst when you approach these works of art. Like or dislike modernism, it reflects the fundamental changes that science and technology have brought to EVERY person's worldview--religious and non-religious. Faulkner was anything but a nihlist: he was a caring person who lived on the edge of financial ruin for much of his life, happy to give away what extra money he had to support his extended family.

Take the previous reviewer's advice and read "Absalom, Absalom!". If you don't let yourself hallucinate a subversive philosophical agenda, you will realize that "Absalom" is an philosophical exploration into the grand human story and the individual stories that are its tributaries. Sure, Faulkner suggests the old South was in many ways morally corrupt, but I hope you'll agree on that much. There is, however, so much more to the book than this simple moral judgement.

-

- Feb-08-2005, 01:29

*******************************************************

"What, after all, is the point of attacking the very basis of man's existence, unless you hate man and society and embrace nihilism?"

"Between grief and nothing, I will take grief." -William Faulkner

Nobody is required to like Faulkner or enjoy his books. I think, however, that you've failed to give him a chance. I freely admit that I had to make an effort at liking his work, but I don't think--as you state about Joyce and imply about Faulkner--that I've been fooled into admiration. Out of curiosity, what do you think about Paradise Lost? Do you think that just because it is a tremendously difficult work that it doesn't warrant the time people from all sides of the political spectrum have spent toiling on it?

I bring this up because I think that in not reading Absalom, Absalom!, you've missed Faulkner's version of Paradise Lost. Absalom weaves together issues that Faulkner dealt with in all of his earlier and creates an intricate answer to the question of how we can find truth in an existence where grief is inherent. Admitedly, Faulkner does not limit us to God as a source of truth, but neither does he preclude God. Above all, he wants to tell us that if the answers in life come easily, they are not the right answers. And if you, the reviewer, think the answers come easily, may God have pity on your soul.

As a note, I enjoyed As I lay Dying enough to say that I would read it again, but wasn't crazy over it. Intruder in the Dust is quite readable and, beyond drawing an interesting picture of racial relations in the postbellum south, is an excellent murder mysery. Go Down, Moses is my second favorite behind Absalom.

Now, the Sound and the Fury, I really don't like. It is too personal of a novel: too rooted in Faulkner's own strange psyche. It is, however, entirely worth slogging through in preparation for Absalom, Absalom!.

- Dan S.

- Dec-11-2004, 22:13

*******************************************************

I can only hope that this site is a parody.

Einstein was a liberal, btw, which probably goes a good way toward explaining why some right wingers have a hard time accepting the scientific concept of relativity, and misinterpret it to be a treatise somehow relevant to religion or morality (and therefore false and unacceptable). It seems especially difficult for dogmatic thinkers to seperate the man from the idea, or science from theology.

In the case of As I Lay Dying, yo've fallen into the trap of identifying a character with the author. Faulkner was no more a nihilistic misanthrope than Dickens was a curmudgeonly miser or JK Rowling is a plucky wizard.

- Faulkner fan

- Dec-08-2004, 06:25

*******************************************************

Your criticisms don't really hold up. To top that off, you obviously do not have a proper grasp of Faulkner. Don't write about things you don't know because it really shows off your ignorance.

General readership, get your reviews from somewhere else that understands the literature they write about.

- Dave

- Oct-18-2004, 01:07

*******************************************************

I find it interesting that you criticize a man like Faulkner for being a relativist and, by extension, anti-human. He wasn't. Faulkner himself once wrote that his aim in writing was to "lift man's spirits." Faulkner was deeply saddened by the death of Camus (who made a stage adaptation of one of Faulkner's works), but believed that Camus was asking questions that only God knew the answer to.

Your interpretation of the novel and Faulkner are fundamentally incorrect and your understanding of him has been sabotaged by your dogmatic views. Your main goal in reviewing novels, it seems, is to attack everything that is even moderately experimental (hard to read?), even when the views expressed aren't too terribly far from yours. It's terrifying that you assume every attempt at literary experimentation is a leftist attack on morality, especially when attacking Faulkner, a man who was obsessed with what he considered the moral failings of the South.

I don't know how you manage to keep your mind closed so tight, but please, quit trying to review works of art if you have no concept of aesthetic achievement and feel the need to turn everything you can't comprehend into a left-wing assault on civilization.

- kristofer

- Aug-04-2004, 21:04

*******************************************************

"antihuman"? It's a book.

- oj

- Apr-22-2004, 17:59

*******************************************************

I think maybe you look at truth from a dogmatic perspective, and that's ok, but to take it out on a work of art that you've obviously misinterpreted to the utmost degree, under the guise of a review no less, is simply uncalled for. The absurdity of life and the lack of a constant truth is not cause for nihilism, but examination and acceptance of other people's values not just your own. Faulkner's experiment with viewpoints was groundbreaking and still is. Also your characterization of Marx and Freud as intellectual villians is at the least ignorant and at the most evidence of your brainwashing. These were brilliant philosophers who dedicated their lives to understanding and benefiting mankind, especially Marx. But they would have understood your viewpoint because they understood that it was all how you look at things, and this is the way I look at this. I can't imagine how a well read person wouldn't recognize their inherent goodness, but maybe now I can. Burn it? Now that's an anti-human statement, if I've ever heard one.

- incredulous

- Apr-22-2004, 17:39

*******************************************************

I became absolutely frustrated by your entire review site. Are you simply against books which test the traditional parameters of fiction, or do you need plot and character development spoon-fed to you? The modernists - Joyce and Faulkner especially - who broke new ground for the form of the novel ushered in an era that challenged readers to do more than watch a chronological progression of images pass by. I am forever indebted to those who have stretched my mind, unlike the authors who so often create formulaic tomes which constantly check to be sure that their readers are "getting" their messages. Get a clue!

- Horrified

- Feb-21-2004, 10:36

*******************************************************