The Sound and The Fury by William Faulkner

Another difficult to understand but rewarding Faulkner novel. More obtuse than "As I Lay Dying" but not nearly as difficult as "Absalom, Absalom!", this novel is full of complex characters.

There are four viewpoints, told in Faulkner's characteristic stream of consciousness style, followed by a final short chapter in the omniscient point of view. Everyone that reads this novel remembers Benjy, the mentally retarded man-child. The first chapter is in his viewpoint, and is a confusing sequence of out-of order and out-of-time memories of Benjy's. If you can make it through the first chapter you will probably make it through the book!

Once again, we have to piece together the plot, which is secondary to the characters. It doesn't help that there are two Maurys and two Quentins (one male and one female!) The setting is not quite so important in this novel as in other Faulkner works. At least the characters are not doing battle with the land, but with their own selves and each other.

There are plenty of family secrets. Castration, incest, theft, adultery, suicide - a whole list of sins. The last chapter, in the omniscient viewpoint, seems racist in it's treatment of the black characters of the novel.

Not my favorite Faulkner novel, and not the one I hate, but still well worth the time and effort to read and understand it.

As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner

This has to be one of the easier Faulkner books to read, and I would suggest it as a good starting point if you want to start reading Faulkner. It is typical of his work: hard to understand until you grasp his technique.

It is written in first person present tense from the viewpoint of about 15 characters. Some of the characters are used only once and then forgotten, others are followed throughout the novel. It is the story of the Bundren family as they bury their wife/mother. The burial is not the focus, of course, but the journey to deliver her body. Even that is subvervient to the characters, and the characters are subservient to the world of the Bundrens. It is a perfect example of the Southern Gothic.

It is necessary, of course, to piece together what is happening as you read along. In that sense it's very similar to a mystery novel, although you are not solving a murder or a crime, you are attempting to understand what is going on. That is the appeal that the novel has to the literary experts. It presents a puzzle that must be pieced together.

Needless to say that I, or any other unkonown author, could not get away with such a puzzling novel. No one would bother to take the trouble to read this if I submitted it.

As I read it I started to realize some of the tricks that Faulkner uses. When he wants to exercise his literary prose, he uses the character Darl. When he wants to use the stream of consciousness style he is so famous for he uses the child Vardaman. The incidental characters are usually the most lucid and easiest to understand - Tull, the doctor Peabody, Armstid, Moseley.

I also enjoyed the subject matter, the hapless and unlucky family that nothing seems to go right for. If it weren't for bad luck, they'd have no luck at all.

Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison

Grim. If "Fay" is a car wreck, then this book is a slow death from cancer. You know it's going to end bad; there is no alternative. The ending is even worse than expected.

Allison's treatment of the setting, the characters, and the tone is perfect. My childhood came back to life, and I remembered cousins and aunts I had forgotten years ago. Thank God my family was not quite the "white trash" that hers seems to have been.

And the novel does seem autobiographical. Written in the first person, it reads like a memoir. A little search on the internet reveals that she actually lived the core of truth at the heart of this novel.

Definitely Southern Gothic, and Grit Lit. You don't finish this novel crying, you finish it wanting to shoot someone.

Oral History by Lee Smith

This is an excellent book, well written and executed. Is it a Southern Gothic? If not, it's close enough. It's about a cursed family, and their history is told by those who know them, relatives and friends. It spans generations.

It also seems to be meticulously researched. Set in the mountains of Virgina, it stays faithful to the culture and heritage of that region.

There is no ending. Which is what you would expect from a family history - it continues on in the lives of the next generation. There are plenty of subplots to keep up the readers interest, but if you are looking for a non-stop thriller - this isn't it. It's also sad and dramatic in places, and of course, dark. Yes I would classify it as a Southern Gothic.

Fay by Larry Brown

Reading this book is like passing a car wreck on the highway. You get caught in the backup first, not knowing what is ahead. Emergency vehicles pass you, lights flashing and sirens blaring. You could get of the highway, turn around, take another route. But you stick it out, and eventually, up ahead, you can see the wreck. Twisted wreckage, bodies on stretchers. You gape. Even after you pass the wreck you are slow to accelerate. You can't look away.

That's Larry Brown's "Fay". It's another in the series of Southern Gothics (or in this case, Grit Lit) that I am reading. It's a simple style, heavy on the "to be" verbs, light on action verbs and adverbs. Definitely not purple prose, but also not as spare as Hemingway. Brown is also not terse. The book is full of long descriptions of drinking, driving, drinking and driving, sex, drugs, fishing, and strip joints. All the essential features of the rural South.

You know it's going to end badly, but of all the endings I could imagine, the real ending is not the one I would have picked. Honestly, by the time the book was over I was ready for someone to shoot Fay.

By all means read it, but be prepared to stare at the wreck on the highway.

Africans in America - Charles Johnson and Patricia Smith

An excellent book, the companion to the WGBH series. I hesitate to call it a history book. It's certainly not a scholarly history book, but nevertheless full of interesting facts.

It does sensationalize and editorialize. Interspersed in the text are "dramatizations" or "short stories" illustrating the historical facts. Of course it's incredibly difficult to treat such a horrific practice as slavery in a totally objective manner.

What I particularly liked about the book were the tidbits of history. There are plenty of quotes and excerpts from primary sources, and it is well worth the price to experience those.

The Georgia Gold Rush - David Williams

Subtitle: Twenty-Niners, Cherokees, and Gold Fever. A nice small book about a confusing topic. There are so many conflicting claims about the discovery of gold in Georgia that it is nice to see a book that actually goes back to primary sources to try to sort out the truth.

Not that it really matters where gold was first discovered. I am more interested in the accounts of the interactions between Cherokee and prospectors, and this book covers much in that area.