A Light in August

I don't know if any of you other than Joe have read ALIA. I believe it to be the best beginning of any of his novels I have read thus far -- although that may not be true. The Sound and the Fury is pretty phenomonal, but I don't know if you can really compare Sound with his other works. Critics often hail it as his most important work, and I'm down with that. But if you are just talking plain old novel -- which ALIA

**wait. I've been listening to NPR this morning, and I just heard that China has an overpopulation of males -- something something due to ability to determine the sex with ultrasound. That doesn't sit right with me. Don't you have to be at least five months along to determine sex? Does that mean that after five months of pregnancy, women are aborting females? OK, maybe I'm out of the loop on this, and this may be nothing new -- but that makes me sad. It's like a grief for femininity. It hurts my heart.**

is, much like Sanctuary, then the beginning of ALIA is incredible. I almost don't feel like the standard make-up of story, rising action, climax, falling action, denoument, applies to Faulkner. Even in his most acceccible works, there is more of an inverse of this. I feel like it's a sinking action, a deepening, and then when you feel like you can't hold your breath any longer, he releases you, only to maybe actually, watch you drown before you get back to the surface. I feel like Faulkner plays upon my notions of conventional mystery -- some unthinkable twist, some suprise -- with most of the plot. There's villany, heartbreak, stereotypes are explored, but he always gives this explanation for the evil that occurs in his novels as simple intolerence. And when he does this, he makes you feel the fool for ascribing any romance to violence, or evil. The whole premise of ALIA is intolerence -- and he doesn't really hide this, but he really drives home how intolerence is the cause for most suffering, and even shows you how you have been able to bear the story due to your own intolerence. You read a story about a black man getting lynched. There are many stories with this action at the fore. But ALIA puts together all the reasons, all the possibilities that could lead up to a lynching, and the question of why this action is so ineviltable is never chalked up to chance -- but always blamed on ignorant intolerant white people, and the chaos that their blind hate creates. He deftly includes love, religion, spirituality, poverty, history, and ecomonics into the mix. There were moments in this book where I had to put the work down, and look out the window just bowled over by the great, great, writing.

Faulkner also does this thing. I will try to get some examples, but its like he writes a sentence, describing some scene, and he will insert a definition into the sentence, and this definition is totally unneccesary, the sentence doesn't need the definition, it's like a sage whispering into your ear -- this is what time means, this is what love means, this is what age means. It's almost like there is a second narrator, a lexicographer of sorts, who is telling you the meaning of life between commas.

I don't know what's next for me on the novel list this summer. I may try American Pastoral, oh! or finishing Moby Dick. Hope everyone's having a good time.

P.S. It's strange now not to post pictures.