My bibliography is a bit late because I ended up changing the course of my research project and had to find new sources. I was thinking of doing a more comparative piece that compares some of Faulkner’s novels to those of South-Asian writers, but there was only ONE secondary source on the topic, so I didn’t feel comfortable writing an entire paper with just one secondary source to back up my argument. Since I was still interested in taking the comparative route, I ended up fishing through different articles on the Hunter one search to find ideas, and found a really great article about how mobilization figured in the works of Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Hemingway and etc. As a huge Fitzgerald / Hemingway fan, I began thinking about the parallels between the works of all 3 of these writers, and how despite writing novels with seemingly different characters, they all seem to share a conjoined kind of inter-war American identity, including feelings of feminized masculinity and racism. My new research question would be something like: In what ways does Faulkner’s representation of American identity in his interwar novels parallel that of his contemporaries? I would focus on first establishing Faulkner’s representation of Southern identity in novels like TSAF & LIA, and then go on to make analytical comparisons with novels like The Great Gatsby and The Sun Also Rises. I feel that there are many politically and socially relevant similarities between these novels that are worth researching. To find sources I used our class Zotero database, the Hunter one search, JSTOR, as well as the NYPL.

1. Gandal, Keith. The Gun and the Pen : Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner and the Fiction of Mobilization . New York ;: Oxford University Press, 2011. Print.

It took a while to get access to this source, but I finally did through “Oxford Scholarship Online”. This book focuses on the works of Faulkner, Fitzgerald, and Hemingway during the 1920s and 30s, and the way in which their failure to experience war “emasculated” them. The book has a great chapter titled “The Sound and the Fury and Military Rejects”, which discusses chivalry, “ethnic others”, and racism, while comparing the novel’s themes to Fitz. & Hem.

2. Faulkner and His Contemporaries, edited by Joseph R. Urgo, and Ann J. Abadie, University Press of Mississippi, 2004. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/huntercollege-ebooks/detail.action?docID=746916.

Although a large portion of this book focuses on things like author feuds and what other writers thought about Faulkner, there’s a valuable chapter titled “Getting Good at Doing Nothing”: Faulkner, Hemingway, and the Fiction of Gesture” that relevantly supports my project’s question. The chapter discusses novels such as TSAF and LIA, and the ways in which the gestures of characters like Quentin and Joe Christmas point to issues of traumatization and social corruption. The author also makes comparisons to Hemingway characters such as Nick Adams.

3. McParland, Robert. Beyond Gatsby : How Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Writers of the 1920s Shaped American Culture . Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015. Print.

Because my topic is a bit odd, it was hard to find access to most sources, but I was able to access this book through the NYPL. This book is more factual / auto-biographical rather than analytical, but I find it an important source for my project, since I might need to make some biographical or historical references in my project when comparing the three writers to each other.

4. Nüssler, Ulrike. “Reconsidering the Function of Mrs. Compson in Faulkner’s ‘The Sound and the Fury.’” Amerikastudien / American Studies, vol. 42, no. 4, 1997, pp. 573–581. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/41157332.

This is a really great, quaint article that reconsiders Mrs. Compson’s role in TSAF. Where she has a tendency to be perceived as a sort of one-sided traditional character, this article refigures that stance by declaring that she’s actually a sort of dominant matriarch that holds power over the males in the household. I’d like to focus on Mrs. Compson in my paper as one of the characters that embodies interwar identity, especially since there are several female characters in the works of Hem & Fitz that function similarly.

5. Hemingway, Ernest, 1899-1961. The Sun Also Rises. New York, N.Y. :Scribner, 2006.

Published in 1926, this novel follows post-World War 1 Americans who find themselves rendezvousing around Paris. Tackles themes like post-war emasculation, conflicted femininity, and race.

6. Fitzgerald, F. Scott. 1995. The Great Gatsby. New York: Scribner Paperback Fiction.

A classic American novel. Although famous for it’s depiction of the “Roaring 20s”, throughout my own readings I’ve found that it’s depiction of American identity is much more complex, layered and sometimes unromantic, as well as deeply rooted in ideas of economics and class.

I’ll be discussing what makes Shreve’s narration and character unique and slightly deviant from the rest, focusing on Chapter 6 / 7 (For some reason thought chapter 7 was today’s reading!).

Although Shreve’s narration seems like a diversion at first, as it unravels one begins to realize that his constant questioning and interest in Quentin’s Southern background is heavily guided by the kind of romanticism that the rest of the novel’s narrators have already expressed. As Shreve is Canadian, he seems to come from a somewhat objective perspective, albeit one disordered by not only Southern but generally American stereotypes, as well as his individual, almost child-like fascination with Quentin’s background. Shreve is an unreliable narrator, but at this point in the novel, it seems that there is no such thing as a wholly reliable narrator in Faulkner’s world. In listening to and contributing to Quentin’s stories, one also gets the feeling that the whole act is a chance for Shreve to conduct what’s almost a sort of mystery solving. He uses a lot of simplistic terms that allude to his position as a novice of Southern histories, such as “Rebel army”, “General Lee”, that although have some relevance to the story, remind me of the kinds of obvious historical facts a primary kid could spout. Shreve also seems to become Bon’s equal in a certain way, as when he begins to figure Quentin’s story from his perspective, he ultimately gives Bon a voice. He states,

“Because your old man was wrong here, too! He said it
was Bon who was wounded, but it wasn’t. Because who told him? Who told Sutpen, or your grandfather either, which of them it was who was hit?”

This connection is both interesting and multilayered, as it’s hard to tell if Shreve genuinely thinks Bon is innocent or if this claim comes out of a sort of natural kinship he feels towards him. Similarly, both Shreve and Bon are outsiders in the Southern world, and both interestingly find themselves thrown into this hectic conflict through academic means. As a result Shreve very much becomes the ideal portrayer of Bon’s story. However, as Shreve begins to root for Bon and bring his “story” to life, a lot of it is entirely fictive and merely him filling in bank space. He becomes a determined Bon defender, but much of his claims are rooted out of his own bias, which is interesting when you think about the fact that he’s supposed to be a detached narrator. Shreve’s narration is a fitting complement to Quentin’s story, as where Quentin typically simply reiterates the facts, Shreve’s recitations are imaginative and inventive. Therefore, Shreve’s relationship to the “content” of the novel’s narrative is one of both unique objectivity and pathos. Because he’s an outsider and because of his self-insertion, Shreve is able to decipher Bon’s story more successfully than any other character in the novel thus far.

1. Matthews, John. William Faulkner: Seeing Through the South. 1. Aufl. Chichester, U.K. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. Print.
2. Aboul-Ela, Hosam M. “Faulkner and the Third World: The Contemporary Politics of Perspective.” CR: The New Centennial Review, vol. 10, no. 1, 2010, pp. 89–99. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/41949676.
3. Ladd, Barbara. “Reconsidering Tradition.” The Southern literary journal 42.1 (2009): 129–133. Web.
4. King, Richard H., and Robert H. Brinkmeyer. “Allegories of Imperialism: Globalizing Southern Studies.” American Literary History, vol. 23, no. 1, 2011, pp. 148–158. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/41237428.
5. Forter, Greg. Gender, Race, and Mourning in American Modernism. Cambridge ;: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Print.
6. Abadie, Ann J., and Annette Trefzer. Global Faulkner. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2009. Print.
7. Gandal, Keith. The Gun and the Pen : Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner and the Fiction of Mobilization . New York ;: Oxford University Press, 2011. Print.

Our class Zotero database ended up being a perfect place to find books / articles, since it includes a lot of sources that touch on both modernism and Southern identity. I can tell that Matthew’s work will definitely be important in my project. I also ended up being exposed to a whole new area of Faulkner studies that I hadn’t really paid much attention to, which is the way in which Faulkner’s work seems to share similarities with global Japanese, South-Asian, third world writers, and etc. It’s a bit confusing because I do like the research question how does Faulkner represent the ‘New South’ in his interwar novels?, but I’m thinking that there’s maybe some way of including these global parallels in my project? Or maybe the smart thing would be to shift my project completely. For example: I’m really interested in how similar TSAF is to Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things, in terms of themes of social uncertainty, incest, etc. I actually included an article that touches on that idea (there aren’t many). So basically, my sources kind of bridge on two different topics at the moment (‘The New South’ and Global Studies).

What is Southern identity exactly, is there such a thing, or is it constantly being recreated in Faulkner’s world? Is it the traditional Mrs. Compson with her “medieval keys” and Quentin’s unwavering chivalric code? Or is it the little Italian girl, shunned by the bakery owner, or maybe even a “new woman” like Lena Grove? I’m interested in how Faulkner depicts the changing South through generational differences and symbols (the egg money, Jason’s stocks), as something that is both stagnant and constantly transforming. I’d be focusing on either TSAF or LIA, or both, and the ways in which the novels figure Southern identity in contradictory ways. I’m also really interested in how immigration is portrayed in TSAF and would like to somehow incorporate this into my research. I’d like to find out more about the inclusion of the little Italian girl in the first novel, since this is the first time I’ve read about a first-generation immigrant in a Southern novel (most of the time we only hear about 1920s immigrants in NYC, especially Italian). My research question is a bit scattered at the moment, but I’m working on making it more specific as I do more research. One quote from the introduction to TSAF that’s sort of the backbone of what I’m getting at is, “There is a thing known whimsically as the New South to be sure, but it is not the south. It is a land of Immigrants who are rebuilding the towns and cities into replicas of
towns and cities in Kansas and Iowa and Illinois…”.

Light In August, like many of Faulkner’s novels, is host to a variety of contradictory, distorted characters that seem to warp before the reader’s eyes. At least in my reading, I felt that that practically every pivotal character was never an archetype, as all of the novel’s characters from Joe Christmas to Hightower are realistically twofold. And although the novel seems to grow more and more complicated as it nears the end, I can’t help but find myself drawn to the beginning of the novel, and the odd, unexpected relationships that form. I’ll be focusing on the initial interactions between Lena Grove and Mrs. Armstid, yokanapedia style (inspired by a blog post I saw another student write), I will also discuss how the items and symbols that appear in these interactions implicitly hint at the nature of the relationship. 

When Lena Grove and Mrs.Armstid first meet, I couldn’t help but be reminded of the tense relationship between Caddy and her mother (although I was quickly proven wrong). Mrs.Armstid is initially presented as a seeming archetype. Faulkner complicates her character soon enough when he states, “They look at one another, suddenly naked, watching one another: the young woman in the chair…and the older one besides the stove” (17-18), and “Mrs. Armstid’s voice is neither cold nor warm. It is not anything at all” (18). Faulkner uniquely paints a generational divide between them, making even more apparent how striking the pregnant, unmarried Lena is in contrast to the traditional, married woman before her. I was also reminded of the scene where we see Byron Bunch and Hightower for the first time, where Hightower sits in an “ancient swivel chair”, and Byron sits in a meager “straight chair”. There seems to be some kind of significance in Caddy sitting, as she watches this older woman with a “savage screw of gray hair” labor at the oven. Lena may be naively innocent, but in sitting there and confidently speaking about her unmarried status, we see some version of a “new woman” forming. Mrs. Armstid, although less earnest than she appears, is shrouded by the archaic. Her face “carved in sandstone” seems to make her stagnant, like the isolated Hightower in his swivel chair.

This relationship is by no means a Caddy and Mrs. Compson parallel, a fact that’s sealed when Mrs. Armstid shatters her rooster bank and gives Lena its contents. When I initially read this scene I found it striking and beautifully described, but not knowing what “eggmoney” meant, the significance didn’t hit me in my first read. In writing my yokanapedia entry, I read the article “Egg money’ shaped farm women’s economy” written by Joe Rutherford, as was struck by how important eggmoney was as a starting symbol of suffrage. Rutherford states, “Eggs, however, served as women’s currency in the rural south for much of the twentieth century”. This “eggmoney” wasn’t just a piggy bank filled with a few coins found under couch cushions, but “a woman’s own province”, money that came from a woman’s hard work and was hers to distribute. The shattering and dispersing of Mrs. Armstid’s eggmoney isn’t just a kind gesture, but a shattering of a traditional value system.

Rutherford, Joe. “Egg Money’ Shaped Farm Women’s Economy.” Daily Journal, 24 July 2006, www.djournal.com/opinion/egg-money-shaped-farm-womens-economy/article_532ef91e-3b47-50c0-adf3-8abbad149eeb.html

I was honestly struggling to find a fresh and unapparent blog topic for As I Lay Dying this whole week, and it wasn’t until my South-Asian Literature class this morning that an interesting idea caught my attention. The professor asked if any of us had ever read Faulkner, and then began discussing how Faulkner’s use of blameworthy subjects (at the time he was writing) were bravely used to divulge some of the American South’s most pressing problems, similar to the works of Pakistani writer Hasan Manto. This led me to think about how both writers were writing at times of distinct liminality, the slow-coming modernization of the South for Faulkner, and the division and violence of partition for Manto. I will mainly focus on how Faulkner’s depiction of death mirrors both the traditional and modernized values of the Southern 1920s.

When thinking about the ways in which AILD depicts the liminality of the South as it navigates between different thresholds of defining death, I immediately think of Cora. Cora lives and breathes religion, for her the Bible isn’t just a text that guides her morally, but a dignified stepping stone that she can use to raise herself above all others. Cora makes a point of allowing religion to do the dirty work for her, she doesn’t have to cope through symbolic fish or horses, but only needs to reflect on conceptions that have already been laid out for her. She says, “I have tried to live right in the sight of God and man, for the honor and comfort of my Christian husband and the love and respect of my Christian children. Not like Addie Bundren, dying alone…glad to go” (Faulkner 23). These lines almost present her as a sort of one-sided poster girl for the righteous Southern, Christian lifestyle, but we see that even Cora, who seems to strictly adhere to pre-modern values, holds a sort of vexed darkness within her. Religion was a way of life for many Southerners at the time, and to pick at its ethics was to question God. Faulkner uses Cora to portray how religion was used as a false ego booster and a way of making death a spectacle, a popularity contest. And it’s not too longer after Cora’s misguided, religious riff, that we transition into the more philosophical, views of characters such as Vardaman.

“My mother is a fish” is the striking single phrase that appears on page 84 of As I Lay Dying. However, this is not the first time we hear of fish, as it’s early on in the novel that we witness Vardaman catch, prop, and gouge at the newly caught specimen. The fish is described as being “ashamed of being dead”, it’s cut apart, becomes “not-fish”, and eventually “bleeds quietly into the pan”. The Bundren’s meal becomes something bigger, a life of its own, capable of shame, being, and a quiet death. The importance of the fish in young Vardaman’s narrative seems to not only be a symbol of coping and understanding death, but an interesting marker of liminality. In hearing of his mother’s death, Vardaman doesn’t rely on God or linger at the Church, but finds himself pondering what it means to exist and not exist. He doesn’t need to read Kant or any other philosopher, but seems to have discovered himself through overlapping events that his mother and the fish are more similar in more ways than one. At least to me, there seems to be an abrupt difference between the religious woman who equates death with reputation and the young child, who ponders “fish” and “not-fish”, as they seem to mark the eventual altering of the Southern belief system.

I’ll admit that I might have gone in too many directions the past few paragraphs, but what I’m basically hinting at is the idea that Faulkner used his characters to highlight slow-coming societal changes, and that these religious and philosophical writings were surprisingly controversial at the time. For a rural 1920s reader, not everyone was so keen on the depiction of selfish Christians or animals being portrayed as equal to human. But like Manto, who wasn’t afraid to poke at the faults of his own country, Faulkner cleverly presents the unravellings of a changing South.