This is crazy.

Sounds legit.

Even better would be a Faulkner review every 4-6 months.

Man I tried AILD and just, idk it was too slow. Lol and I read slow Russian novels.. I do want to get into Faulkner cause I love McCarthy..

@@uniquechannelnames Give it another shot. It sure took me a couple of tries to get through it and that was when I wasn't really exposed to much southern authors.

@@Ryan_Ek2 #FaulknerInAugust2020

@@uniquechannelnames #FaulknerInAugust2020

@@MrDinghus Well Harold Bloom got me to read that book in the first place :) A lot of my favorite books come from me reading about them in a Harold Bloom book. The guy was great in passion for great literature, I felt quite sad when ha passed away, he helped me become the reader I am today.

Mattjmjmjm Harold Bloom was a modern day Samuel Johnson. He modelled himself after him and he was just as vastly read with an impressive memory facility and unrivalled erudition when discussing literature and books that are canonical to the west. Both Christopher Ricks and James Wood are also great literary critics

I think they're on that level of quality that makes them incomparable. Both are incredible, I couldn't choose one.

@@bsnoguera To a certain extent that is true but I felt more emotion when reading As I lay dying so I prefer that one.

Actually the greatest writers are the ones who have the easiest language and are easy to read...

What specifically makes you like it so much?

MrDinghus great point! My buddy that records with me lives in Florida while I live in Indy. We always do a Faulkner read in August each year and it’s a blast doing it with someone! #FaulknerinAugust2020

_Hola!_ #FaulknerInAugust2020

Why would one be nervous reading Faulkner?

damn i hope i have friends

How did those other books go? Faulkner is my absolute favorite!

@@klausmaccus4397 what a pleasant surprise to be asked about this! I indeed went on to read TSATF, AILD, Absalom Absalom, and the Snopes trilogy. A mlong with a myriad of his short stories. Let me share that I became quite devotional to him upon my journeying through his works. And another thing, this is well over a year ago or so, but from the time I finished Light in August I became inspired to write. I’ve been doing it each and everyday since, and I cannot imagine going more than a day without doing this now. Faulkner showed me both the possibility and the profundity that can happen in literature, that can trump just about any other thing there is to do, experience. I’ve had many sublimely little moments across my lifetime, in travel and in nature and within lived social experiences, but the peculiar possession I fell so abruptly to the bone --upon starting Quentin’s section of TSATF, had me levitating on the couch. It was that sublime. Right then and there I thought, this is how I can make it in life, this is the reason to be alive. And I hate that this will all sound much too melodramatic but I really might have to list that occurrence as my most significant, paradigmatic moment in life. As good as sex, mushroom trips, and hiking the Annapurna mountains of Nepal amidst a snowdrift; As good as all of these things. So thanks. Faulkner once stated something to the effect the writer’s desire is to permanently imprint themselves onto their readers, so that their remembrance goes so deep that they will come haunted across life and so forever live on, by them in this way. No doubt has he accomplished this with me, as just one of his subjects. I think all Faulkner lovers will admit as much. It can be very subtle. I’m curious what works of his are your favorites? And if you happen to want to go further, how has Faulkner affected you?

@@choggerboom Wow thanks for such an amazing response! I'm so happy to hear that Faulkner inspired you in such a powerful way. I have similarly been affected by him. My top 3 favorite works by him are 1. Absalom, Absalom! 2. As I Lay Dying and 3. The Sound and the Fury. All unbelievable MASTERPIECES in my opinion. I think he was a Literary genius and the best American writer ever. No writer has inspired and influenced me more than him and Shakespeare. Faulkner just has such a way about him that it's really hard to put my finger on it. Even though his subject matter is often very bleak, his work is ultimately life affirming because of its striking depth. These depressing stories are redeemed by their author's uncanny awareness and brilliant insights. His sort of repetitious and hypnotic contemplation of everything, his rigorous penetration of the truth, really just inspires me to think and feel DEEPLY on a daily basis. That's why I think it's life affirming. It's like Hamlet or Dostoevsky's Underground man, where no matter how dark the subjects they explore are, the characters themselves contain a redeeming self-awareness that makes it all worth it. I think Camus alludes to this in the Myth of Sisyphus, saying "there is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn." I think Faulkner pulls this off. He tells you unbelievably bleak and hopeless stories, but does so with such a sharp and borderline divine sense of awareness and eye for observation that the writing itself lifts you up and inspires you to live, feel, and think in a deeper and richer way. Anyways I'm sorry for rambling! I thank you for your thoughtful response and I totally wish you luck with your writing! Enjoy it as much as you can because it's a gift!

@@klausmaccus4397 such an insightful reply, ripe with evaluations, you’ve got me nodding my head in approval, incessantly, as if desiring to punctuate each point. I agree that he is the greatest American writer, and as it stands now, one of the greatest writers no matter of nation. But I’ve got too much reading to do for either claim to have any significant bearings, or mean anything that significant. But you’ve demonstrated perfectly just one of the subtle facets to his mastery, in how he redeems from the tragedy he creates something innocent, baroque, beautiful and worthy. It’s the damndest thing when I’ll have finally gotten a close friend or family member to try on Faulkner and then see how this epiphany doesn’t seem to land for them, which is understandable, for I think if I had not my sensibilities to words and language already innate and this routed-so that I’m surcharged a rush of endorphins on a nearly line by line basis-then I can easily see how the language can appear taxing, estranged, and abusive even. But I think all who are charmed by his prose find the delicacy of his structures. It is the characters, isn’t it? Alive, dead, toy-like, Christian, Buddhist, supernatural, insignificant, omnipotent, death-driven, innocent, straying in the present, past, future, or none of these places, indomitable, to use a Faulkner-favorite. And his plot structures, entwined with the narrative structures. When I began to see cleanly what was occurring all along in Absalom Absalom (with help, no doubt, with assistance) I became quite petrified. One can’t help but to see his face come up in your eye, smiling and winking like a demon. There’s just so much praise to address. In the minutiae of finding a vigor in just that of a strand of hairs and in how the way it lays upon a working man’s forehead before the suns come up, is to almost tell me everything. He’ll use a magnifying glass then switch it out for a kaleidoscope and then option to use a spyglass. And then in some of his stream of consciousness installments as I’m reading and falling out of time along the excursion Into any hypnosis I’ll pause upon some elicit of impact, come briefly out from my trance, and wonder whether I’ve just eaten a superior kind of gummy prior, because this feeling cannot come from just the words. But it did, but it does. Now I’ve been rambling and at some point one figures they should stop. I will fall back. But I must mention finally, since you’ve rightfully mentioned both Shakespeare and Dostoyevsky (who I need to read more into, each), Samuel Beckett’s trilogy is another profound masterpiece that affixes upon these same themes. Especially if you’re looking to get there through the heady steam of a hypnotic reading, I cannot recommend it enough. And thank you for the kind words and encouragements about writing. It’s a faculty so necessary to me now as food, sleep is. I’d hope to be able to do what these authors have done for me the same for others, some day, but I won’t fret on it. When I’m writing I just want to get closer, you know. But it’s been a pleasure engaging with you Klaus! Kind of a universal reminder that there are friends out there, waiting to bump into one another, however briefly, so that about life, you remember that it does happen.

So true. Great comment.

@@MrDinghus Yeah. I enjoyed Absalom alot. But I might ease myself in with As I Lay Dying first.

@@rubeng9092 As I lay Dying was FANTASTIC. The story itself is very simple yet incredibly layered. That was my first Faulkner. I just started The Sound and Fury and unless I dread that, I will go to Absalom Absalom next.

@@nicholasmaxwell9899 Thoughts on Sound and Fury?

Thank you for watching and the feedback. Yes, you're correct, it's now in there, thanks for catching that.

Should I read Sound and Fury, Absalom or Light in August first?

@@jpmisterioman Out of these choices I like Absalom best but I recommend Light In August first.

shakespeare sucks

Shakespeare is the opposite of sucks

Balso Snell.

I’m scared to read it lol

Did you get to read Absalom, Absalom! Yet?! It's Faulkner's best book in my opinion.

What’s that book about?

@@Neat0_o It honestly defies summary, which is said about a lot of books but it's really true here. It's broadly about an American soldier in WW2 Europe who is suspected by various agencies of causing V2 rocket strikes by his erection. He's pursued by these agencies throughout the late WW2 "Zone" of Europe. I'd highly recommend it, it's insane and brilliant in every way.

​@@Neat0_o Like guy above said, pretty much impossible to summarize but yes, the main-ish protag is an American "soldier" in Europe during the end of WW2, his paranoid adventures through London during the rocket bombing of it, his time in the bombed out European mainland ("the zone"), it's a psychedelic mish-mashing between perspectives, changes of tone between slapstick vaudeville, somber, silly... There are a handful of scenes that will make your stomach turn over and over, but it's also very funny.. A boat of hedonistic (and degenerate) aristocrats, this special rocket 000000 that this sadistic Nazi Blicero launches. (V-2 rockets in general play a gigantic, central symbolic role in many different ways. The other major concept, which is also tied to the V2 rocket, is the reversal of Cause and Effect. Because V2 rockets were the first thing to break the sound barrier thus the rocket would strike first and explode before making a sound, thus reversing cause/effect.) This rocket is hunted by a group of Hereros as well as Slothrop (the American soldier protag-ish). There's a spy named Katje, a heartless and conniving Pavlovian scientist named Pointsman, large paranoid conspiracies about corporate conglomerates and governments, it talks about power, death, war as a continuation of business, dehumanisation, science as a mechanism for either increased death or prosperity (but mostly death). The best summary I could give is it's a "historical semi-fiction" of WW2's lesser known history, (All the big hits are mostly one paragraph at most, like one of the prison labour camps that were building these rockets that a German rocket scientist has been developing the whole book, is only made aware to you once in a single paragraph. The nuclear bombing of Hiroshima/Nagasaki is 1-2 sentences I think) as well as 40s culture (way over-the-top slapstick/vaudeville references abound) all presented in a kaleidoscope style, with a postmodern philosophy as in there are no Grand Narratives or Grand Truths, everything is connected but there is no closure or finale, it's presented in a psychedelic annihilation of normal fictional arcs. There is very little closure, no Grand Answers, but it sparks a lot of interesting debate about many topics, like I said above about national, corporate, and personal power, death, perspective relative to one's position, desire versus outcome, sex and death, destiny. Sorry for the fucking wall lol. It's a hugely dense book and this is really a "highlighted greatest hits" and I'm really glossing over and dressing up a lot of the concepts. They don't come out this sexily especially on your first read because it's so fucking confusing and shocking and fast flowing, everyone misses a lot. The author never comes out and sits you down to talk about "power", or "science". It's all mashed together within the story. It's touted as one of the hardest books around for very good reason, but don't be intimidated as it IS possible and it's one of the best books around IMHO. My 2nd read of it was SO MUCH more enjoyable and much easier to appreciate the goofy and clever humour, and just overall made me fall in love with the whole book. The first time is very masochistic reading and tough, dense to get through. Most difficult books "teach" you how to read them so they slowly get easier the deeper in you get, but this book is cleverly and subtly designed to further confuse you the deeper you get, the last 200 pages are a notorious whirlwind of craziness, but beautiful too.

D.S Tice very very interested now that you beautiful explained it to me. Thank you! I enjoyed reading your highlighted responses. I think I’m going to actually read it instead of using audible lol. The book sounds fucking nuts but I love that so I’m in!

Did you like it?

Check out Cormac McCarthy for some later era southern-gothic style

I read these this year Blood Meridian (not Southern but must read) Child of God Suttree Sound and Fury As I Lay Dying Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Everything that Rises Must Converge Moby Dick (not Southern)

Ray Pollack, Cormac McCarthy. Both are excellent!