Wrong.
Dead wrong.
Dead as Addie Bundren in a homemade coffin for eleven full days being dragged around by her unloving and toothless family through raging rivers and burning barns.
The Bundren family honours the wish of their matriarch to be buried in Jefferson county, however their reasons seem to me, to be all quite selfish. I kept thinking that at any moment one of the family members would choose to be the hero and save this family from themselves but, alas, that moment never came.
Once I realized that the actual story of these idiots (sorry Faulkner, but seriously) was never going to capture my interest, I started to just focus on the enjoyment of Faulkner's writing. He has a way with words which can make an entire novel seem like a poem.
Example #1
'And before you are emptied for sleep, what are you. And when you are emptied for sleep, you are not. And when you are filled with sleep, you never were.'
Makes sense... right?!
Wrong.
Dead wrong.
I'm sure that if I took my sweet time and a handful of ginko biloba I might be able to figure this riddle out, or at least have an opinion of what it means to me, but thats not what is going to happen here.
There are times in life when comprehension is critical, and times, like now, when you just have to sit back and enjoy the read.
Maybe Addie Bundren was on crack? Maybe she didn't know what the word empty meant? Maybe I don't know what the word empty means?
Maybe if I read the words, out loud, under my breath, it will sound like the a beautiful poem.
There's no denying that Faulkner has a way with the words that would make even Ernest, Ayn, and Aldous jealous. A few stuck out to me as favorites.
'If her eyes had been pistols, I wouldn't be talking now'.
I've been working on this look since 1996 and have yet to stop a man in his tracks. Expect for the ignorant few that stopped to ask if I was having a stroke.
'I wish I had time to let her die. I wish I had time to wish I had'.
The regret in this sentence is so crisp and so real that it blew me away. To wish you had done something differently or even at all is one thing. To wish you had even thought to wish it is a whole other monster. The sneak attack kind.
'It is as though the space between us were time; an irrevocable quality'.
This one made the wall of favorites. I'm not even quite sure what it mean but I do know that I love each word and I am quite contented staring at these words, trying to translate them into something I can hold.
I just hope that the next book of William Faulkner will still have his beautiful style of writing but a brighter and more interesting storyline to keep me rivited. A good love story would do the trick. Apparently Faulkner wrote this depressing novel in six weeks and didn't change a word of it.
Good decision...right?!
Wrong.
Dead wrong.
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