Et ego in arcadia

Rethinking my thesis

After reading, rereading, and rerereading As I Lay Dying for two and a half weeks, and finally dropping it from my reading list, I am now 2/3 of the way through Absalom, Absalom! and am no closer at drawing a formative conclusion that can relate it to the rest of my thesis either. I am definitely considering, especially at the behest of my primary thesis adviser, Prof. John Bishop, that I should stick with The Sound and the Fury as my subject of interest and target of critical pressure for my thesis. I have 14 pages from mostly the Quentin Chapter alone, and at that rate, at roughly 10-12 pages per section, will have enough to meet the 40 page minimum requirement for my thesis, after the introduction and conclusion is taken into account.

14 Page Rough Draft and Next Steps

It's been a while since I last posted on here, but I know have a fourteen page rough draft. The rough draft is what will be the first draft of my thesis, and covers Faulkner's use of metaphor in the Quentin Chapter of The Sound and the Fury. In summary, Quentin Compson attempts to counter the nihilistic philosophy he has inherited from his father, which is symbolized in the watch, by infusing his life with metaphoric meaning. After removing the hands of the clock, Quentin metaphorically rids himself of Mr. Compson's nihilism. Yet, the clock clicks on without the hands, only emphasizing and reinforcing his father's belief on the meaninglessness of time and existence. Quentin keeps this watch with him at all times, hearing its tick-tock at all times, even over the noises of the city; Quentin cannot escape life's meaninglessness.
Yet, as I said before, he nonetheless infuses his world with metaphoric meaning. Birds come to represent his lost sister, the eye of his dead father follow him in the eyes of other father figures, such as the shop owner, and he believes his life to be as purpose-filled and destined as the life of Jesus and Saint Francis, as a martyr defending the purity of his sister and upholding the ideals of Christianity and Southern Aristocracy.
However, these symbol-systems are eventually toppled by Faulkner, and Quentin finds himself unable to escape the certainty of his father's nihilism. Quentin's allegorical/symbolic imagination comes to being in reality in the little Italian girl and the three country boys who search for an elusive fish. The three boys function as an allegory for the three Compson brothers, and how they appear to search for their sister Caddy, yet inwardly reject her when they have the opportunity to seize her. (For another example of hunters being impotent at the moment of seizing their prey, see Go Down, Moses, especially Was and The Bear, where Ike McCasslin fails to shoot the bear Old Ben at the opportunity. Faulkner implicitly compares the hunt to Keat's Ode to a Grecian Urn, where beauty is at once perpetually elusive, and at the same time the ground for (Platonic) truth. The object of the hunt in Faulkner's works, whether it be the fish of The Sound and the Fury, the fish of As I Lay Dying, or Old Ben in The Bear, functions as what post-structuralist theorists would call the "decentered center," which is the ground for truth in a linguistic paradigm, yet is at the same time outside and beyond any articulation possible by that same system.) Thus, the final two chapters of Quentin Compson's narration in The Sound and the Fury are written in the realist mode: Quentin has abandoned metaphor and his narration continues metonymically and literally. As the idea of God and metaphysics implodes, so does metaphor.
The thesis is looking to be structured following the sequence of the publication of Faulkner's major novels on Yocknapatawpha County; First, The Sound and the Fury (1929), then As I Lay Dying (1930), and finally Absalom, Absalom! (1936).
My treatment of As I Lay Dying will continue to view the trajectory of Faulkner's critique of metaphysics and the Heideggerian/Nietzschean perspective of Being. Darl and Addie Bundren play a crucial role in deciphering Faulkner's view on human essence, what Heidegger would call "Desein." As I Lay Dying has a simple plot, but seems to be Faulkner's most philosophically dense work; this will certainly be the most difficult chapter of my thesis. This past weekend I have been reading summaries of Heidegger, mostly through the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and other sources. I will read a little bit more criticism tomorrow, and then I will finally jump back into As I Lay Dying for the second time, and see if I can actually understand the underlying existential themes of the novel.

Comparison Table

A Table I created comparing Faulkner and Nietzsche can be found Here.

Acquired Second Reader & First Three Pages

Good news: I just got a second reader for my thesis. The way the honors program works here in Berkeley is that you have your first professor who teaches you literary theory the first semester and acts as a general guide the second semester. Each student then has to find a second reader amongst the faculty who is a specialist in the field you are researching.

Luckily, Professor Donna Jones has agreed to be my second adviser for my thesis.

Also I have written the first three pages of my paper, and will have about ten more pages written soon: Click Here.

Eyes: Faulkner's Perspective on Mankind

Critic Richard Godden cites Paul Virilio as saying that in A Fable, the bird's-eye-view of earth is taken by the pilots, who photograph the landscape for the purposes of knowing how best to demolish it. Virilio suggests that the privileged perspective on human activity is made by the very one's who are intent on destroying it. As a parallel, I hope to make a comparison between the way mankind is viewed in A Fable, and the image of the "eye" of the billboard which appears at the end of The Sound and the Fury. What is the "privileged perspective" in The Sound and the Fury? Does the billboard represent Capitalism/Materialism? Is it a Paternal Eye, the eye of "Father," the eye of God?

Also, as I was in the shower, I realized I should probably hold off on reading the 200 pages left in A Fable until later. I will stick to reading the rest of As I Lay Dying, and completing The Birth of Tragedy tomorrow. I think I will get too stressed trying to shove A Fable into my schedule, and it won't be as productive a criticism.

The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying and Birth of Tragedy (equals) Nihilistic/Existential Tragedy in a Family Setting

A Fable is probably best matched up with what I may go on to call Faulkner's War Trilogy:
Absalom, Absalom! and The Unvanquished and A Fable (equals) Faulkner's Criticism of War and Will to Power

Anyway, let's hope I can keep this blogging up!

Much Love...

Frustration...A Near Repudiation

I repudiate my repudiation...

I have the first fifteen pages of my thesis due Friday, which really isn't that much of a problem and I am excited about it, but Faulkner's A Fable is giving me a hard time. I finished The Sound and the Fury, and was at first let down by the ending, until I realized that the book is supposed to be about nothing. The ending, which is actually three endings in one, is suppose to expose the failure of three kinds of systems which attempt to add meaning to the meaninglessness of life:

1. Pragmatism/Materialism, as represented by Jason
2. Ignorant Bliss, as represented by Benjy
3. The Aesthetic Ideal/Morality/Cultural Dignity and Values, as represented by Quentin
4. Christianity, as represented by Disley (Although I am still skeptical as to whether Faulkner implies that Christianity "fails" to add meaning to life, or if the Compsons simply fail to grasp the hope it offers....

It seems like I have to reread the book, because now I actually know what to look for. Either way, stylistically, the book is brilliant, even if you don't know what is going on. There is one line that reads

I could hear Shreve working the pump, then he came back with the basin and a round blob of twilight wobbling in it, with a yellow edge like a fading balloon, then my reflection.

Anyway, back to my original frustration: A Fable. The story is an allegory of World War I, and was considered by Faulkner to be his masterpiece. Yet, most scholars regard The Sound and the Fury to be his greatest work. The story is complex and very long, and I feel like the entire middle section could be cut out. Some of Faulkner's usual techniques, like his overly qualified sentences, run far too long, probably causing what feels to me the unnecessary length of the work. The story centers around a French corporal of Jewish origin, who through his squad of twelve men, convinces both the French and German lines to stop the war. The world looks on, awaiting to see what meaning they will rest their lives upon without a war to fight. The corporal is a Christ-figure, of course. It should be interesting if I can make some comparisons between hi and the Superman of Nietzsche.

Here is a general approach to Faulkner I have thought about taking from reading so far: He seems to like to set up different systems which attempt to give meaning to life, and watch as they all self-destruct. What is left is unavoidable nihilism, what Paul Tillich called, the "threat of non-being." How do Faulkner's characters cope with nihilism? Do they overcome it? Is Quentin Compson's choice to jump off a bridge the only answer?

Critic's Quote on Faulkner/Nietzsche

"The link between Faulkner's novel and the philosophies of Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, once identified, is hard to deny."

- The Birth of Tragedy from the spirit of the blues: Philosophy and history in If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem
Patrick McHugh. The Faulkner Journal. Orlando: Spring 1999. Vol 14,
Iss. 2; pg. 57, 18 pgs.

Full-Text Here

Faulkner and Nietzsche Link: Progress!

Thankfully, my professor arranged an appointment with the class to visit the university librarian. She introduced me to an excellent resource in the form of the Modern Language Association International Bibliography. It is a great research resource, but you may need to have a proxy with your school's library in order for it to work. Take the half hour to go to your school's librarian and see how you can fix your laptops browser to access resources like the MLAIB through a proxy server.

Anyway, here is the Holy Grail I have been looking for: A Bibliography of Scholarly Works Comparing Faulkner and Nietzsche.

I know the Wikipedia page on Faulkner only mentions the relationship between the two, but now these two links can provide some further material for those interested.

All the Best....

Whitman & Nietzsche: Drawing Comparisons

Few would expect these two writers to even be on opposite sides of a line on the same drawing board. Walt Whitman, as Prof. Robert Hass described, is the "grandfather of American poetry" and is known for his humanism, optimism, and general panache. In contrast, as we all probably know, Nietzsche is the "Continental Immoralist" and nihilist. Yet, consider the following lines:

There was never any more inception than there is now,
Nor any more youth or age than there is now;
And will never be any more perfection than there is now,
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now

Urge and urge and urge,
Always the procreant urge of the world.
- Song of Myself

Although I do not have time to reference the specific lines from Nietzsche that can compare to this passage, it does strike me as containing similar themes. For one, there is the presumption of an eternal, static world, that cannot be qualified objective values or beliefs (time, aesthetics, morality). There is a sense of liberation in Whitman's work, just as Nietzsche "unfetters" himself from the belief in God, and the world is spinning "unchained to the Sun." Perhaps there are factors behind Nietzsche and Whitman that brought about this same belief of suspension and release from any grounding force, such as God.

What do you all think? Have we scratched the surface of some movement within Modernism that binds such appearingly different authors? I would love to hear what you all think...

Short Term Goals

I've been lagging on this project and this blog reflects that. Here are the following things I need to do:

1. Get a second faculty adviser. Top of my list is Prof. Emeritus Carolyn Porter, upon the recommendation of a graduate student friend of mine who had her as his own faculty adviser. She is an expert on all things Faulkner.
2. Establish reading schedule. Figure out what times during the day I can read and maintain a steady, consistent schedule.
3. With number 2, slim down the works I want to focus on. I think I have too much. (I already feel this way, and it is day 1 of Spring Semester!)
4. Read some criticism on Nietzsche and Faulkner (I know, contradicting number 3)

I'll be updating this blog hopefully daily, and maybe people interested in Faulkner, Nietzsche, and Modernism will be interested enough to read it.