When I first bought the first volume of William Faulkner’s novels from the Library of America series, I was hesitatant to start reading his first novel, Soldiers’ Pay, because of a random review that I read on LibraryThing. I was put off for months, despite having absolutely loved As I Lay Dying. When I found myself suffering a bit of reader burnout I decided to finally get stuck into Faulkner. From this I’ve learned a valuable lesson: don’t always trust the reviews of people whose literary taste you’re not familiar with. Soldiers’ Pay may not reach the soaring heights of Faulkner’s later masterpieces, but there is a lot to admire in his debut novel.

Soldiers’ Pay opens with a bunch of drunken soldiers returning home by train after the war. Joe Gilligan and Julian Lowe are seated across from the horrifically scarred Donald Mahon and a young woman, Margaret Powers, also finds herself incapable of leaving the injured Mahon to fend for himself. She and Joe prepare to take him home to Georgia, where a flighty and unfaithful fiancée, Cecily Saunders, and worried, oblivious father await him. As they, and other townsfolk, adjust to life touched, broken and irrevocably altered by World War I, Faulkner crafts a commanding meditation on the cycles of sex, death and human relationships.

“It isn’t me that made you lose a night’s sleep. I just happened to be the first woman you ever knew doing something you thought only a man would do. You had nice fixed ideas about women and I upset them. Wasn’t that it?”

The style is undeniably Faulkneresque. The opening chapters have soldier songs interrupted by dreamy descriptions of the landscape, intercut with the drunken dialogue between the characters. It’s an effective technique, intentionally jarring. Characters’ thoughts mix with the words they speak, revealing the contradictions between the two. The style becomes more functional as the story progresses, but does occasionally return to the effectively dramatic style. Admittedly, some passages do read rather awkwardly, perhaps too overwritten and drifting from the focus of the novel. Faulkner convincingly utilizes repetition: the rector father repeating “This was Donald, my son. He is dead.” as he comes to term with the inevitability of his son’s death, and the fixation of certain characters to their memories – Emmy’s recollection of her midnight liaison with Donald, Margaret’s guilt about her dead soldier husband, George’s obsession with Cecily – echoing the inescapable return for these characters to their defining moments. The repetition falters and loses effect as Faulkner chooses to repeat descriptions of landscape, admirable turns of phrase that become tedious with their reiteration.

Like Vardaman in As I Lay Dying, young Robert Saunders’ voice and thoughts express the same youthful inability to comprehend the complexities of the adult world. I am utterly in love with a scene from the novel, relatively inconsequential to the story, of Robert hiding in the bushes listening to Margaret and Joe talk, seeking his revenge for their having spooked him in front of his friends, as he overhears and misinterprets their conversation. Faulkner plays with our awareness of his characters, giving each of them their own unique perspective, slowly revealing their essential core and showing the uselessness of snap judgement. It is quite beautiful. The central relationship between Joe and Margaret is also really tender, very real, complicated by her considered decision to marry Mahon when Cecily cannot go through with marrying the invalid. Their parting scene is, to use a cliched term which doesn’t at all accurately sum up how distraught this scene made me, heart wrenching. Both this and Margaret’s epistolary relationship with Lowe are poignant reflections on the state of flux of human relationships.

In wartime one lives in today. Yesterday is past and tomorrow may never come.

Though showing only hints of Faulkner’s formidable talents, Soldiers’ Pay is a powerful look at the intricacies of human relationships, the breaking of the spirit in the wake of World War I, and the centrality of sex and death to our existence. It manages to be humane, sensitive and with moments of elegantly poetic and perceptive prose. If Soldiers’ Pay is to be considered a minor work in the oeuvre of a master I have a lot to look forward to.

Still no loot to report, still saving for Clunes in a few weeks. I’m currently reading the complete works of Nathanael West, still intimidated by the looming giant of William Faulkner. Volume One of his collected novels sits on my desk, a young Willy staring at me as though trying to lure me in. I think what has put me off is a scathing review of his first novel Soldier’s Pay on LibraryThing. So I picked up The Day of the Locust on a whim, and upon finding out that his literary output was so slim, have begun the project of reading all of Nathanael West’s short novels. At least it is still in tune with my goal of reading the complete works of authors.

Next week I’ll be seeing Henry Rollins in Melbourne, which I’m very excited about. A battered copy of the Portable Henry Rollins got me through much of my university years. I saw him do his spoken word thing a few years ago, and it was such a riot; funny, though-provoking, unapologetic about his anger. Definitely looking forward to seeing him again, and it feels like I’m in the right headspace for it too. Also I’ll be seeing the Mountain Goats next week, who were featured in John Green’s Paper Towns [review here], which is perhaps a tenuous literary link, but a literary link nonetheless!

I don’t even have a list of links to share this week, but I did come across these very cute retro library posters, so hopefully they’ll be enough for you to forgive my slackness.

[Image credits: flickr user VB library, and be sure to check out their amazing set of 1960s library posters.]

Well, I’ve finished reading all of John Green‘s novels and so now it’s on to the next author as part of my comprehensive reading quest, and, oh! look what arrived in the mail this week. The first volume of William Faulkner’s novels from 1926-1929, Soldiers’ Pay, Mosquitoes, Flags in the Dust (previously published in a heavily edited form as Sartoris) and The Sound and the Fury. I really love the Library of America collections, even if the design is rather outwardly plain. They’re of a good, sturdy size, and thorough collections of essential authors. Positively drool-worthy.

Although, it is probably too heavy going and unwieldy for holiday reading for my brief trip to Sydney this week, so I might leave ol’ Willy behind and take Pop: Truth and Power at the Coca-Cola Company by Constance Hays. Or maybe Winter Under Water?  Other than seeing one of my favourite bands, Brand New – the original intent for the trip, a sort of reward for surviving a very average 2009 – I plan to scout out the best of Sydney’s bookstores. Excess luggage charges ahoy!

Image credit: Girl Reading by Charles Edward Perugini, 1879

In lieu of a grossly indulgent stacks of newly acquired books – yes, yet again! Has it really been over a month since I bought a book? – here are a few interesting articles that caught my eye during the week, in between continuing frustrations with library school administration, starting back at school for the year, work, and glittering literary events. The picture to the left is Ernest Hemingway kicking a can and I’m posting it because it is Ernest Hemingway kicking a can.

The Book Depository‘s announcement of the winners of their recent bookmark design competition could having me placing several orders in the hopes of receiving one. I’d be hoping for Myles Egan’s effort “Bob was so stuck into his book he didn’t realize he was in SPACE”. Well, I think we’ve all been there Bob.

From The Guardian we have a look at literature’s most mind-blowing drugs. Following a failed attempt to read Burroughs The Naked Lunch, Darragh McManus considers a number of fictional drugs. I believe there was also a heavily fictionalized version of adrenochrome in Hunter S. Thompson‘s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, though existing as a pigment, it’s extraction and effects as a psychotropic drug were in the novel highly exaggerated. Any particularly lethal literary concoction that you’d be interested in dabbling in?

The Guardian also revealed Britain’s top 250 most borrowed books in their library system in 2009, in both raw data and again with a bit of analysis. Popular fiction wins out over non-fiction in the libraries. I wonder if there is similar evidence for Australian libraries available anywhere online.

The posthumous discussion of J.D. Salinger‘s work continues, with Michael Greenberg of the New York Review of Books blog looking at conformity and authenticity in Franny and Zooey and The Catcher in the Rye. I think Greenberg, without even explicitly stating it, taps into why Salinger speaks so much to young people – his characters feel like they are outsiders while appearing to the world as insiders.

And finally, I really love this piece on the discovery of a 19th century plantation ledger which may have inspired William Faulkner‘s Yoknapatawpha novels. It’s always the most unlikely sources that serve as inspiration, and it is encouraging that that was true of Faulkner as well. (And I also really love the badass photo of Faulkner with a pipe on the article.)

The next week on Start Narrative Here is devoted to the life and work of Carson McCullers, February 19th marks the 93rd anniversary of her birth and while I do like my original idea of cooking up some ‘Spuds Carson’ as outlined in Illumination & Night Glare (and let’s face it, I might do it anyway), a week long celebration of her writing is probably a lot easier to share with you. There will be some poetry, some love letters, some reviews, and as always a lot of McCullers love.

A few ebay purchases arrived this week, a pay day and an unusually restrained visit to the Federation Square book market.

• The First Third by Neal Cassady
• Jack Kerouac: A Biography by Tom Clark
• Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture by Douglas Coupland
• Sanctuary by William Faulkner
• Jack’s Book: An Oral Biography of Jack Kerouac by Barry Gifford and Lawrence Lee
• Hunger by Knut Hamsun
• Reflections in a Golden Eye by Carson McCullers (review)
• The Collected Dorothy Parker by Dorothy Parker

This week I’ve been reading The Sandman comics/graphic novels/whatever your preferred term of endearment/books by Neil Gaiman. Immensely enjoyable, but I don’t feel adequate reviewing them, I don’t know how to speak about them. Maybe a summary post when I finish all of them off? I’ve also just started Truman Capote’s first published novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms. Although, I am expecting McCullers’ unfinished autobiography – Illumination and Night Glare – to arrive this week and I can see myself ignoring everything else and devouring that quite easily in a day or so. I don’t really know what I’ll find myself reading next.

How do you choose what to read next? Do you plan your reading ahead of time, knowing what book you will be picking up next, or do you act solely on instinct?

As I Lay Dying: Successive episodes in the death and burial of Addie Bundren are recounted by various members of the family circle, principally as they are carting their mother’s coffin to Jefferson, Mississippi, in order to bury her among her people. As the desires and fears and rivalries of the family are revealed in the vernacular speech of the South, the author builds up an impression as epic as the Old Testament, as earthy and comic as Chaucer, as American as Huckleberry Finn.

I’m almost considering launching yet another tirade on how my Australian high school education and limited experience of studying Literature at a tertiary level never introduced me to Faulkner. I don’t know why I place such emphasis on discovering these authors within an educational setting, maybe because it seems like that is where most people tend to come across them? Then I think that I probably would not have understood these authors when I was younger, and that I am discovering them now because I am at a level where I can appreciate and enjoy them without it feeling like laborious study.

So, William Faulkner. I’ve spent a while researching Southern – mainly Southern Gothic – literature, and everything I’ve read of the genre has completely floored me. Faulkner was the huge looming giant of the genre, intimidating me with his stature and supposed difficulty.

I could just remember how my father used to say that the reason for living was to get ready to stay dead a long time. (Addie)

William Faulkner

The death and subsequent burial rites of Addie Bundren are told through the voices of her children and husband, and local townsfolk, in a stream of consciousness style. It is richly layered and complex, it approaches issues of death and of the fragility of human identity. While the stream of consciousness narrative, shifting between fifteen different characters does take time to adjust to, it is also liberating – so much of the story is left to the imagination, so much is left unsaid and the reader has to interpret. It is challenging but in a satisfying way. The characters, at the beginning, seem to be indistinguishable from one another but gradually, through nuances of speech and thought patterns, they become clearer. They all deal with their grief over Addie Bundren’s death in their own way, no matter how far from usual conceptions of grief they may be. Their actions speak of their character more than their thoughts or speech does – I’m thinking mainly of Jewel here, who isn’t really given much of a voice, and his actions are read through the other characters. While Darl is the most eloquent of the family, some of his internal monologues are just breathtakingly gorgeous. The division between the inner thoughts and the conversations between the family establishes up how secretive and set apart all the characters are.

My mother is a fish. (Vardaman)

Most striking, and I’ve been thinking about it for days since, is Addie’s chapter told from her point of view after her death. (I think Faulkner says a lot about her position in the family by only allowing her voice to be heard beyond the grave.) She speaks of motherhood and childrearing in a completely unexpected non-romanticized way. It’s confronting in that it still seems to be largely believed that motherhood and the desire for children is a trait inherent in women. Addie speaks of how she hates her children, how motherhood is just a word and doesn’t mean a thing to her, it is just something she does.

He had a word, too. Love, he called it. But I had been used to words for a long time. I knew that that word was like the others: just a shape to fill a lack; that when the right time came, you wouldn’t need a word for that any more than for pride or fear. (Addie)

An intense novel, thematically and stylistically, but the images of these characters have stuck with me for days. Their struggles, their secrets. I’m really looking forward to reading more Faulkner.

(In tribute to the friendly young man who complimented my choice when I purchased this from his book stall, telling me it was his favourite book of all time.)

I was going so well, I didn’t buy anything at all during the week. Then I decided to visit the Federation Square Book Market on Saturday. It had always been on my radar, but for the past couple of years I’ve worked every Saturday so I’ve never been able to go. Oh, my! Cheap books. Good cheap books. Friendly stall-holders. Relaxed atmosphere. Cheap books bears repeating. I’m hooked. I won’t be able to afford to go every week, but I am definitely going to make it a somewhat regular book shopping treat.

Book Loot: Week Ending 6th September 2009

The score:

• Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson
• The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë
• Off the Road: My Years with Cassady, Kerouac and Ginsberg by Carolyn Cassady
• As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
• Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner
• The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
• East of Eden by John Steinbeck
• The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
• Of Mice and Men/Cannery Row by John Steinbeck
• Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck
• We by Yevgeny Zamyatin

The more I write these Book Loot posts, the more you will realize that I buy way more books than I could ever possibly read. Sure, eventually, over the course of a lifetime, I’ll hopefully get them all read. As a customer said to me this week, “I need more books like I need a hole in the head!” – ouch! Didn’t stop her from buying five books from me. I like to think of my book buying adventures as an investment for the future in a way. Here’s what I “invested” in this week.

The Return of the Native – Thomas Hardy
The wilds of Egdon Heath seem like a prison to Eustacia Vye, cut off from the world in her grandfathers lonely cottage. When Clym Yeobright returns from the glittering lights of Paris, he seems to offer everything she dreams of – passion, excitement, and the opportunity to escape. However, Clym’s ambitions are quite different from hers, and marriage only increases Eustacia’s destructive restlessness. In his evocation of the ‘vast tract of unenclosed wild known as Egdon Heath’, Hardy’s descriptive and lyrical powers are seen at their height, creating a powerful setting which seems as vital and dramatic as the characters it sustains.

This sounds really wonderful. It has the landscape as character theme which I’m so interested in at the moment, sounds like it is dark and melancholic with a touch of romance? A sense of isolation. This summary doesn’t really give much away, but it makes me excited to read it. Eustacia Vye is such a great character name.

The Night Climbers – Ivo Stourton
When I jumped, I felt at first that I moved very slowly through the air, accelerating only as I fell. Far below me on te cobbles, there were the upturned faces of the police and the porters, staring into the sky like children. It made me feel like a god.

I’m solely interested in this one because of its inclusion on a shelf on GoodReads, “Books Claiming To Be Just Like The Secret History.” Obviously nothing is ever going to be as good as The Secret History – well, not nothing ever but within the same broad genre – but I’m still interested in reading these supposed lesser versions. I should just reread The Secret History over and over.

A quick visit to the local secondhand bookstore – just to waste time while I was waiting for the bus, I promise! – saw me buy three William Faulkner novels. I’ve been going to this store for over ten years and now that I work in a bookstore on the same street, the owner and I are quite friendly and he always gives me a discount on the marked prices.

Light in August – William Faulkner
When it was first published, many critics considered Light in August to be a macabre fantasy – one went so far as to say that the novel was like “an epileptic fit.” It has now become a landmark in American fiction. The central figure, ironically called Joe Christmas, kills his perverted but God-fearing lover (who has ordered him to fall on his knees and pray at pistol point) and is pursued by a lynch-hungry populace. Through his observation of the character of this man and of the people with whom he comes into contact, Faulkner probes deep into the frightening recesses of the Calvinist spirit, and of society in the Southern United States.

Requiem for a Nun – William Faulkner
Nancy, a negro nursemaid, is about to be hanged for killing her mistress’s baby: her lawyer, Gavin Stevens, compels the mistress to confess the reason for Nancy’s crime. The law takes its course; but justice, in Faulkner’s sense, has been done.

The Unvanquished – William Faulkner
In a series of episodes set during and after the American Civil War the 1949 winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature profiles the people of the South – who might surrender but could never be vanquished. The characters of The Unvanquished and the earlier Sartoris are largely based on Faulkner’s own family: in particular, Colonel John Sartoris is a fairly faithful portrait of the author’s extraordinary great-grandfather – a notable personality who fought in Mexico, was tried for murder, raised a Confederate regiment, built a railway, ran a plantation, founded a college, and published a best-seller. These tales of the Civil War form Faulkner’s least difficult novel, and serve to introduce many of the themes and characters of his famous novels of the South.

Strange, I can’t find an image of my cover of The Unvanquished anywhere online. Just when you think absolutely everything is accessible …

I also visited the local library this week, and picked up a few books that may or may not actually get read (or may just sit on the nightstand way past their due date and amass a huge fine): some of Mary Roach’s work, Stiff and Bonk; John Steinbeck’s Winter of Our Discontent and Catherine Ray’s Stepping Out. In a few weeks I’ll be digging out Jane Austen’s Lady Susan as part of A Soirée with Lady Susan as organized by the Austenprose blog. AND I’ve got some ebay purchases due to arrive next week – book buying problem? What book buying problem?