#10 Light in August

By: William Faulkner

 

     I really wish I'd started this blog when I was still reading Light in August.  I feel like a 7 weeks, and 11 books, after the fact I won't be able to do it justice.  Numerous were the times I was literally moved to tears by Faulkner's prose.  Once again I found myself saying "this is the best book I've ever read"; besides maybe Lolita I don't think anything has taken the title from it.  It's a dense, confusing read at times but whenever I thought I'd be overwhelmed by the wrinkles in the chronology Faulkner would jolt me back to ecstasy with a gorgeous piece of phrase or artful bit of characterization.

    My only past experience with Faulkner's famed Yoknapatawpha County had been read As I Lay Dying in AP Literature class.  Though I found myself appreciative of the unique narrative techniques utilized by Faulkner I was largely underwhelmed and confused.  To me the same thing that can be said about cooks in the kitchen can be about narrators in a novel.  As I Lay Dying felt bogged down and muddied by its abundance of first-person voices.  Faulkner's themes were harder for me to uncover and appreciate when I had to constantly be adjusting to the different styles of his dozen narrators.

   Light in August occasionally toes the line that As I Lay Dying leaped across.  Numerous characters memories, dreams, experiences swirl together and at times confused the hell out of me.  In the end though there's a clarity and a thematic unity apparent in Light in August that I didn't experience with the other novel.

  Though it is first and foremost the story of mixed-race runaway Joe Christmas, Light in August follows numerous tragic Yoknapatawpha residents.  Christmas, Reverand Hightower, and Byron Bunch, all alienated in their own ways are among the most complex and excellently written characters I've ever come in contact with.  Faulkner's ruminations on their pasts and presents as well as the disparate ways they cope with loneliness are often breathtakingly beautiful.  Christmas is an orphan, unsure of his racial make-up, Byron is a solitary hardworking man who finds solace in routine, and Gale Hightower is a man of god ostracized from his community but unwilling to pick up and leave.

 I won't delve too much into details of plot because the histories and motivations of Faulker's numerous characters should really be discovered upon reading.  Light in August is too dense and upsetting to be called my favorite book but it more than earns the distincion as one of the best I've ever read.

  Here's a few of my favorite passages:

"The dark was filled with the voices, myriad, out of all time that he had known, as though all the past was a flat pattern. And going on, tomorrow night, all the tomorrows, to be a part of the flat pattern, going on. He thought of that with quiet astonishment: going on, myriad, familiar, since all that had ever been was the same as all that was to be, since tomorrow to-be and had-been would be the same." 

 "...how false the most profound book turns out to be when applied to life."

"It does not take long. Soon the fine galloping language, the gutless swooning full of sapless trees and dehydrated lusts begins to swim smooth and swift and peaceful. It is better than praying without having to bother to think aloud. It is like listening in a cathedral to a eunuch chanting in a language which he does not even need to not understand." 

 

#9 The Corrections

#9 The Corrections (March 2012)

I'm also documenting my progress on Instagram.  Follow me at hiramgunderson.

         Before I started The Corrections I did a great deal of research on the novel and its author Jonathan Franzen.  I was quickly able to surmise one thing, both are highly polarizing.  Franzen is an award-winning, best-selling author who is perhaps best know for upsetting Oprah and fans of Graham Greene.  The Corrections, the National Book Award winner in 2001 is, outside of the world of literary critics, far from universally popular.  Amazon's page for the novel features user reviews that praise the novel as "beautifully written" and decry it as a "plotless wonder", and that's just two of the thousand reviews.

       I bought The Corrections at my local library where books are sold for fifty cents apiece.  I decided to read it first originally as part of a plan to read every National Book Award winner.  Franzen's novel was a favorite almost immediately this prompted me to look into Time's Top 100.  I suggested the idea as a half-joke at first but after finishing I was convinced to commit myself to it.

      Franzen, like Faulkner before him, manages to create a family composed entirely of characters both interesting and unsympathetic.  Manically old-fashioned Enid, stern, Parkinson's-addled Alfred and their children Chip, Denise, and Gary each bring weight, humour, pathos, and nuance to the novel.

      Before I get too far into this entry I want to include a sort of disclaimer.  I have no clue how I plan to format this entry or any others.  This blog is still very much a largely-misguided work in progress.  In fact I can't say for certain what's a more daunting task, reading 81 more books or coming up with interesting things to say about all 100.  As you can tell from the fairly bland format of all of this I don't have the most minute trace of an idea of how to blog.  So this is a learn as I go kind of thing for me.  My entries will hopefully get better as well as the appearance of the blog as a whole.

     Now that I got that out the way, back to The Corrections.  Franzen separates the novel into sections focusing on each character.  This colorful cast is the novel's best attribute.  I found myself deeming each individual character the best, the most maddening, the most relatable.  Each of these stories is centered around Enid's desire to get the Lambert clan together for "one last Christmas" while Alfred is still around.

    Chip and Gary's segments of the story were especially strong.  I think however the absurd turns Chip's story takes are one of the novel's weaker points.  Chip, a pretentious, Marxist professor at an unnamed (it's designated as C_____) liberal arts college in Connecticut finds himself in the employ of a Lithuanian crime-boss.  Chip's bought with depression and his damning relationship with a student were an early high-point of the work but I found the later Lithuanian storyline less interesting.  Gary is a depressed banker living with his wife and three kids near Philadelphia.  As he grows increasingly dissatisfied he begins to feel his family is in cahoots against him.  Gary's musings on the effects of his depression are at once uncomfortable and darkly humorous.  A scene where a very drunk Gary nearly slices off his hand trying to do yard work but cannot be deterred was particularly interesting.

      Franzen's dialogue is top notch.  It'd have been one thing to simply state that his characters talk without listening to each other but Franzen instead reveals the self-absorption and destructive obsessions of his characters through the "conversations" they have.  Enid seems deaf to anything not related not related to a family Christmas and listening to Gary or Denise try and reason with her is often very very funny.  These characters sometimes read like heightened versions of common stereotypes but what makes them so interesting is that we all know these people, most of us are these people.  Maybe my favorite exchange is one between Chip and his Lithuanian employer.

“So, what, you got cigarette burns, too?" Gitanes said.

Chip showed his palm, "It's nothing."

Self-inflicted. You pathetic American."

Different kind of prison" Chip said.”

      Finishing The Corrections was the first of many times in the last two months that I've dubbed something "the best book I've ever read".  Though The Corrections only kept its title until I finished Light in August, I'd still recommend it to anyone.

Thoughts on the Remaining 82 Books

 

                I have a hard time remaning mentally idle.  I haven't been able to keep the next book and the next book and the next book out of mind.  Even thoroughly engrossed in the prose of Faulkner and Didion I couldn't help but to think, "I think I'll read The Sun Also Rises next, I can't wait".  This list and all the unique challenges and joy I anticipate from it have had a monopoly on my waking thoughts since March.  I've planned my reading list through the next ten books and I'm checking them out the library six at a time, I'm overcome with excitement. 

               Thrilled as I am to continue towards my goal there's a few entries on the list that intimidate to the point of night terrors.  A few of the books on the list aren't books at all but multi-volume series generally collected as one. I'm an unabashed lover of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings films but the thought of reading the trilogy, considered one entry on the list, has me a bit uneasy.  A Dance to the Music of Time and Infinite Jest are among the longest works ever written in the English language; I've heard nothing but praise for Foster Wallace's footnote-rich opus but the very sight it has me wondering if I'll finish this list in the next decade.
              Honestly though, I'm dreading one book on the list far more than any other.  This dread has nothing to do with the book's length.  If I hope to accomplish my goal of reading each book on the list I'm going to have to read Judy Blume's timeless classic Are You There God? It's Me Margaret.  When my beffudlement at the idea of a book for ten-year-olds making this list over Brave New World finally began to subside (it took some time, trust me) it was replaced by legitamate concern for how I'd go about reading it.  Assuming I finish the remaining 82 books by the time I graduate from college I will be reading Judy Blume's book, narrated by and intended for newly pubescent girls, when I'm between the ages of 18 and 22.  Considering that my first period will be ten years behind me I don't see Blume having much to offer me.  I can't even begin to imagine the myriad challenges that obtaining this book, let alone reading it will present.  As of now I plan to read it last, a male college senior reading a book for middle school girls is just deliciously ironic.  I'll be sure to post updates as I consider new ways to go about getting and reading the book, as of now I'm hoping its embedded online somwehere.
             For now and for the near-future I'll be sticking to the mid-length and reasonably relatable books on the list.  I'm halfway through Revolutionary Road and I plan to read American Pastoral next.

Too Much Time on my Hands

      I've realized that I'll never have so much free time again.  I can think of no better way to spend the dwindling days of my time in high school than to read a bunch of books.  During the first week of last month (March 2012) I decided to begin reading each of Time's Top 100 Novels.  This list includes what the magazine's book critics, Lev Grossman and Richard Lecayo, consider to be the best and most important pieces of fiction since Time Magazine began in 1923.  At first I planned to finish the list by the end of the school year.  Unfortunately this dream was dashed quickly when I realized that 100 books is likely more than I've read in my lifetime. 
http://entertainment.time.com/2005/10/16/all-time-100-novels/#all

      Before last month I had read 8 of the 100 books.  Most of these were read in English class but a few (Blood Meridian and A Clockwork Orange) were just for fun.  These eight books, which I may or may not reread for this blog, are as follows:

1. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis (4th Grade, 2004)
2. Watchmen - Alan Moore  (Summer, 2008)
3. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (9th Grade, 2009)
4. Animal Farm - George Orwell (9th Grade, 2009)
5. Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy (Summer, 2009)
6. The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald (10th Grade, 2010)
7. The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger (10th Grade, 2010)
8. A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess (Summer, 2010)

     Since I officially began my attempt at the list I have finished ten more books.  I will dedicate entries to each of these. Since March I have read:

    9.  The Corrections - Jonathan Franzen (March 2012)
   10. Light in August - William Faulkner (March 2012)
   11. The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway (March 2012)
   12. Play it as it Lays - Joan Didion (March 2012)
   13. Portnoy's Complaint - Phillip Roth (April 2012)
   14. Go Tell it on the Mountain - James Baldwin (April 2012)
   15. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov (April 2012)
   16. Catch-22 - Joseph Heller (April 2012)
   17. Falconer - John Cheever (April 2012)
   18. Pale Fire - Vladimir Nabokov (April 2012)
 
   My 19th selection from the list is Richard Yates' Revolutionary Road. I will do my best to post entries on the first 9 books before I finish number 10.  I think undertakings like this are the kind Drake and Lil Wayne had in mind when they said YOLO.  With the words of those two legends in my mind I go forward in my quest.  Foolhardy as it may seem I'm more than motivated to read 82 more books, whether I finish by the year's end or not.