Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner

Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner; narrated by Grover Gardner | 2007; originally published 1936 | Random House Audio | Audiobook $ 20.25

Absalom, Absalom! tells the story of Thomas Sutpen, the enigmatic stranger who came to Jefferson township in the early 1830s. With a French architect and a band of wild Haitians, he wrung a fabulous plantation out of the muddy bottoms of the north Mississippi wilderness. Sutpen was a man, Faulker said, “who wanted sons and the sons destroyed him.” His tragedy left its impression not only on his contemporaries but also on men who came after, men like Quentin Compson, haunted even into the 20th century by Sutpen’s legacy of ruthlessness and single-minded disregard for the human community.

I wanted to add at least a couple of books from the Southern Gothic genre to my list for Classics Club, and this particular title is often listed as a prime example of the type.

This book is so incredibly atmospheric. I might have been listening to it while driving down the highway on my way to work with a styrofoam cup of lukewarm middling coffee and the air conditioner blasting, but in my mind I was sitting in a rocking chair on a front porch on a humid evening as the cicadas scream and sipping syrup-sweet tea.

This isn’t really what one could call a horror story, but nonetheless a sense of horror starts to build as the story unfolds and all the sad, grim details start to come out. What starts off as a story about a mysterious stranger coming to town develops slowly into a tale of self-inflicted tragedy, a tale of an individual family’s downfall tied inextricably to the downfall of the postbellum South. You might be saying, “YES silly, that’s what Southern Gothic IS,” but TBH this is my first experience with the genre (in book form, anyway).

I couldn’t help but think of my own family’s history while listening to this one. My great-great-great grandfather was, according to family lore, killed by his own father-in-law on the eve of the Civil War in Kentucky. I haven’t found any actual evidence to either prove or disprove this story, and the motive for this alleged murder hasn’t been passed down. But when I read a book like Absalom, Absalom!, I find myself once again pondering the story behind this mysterious, violent heritage.

I will say that I’m not 100% sure that audio was the right format choice for this one. I was occasionally, especially at first, confused about which character was meant to be narrating; their patterns of speaking are all the same and in any case don’t really come across as people speaking so much as some form of poetic stream-of-consciousness. This may have been less of a problem with the print version of the book. In any case, once I relaxed and just let the words flow over me without worrying overmuch about who was saying what, or even trying to pay too much attention to the details of what they were saying, the book was more enjoyable. It felt a bit like sort of lazily overhearing the conversation of people sitting next to you; not eavesdropping, just listening without being involved.

I would recommend this book to anyone else who’d like to give Southern Gothic a try, or really anyone from (or of people from) the American South.

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Links:

• The William Faulkner Society
• Biography of William Faulkner from The Nobel Prize
• The William Faulkner Collection at the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia
• Faulkner at Virginia Audio Archive at the University of Virginia
• The University of Mississippi Museum’s Rowan Oak

Publication information: Faulkner, William. Absalom, Absalom! New York, NY: Random House Audio, 2007. Audiobook.
Source: Public library, via Libby.
Disclaimer: I am not compensated, monetarily or otherwise, for reviews of books or other products.