Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-vdxz6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T22:43:20.007Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Reading Bon's Letter and Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

David Krause
David Krause*
Affiliation:
Marquette University Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The old letter Mr. Compson gives his son Quentin to read in chapter 4 of Absalom, Absalom! cannot be easily interpreted. Faulkner refuses to authorize any assumptions about the origin, destination, or meaning of the letter that might simplify its reading; instead, he entangles its readers, both inside and outside the novel, in a web of competing readings, rereadings, and misreadings. Given the problems of reading, we cannot assume that a text like Absalom discloses the way it imagines its own reading(s) through the scenes of reading it represents. Still, the better we can see how Faulkner imagines various readings of texts within his text—through detailed readings of the readings of Bon's letter—the closer we can come to understanding what Faulkner reveals about the uncertainties and risks of reading, about what is and is not in his book, and about our own uncertainties regarding how we are and are not in the world.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 99 , Issue 2 , March 1984 , pp. 225 - 241
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1984

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Altman, Janet Gurkin. Epistolarity: Approaches to a Form. Columbus: Ohio State Univ. Press, 1982.Google Scholar
Barthes, Roland. “From Work to Text.” In Textual Strategies. Ed. Harari, Josué. Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1979, 73–81.Google Scholar
Barthes, Roland. S/Z. Trans. Miller, Richard. New York: Hill & Wang, 1974.Google Scholar
Brooks, Cleanth. “The Narrative Structure of Absalom, Absalom!” Georgia Review 29 (1975): 366–94.Google Scholar
Brown, Homer Obed. “The Errant Letter and the Whispering Gallery.” Genre 10 (1977): 573–99.Google Scholar
Chavkin, Alan. “The Imagination as the Alternative to Sutpen's Design.” Arizona Quarterly 37 (1981): 116–26.Google Scholar
de Man, Paul. Allegories of Reading. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1979.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology. Trans. Spivak, Gayatri C. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1976.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. Speech and Phenomenon. Trans. Allison, David B. Evanston: Northwestern Univ. Press, 1973.Google Scholar
Donoghue, Denis. Ferocious Alphabets. London: Faber, 1981.Google Scholar
Faulkner, William. Absalom, Absalom! New York: Vintage-Random, 1972.Google Scholar
Faulkner, William. Selected Letters of William Faulkner. Ed. Blotner, Joseph. New York: Random, 1977.Google Scholar
Faulkner, William. The Sound and the Fury. New York: Vintage-Random, 1954.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. The Archaeology of Knowledge. Trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith. New York: Harper, 1972.Google Scholar
Kartiganer, Donald M. The Fragile Thread: The Meaning of Form in Faulkner's Novels. Amherst: Univ. of Massachusetts Press, 1979.Google Scholar
Krause, David. “Reading Shreve's Letters and Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!” Studies in American Fiction 11 (1983): 153–69.Google Scholar
Matthews, John T. The Play of Faulkner's Language. Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1982.Google Scholar
Minter, David. William Faulkner: His Life and Work. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1980.Google Scholar
Muhlenfeld, Elisabeth. “‘We have waited long enough’: Judith Sutpen and Charles Bon.” Southern Review 14 (1978): 66–80.Google Scholar
Ross, Stephen M. “The Evocation of Voice in Absalom, Absalom!” Essays in Literature 8 (1981): 135–49.Google Scholar
Roussel, Roy. “Reflections on the Letter: The Reconciliation of Distance and Presence in Pamela.” ELH 41 (1974): 375–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zender, Karl F. “Reading in ‘The Bear.‘” Faulkner Studies 1 (1980): 91–99.Google Scholar