Author Archives: Jeff Allred

A way in…

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Check out this playful yet profound portal into reading Faulkner’s work.  We’ll be talking a lot out the subjective experience of reading Faulkner’s work for the first time: what kind of reader he anticipates, how he inducts readers into what Philip Weinstein calls the practice of “unknowing,” how we readers compete, as it were, with narrators and characters for knowledge of past events.  And to be clear, the linked material is just an interesting suggestion by one person for how to start reading Faulkner; it is not any part of a syllabus for our class!

Welcome

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Fall 2020 students: welcome to our course site. We will use this site, along with a Dropbox folder and Zoom, to conduct the course. Here, you’ll find a wealth of resources, from slide decks to study questions to upcoming assignments to posts by myself and prior students, to guide you reading, thinking, and writing.

We will cover all the nuts and bolts on Thursday August 27th, our first Zoom: details will arrive via email. In the meantime, poke around and email me if you have any questions: [email protected]

Yoknapedia Hall of Fame, 2017 edition

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I wanted to share with you some of my favorite entries you produced for the Yoknapedia this term. Though it’s a long list, it’s by no means comprehensive, so don’t feel bad if your entry is not present!

My general impression is that, with this second iteration of the encyclopedia, you students had to dig a bit deeper and focus on more marginal texts (we didn’t read The Unvanquished last time, so it was “new” for the Yoknapedia) and figures/concepts. I also note that very many of you focused on women this time around, especially women who are marginal to the texts in question but, upon closer examination, often resonate deeply with themes in Faulkner’s work and in modernist literature more broadly.

Examples of this latter tendency include Molly’s piece on Mrs. McEachern, tying her to the broader landscape of Faulkner’s depiction of women subtly resisting patriarchy. And Lynn’s well-researched piece on Caroline Bascomb, which explores the contradictory aspect of Caroline (and by extension the matriarchs of the plantocracy) as “both prisoner and jailer” of the social dominant. Along similar lines, Meghan’s medium entry on Hightower’s unnamed wife examines the way her “wildness” goes viral in the novel, infecting Hightower, so to speak, and pointing to a broader range of “wild” expressions of sexuality by women like Burden and non-conforming figures like Hightower himself. And Karen’s entry on Bobbie Allen is exemplary for its deep dive into a seemingly bit player, revealing her roots (via her name) in popular culture and sensitively analyzing her delicate balance of vulnerability and power as a white woman (if not “lady”). Finally, Carla’s gloss on Drusilla Hawk explores Drusilla’s “unsexing” of herself during the turmoil of the War and her recapture, as it were, after the War’s end. I’ll also wedge in a “medium” entry on a marginal man: Kate explores Maury Bascomb from TSAF, arguing that the text subtly links him to African Americans via a common denigration and marginalization.

There were many helpful “short” entries; here are some of the best:

Katie’s Riposte in Tertio provides a nice illustration of the maneuver and a lucid explanation of what the fencing term might mean as the title of one of the stories in The Unvanquished.

Sal unpacks Pantaloon, explaining the relevance of Early Modern “commedia dell’arte” to Faulkner’s text but noting the limits of the comparison of Rider to the “Pantaloon” type in that cultural form.

Cara’s take on horses explores the relationship between the equine ilk and mobility, a connection that can be read widely across Faulkner’s work.

Melissa glosses Gaius Petronius Arbiter, a writer from the first Neronian era in Rome (we are currently experiencing the second Neronian era IMO). LIA imagines Joanna’s decadent sexual body in terms of Petronius’s famous satire Satyricon, and Melissa’s lushly illustrated entry helps us to grasp the implications of the reference.

 And because we all love lists, here’s a Top Five that come in for special commendation:

Lynn’s Shegog gives a breathtakingly comprehensive review of the literature on Shegog’s sermon in a compact space, a review that helps us understand how questions of race have thundered into Faulkner studies since the 1980s and transformed the field.

Kate’s long entry on cloisters ruminates on Faulkner’s penchant for the word “cloister” and the concept of seclusion. It’s a fascinating itinerary through a range of figures and works that make us think about the contradictory aspects of the cloister: as solitude and imprisonment, as privilege and prison, as intimacy and expulsion.

Katie’s medium entry on Cassandra helpful unpacks the name that Jason III believes Sutpen intended for Clytemnestra: it’s a really full gloss on the many implications of the name with helpful reference to secondary literature.

Rene’s theoretically sophisticated take on “parchment” as a descriptor for Christmas’s skin/flesh reads the figure through the work of the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben, arguing that Christmas’s blankness does not so much point to ideology’s inscription of subjects as Christmas’s status as what Agamben calls “bare life,” a zero degree of biological existence that the State can sacrifice at will to shore up its own sovereignty.

Karen’s long entry on dress is a virtuosic long riff on the many valences of clothing in the County. It wears its theory lightly, pointing out the way clothes dialectically combine individual choice and sensibility with deeply inscribed ideological norms. The essay then proceeds to lay out ways in which clothing manifests in the County in ways that illuminate Faulkner’s portrayal of race, class, gender, and sexuality.

I hope you enjoy reading each other’s work as much as I have enjoyed reading yours. Thanks for your hard work and creativity this term.

New Orleans, the Confederacy, and Hating It

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I didn’t make nearly enough of the stirring story of toppling monuments to the Confederacy in New Orleans this month. After reading GDM and AA in particular, we should have a keen sense of the depth of historical resonance as Mayor Landrieu has overseen the removal of monuments to Confederate leaders such as Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis. The removals have been accompanied by protests and counter-protests, often with valences of fascism (e.g., burning torches and heavy arms) as well as more reasoned reactions by writers from right to left meditating on what it means to remember and/or memorialize the past.

For us, we should think of certain aspects of Faulkner’s legacy. For example, we might remember how large the War looms in the imagination of Quentin Compson, so much so that he feels emptied out in the present, “his very body an … empty hall echoing with sonorous defeated names.” We might also reflect on two contrary vectors in Faulkner’s work that are highly relevant. On the one hand, we have Faulkner’s strenuous effort, amid the resurgence of nativism and white supremacy, to reveal the absurdity of racial ideologies (especially in LIA and AA via Christmas and Bon), and to attempt, however awkwardly at times, to inhabit black subjectivities and imagine black desires (especially via Lucas and Molly in GDM).

In similar fashion, Landrieu and other white elites, who very much still dominate the city and state governments and control a vast share of capital and influence, nonetheless have made a courageous effort to chip away at the toxic legacy of white supremacy with this act. On the other hand, we should remember that Faulkner shares with his liberal Southern counterparts an antipathy to some aspect of antiracist progressivism of his era and a strong preference for the kind of “going slow” on racial issues that King later mocked as meaning “never.” The very existence of these monuments in 2017 speaks to the equivalence of “later” and “never” in many minds up to this point, and the push to remove them now represents, one hopes, a growing will on the part of a substantial majority of the nation to reckon with this painful past. We need to replace what Landrieu calls “a fictional, sanitized Confederacy” in our official modes of memory with a more complex narrative in which white supremacy and the violent subjugation of indigenous peoples and members of minority groups is central to the formation and maintenance of “The South.” Here’s Landrieu’s speech, which is well worth a read: .

Joe Christmas’ Resurrection

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In Joe Christmas’ death scene he is resurrected and transcends out of his body and manifests himself in the mind of the townspeople. “The pent black blood seemed to rush out of his pale body like the rush of sparks from a rising rocket; upon that black blast the man seemed to to rise soaring into their memories forever and ever.” In Christmas’ final scene he is able to finally shed the ambiguous color that has plagued him his entire life. He physically loses his racial identity as he becomes pale and the black separates from him. His biracial identity is literally ripped out of him by Grimm.

Faulkner’s Christ-figure misfit isn’t given the final say in the novel. I find this to be a bold choice and a direct commentary on the Christ-figure. Throughout this novel, there have been biblical allusions. Lena Grove mildly representing Virgin Mary, Joanna Burden representing John the Baptist, and Christmas representing Jesus Christ. The choice for Faulkner to twist and contort these characters into less than holy representations of these biblical figures is intriguing.

Focusing on Christmas, the sexist, possibly murderous, irredeemable character in this novel takes on this Christ role. Faulkner using someone who is the complete opposite of Christ pushes the death Christmas to be more controversial. Are we are the reader supposed to feel sorrow for Christmas? His murder at the hands of a white supremacist pushes the reader to feel bad for a character that maybe we shouldn’t feel bad for. Ultimately, Christmas’ murder is driven by hate, and in true Faulkner fashion, he flips the resurrection on its head.

Biblically, Jesus died for people’s sins, and those sins were absolved. Joe Christmas’ death does not absolve the town of their sins. His death instead instills the memory of Joe Christmas that will not fade from their memory. Christmas’ death serves to hold a mirror up to the town. His corpse, with the black and white in him physically separated is a visual representation of the racial divide that inhabits the town.

Abrogating Structure

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When Wash Jones comes to Rosa Coldfield with the news that her nephew, Henry Sutpen had killed his sister’s fiance at the gates to Sutpen’s Hundred, Rosa knows that she must set off for Sutpen’s because she promised her deceased sister that, although her niece [Judith]  was years older than her, she would look after Judith. Upon reaching the home, Clytie tries to prevent Rosa from going up the stairs first by calling her by name [different than how she said her name in the past] and then by touching – grabbing- Rosa by her arm. This was monumental.

Clytie having addressed Rosa by her first name was not as shocking as one might think; Clytie called Rosa by her name since their childhood and to most people in Jefferson County, Rosa was still a child. However, Clytie grabbing Rosa’s arm was an act of defiance that their social structure could not abide. In grabbing Rosa’s flesh, Clytie declared herself an equal. In grabbing her arm, Clytie shook the rigid structure of social hierarchy and in flesh touching flesh, affirmed that race indeed, is only a rumor, not a fact. There is no superiority of one over the other, there is only flesh, “…that black arresting and untimorous hand on my white woman’s flesh…there is something in the touch of flesh which abrogates…I crying out to her…because of the shock which was not yet outrage because it would be terror soon…” [AA, 111-112]. When Rosa spoke, her narration declares that she spoke not to Clytie, but to “it,” it being the rigid, racial structure of society which Clytie had defied with that grab.

Rosa’s terror sprang not only from this defiance, which could change Rosa’s way of life forever, but from what she was. Rosa recalled with equal parts horror, disgust, and a sprinkle of awe how Clytie and Judith not only played with the same toys, but on occasion, slept in the same bed [Judith’s] or pallet [Clytie’s] together. Based on Rosa’s fixation with Clytie and Judith’s childhood and their indecorous nocturnal placements, this moment of Black flesh making contact with White flesh as equals will stay with Rosa for all the days of her life. She will carry with her this unease / anxiety that Clytie’s flesh can make contact with Rosa’s flesh again.

 

Movement of Tomey’s Turl/Fox

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Unlike other characters in Go Down Moses, Tomey’s Turl is not content with remaining in a state of social stasis and it is for this reason that he is the central character of the book. The plot moves forward with his  sudden but not unexpected departure from the McCaslin plantation to Herbert Beauchamp’s plantation in yearning of his love, Tennie. At first reading, Buck and Buddy seem content with the stasis kind of life they lead; neither is married, they live together, and apparently, want to continue living in an all-male world, yet as the reader notes, Buck makes it a point to “put on his necktie while they were running toward the lot to catch the horses” [GDM, 7] because he would see Miss Sophonisba, who is looking for a husband. One must wonder, if Tomey’s Turl was not the catalyst of movement, would Uncle Buck have acted upon his secret desire to marry? It seems unlikely that he would ever have acted on marriage if not seemingly coerced into to, thanks to the stakes of the card game played with Beauchamp.

Both Uncle Buck and Herbert Beauchamp love to play cards and make wages, perhaps over anything, but it is unlikely that if Tomey’s Turl had not made the bi-annual journey to Tennie, neither man would have such a big wager – ownership of either Tomey’s Turl or Tennie and Miss Sophonisba’s marriage [to Buck].

In line with Tomey’s Turl being the catalyst of the plot, Tomey’s Turl is an allegory for the fox that is hunted by the dogs of people who find entertainment in this. The fox may run and think it is running toward freedom, but it is always forced back to its box under the bed, to be let out on a whim. It is not master of its own domain; it has to deal with the savagery imposed on it by people who deem this game/social hierarchy necessary.

Rider’s Last

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In “Pantaloon in Black,” Faulkner critiques indifference to racial violence by giving readers two iterations of Rider’s story which vary in how and how much they say about the man. From the moment he buries his wife until he kills Birdsong, the story is focalized through him and it is very detailed. It faithfully reports everything from his movement through the landscape to the unique physical sensation of the alcohol he imbibed. Readers should pity him because of his addiction and inability to cope with loss, both interconnected symptoms of his problematic understanding of self and masculinity. Through this sympathy he is thoroughly humanized as the story’s protagonist and as an African American male.  In the second part of “Pantaloon in Black,” his suffering and inability to cope are minimized by indifference as the story is shortened and told through by the white deputy to his wife. Everything that humanizes Rider to the reader is reinterpreted as evidence of the inhumanity of all African Americans, “but when it comes to the normal human feelings and sentiments of human beings, they might just as well be a damn herd of wild buffaloes. Now you take this one today–” (147). Here, he proceeds to tell a condensed version of the story in he really only recounts and emphasizes the parts of Rider’s last days that fully support his claim. As evidence of his claim that Rider might as well be a wild animal, he is sure to stress Rider’s brute strength in lifting the logs, ripping open the cell, and brawling with the prisoners. And how could he overlook Rider’s apparent lack of feelings and respect in picking up a shovel at the funeral and returning to work the next day. This is a dramatic reduction of Rider’s true story to a convenient narrative for a racist deputy to believe.

Upon finishing his account, he asks his wife what she thinks of it all to which she replies, “I think if you eat any supper in this house you’ll do it in the next five minutes…I’m going to clear this table then and I’m going to the picture show” (152). Her response is so routine, so ordinary that it is as if she had not just heard the violently tragic tale that her husband just told her, like she had not even listened to the twisted version he spun. It is the response of someone who is so desensitized to racial violence and is so convinced of the inhumanity of African-Americans that it effectively takes what was already a shortened account of Rider’s most traumatic hours and erases it from the world. Save for the fact that this fictional account of build up to a lynching has been recorded by Faulkner and included in this collection, the community that allows the response of deputy’s wife’s response will itself never hear his story again story again. 

“Woman-Made”

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The story “The Fire and the Hearth” in Go Down, Moses explores Lucas Beauchamp’s complex feelings regarding the interconnections of racism and sexism as he confronts the temporary loss of his wife Molly, both at the time of this loss and years later. Lucas describes the moments that precipitate Molly’s departure, during which he risks his life crossing a creek swollen with rain in order to bring back the doctor for Zack Edmonds’s wife, only to find upon his return that he is too late: Zack’s wife has died in childbirth. “It was as though on that louring and driving day he had crossed and then recrossed a kind of Lethe, emerging, being permitted to escape, buying as the price of life a world outwardly the same yet subtly and irrevocably altered” (46). Zack reacts immediately, essentially slotting Molly into her place for the purpose of child rearing, and perhaps sexual purposes as well, as if the two women are interchangeable objects. Despite his great love for his wife, Lucas’s struggles with this situation are contradictory and thorny, involving a flawed view of masculinity and womanhood.

Lucas is a concerned and angered observer of the subjugation to which Molly, as well as Zack’s deceased wife, have endured. Regarding Zack’s wife, he remarks,

It was as though the white woman not only had never quitted the house, she had never existed–the object which they buried in the orchard two days later … a thing of no moment, unsanctified, nothing; his own wife, the black woman, now living alone in the house which old Cass had built for them when they married. (46)

Upon Molly’s eventual return to him, Lucas notices further evidence of Zack’s callous behavior: she is wearing Zack’s wife’s shoes. Lucas notes that “They had belonged to the white woman who had not died, who had not even ever existed” (51).

However, Lucas seems unable to disconnect himself entirely from the sexist strains of the racism driving Zack’s behavior. This incapacity seems to be filtered through Lucas’s anxieties regarding the social gaze, which is apparent in his focus on the state of his masculinity in light of the situation in which he and Molly have become ensnared. Upon Molly’s return, Lucas concludes that “Yes … I got to kill him or I got to leave here” (48). Although he says “He could not have said why,” Lucas waits until daybreak to approach Zack (51). Lucas perhaps wishes to take the more brazen, and thus, more manly route, but a desire to shine a spotlight on Zack’s reprehensible actions may also be at play, despite the unlikelihood that the society surrounding them would take notice of what was sadly routine conduct. Adding a further wrinkle to the situation is Lucas’s analysis of the implications of the timing of the confrontation. Lucas evaluates the following possibility: “He keeps her in the house with him six months and I don’t do nothing: he sends her back to me and I kills him. It would be like I had done said aloud to the whole world that he never sent her back because I told him to but he give her back to me because he was tired of her,” revealing a concern over Molly’s perhaps evolving reputation resulting from her mistreatment as well (48). This fixation on masculinity is perhaps mixed in with his undoubtedly complex feelings regarding his inability from his place within a racist system to prevent Zack’s actions and confront this power structure.

This inability to completely disengage from the complicated structure of oppression that surrounds him and Molly is also wrapped up in his views of his and Zack’s shared yet distinct heritage. Lucas paradoxically contends with the violence haunting his racial heritage, the same lurking menace that victimizes Molly, by disparaging women. He refers to Zack and the other men on the Edmonds branch of the family as “woman-made” since they are descended from Carothers McCaslin through the female line, in contrast to Lucas (51). As he says, “what you and your pa got from old Carothers had to come to you through a woman–a critter not responsible like men are responsible, not to be held like men are held” (52).

Uneasy at the Thought of Thinking

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Faulkner fashioned Henry Sutpen as more of a feeling man than thinking man with the words, “Henry, the provincial, the clown almost, given to instinctive and violent action rather than to thinking…” [AA, 76] and I think Henry was subconsciously aware of it. Henry is a strange sort of man; although he feels, he is a something of a brute. Prior to leaving for University of Mississippi, Henry had never seen the world beyond his nose. Once at Mississippi, he meets and becomes completely enraptured by the older, mysterious, and cosmopolitan Charles Bon.

Everything about Charles Bon fascinates Henry Sutpen; his manner of speech and dress, his way with women, and even his mysterious past, which he wants to know. Henry Sutpen had never been as interested or devoted to anything as he was to being Charles Bon’s comrade. This is why he wanted a marital connection between Bon and his sister, Judith; it would permanently unite the two men in an acceptable fashion, as brothers. Henry could never be Charles and if Henry never learned all of Bon’s history, then he would at least help shape and always be a part of Bon’s elegant future. If only Charles had heeded the unconscious decree Henry demanded during that four year engagement probation period, but Charles did not; the contract of his first marriage remained.

According to Faulkner, Henry’s fixation with Bon and  his sister’s virginity was, “the pure and perfect incest: the brother realizing that the sister’s virginity must be destoryed in order to have existed at all, taking that virginity in the person of the brother-in-law, the man whom he would be if he could become, metamorphose into, the lover, the husband…perhaps that is what went on, not in Henry’s mind but in his soul. Because he never thought. He felt, and acted immediately”[AA, 77]. Henry was not a thinking man, he was a feeling man. Around Charles and to an extent, around his sister, Henry felt despair; he could never be with Bon nor he could he become Bon. If Bon lived, then Henry Sutpen would have to spend all his days thinking about this.

I am curious about several things, the first being, how different would life have been for Henry Sutpen if he had not disavowed his inheritance and run off with Charles Bon to help the Southern cause? What would have become of Thomas Sutpen’s legacy and his land? The second source for errant thoughts is, could Henry have reconciled the possibility of his half-brother, who may have had Black ancestry, married to his White sister if no one else would ever know? Would Judith have married him anyway? Why did the possibility of this ancestry all but eradicate Henry’s longing for and despair of Charles Bon?