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Thumper
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Username: Thumper
Post Number: 621
Registered: 01-2004
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, August 24, 2008 - 06:12 pm: | 
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Hello,
I got my dictionary out and I'm about to start Light in August. Chris, I know you got your copy out! I know you probably have already read it and committed parts of the book to memory. *LOL* No need to protest Chris, I can feel the love you have for him all the way over here in Indy...good thing too, with the weather being as hot as it is, I need an ice cold breeze blowing by. *big smile* |
Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 7352
Registered: 03-2004
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, August 25, 2008 - 11:23 am: |
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If you can find a copy with some of that real soft onion skin paper I can put it out in the outhouse where it belongs--for toilet paper. |
Thumper
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Username: Thumper
Post Number: 630
Registered: 01-2004
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, August 25, 2008 - 12:08 pm: |
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Hello,
Chris: I take it, from your post, this is YOU TRASHING a book! *eyebrow raised* As my grandmother would say; Well, I do declare... |
Thumper
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Username: Thumper
Post Number: 635
Registered: 01-2004
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, August 28, 2008 - 12:17 am: |
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Hello All,
Speaking of Light in August. I love Wikipedia. I brought up Wikipedia to read the summary of Light in August. On the bottom of the page is a link to Time's 100 greatest novels from 1923 to present, which Time published in 2005. The list is whacked and lacking. Anyhow, some of the books that is one the list there is a link where the original review of the book when it was initially published. Here's the link to Light in August, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,744655,00.html?internalid=atb10 0.
Now, why they felt to republish it, especially with its original title is beyond me. But the term is an old one and one I heard often when my grandmothers, father and other relatives would talk about our family tree. Every white family has a ______ in their woodpile. When are they going to come out?? |
Steve_s
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Username: Steve_s
Post Number: 379
Registered: 04-2004
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, August 28, 2008 - 05:29 am: |
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As a Faulkner neophyte, my obvious question is, if Faulkner is such a racist, then how come so many black writers have apparently* been copying, borrowing, and appropriating his stuff for years?
For starters, isn't the whole idea of an imaginary county (like Yoknapatawpha County)...
http://www.lib.umich.edu/spec-coll/faulknersite/faulknersite/sroots/maps.html
...with a revolving cast of character (like the Sutpens, the Snopes, and so on) Faulkner's?
For example: In William Melvin Kelley's "A Different Drummer," you have an imaginary southern state, in Edward P. Jones's "Lost in the City" and "All Aunt Hagar's Children," you have many of the same characters recurring and both books are set in Washington, D.C. Isn't the setting for many of John Edgar Wideman's books Philadelphia - the Homewood section in particular?
Also, after reading just a few pages of "Absalom, Absalom!" I wondered if Thomas Sutpen wrestling with the Haitians (for sport, not like Frederick Douglass wrestled with Thomas Covey) a lot like Henry Townsend in "The Known World" wrestling with Moses (an unheard of thing for a slaveholder to do)?
In The Bluest Eye, when the narrator riffs on "only a musician could...":
The pieces of Cholly’s life could become coherent only in the head of a musician. Only those who talk their talk through the gold of curved metal, or in the touch of black-and-white rectangles and taut skins and strings echoing from wooden corridors, could give true form to his life. Only they would know how to connect the heart of a red watermelon to the asafetida bag to the muscadine to the flashlight on his behind to the fists of money to the lemonade in a Mason jar to a man called Blue and come up with what all of that meant in joy, in pain, in anger, in love, and give it its final and pervading ache of freedom.
...isn't it a little like Faulkner's "Absalom, Absalom!" where "Only an artist could..."
But he was a good architect; Quentin knew the house, twelve miles from Jefferson, in its grove of cedar and oak, seventy-five years after it was finished. And not only an architect, as General Compson said, but an artist since only an artist could have borne those twenty years in order to build a house which he doubtless not only expected but firmly intended never to see again. Not, General Compson said, the hardship to sense and the outrage to sensibility of thee two years' sojourn, but Sutpen: that only an artist could have borne Sutpen's ruthlessness and hurry and still manage to curb the dream of grim and castlelike magnificence at which Sutpen obviously aimed...
Harold Bloom and other literary scholars have long written about the apparent Faulkner influence in Toni Morrison's work, and idea which she apparently resists. Isn't this a little like "Junot" keeping mum about the influence of a certain "hip-hop" novelist (something that "Adam" freely admits)?
. |
Thumper
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Post Number: 636
Registered: 01-2004
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, August 28, 2008 - 11:12 am: |
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Hello,
Steve_s: I know there are certain people who believe that Faulkner was a racist. I am not one of them. I was not around at the time when all of these authors were alive and popular: Faulkner, Hemingway, Fitzgerald and others, so I can not get a complete picture as to what was being published or not, although I have an idea. To many black folks didn't exist (like Fitzgerald), others black folks were the indifferent house servants is all their stereotypical mess (like Hemingway), Faulkner was one of the few who at least attempted to create three dimensional black characters. With the invention of Lucas Beauchamp, in my eyes, Faulkner did away with any risk of being a racist. Lucas Beauchamp is probably one of the strongest black male character in literature. Lucas prominent in two of Faulkner's books: Go Down Moses and Intruder in the Dust. Intruder in the Dust is really Lucas's book.
Absalom, Absalom is perhaps my favorite Faulkner book. Supten is a racist, but he's not the hardcore burning cross racist, he's the dangerous sort. Black folks are cool as long as they stay in their place, but other than that Supten don't have a problem. But, he is driven by it. Faulkner took the time to show what "poor white trash" Supten, would do and act if they got the opportunity to live like "regular" or "high brow" white folks. Supten becomes obssessed with leaving a legacy. Supten race issue comes into play when he unwittingly falls for a quadroon, marries her and gets her pregnant. When he finds out that she has some black in her, he abandons her and the child. Then he moves to Mississippi, marries a real white woman has children and then his new wife dies. He then starts courting his sister-in-law to keep his "bloodline" pure. But, his younger son gets killed somehow because he was stupid. Then his first son, comes to town and his daughter falls in love with him and is determined to marry him, not knowning that he is her half brother. Is this some twisted sh_t or what! I love it! Anyway, the books ends with Sutpen pure blood line being a mentally retarded young black man, who has to be taken care of. The book is like a Twilight Zone episode with one of those ironic twist ending.
All this to say, I don't see a racist writing these types of books.
Morrison discusses Faulkner in her book Playing in the Dark. I'm going to have to re read that lecture concerning Faulkner because I forgot most of what she said about him. |
Yvettep
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Username: Yvettep
Post Number: 3155
Registered: 01-2005
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, August 28, 2008 - 11:18 am: |
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As a Faulkner neophyte, my obvious question is, if Faulkner is such a racist, then how come so many black writers have apparently* been copying, borrowing, and appropriating his stuff for years?
Steve, not saying he was or he wasn't--but the two are not mutually exclusive (racism and respect from Blacks). African American artists (and other artists of color) have always had to compartmentalize the White artists that have come before them: recognizing and respecting (and yes, even often emulating) them, while at the same time holding onto their own humanity that these artists may have personally and/or professionally denied.
I love your idea about the imaginary locations with a revolving cast of characters over several books. Add Stephen Carter's two novels to the list (Emperor and New England White). |
Steve_s
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Username: Steve_s
Post Number: 380
Registered: 04-2004
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, August 28, 2008 - 01:32 pm: |
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From the 1935 Time magazine review of "Light in August":
"Because he [Joe Christmas] was a bastard with Negro blood in him. little Joe had a hard time from the start."
I think the reviewer's assumption is incorrect, in fact, it may be missing one of the major ironies in the story, about the social constructedness of race. Without getting too far ahead, I think that like the character "Bliss" in Ralph Ellison's "Juneteenth," Joe Christmas's race could be described as "indeterminate" (the word that's often used to describe Bliss). He has no idea whether or not he has a black father.
On the other hand, I'm pleasantly surprised to learn this tidbit from the review:
He plays jazz records while he writes; wrote Soldier's Pay to Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue." |
Steve_s
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Username: Steve_s
Post Number: 381
Registered: 04-2004
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, August 28, 2008 - 02:11 pm: |
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..if Faulkner is such a racist, then how come so many black writers have apparently* been copying, borrowing, and appropriating his stuff for years?
Steve, not saying [Faulkner] was or...wasn't [a racist]--but the two are not mutually exclusive (racism and respect from Blacks). African American artists (and other artists of color) have always had to compartmentalize the White artists that have come before them: recognizing and respecting (and yes, even often emulating) them, while at the same time holding onto their own humanity that these artists may have personally and/or professionally denied.
I love your idea about the imaginary locations with a revolving cast of characters over several books. Add Stephen Carter's two novels to the list (Emperor and New England White).
Yvette, You're correct to point out that [for a white writer like Faulkner?] "racism and respect from Blacks" are not mutually exclusive, however, I was commenting more about influence, albeit in a rather cheeky way.
I think Harold Bloom identified an Oedipal component to literary influence in "The Anxiety of Influence," but I haven't read it or studied literary theory, however, I think there's a certain amount of anxiety associated with artistic influence when it's complicated by ideology or politics (think of art under the Soviets) and race. And I don't think these factors (politics or ideology and race) are mutually exclusive of Oedipal anxiety either. |
Steve_s
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Username: Steve_s
Post Number: 382
Registered: 04-2004
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, August 28, 2008 - 05:35 pm: |
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Thumper, Thanks for the information, you know much more about Faulkner than I do, so I saved your answer for when I get around to Absalom. I've read Ralph Ellison's piece about Intruder in the Dust (which might have been in the context of the movie adaptation) in Shadow and Act, and that's why I picked up a copy of that novel.
I think it was Edward Gaines, who if I'm not mistaken grew up on a Louisiana sugar cane plantation, who said that Faulkner wrote the types of characters that Gaines knew from (what he called) the quarters.
Stephen L. Carter is obviously not writing about the kind of characters that Oswald Spengler in Decline of the West dubbed the "fellaheen," however, the idea of recurring characters in a small fictional universe may, through reciprocal influence (after all, Faulkner was writing about black characters) have become a black thing along the way. It's not "my" idea, everybody knows this.
On the subject of influence, Ralph Ellison once made a distinction between what he called his literary relatives and his literary ancestors. I think the former group included Richard Wright and the latter group Hemingway and Faulkner.
An aesthetic become problematic and even coercive when it becomes too politicized and writers are expected to conform to an ideal in which certain influences are considered undesirable.
Chapter 6 of The Souls of Black Folk is a piece of lyrical sociology originally published separately, which someone on another book discussion board once compared to the writing in Absalom, Absalom! although I can't say.
While Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby has no black characters (except for the rich man in the chauffeured limousine who they pass in the Valley of Ashes if I remember correctly) the subjects of race and even the blues are fairly prominent in the novel (compare it to Light in August which, so far, is making its point about racism with very few black characters).
In The Great Gatsby, the character Tom Buchanan is a white supremacist, and this may be one of the reasons the color white (perhaps in a way similar to how Melville uses it in Moby-Dick) takes on negative connotations related to moral emptiness. Albert Murray has described it as "the most famous novel about passing," or presenting oneself as having an ethnic origin other than the actual one, "ever written," and it contains an allusion to a James Bland song. According to Stanley Crouch, it's also Murray's belief that "Fitzgerald was the first American writer to use blues as a foundation for motivic development: the lyrics of 'Beale Street Blues' contain almost all of the themes of the novel." |
Thumper
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Username: Thumper
Post Number: 638
Registered: 01-2004
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, August 30, 2008 - 08:51 pm: |
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Hello,
Steve: I love Fitzgerald and I never thought of him writing in the blues idiom. I have always felt that his writing was melodic. But, I can see where one would think that it has a blues influence.
Although Gatsby was not a black character, he had it in his head that he remake himself into what he felt the true image of a white man, because as Sutpen pointed out in Absalom, Absalom!, he was "poor white trash" and regular white folks treated and respected black folks better. So the set up of Gatsby versus Tom Buchanan (using your notion of the color white taking on negative connotations) makes sense.
I see a lot of the same characteristics in Gatsby that is in Faulkner's Thomas Sutpen. Both attempted to "rise" above their stations, almost had it and lost it. With Sutpen, Faulkner showed how Sutpen's racism destroyed all that he had built. He literally cut off his nose to spite his face all because of that one drop of black blood.
I can't wait to hear what you think of Absalom, Absalom! |
Steve_s
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Username: Steve_s
Post Number: 383
Registered: 04-2004
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, August 30, 2008 - 11:23 pm: |
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Thumper, I'm finishing up chapter 10.
My final thought about influence. Jerry Watts wrote an attack on Ralph Ellison based, not on his novel, but on his "political and metaphysical ideas on integration" (to quote Charles Johsnon). Identity politics, in other words. Watts wrote:
"Suppose . . . that Ellison's ambitions stem from a need to prove himself in the eyes of white writers or the Western literati at large. . . . This is a rather typical black intellectual 'disease.' It is a disease that arises out of the struggle to confront the inevitable internalization of inferiority among subjugated persons. . . . In this sense, a metaphorical, unsatisfiable 'great white master' may have taken up residence in Ellison's black superego."
http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/04/05/specials/johnson-intellectual.html
Norman Podhoretz, in his review of Juneteenth, seems to echo this view of a "great white master" inside Ellison's psyche, but he takes it one step further with the bizarre claim that Ellison's supposed "literary enslavement" to William Faulkner prevented him from finishing the second novel! Podhoretz wrote:
"Other parts of the 2,000 page manuscript he left behind may prove me wrong, but for now my speculation is that Ellison -- a man of great inteligence and literary erudition who had an ear second to none -- knew that Faulkner had invaded and taken him over and that this was why he could never finish the book. I can imagine him searching desparately for the lost voice he had created in Invisible Man; I can imagine him trying to fool himself into thinking that he had finally found it again, and then realizing that he had not; and I can imagine him being reduced to despair at this literary enslavement into which some incorrigible defect in his nature had sold him -- and to a Southern Master, at that!" (Norman Podhoretz Reader, p. 369 not part of Google preview)
http://books.google.com/books?id=xceDZqLnBs0C&pg=PA349&lpg=PA349&dq=norman+podho retz+reader+what+happened+to+ralph+ellison&source=web&ots=z0VJynr1MZ&sig=8ywowce AeSJycf9-qDxEqWMi8RM&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result
Man, what they do to poor Ralph Ellison is a crime! So with that in mind I suppose I can understand why Toni Morrison might want to downplay any possible Faulkner influence in her work, as she suggests in "Conversations with Toni Morrison":
"...We have no systematic mode of criticism that has yet evolved from us, but it will. I am not like James Joyce; I am not like Thomas Hardy; I am not like Faulkner. I am not like in that sense. I do not have objections to being compared to such extraordinarily gifted and facile writers, but it does leave me sort of hanging there when I know that my effort is to be like something that has probably only been fully expressed perhaps in music, or in some other culture-gen that survives almost in isolation because the community manages to hold on to it...."
And then she talks a bit about her conception of a Black Aesthetic, however, in my opinion, the idea of an autonomous black aesthetic never really took hold in jazz after the brief fling with nationalism in the 1960s and so Herbie Hancock, for example, is free to name Bill Evans, Alexander Scriabin, or whomever's quartal harmony influenced his style without any pejorative connotations. Everybody knows where jazz comes from. It is interesting however that cultural nationalism in jazz, was transplanted to the Netherlands, where, through the efforts of the jazz musician's union, it's been institutionalized (the jazz venues are subsidized, for example), however, it's not black cultural nationalism (and although there are black musicians - mostly from Surinam - they're not privileged by race), it's their (Dutch) music, described in the book "New Dutch Swing" as a mixture of "Jazz + Classical + Absurdism."
Anyway, I still think that Harold Bloom probably has some idea of what he's talking about when he says something like this:
"In some sense, all of Morrison's protagonists leap wheeling towards the death struggle, with the fine abandon of Faulkner's doom-eager men and women. Toni Morrison, in her time and place, answering to the travail of her people, speaks to the needs of an era, but her art comes out of a literary tradition not altogether at one with her cultural politics." (from the introduction to "Toni Morrison (Bloom's Modern Critical Views)"
Although I can't comment specifically on his opinion, he's deeply into her writing and I doubt that he has any ulterior motives in comparing her work to Woolf and Faulkner.
At the beginning of "Light in August," Lena Grove arrives in Jefferson just as Joe Brown/Lucas Burch has set fire to the house belonging to Joanna Burden, while her corpse is still in it. In "As I Lay Dying," Darl Bundren sets fire to the barn in an attempt to destroy his mother's corpse. In "Sula," Eva sets fire to her son and Hannah accidentally sets herself on fire. These may be superficial similarities, but I don't know these two author's works well to comment more deeply.
I'd like to forget all this comparative stuff and just talk about the book itself whenever you or Crystal or anyone is ready. |
Thumper
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Post Number: 639
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, August 31, 2008 - 12:47 am: |
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Hello,
Steve: I'm about to finish up Chapter 11.
I believe that Ellison's critics could be over thinking it. Could the answer to the Ellison riddle simply be that Ellison did not truly find his "voice"? Maybe this is why it took him so long to right Invisible Man. I read Juneteenth when it came out. I did not have a problem with how Callahan edited it, but it was obvious that Ellison's "voice" kept changing, not his narrative, or point of view but his writer's "voice" was not definitive. With Flying Home, the different stories and narratives, its not really apparent. Where as Juneteenth had a feeling that it was written by a few authors and not one.
It is unfair that the comparsion with Faulkner and Ellison's Juneteenth is unfair. While the subject matter does sound as if it would be something Faulkner would have, could have written about, it should not mean that Ellison can not tackle the same area. That's silly. So, I highly disagree with ol' Norman on his analysis.
Now as far as Morrison is concern, she can pretty much hang that up. From her first book to her last, she comes off as Faulkner's literary daughter. The difference between Morrison and Ellison is that Morrison found her voice through a Faulkner portal. While the similarity between the two is apparent; the timing, the flow, the lyricism is different. As it is pointed out in music, the same can be said with authors: when Aretha, Etta, Gladys opens their mouths, you know that you are hearing Aretha, Etta and Gladys. When you read a Morrison line, you know that its her. When you read Faulkner, you know that its him.
Now, about the book: It's like I'm reading it, really reading it for the first time! I'm a chapter ahead of you, so if I spoil it for you, I apologize. I wish I could really see a picture of Joe Christmas. I think he is mixed. Faulkner's take on the "tragic mulatto" theme is certainly unique. But, Lena, Lena gets on my nerves. I'm kinda glad to be done with her for a minute. Her type of stubborn naiveté really burns me up, because its the ultimate form of manipulation. The men in the book don't pick up on it, but notice that the women Lena came in contact with hated her on sight. The Burden's family tree...is that interesting. Here again, Faulkner plays with the notion of black blood in the family. But, unlike Thomas Sutpen, Calvin Burden's family provided an alternative take on it. True, Faulkner used Hispanic characters instead of AA, notice how he described them: His son came out dark, black, grandson. So, Joe Christmas and Joanne Burden are the flip side of the same "one drop" coin. Whereas Joanne has pride in it, Christmas is confused and its his confusion that is the origin of his anger. What do you think? |
Steve_s
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Username: Steve_s
Post Number: 384
Registered: 04-2004
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, September 01, 2008 - 08:03 pm: |
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Thumper,
Chapter 11 is the most interesting chapter so far. Calvin, the abolitionist grandfather, is a man who's so vehemently opposed to slavery, he kills a man in an argument over it, and later during Reconstruction, he and his grandson are both killed by the ex-Confederate colonel over the issue of black suffrage. And yet, when you hear his views about race, they're totally bizarre: double curses, the "bleaching" of Mexicans, etc. I know it's satirical and it is funny, but on the other hand, abolitionists probably believed all sorts of things including ideas like these.
The oddest part is when son Nathaniel introduces his wife - a Mexican woman named Juana who bears a striking resemblence to his (apparently French) mother Evangeline, in that they're both relatively dark complexioned women - to his father Calvin, the abolitionist, who says, "another damn black Burden. Folks will think I bred to a damn slaver. And now he's got to breed to one, too" (!)
Louis Menand, in his NY Times review of Juneteenth, pointed out something about Callahan's editing job that I think is relevant.
"....But what is Bliss's racial ancestry? One can see the dilemma Ellison faced on this question; for according to his own views on the subject, the biology shouldn't matter. But the story required a decision, and it does not seem clear that he had made it. That Callahan grafted the section about Bliss's birth onto the text from a separate manuscript suggests that Ellison had rejected the version of Bliss's origins he wrote there (which is still indeterminate on the question of his race) and was considering possibilities adumbrated elsewhere in the text, of which there are several."
http://www.nytimes.com/books/99/06/20/reviews/990620.20menandt.html
It makes complete sense that Ellison didn't want to just "explain" Bliss's ancestry, he wanted to do what Faulkner is doing, "describe" it by the effects it has on the protagonist and the other characters. For example, Joanna's skepticism that Joe is mixed, seems to hone in some unexamined feelings of his. Like Lena, he's very naive and because of the way he's been raised by the sadistic Calvinist McEachern, he becomes masochistic. Doc Hines believes that Joe's father is black. Simon McEachern instills in Joe the idea that he's a sinner, but he apparently doesn't suspect that Joe might be mixed because Joe considers telling him, out of spite.
Jay Parini, in "One Matchless Time," describes the social construct as a "call and response":
"Joe seems to accept, at least temporarily, the view that he is a sinner and acts out this belief, hooking up with a prostitute called Bobbie Allen, who rejects him when he tells her of his mixed blood. But there is no certainty of his heritage, as Joe confesses to Joanna Burden. He has no idea whether or not he has a black father, but seems almost to delight in telling whites that he is black and telling blacks that he is white. In this, Faulkner offers a subtle critique of the deeply arbitrary quality of racial prejudice in the South. 'The surface view of Faulkner's world is that you are who you are by virtue of inherited blood,' notes [Philip M.] Weinstein, 'but the deeper view is that you are who you are by virtue of how you have been called: what calls upon you you have internalized as you.' Thus race is a social construct, a complex call-and-response that becomes a 'fatal becoming,' as Weinstein says, and turns Joe Christmas, regardless of any basis in fact, into a 'little ______ bastard' in the eyes of his family and those who gather around him. Joe cannot comprehend this complex dialectic, and he is ultimately destroyed by his lack of understanding, which mirrors the lack of understanding around him..."
I can't say yet if Joe is mixed and ultimately, it may not even matter. However, I did consider the idea that this might be a "tragic mulatto" story, and maybe it is, but I would say it's at least a very atypical one. |
Thumper
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Post Number: 642
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, September 01, 2008 - 11:15 pm: |
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Hello All,
Steve: Keep reading, Joe Christmas's origin is explained. Why its kept a secret in the book's summary is beyond me, like people don't want to ruin the possibility of a teacher assigning this book as a book report or something.
I think the whole book is Faulkner's entire examination of race. Later on Faulkner, as I stated, Faulkner explains that Joe's father could have been "passing" as far as Joe's mother was concerned but to his boss in the circus he was had some black in him. And the response to Joe in his mother's family was that Joe was an abomination and his mother committed the sin with her "bicthery and abomination" for the fact that she laid with a black man. I believe that Faulkner's genius lies with how he describes the society in which the story takes place. Notice how he touches on the multiple aspects of white society, yet he does not touch the black side of town, he really used this in his portrait of Joe. On the surface, we have read plenty of stories of how people of mixed ancestry is treated in black society, but Faulkner flipped the coin and showed how it would be with that same child raised in an all white racist society with no connection with the black community. Whether good or bad, our skin color serves as a component to our identity, especially in the country and most definitely in the South.
Now, Joe's confusion is palpable. He begins using his blackness tentatively when he would sleep with white prostitutes and when it came time to pay them, he told them that he was black, expecting to get kick out, beat up, etc. Remember that small portion of the story when Joe lived with a black woman for 3 years? So, it appears to me that it was like he was sticking his toe in the pool of BLACK to see if it was OK to jump in or not, but he could not commit to doing one thing or the other. So, his confusion and his ambivalence messed with him.
Also, notice how religion played with his mind. His foster father was a religious, sadistic nut. Which is no surprised that in Joe's mind, race, religion and violence is all mixed up in his mind. Then to find out that Joe's maternal grandfather became a religious nut when he found out that his daughter was pregnant with a mixed child, I don't know if Joe's fanaticism was hereditary and/or it was reinforced with his sadistic upbringing.
I do however disagree with the statement, "Joe seems to accept, at least temporarily, the view that he is a sinner and acts out this belief, hooking up with a prostitute called Bobbie Allen, who rejects him when he tells her of his mixed blood."
Because Bobbie did not reject Joe because of his blackness. Remember he told her toward the beginning of their relationship that he was black and she continued to see him. She blew up at him because McEachin came to that dance, after Joe sneaked out of the house, calling Bobbie all those ho's and bitches, and Joe cold cocked up with a chair. |
Steve_s
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Username: Steve_s
Post Number: 385
Registered: 04-2004
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, September 02, 2008 - 02:00 am: |
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Thumper,
On the fourth page of Chapter 12, the narrator tells us that Joe is white, although it may be contradicted elsewhere. First sentence of the fifth paragraph of Chapter 12 :
"Sometimes the notes would tell him not to come until a certain hour, to that house which no white person save himself had entered in years and in which for twenty years now she had been all night alone; for a whole week she forced him to climb into a window to come to her."
The end of the same paragraph might indicate that she has sexual fantasies of him as a black man, but we know that she hasn't had any relations with any man (including any of the available black men who have apparently frequented her house) in the past twenty years. In my opinion, it might have to do with her father's explanation, at the gravesite when she was four years old, of the "curse of race," which causes her to "objectify' black people.
Joe's father is a dark-skinned circus performer thought to have "Negro" blood in him. Joe's white mother, Milly Hines, died while giving birth to him, and Milly's father, old Doc Hines -- incensed by his daughter's relationship with a "Negro" --apparently killed the circus performer, then placed Joe in an orphanage. While growing up, Joe is aware of a janitor who always seems to be watching him; the man never talks to Joe, but insinuates to others that the light-skinned Joe is a "______." The janitor turns out to be Doc Hines. He's a deranged racist who is obsessed with scapegoating the child because his daughter gave birth "illegitimately" The character Lena Grove is her double).
The symbolism of naming in this novel could fill a few pages. Lena "Grove" is impregnated by a Lucas "Burch." There's a proliferation of the letter "B". Lucas Burch, who runs out on Lena; Byron Bunch, who wants to take her in (the name "Burch" is a derivation of "Bunch" the way "Joanna" is derived from "Juana" and "Burden" is derived from "Burrington"); Joanna Burder, Mrs. Beard, Joe Brown (the name Burch takes while running) are other examples. Grove suggests an Eden or Garden, Joe Chrismas, her opposite, has a name which derives from Jesus born in a manger, Hightower, the preacher, has a name which places him higher than others, while Gail Hightower may suggest sexual ambiguity.
"Lena," Mississippi and Walnut "Grove," Mississippi appear to be the same town (compare their locations on the map):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lena,_Mississippi
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walnut_Grove,_Mississippi
Faulkner's "examination of race" includes naming and nomenclature. The abolitionist grandfather from New England is described as a "Nordic." This euphemism for white was popular among blacks during the Harlem Renaissance, not to designate Scandinavian ancestry from Norway, Sweden, and Denmark (or Finland and Iceland) but for any Europeans north of Spain, Italy, or Greece. When I first started reading black literature, it took me a minute to figure out why Carl Van Vechten, who was of Dutch ancestry, was often described as "Nordic." It's hardly a scientific description.
I seriously doubt that Joe's father was an Afro-Mexican, it's more likely that he was a mestizo (the Mexican ethnic majority group that obviously doesn't show up on the circus boss's radar screen -- as it did for the Burden men who had lived in California and Mexico and married relatively "dark-skinned white" women, one Mexican and the other French. I think Faulkner is explaining this imprecision of naming indirectly through doubling.
I have to sign off, but I think you're right about Bobbie. I'll have to check the text. |
Thumper
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Post Number: 643
Registered: 01-2004
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, September 02, 2008 - 09:34 pm: |
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Hello All,
Steve: I just finished the book and am currently "decompressing" from it. I'll be back to respond to your post a little later. I have to give Faulkner his due because he ended the book with a laugh. Well, with the seriousness and tone of the book, a hearty laugh was most welcome. I'm glad you brought Light up and that I decided to read it with you. Crystal thanks for reading the book with us. I enjoyed it. Although the only down fall to me was Faulkner's last portion of the novel featuring a flashback exploring Gail Hightower; which I felt was overkill. By that time I was mental and emotional exhausted with the murder of Joe Christmas. It didn't help that I found Hightower uninteresting in the first place. I'm going to have to reevaluate my favorite Faulkner book because of it. |
Steve_s
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Post Number: 386
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, September 02, 2008 - 10:38 pm: |
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Thumper, I've now read half of the book but I won't be able to finish for another week. I may come back when I do. Thanks. |
Crystal
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Post Number: 433
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, September 04, 2008 - 03:05 pm: |
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I enjoyed it too Thumper. I know I called Faulkner a racist in an earlier post but it may have been he was just writing about what he knew and the time he was in. Plus he’s pretty heavy handed painting the picture of the white-trash white folks he writes about so I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. This is a racist country after all and most of us contribute to that in some way. The sexist statement stands though.
I too wondered what was the point of the Hightower part of the story. I also picked up on Lena’s ‘depending on the kindness of strangers’ manner. Hey, it worked for her. The end of the story was very cartoonish with everybody running around like mad men “kill the ni**er”, “no, stop, he was with me”. – loony tune! And that Percy Grimm character – man what a caricature!
Thanks for suggesting this winter wonderland interlude. |
Nom_de_plume
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Post Number: 145
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, September 05, 2008 - 11:40 pm: |
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LOL I'm still trying to make my way through the collected stories, but will have to check out his novels. His Paris Review interview was AWESOME! I'll see if I can find it online.
BAM!!!!!!
http://www.theparisreview.org/media/4954_FAULKNER4.pdf |
Crystal
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Username: Crystal
Post Number: 435
Registered: 01-2004
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, September 10, 2008 - 03:11 pm: |
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Thanks for the link Nom. See what I mean:
"Success is feminine and like a woman; if you cringe before her, she will override you. So the way to treat her is to show her the back of your hand. Then maybe she will do the crawling." |
Steve_s
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Post Number: 387
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, September 10, 2008 - 04:33 pm: |
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Thumper, I haven't forgotten about the discussion, it's just taking me longer than expected to finish because I'm reading another book for a discussion. I still have 125 pages left. |
Thumper
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Username: Thumper
Post Number: 650
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, September 14, 2008 - 03:17 pm: |
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Hello,
Steve: Don't worry about man. Take your time.
Crystal: I did see your point about Faulkner being against women. I've read more than a few of Faulkner's books, and I can not recall one where there was a strong female character that had good sense or wasn't going through the change. |
Steve_s
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Post Number: 389
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, September 21, 2008 - 12:21 am: |
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Thumper and everyone,
I finished Light in August. Part of the reason it took me so long is the intensity of the story; it's an intensity that builds slowly, leading to the inevitable outrage. Ernest Gaines and Pete Dexter are two writers I associate with this kind of racial melodrama, although I never finished the one Gaines novel I attempted, for this reason.
For the benefit of those who haven't read it, this is a 500-page epic novel that culminates in an act of mob violence, and is set in Mississippi during the same time period that as its publication, 1932, just two or three years after NAACP executive secretary Walter White published his own searing book-length indictment of lynching.
The story seems to turn on a few ambiguities, including racial identity and whether the killing is a murder or done in self-defense. I think there's evidence to support either argument.
I think it's impossible to read Light in August and come away believing that the author is countenancing mob violence. There is a certain amount of "contextual racism" in the presence of the n-word without the twenty-first century conceit of a "semantic reversal" which theoretically - as in Diaz - would diffuse the word's power in direct proportion to the frequency with which it's invoked. And some of the minor characters might be construed as racial stereotypes, however, I think you'll find the same or worse in any James Baldwin novel.
Just my opinion, but I don't think the average reader can infer authorial "sexism" or anything about menopause from this novel, although I have read that opinion elsewhere so I'm not doubting that it might apply to his other work. I think the case has to be made on a character-by-character basis, for example, I think Lena is a "strong" character. Mrs. Beard who owns the rooming house is a minor character, but a positive one. I think Mrs. Hines finds her own voice with the birth of Lena's baby, and I think there may even be some honor in Hightower's wife being driven to madness by her husband's obsession with his Confederate ancestor, his grandfather. Joanna is a philanthropist, or runs what might be called today a consuntancy for black schools and colleges.
I liked the Hightower chapter. It was not as negative as I expected, and it shows him as a product of his past, which, like Joanna's, is third-generation and surprisingly includes one ancestor -- his father -- who was anti-slavery.
I think it's possible (although not probable) that this chapter might have been an influence on Marilynne Robinson's "Gilead," a novel about three generations of Protestant ministers in a small Iowa town that was a safe haven on the Underground Railroad. At one time Barack Obama's Web site listed Gilead as his most recent novel read.
Thumper, Thanks for the discussion. You were right in pointing out Faulkner biographer Jay Parini's error in misstating the reason for prostitute Bobbie's rejection of Joe Christmas. So if you still feel like critiquing anything I've written, go right ahead. |
Steve_s
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Post Number: 390
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, September 22, 2008 - 09:38 pm: |
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I just watched the movie that Crystal mentioned, "Streetcar Named Desire," for the first time. I'm sorry but Lena Grove, the calm, steadfast, innocent pregnant country girl in "Light in August," does not bear even a vague resemblance to Tennessee Williams's Blanche DuBois from "Streetcar," the frequently ill, worrisome, fretful, not-quite-able-to-deal-with-reality aging Southern Belle who utters the famous line, "I have always depended on the kindness of strangers" as they come to take her away to the sanitorium. Nice try. |
Crystal
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Username: Crystal
Post Number: 443
Registered: 01-2004
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, September 23, 2008 - 12:16 pm: |
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Steve – no Lena’s naivety is not like Blanche’s pitiful flightiness but Lena does depend on strangers or maybe providence is a better word to get her where she’s going. I seem to remember a specific reference or two to Joanna going through menopause but I’d have to check the book. And I still find Faulkner sexist in his description of various women and women in general. I don’t have either of the books I recently read around anymore for specific examples but his overall tone from the beginning of Sanctuary through Light in August is just not very flattering of women to me. |
Steve_s
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Post Number: 391
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, September 28, 2008 - 04:30 pm: |
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Crystal - I just read Absalom, Absalom! with your criticism in mind and I did notice many instances where the male narrators (they're all male and all are unreliable, to differing degrees) either espouse certain beliefs about "women's nature" or attribute similar beliefs to characters, male and female (like Rosa Coldfield, to name one) whose internal monologues they're inhabiting and/or speculating about. Many of these statements resemble the one made by William Faulkner himself in the Paris Review interview which you called "sexist." I don' say these kinds of things and I don't defend them, so I don't disagree with you. I also greatly appreciate your comments about racism in the novel. However, I just wanted to point out to those who haven't read Faulkner, the difference between these sexist things that a lot of men say and the kind of sexism depicted in the novel, as described in this critical essay about Light in August.
"...Bleikstein insists that the pervasive presence of racist and sexist attitudes is responsible for the profound psychological damage suffered by so many of the characters and for the social ostracism and even death by violence to which they are too often driven. He then moves beyond such observations to a broader consideration of the repressive nature of the Puritan ideology that both endorses and underlies the entire value system of the world presented in Light in August and goes on to argue that a society grounded in such clear-cut divisions between white and black, male and female, election and damnation must necessarily compel absolute and unambiguous conformity from its members and from those outsiders who venture within its boundaries. It is this coherent explication of the interdependent functioning of racial, sexual, and religious obsessions within thee novel that constitutes perhaps the single most valuable aspect of an altogether important essay.
Bleikasten does not, even so, exhaust the issue of sexism in the world of Light in August and in the imagination of William Faulkner, and several additional aspects of the topic are examined by Judith Wittenberg in the fourth essay in this volume. Well aware of he fact that Faulkner has sometimes been discussed as a misogynistic writer....[etc]" {from New Essays on Light in August by Michael Millgate}
There's a four page short story in Cane by Jean Toomer called Blood-Burning Moon, about a murder by mob violence. Louisa is not a "tragic mulatto" but she works in "the white folks' kitchen" and "her skin [is] the color of oak leaves on young trees in fall" (or pale green but beginning to acquire a touch of autumnal color). It's a story about a horrific murder by mob, however, does it contain any class and gender chauvinism?
She has two suitors, one white and one black. She's relatively sophisticated in comparison to the field hand - just as Charles Bon is to Henry Sutpen and Thomas Sutpen is to Wash Jones in Absalom, Absalom! so there are underlying class issues in the story. The white suitor acts exactly as one would expect someone of his class to act in say, a Maoist agitprop drama. He thinks to himself something like, "Men like me have always had our way with women like her, so why shouldn't I?" What does that say about her? And does the author attributed the murder, in part, to her indecision? I don't thin the author observed the color line status quo in his own personal relationships. |
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