After several revisions this is what I have so far.

I plan on focusing on the femme fatales of Carmen and Vivian in The Big Sleep as compared to Caddy in Faulkners works. This list will definitely be whittled down. Possibly, I’d also like to explore depictions of sexuality since “The Big Sleep” has a central issue of sexuality and pornography at the center of its investigation and The Sound and the Fury have a central theme of female virginity, sexuality and promoscuity. I mostly used Jstor using the key words ‘Faulkner’ combined with ‘femme fatale’ ‘film noir’ and ‘The Big Sleep’.

Dussere, Erik. “Introduction: Unknown Legends.” Faulkner Journal, vol. 28, no. 1, 2014, pp. 3–10. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/24908431. Accessed 16 Nov. 2020.

Use in essay: to introduce the noir genre and how uncertain the definition is and its connection to Faulkner’s work which is also uncertain. How mystery and the noir genre attempt to perceive objectively what is mostly impossible to see objectively. “Faulkner is as problematic a category as ‘noir.’” The seemingly parallel in timeline between Faulkner’s writing career and the rise of the noir genre. The structural similarity between noir and Faulkner. How Faulkner places the reader in the form of detective in “Absalom, Absalom!” by providing multiple different perspectives of the same events to the reader the same way that the people a detective questions provide differing accounts of the same events, leading the detective and the reader to rely on their own perception to discern the truth. “The book’s narration moves not towards closure but loops back endlessly into its own tortured telling.” The paralleling theme of “radical subjectivity.” “the difficulty of reconstructing the past in Absalom, Absalom! -influenced the style of many noirs…” “

Robbins, Ben. “Inscrutable Images and Cultural Migrations: Wartime Noir and the Compson Appendix.” Faulkner Journal, vol. 28, no. 1, 2014, pp. 55–77. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/24908434. Accessed 16 Nov. 2020.

Use in essay: the connection of the femme fatale and Caddy. Faulkner wrote the Compson Appendix after penning 3 noir films and walking out on his contract with the studio. The Caddy section of the Compson Appendix has more femme fatale themes than the portrayal of Caddy in The Sound and The Fury. “The way in which these new images depict Caddy differs considerably from her presentation in ‘The Sound and the Fury.’ Indeed, perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the whole appendix is Faulkner’s reimagining of Caddy in this later depiction as a transnational femme fatale.” Brings attention to inconsistencies between The Sound and the Fury and the appendix, showing Faulkners evolution from his initial work to his later work which was influenced by his time in Hollywood. 

Librach, Ronald S. “ADAPTATION AND ONTOLOGY: The Impulse towards Closure in Howard Hawks’s Version of ‘The Big Sleep.’” Literature/Film Quarterly, vol. 19, no. 3, 1991, pp. 164–175. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/43796498. Accessed 16 Nov. 2020.

Connection between The Big Sleep’s “confusing” plot line and Faulkner’s own confusing plot structures. Hawks quote “during the making of The Big Sleep, I found out, for the first time, that you don’t have to be too logical. You really should just make good scenes. You follow one scene with another and stop worrying about hooking them together.” This was no doubt in part because of Faulkner’s own writing style as exhibited in The Sound and The Fury and Absalom, Absalom! Which does not follow a typical point A to point B straight line logic but as Librach says loops back and forth.

KENLEY, NICOLE. “The Southern Hard(Ly)Boiled: Knight’s Gambit, The Big Sleep, and Faulkner’s Construction of the Popular.” The Mississippi Quarterly, vol. 65, no. 3, 2012, pp. 339–366. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/26467195. Accessed 16 Nov. 2020.

Justifies the connection between Faulkner’s literary output and his Hollywood career instead of isolating the two from each other. “Ironically, Faulkner wrote the material that critics try to explain away as not literary enough for precisely that reason– the popular medium provided him a platform for making an argument about high literature that he could not make from within it.” While Faulkner was openly disdainful of his time in Hollywood the experience did change his writing style. Often it is not the things we most enjoy but those that we least enjoy that change us as people. Authors are forever expressing themselves while writing even while not intending to. Therefore every experience changes their writing. While Faulkner’s hatred of Hollywood is well known, he was once quoted as saying “Hollywood is a place where a man can get stabbed in the back while climbing a ladder.” his criticisms were not of the writing itself but of the people, calling Los Angeles “The plastic asshole of the world.”

“William Faulkner.” Hawks on Hawks, by Joseph McBride, University Press of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky, 2013, pp. 69–72. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt4cgsgb.14. Accessed 16 Nov. 2020.

Personal accounts of Howard Hawks on William Faulkner, giving personal insight to the author himself and his time in Hollywood. Account of how Faulkner wrote in Joan Crawford’s part in Today We Live solely because Hawks told him too, establishing how women served a function in his narrative instead of being fully fleshed out characters. It also has funny anecdotes on Faulkner and stories about his alcoholism. In Chapter 23 “Bogart and The Big Sleep” he also explains that Raymond Chandler did not know who killed ‘so and so’. Chandler’s lack of surity of his own plot is symbiotic with Faulkner’s own ambiguity when it comes to his writing.

TROMLY, LUCAS. “‘Lady Tiger in a Tea Gown’: Decadence, Kitsch, and Faulkner’s ‘Femme Fatale.’” The Mississippi Quarterly, vol. 62, no. 3, 2009, pp. 457–477. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/26476715. Accessed 16 Nov. 2020.

An in depth analysis of Faulkners portrayals of the femme fatal through his poem “XXXVII” the novels “Soldiers Pay” “Flags in the Dust” and “The Sound and the Fury” as a threat to patriarchal order through control of her own sexuality. This also connects the femme fatale as a symbol of modernity. The femme fatale, Tromly says, “invariably entails the downfall of the men she attracts” which parallels with Caddy causing the downfall of the Compson men through her sexuality. He goes on to quote Peter Nicholl saying “the energies that drive the femme fatale constitute a larger sociopolitical critique, claiming that in decadent culture, sexual perversity ‘spells the ruin of bourgeois rationalism.’” He later offers an in depth analysis of XXXVII’s central character Lilith, the original femme fatale though he does not use the name Lilith until the third staza, making ‘her’ any and every woman until specified. He later argues that female sexuality in The Sound and the Fury “transfixes and horrifies men and is frequently associated with death”. 

Genuinely, these sources were bookmarked on my laptop for a week and I thought I already handed this in.

I plan on focusing on the femme fatale, the ingenue and the depictions of masculinity in the big sleep as compared to Faulkners works. I do not know if I will have time to read sanctuary though I will try. This list will definitely be whittled down. Possibly, I’d also like to explore depictions of sexuality since “The Big Sleep” has a central issue of sexuality and pornography at the center of its investigation and the works we’ve read so far (The Sound and the Fury and Light in August) have a central theme of female virginity, sexuality and promoscuity. I mostly used Jstor using the key words ‘Faulkner’ combined with ‘femme fatale’ ‘film noir’ and ‘The Big Sleep’.

Mecholsky, Kristopher. “‘The Mansion’ as Soft-Boiled Noir.” Faulkner Journal, vol. 28, no. 1, 2014, pp. 79–93. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/24908435. Accessed 16 Nov. 2020.

Dussere, Erik. “Introduction: Unknown Legends.” Faulkner Journal, vol. 28, no. 1, 2014, pp. 3–10. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/24908431. Accessed 16 Nov. 2020.

Robbins, Ben. “Inscrutable Images and Cultural Migrations: Wartime Noir and the Compson Appendix.” Faulkner Journal, vol. 28, no. 1, 2014, pp. 55–77. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/24908434. Accessed 16 Nov. 2020.

Osteen, Mark. “Dark Mirrors: ‘Sanctuary’’s Noir Vision.” Faulkner Journal, vol. 28, no. 1, 2014, pp. 11–35. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/24908432. Accessed 16 Nov. 2020.

Fluck, Winfried. “Crime, Guilt, and Subjectivity in ‘Film Noir.’” Amerikastudien / American Studies, vol. 46, no. 3, 2001, pp. 379–408. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/41157665. Accessed 16 Nov. 2020.

Conley, Tom. “Stages of ‘Film Noir.’” Theatre Journal, vol. 39, no. 3, 1987, pp. 347–363. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3208154. Accessed 16 Nov. 2020.

Librach, Ronald S. “ADAPTATION AND ONTOLOGY: The Impulse towards Closure in Howard Hawks’s Version of ‘The Big Sleep.’” Literature/Film Quarterly, vol. 19, no. 3, 1991, pp. 164–175. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/43796498. Accessed 16 Nov. 2020.

FONTANA, ERNEST. “Chivalry and Modernity in Raymond Chandler’s ‘The Big Sleep.’” Western American Literature, vol. 19, no. 3, 1984, pp. 179–186. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/43020380. Accessed 16 Nov. 2020.

KENLEY, NICOLE. “The Southern Hard(Ly)Boiled: Knight’s Gambit, The Big Sleep, and Faulkner’s Construction of the Popular.” The Mississippi Quarterly, vol. 65, no. 3, 2012, pp. 339–366. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/26467195. Accessed 16 Nov. 2020.

Rzepka, Charles J. “‘I’M IN THE BUSINESS TOO’: GOTHIC CHIVALRY, PRIVATE EYES, AND PROXY SEX AND VIOLENCE IN CHANDLER’S ‘THE BIG SLEEP.’” Modern Fiction Studies, vol. 46, no. 3, 2000, pp. 695–724. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/26286071. Accessed 16 Nov. 2020.

Robbins, Ben. “Inscrutable Images and Cultural Migrations: Wartime Noir and the Compson Appendix.” Faulkner Journal, vol. 28, no. 1, 2014, pp. 55–77. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/24908434. Accessed 16 Nov. 2020.

“William Faulkner.” Hawks on Hawks, by Joseph McBride, University Press of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky, 2013, pp. 69–72. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt4cgsgb.14. Accessed 16 Nov. 2020.

TROMLY, LUCAS. “‘Lady Tiger in a Tea Gown’: Decadence, Kitsch, and Faulkner’s ‘Femme Fatale.’” The Mississippi Quarterly, vol. 62, no. 3, 2009, pp. 457–477. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/26476715. Accessed 16 Nov. 2020.

Faulkner, William, and Sarah Gleeson-White. William Faulkner at Twentieth Century-Fox: the Annotated Screenplays. Oxford University Press, 2017. 

(CJ was kind enough to email me a copy of the last source a while ago cause he’s a great dude)

I’d like to write my paper on Faulkner and the noir genre, how he influenced it as one of the first screen writers of it and how it influenced his writing after he started penning screenplays for The Big Sleep. I’d also like to research if there are any thematic overlaps between noir in general and his work, was it a symbiotic and easy transition for Faulkner or did it change his writing over time? Essentially the relationship between noir and Faulkners other works.

In Light In August we’re introduced initially to Lena Grove, a pregnant woman walking her way to a man who abandoned her. While Lena literally relies on the kindness of strangers those strangers seem primarily to be men. Armstid, for example, give Lena a ride and a place to sleep for the night however his wife, who did not oppose to her staying there, is incredibly dissmissive of Lena, essentially paying her to leave in the form of giving her the egg money. While giving Lena money is a kind act Armstid’s wife does not do it out of a sense of true compassion, it is a pitiable act to her. This is not the only passive aggressive act, Mrs. Armstid also makes breakfast for Lena, as early as she can, but does not sit with her to eat it or even see her off. She is in this scene attempting to run Lena off in a societally acceptable way. Lena is a wronged and yet not loved person to her for Lena had some agency in ‘getting herself pregnant’. To Mrs. Armstid Lena has violated the rules of femininity by both getting pregnant out of wedlock and by walking away from her family toward the man that abandoned her. This is not the way a woman should be according to the society Faulkner describes. Lena is at once pitied by the men for being wronged and hated by the women for doing some of the ‘wronging.’ Mrs. Armstid has internalized the patriarchal ideas of femininity to the point that she, not her husband, has become an enforcer of what it is to be a proper woman in society. Armstid reminisces on this a bit, on page 14 thinking “But thats the woman of it. Her own self one of the first ones to cut the ground from under a sister woman… she don’t care nothing about womenfolks.” Armstid thinks that Lena is the one who has betrayed femininity, a sentiment his wife shares in her actions and interrogations of Lena. They are members of ‘proper’ gendered society and Lena is an unfortunate outlier.

Mrs. Armstid is not alone in this, the women of the church react the same way to Hightowers wife when she violates their code of what it is to be a pastors wife. Their initial reactions to both Hightower and his wife are suspicious however she is the initial target of their gossip and ill will. When she does not show up to church they gossip, when she is spotted in Memphis they gossip, when she evetually comes back they gossip. Any action that she takes is met with the chagrin of the women. They are the ones who leave the church after Mrs. Hightower is killed in the hotel, they are the ones who come over unannounced to see and observe and gather intelligence about the Hightower’s lives to spread around or over exagerate in retellings. They are the enforcers of what is proper patriarchal society. So, as Armstid puts it, they “cut the ground out from under a sister woman.”

Dewey Dell, the mourning woman who cannot cry. She keens when her mother’s soul leaves her body and cannot cry afterwards. Her grief is both overwhelming and numbing. As too powerful to cope with immediately she can only scream, then empty herself and feel nothing. The relationship Dewey Dell has with her baby is also the one she has with her grief, she is in the liminal space of aloneness and not-aloneness, of the pain of grief and overwhelming numbness. 

Keening is the action of wailing in grief for a dead person. It is a soporatic combination of singing and screaming meant to convey the deepest of despair. Deweys name is of celtic origin meaning ‘beloved’ so it follows that this would be her method of grief. Keening is both overwhelming and sudden, usually out of the keener’s control, a spontaneous melodic scream. After her mother has passed on however Dewey cannot cry, repeating it to herself like a mantra. The keening was her first expression to the grief of her mother’s death and the only one she allows herself to .

According to myth, keening was created by the Goddess Brigid from Irish Mythology to mourn her son who was killed in front of her. Keening became a tradition for Celtic funerals with a group of keeners often being hired to keen at funerals, the practice is still alive today, however not as common. It is an ingrained tradition in Celtic countries such as Ireland, Wales, and Scotland. The act of keening also shows some of the Bundred cultural background, perhaps Scottish, perhaps Welsh since this is Dewey’s first and only expression of grief.

Neither Benjy nor Quentin give us the readers full scale narrative in the conventional arch of beginning middle and end. The ‘middle’ in particular seems to be the hard part for Benjy where as with Quentin the ‘end’ seems to be it. By this I mean that though Benjy has a definitive sense of where he is in the moment he starts narrating (with Luster who is looking for his quarter) he does not understand the past as ‘the past’. To Benjy it is also happening in the present and though someone with a linear understanding of time could piece together the forward backwards motion that happens in Benjy’s mind Benjy himself does not understand it. Benjy has no concept of the future, he cannot comprehend years passing let alone understand that yesterday or 26 years ago is not today. This, in his section of the text, can be attributed to his mental disability however it also is reflective of the Compson Family as a whole. This becomes more apparent when Quentin’s section is analyzed.

Likewise Quentin has a fragmented understanding of time itself. Like Benjy he skips back and forth from the past to the present however unlike Benjy he understands that the past has already occurred. When Quentin travels to the past in his mind it is not because he cannot differentiate between past and present but because he does not want to. Quentin longs to correct previous wrongs, to be a savior to his ‘fallen’ sister, the Adam to her Eve instead of her succumbing to the Serpent Dalton Ames or others like him. Quentin chooses not to live in the present moment or plan for the future. Though he has the mental capacity to plan for the future and not dwell only on past experiences he subconsciously or consciously chooses to do so. He and Benjy are the same that way. Perhaps Quentin is unintentionally mirroring Benjy because he and Caddy are so close. Quentin therefore would like to replace Benjy in this thread of reasoning.

So far in the text it as apparent that both Compsons who’s narratives we as readers have been exposed to would like to live in the past whether they mistake it for the present or not. This clear theme through the Compson family is a metaphor for the south itself wishing to return to it’s Antebellum phase when rich families like the Compsons owned not only land but slaves, their reputations were clear of any blemish, their ladies acted like ladies. This toxic nostalgia, a longing for a past that was not as rosy as it is remembered as is the fall of the Compson family. Instead of addressing the future they can only address the past or the present and so they will continue their decline.