I have been rereading Faulkner´s "The Sound and the Fury," and it is such a slog, that I am trying anything at all to keep from going back to it. I just answered a friend´s 3-sentence email with about a book-length reply that was totally unnecesary.
I know the first, and only, time I read this book was in 1963-64. In the summer of 1963, after I graduated from high school, the University of Nebraska sent out a recommended reading list to all prospective freshman. These were books we were told we were expected to have read by the time we entered the university the next fall. Bob Peterson, if you are reading this, do you recall that list? If so, do you remember any of the other books? My memory tells me it was not a particularly short list of books. Although I don't know how I would have found those books in the cultural center that was Genoa, Nebraska, my memory also tells me that I read all, or almost all, of the books on the list.
I don't know if I can only recall the Conant book because it was so gripping and eye-opening, or because it was so daunting. But that very uncertainty makes me think the Faulkner books were not on the read-before-you-get-here list, but must have been assigned reading for one of my courses. If the university had told me I had to read and understand Faulkner before beginning my freshman year, I would have probably just given up on the very idea of the university, and applied for a job pumping gas somewhere.
At any rate, it is because of Faulkner that I have wasted the last few hours finding these funny, sad, pathetic...whatever...headlines.
5 comments:
I do remember one: Apologia Pro Vita Sua by John Henry (Cardinal) Newman. Talk about slogging. It was slow and tedious going and I was seriously not ready for that.
Don't remember the rest.
BTW, those headlines are priceless.
Bob, Thanks for the reminder. Let me correct the statement that I read all or most of the books on the list. "Most" may still be true, but I never read the Newman book, and probably never will.
How many books would you guess were on that list? Any sense at all of that, at this late date?
BTW, the second half of The Sound and the Fury is easier than the first. Maybe I'm just getting accustomed to Faulkner.
I am not even going to guess at the number on that list...but it was substantial. I remember there were only a couple that I had already read.
So you made it to the last half of The Sound and the Fury. Most people don't, and I remember just trying to get done with it. Reading Faulkner is like reading Shakespeare, you get used to the language. I remember specifically my dismay when I picked up As I Lay Dying.
What is the "Conant" reference. Did I miss something?
Just got a new book--The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durell. Ever heard of it? Someone recommended it years ago and for some reason I ordered it.
Watch out for the solar flare.
Bob-As regards the Conant reference, either I'm going wacko and think a paragraph in my head and then imagine I actually wrote it...or I wrote something and deleted it, and then forgot I deleted it.
The only book from the list that I remember was "Understanding Science," by James B. Conant. But I don't know why I remember it so well. I don't consciously remember anything from the book itself. Perhaps it was just that I was reading a book by the President of Harvard and was feeling self-satisfied that I thought I understood it.
You know it was Conant's granddaughter who wrote the book "Tuxedo Park," that you liked so much.
As for Faulkner, somewhere around the half way point, I became actually caught up in the book and raced through to the end. It dawned on me that "I get this." Tonight I downloaded "As I Lay Dying," so I can reread it too. Then maybe I'll go on to some of his others.
I know the Durell books, but I've never read them. Let me know what you think.
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