Absalom, Absalom! (1936)

Summary

A. B. Bernd. “Today's Book.” Macon Telegraph, October 25, 1936, p. 4.

When an author remains breathless for almost 400 pages, he should by rights expect his readers to reach that state of fatigue of which breathlessness is a symptom. Yet such is the magic of William Faulkner's style and method that the reader becomes only a fellow-panter, eagerly turning chaotic pages to learn the next terrifying tragedy that will overwhelm a group of forbidding and inhuman neurotics.

For Faulkner has imagination and power–qualities requisite to good literature. His fund of invention seems endless–though limited to such abnormal persons as we customarily prefer not to know intimately. He wastes in a single novel a dozen minor incidents that would make masterful short stories in themselves–and, as a matter of fact, he has used one of his own best short stories, “Wash,” which appeared in Harper's two or three years ago, as a major incident in this book.

His driving force is tremendous. His words catapult from his pen with such impetuous violence that the wonder is, not that he is able to arrange them in order (for in this novel, at last, Mr. Faulkner boldly throws grammar overboard and follows his own private rules of syntax), but that he can communicate his meaning as clearly as he does. Naturally there are lapses. Occasional strings of words seem as relevant as the major output of Gertrude Stein. But for the most part, their meaning, in spite of some difficulty with pronominal reference, is perceivable, and their construction lamentable.

Reading Faulkner is an experience. Grant him his right to his own peculiar language (and he is a highly capable master of it). Grant him his circuitous method.