Absalom, Absalom
- by William Faulkner
Absalom, Absalom! is said to be Faulkner’s most difficult but most brilliant work. Absalom… presents the story of Thomas Sutpen, an enigmatic stranger who came to Jefferson in the early 1830s to wrest his mansion out of the muddy bottoms of the north Mississippi wilderness. He was a man, Faulkner said, “who wanted sons and the sons destroyed him.” Described as ‘hard-core Faulkner’, one review says: “The words and writing are critically acclaimed since your parents were in school. The examples of how a war can raze an entire culture’s edifice of identity are compelling, each person’s doom and curse being common among her kin and her countrymen: ghosts and sex and violence and cruelty, gut wrenching drama to challenge any soap opera or miniseries or movie. There are themes and studies aplenty within the nightmare realm of Faulkner’s masterpiece.” Absalom, Absalom! includes characters and shadows from Sound and the Fury but delves more deeply into the surrounding world and Southern inheritance that S&F traces.