6A JULY 6 - 12, 2022 • LONG ISLAND WEEKLY
FULL RUN
233106 S
FAULKNER from page 4A from Robert E. Lee. After the war, Henry’s moment of truth arrives. He does avenge his sister, but through most dishonorable means, shooting Charles in the back. The Sutpen family collapses. Henry flees the country. Judith perishes during an outbreak of yellow fever. The elderly Sutpen is undaunted. He remains fixated on fathering an heir. An old man, he seduces a teenage girl. The girl has a father. Sutpen becomes the second Sutpen man to meet a violent end. Sutpen, Charles, Henry, Judith—all dead. The mansion is burned to the ground. No wonder that Faulkner’s scholarship rivals that of Shakespeare. With Absalom, Absalom! the man went into the ring with The Bard—and scored some real points. For Cleanth Brooks, Faulkner’s most profound critic, the novel is much more than Southern gothic, “Sutpen’s virtues are those of a typical twentieth-century man. So are his vices—his dismissal of the past, his commitment to the future, and his confidence that, with courage and know-how, he can accomplish literally anything.” Quinten Compson acts as the novel’s main narrator. Sutpen’s second wife, Rosa Coldfield, has summoned Quentin to tell him the Sutpen story, hoping that the young man might someday record it. Instead, Quentin talks about the drama all evening on a cold New England night, coming to terms, tragically, with his failed manhood. Henry is a man of action. Quinten flashes back to his adolescence when local men had their way with his older sister, the stunning Candance (“Caddy”). He must fight at least one of them to save his sister’s honor. Quinten is beaten and humiliated by one Dalton Ames, a man who had impregnated Caddy. Henry fought and “won.” Quinten was beaten. He can’t go on. In The Sound And The Fury, the Compson family represents the landed gentry Faulkner revered. The downfall of the Compson family is especially moving. The reader knows that the best of America is passing with them. The Compsons have three surviving children: Jason, the embittered older brother; Candance, the young siren who flies the family nest and Benjy, the 36-year-old man-child. Before leaving town, “Caddy” gave birth to a girl she named after her dead brother. The girl is now 17 and set to leave the haunted household. Benjy is protected by his minder, Luster, and the latter’s mother, Dilsey, the maid who tries to keep the household together. Jason is resentful. Spoiled by his mother, he lives at home, works at a department store, frequents local brothels and dreams of making a killing on Wall Street. He, too, is a modern, 1920s-style character: America, he grouses, is now the “land of the wop and the home of the kike.” An anonymous “New York jew” prevents him from cashing in on his investments. Caddy has fled. Jason now must look
William Faulkner: First Encounters (Photo courtesy of Amazon.com)
after her daughter, while keeping an eye on the retarded Benjy. He hates his life and blames others for his fate. Since Quentin’s suicide, Mr. Compson succumbs to alcoholism. The female Quinten takes her life savings of $3,000 (serious money in those days) and tries to run off with a traveling showman. Jason wants the money for himself. Benjy and Dilsey retain their humanity. Both can give and receive love. Dilsey takes Benjy to her Easter Sunday service, dismissing the gossip of black parishioners over a retarded white man in their midst. The novel begins and ends with Benjy howling away. Its beginning remains unforgettable. Luster is scouring the rough of a local golf course, looking for stray golf balls he can trade in for coins to go to the motion pictures. On the links, golfers are yelling “caddy.” Benjy thinks that they are addressing his long-lost sister. On he goes, howling away. At the end, Luster drives Benjy home from the services. He makes a wrong turn and Benjy, his world out of joint again, howls on until Jason steps in and sets things right. Is Jason that bad? When need be, he is a reluctant lifeline to his younger brother. As with Absalom, Absalom! Cleanth Brooks believes the novel has a universal theme. “The book is…about the disintegration of a family, a tradition, and of a culture,” he observes. “The Southern setting… renders these lesions…more poignantly…because the South…is stubbornly traditional…and old-fashioned. But the disintegrating forces…are national and international.” Of the two, The Sound And The Fury is the easier read. All you need to do is turn off the television set and read the first chapter. You’ll remember the experience for the rest of your life. I guarantee it.
