Hightower’s words are not as disparate from his actions when Bunch returns to announce that Christmas has been captured. Bunch arrives to discover a sleeping Hightower. The clean, fresh clothes and folded hands of this sleeping man make him appear pontifical (363). But his repose is disturbed and he quickly becomes the sweaty large man we recognize from his earlier encounter with Bunch. He is easily excited by the news and request that Bunch bears this Sunday evening. His excitability is mirrored by his verbal and physical presence in this scene. Where he merely sweated steadily while maintaining composure over his verbiage the last time this pair spoke, his speech is littered with (longer than em) dashes that indicate an audible redirect or correction: “But it is not right to bother me, to worry me, when I have          when I have taught myself to stay          That this should come to me, taking me after I am old, and reconciled to what they deemed          ” (364-365). In this climactic instance of speech, Hightower is trying but can’t find the words to admit to Bunch why he is no longer a reverend. It is not only his ability to clearly communicate that cracks under duress, but he begins to cry in a way that subverts his first conversation with Bunch.

Previously, his sweat was depicted as tears streaming from his entire body. Now, his benignant facade is cracked and his tears are real though diminished in sentimental value: “Once before Byron saw him sit while sweat ran down his face like tears; now he sees the tears themselves run down the flabby cheeks like sweat” (365). This switch is focalized through Byron and could reveal that that he lacks empathy. To look at a large man cry and imagine the tears are sweat is insensitive. I’m not calling Byron out for body-shaming, he conveys that he is not an empathic person through his next words to Hightower too. In the next few lines, he assumes that because of the reverend’s title and position, he can handle any news a man could bring to him.

Hightower has the potential to be remembered for his deeds. In spite of his current state of disgrace and in direct opposition to his forefathers. Offering the remaining scraps of his reputation for the soul of Christmas (whose guilt or innocence is impossible to know for sure) would be the honorable thing to do if he felt it necessary to protect Christmas’ life or if Christmas was definitely innocent. But he knows that Byron does not come to make his request out of tremendous care for Christmas but rather to undermine Brown and save Lena. This is why Hightower says he refuses Byron’s request. Christmas’ recently revealed heritage is unstated here, but must be involved in his decision subconsciously. The news Christmas’ his being part black evoked an alarming physical reaction from Hightower. On some level, the reverend must be thinking of Byron’s request through the lens of his own Confederate family history.

BP5

The physical descriptions of Hightower during Bunch’s telling of Christmas’ story paint a picture of the Reverend that is rife with contradictions. His calm voice “sounds light, trivial, like a thistle bloom falling into silence without a sound, without any weight” and is belied by “the still, flaccid, big face…suddenly slick with sweat” (89). His meditative posture resembles “that of an eastern idol” and clashes with the Christian title of Reverend he once held (90). He does not say or do much during his exchange with Bunch, so his limited  dialogue and Faulkner’s descriptions of his body are supposed to give readers a sense of his feelings about race.

Knowing Hightower’s history as a proud descendant of Confederates gives us insight into how we might read the contradictory descriptions of his speech and actions. Hightower hasn’t heard the news of Burden’s death yet. The first bit of gossip he is presented and has to accept is that Christmas is black. His body contorts in separate parts and ways as if it were the features of a face trying to maintain airs: “There seems to come over his whole body, as if its parts were mobile like face features, that shrinking and denial” (89). Though his voice is light and airy, his physical reaction is a manifestation of the Confederate pride in his bones. His body wants to reject the new addition to his brain, the knowledge that Christmas is part black.

Knowledge of Christmas’ heritage has visibly disturbed Hightower. There is not another mention of  the features of his body demonstrating a denial, but the sweating continues steadily has Bunch relates to Hightower Christmas’ crime. Perhaps the movements that the narrator noted in Hightower’s body are a series of microexpressions that he cannot control but reveal one’s true fears or emotions

At the end of the story the sweat is transformed into tears: “Hightower with that look compassionate and troubled and still…with his eyes closed and the sweat running down his face like tears” (100). His whole body is crying at the news of black on white violence. But to reiterate the troubled upbringing of a man who reveres Confederate ancestors, his first words at the end of the story are not about the murder but to ask if it is “certain, proved that he has negro blood” (100). He prioritizes knowing Christmas’ true racial identity before offering condolences, expressing sympathy, or asking about any other part of the case. His response to the news is punctuated with  the lament “Poor man. Poor mankind” (100). This is a loaded phrase that could be read as Hightower’s complete disavowal of Confederate ideology. As a former reverend, he could be expressing pity for a man who will surely be lynched if Bunch’s story is true. However, when Hightower has a chance to defend Christmas’ life and provide him with an alibi, he refuses.

BP4

(Final Project Proposal)

As scholars, we tend to be quick to castigate manual laborers as less apt, less adept and perhaps more obstinate. In reading Faulkner, I realize that he sits on something of a high horse in terms of literary craft, however, I can’t ignore the hyper-focus he casts on labor in relation to the community of his towns. Whether it be the sawmill community in Light in August, the architects in Absalom, Absalom! or Jason Compson’s storefront business in TSAF, Faulkner is commenting on the role of labor in fostering community, nationhood and personal identity and how they are all interconnected, whether for better or for worse.

In one literary analysis on Faulkner and commercial culture, a student of Faulkner reasons that, “Whatever the original inspiration for the Snopes forenames, they function ultimately as ironic public reminders, signs at once of the distance and relation between American commercial history and a disenfranchised family’s own underclass identity” (Skinfill). While the provocative nature of the Snopes’ line constitutes a case study in and of itself, the writer’s point on “function” of labor in generating a shared identity between person, family and town is not lost.

In a revealing episode of Absalom, Absalom! justice Jim Hackett welcomes a bruised and bloodied Bon Jr. back with an indictment speech to a full court house professing that, “At this time, while our country is struggling to rise from beneath the iron heel of a tyrant oppressor, when the very future of the South as a place bearable for our women and children to live in depends on the labor of our own hands… What are you?” (165). At this juncture, the son of Bon has been repressed from entering the social structure of Jefferson and thus is unknown by the judge or the town. Regardless, it is vital for him to assume a purposeful role in the society or otherwise, he will not only fail to contribute to the country at its hour of greatest need (civil turmoil), he will remain unknown without identity  and thereby continue to be interpolated as a miscreant and troublemaker.

The pragmatic mindset of the judge is rooted in capitalist-industrialist ideals, the same ideals which threatened the ecosystem of a rural Southern society not economically per se but culturally. It’s worth noting how Skinfill calls attention to the normalized fragmenting of the family unit with relation to labor. Martyn Bone, a scholar of Southern literature, takes this notion a step further applying it to the region as a whole: “confronted by capitalist speculation in, and despoilation of, the rural South, Faulkner was not averse to indulging a neo-Agrarian ‘aesthetics of anti-development’ ” (Bone 21). In Bone’s view, Faulkner is engaging in a region-wide sentiment of dissociation from the norm or capitalization and development simply by not engaging with the latter.

One of Faulkner’s strongest examples worthy of consideration towards this position is the Compson household in TSAF. Upon the suicide of Quentin and the shaming of Caddie, Jason takes it upon himself to maintain the Compson household financially through his business endeavors and money laundering. In spite of monetarily sustaining the entire household and repeating it constantly to satiate his ego, Jason causes a near disintegration of the family and meets near death via his shaming of Quentin, an action the result of his “need” to sustain and maintain the well-being of the house and its inhabitants. Jason can not be a mogul in both his business and his family lives without repercussions whereas Dilsey, a black maid at the bottom of the economic food chain, glues the household together tighter than Jason could even fumble it apart. In that respect, Faulkner’s Compson household signifies how obsession with labor and economic development potentially compromise the integrity of the family.

(TO BE CONTINUED)

Works cited (so far)

Bone, Martyn. The Postsouthern Sense of Place in Contemporary Fiction. Baton Rouge: Baton Rouge: LSU, 2005.

Skinfill, Mauri. “The American Interior: identity and commercial culture in Faulkner’s late novels.” The Faulkner Journal, vol. 21, no. 1-2, 2005, p. 133+.

My proposal is inspired by a moment in Absalom, Absalom! in which Jason Compson ruminates on Henry Sutpen’s (lack of) understanding of his sister’s virginity: “Henry, the provincial, the clown almost, given to instinctive and violent action rather than to thinking, ratiocination, who may have been conscious that his fierce provincial’s pride in his sister’s virginity was a false quantity which must incorporate in itself an inability to endure in order to be precious, to exist, and so must depend upon its loss, absence, to have existed at all” (AA! 76). Faulkner’s exploration of the “false quantity” concept extends through many of his texts.

The most obvious parallel is in The Sound and the Fury, when Quentin can only contextualize Caddy’s virginity by losing it. The false quantity of virginity is fundamental to the culture of the Antebellum South. What is the implication when something, even something as intangible as virginity, is defined by its negation? By it’s “inability to endure”?

The intangible becomes much more cherished with the knowledge that it can and will be lost. Beyond virginity, this also applies to race. Many of Faulkner’s characters are fixated on racial identity and “whiteness” becomes a false quantity in Yoknapatawpha. In this case, it is not the absence of white (black) that is worrisome. Rather, it is the loss of a white racial identity that concerns the characters. They can only perceive of “whiteness” along with the inevitability of miscegenation.  Joe Christmas’s internal conflict is fueled by this false quantity.

I believe that other false quantities are more subtle, but still present in Faulkner’s work. Childhood and/or innocence must come to an unavoidable end. The Compson children, Bayard and Ringo, and Joe Christmas exemplify this concept. It would be interesting to explore the ways in which adults act toward children, as a result of the false quantity of childhood. Bayard’s retrospective narrative provides a perspective in which a character reflects on the false quantity of his own innocence.

I’ve also considered thought – more specifically “ratiocination” which is the “process of exact thinking” or “a reasoned train of thought” (medium Wiki to follow!). The Compsons really personify this false quantity – Caddy is presented as someone who thinks very rationally (supported by the fact that she never narrates). Jason’s section of TSAF shows some slippage, brief moments of unreasoned thought. Quentin is next, with many passages that are disconnected and lack exact thinking. Benjy, of course, exemplifies a total loss of ratiocination. The ratiocination false quantity is like a literary device for Faulkner. His writing is often defined by the relinquishment of reason. Here, I plan to use research about Faulkner’s stream of conscious writing style and it’s significance.

In addition to research about Faulkner’s style, I think that most of my sources will focus on the big topics (virginity, childhood/innocence, race) since early research hasn’t yielded much about false quantities specifically.

Here’s the review I mentioned today of Andre Bleikasten’s biography of Faulkner by Thomas Powers. And here’s S-Town, the somewhat Faulkneresque podcast that’s taking the world by storm.

Have a great Spring Break, folks!

My final project will be in the style of a long Yoknapedia entry. It will explore the reception of TSAF. I think the breadth of this topic lends itself to a wiki entry because of the need for future students to consult this entry for Faulkner’s reception, explore sources, and explore more specific aspects of this topic. There will be an extensive section on its reception in America in the decades since its publication. In this section I will seek to explain the problematic and praiseworthy sections of TSAF for each decade. It will also seek to organize the reception of TSAF in other countries less extensively. As of now, I have only explored a few databases through Hunter and have had some success on JSTOR and the Literature Resource Center finding criticism contemporary to the novel and articles on reception in other countries. My next step for research is to consult the librarian. I may need to explore databases that include disciplines other than English.

I am interested in examining the alternative kinship relations and queering of domestic spaces in Faulkner’s novels and the ways in which the political and social climate of the post war south generated an environment of exceptional domestic fluidity. Faulkner’s novels are rife with characters whose gender diverge from a binarized model, regarding their actions, feelings, and the descriptions of them. I first became interested in this notion in reading about Uncle Buck in The Unvanquished, and was tickled by how fluid and non-static descriptions of him were, regarding gender. Faulkner would not hesitate to repeatedly compare Uncle Buck to ladies, little girls, and grannys, which I extrapolated on in an earlier medium-sized wiki. We discussed at length the outright gender role swapping that occurs between Joanna Burden and Joe Christmas in Light in August, particularly relating to their sexual life.

As we have continued through Faulkner’s texts, my interest in the character gender fluidity began to formulate more solidly within the various domestic spaces that challenge a heteronormative binarized model of conjugal coupling. Although many of the families presumably were encouraged to follow the model of “the conventional family group of the period” (Absalom, Absalom!, 9), Faulkner relentlessly sprinkles his texts with domestic realms that push back against this conventional model, of which traditionally centers around a heterosexual couple getting married and having children of their own, residing in a private domestic space. For example, this pushback can be seen in the multiple instances of male homosocial plutonic domestic coupling in small cabins on the property of estates, such as with Uncle Buck and Uncle Buddy in The Unvanquished (and in the forthcoming Go Down, Moses) as well as with Joe Christmas and Joe Brown, for a spell, in Light in August.

There are repeated instances of women living alone, and also with other women, in texts such as Absalom, Absalom! and Light in August, under various circumstances. As we know, Joanna Burden lived in her estate alone for years, engaging in an extremely dynamic sexual relationship with Joe Christmas. Despite any ambivalent undertones and her eventual death in the home, the environment that she and Christmas crafted is noteworthy and liberative: they were not married, and they maintained a relationship of sorts that met various needs of them both for extended, varying “stages,” with very little established rules or communication that would stifle this strange freedom they created. In Absalom, Absalom!, Rosa, Judith, and Sutpen are all described various times as residing in alternative, non-conjugal domestic relationships either by themselves, or with each other. Ultimately, I plan to argue that the disorientation that resulted from the war at this time in the south engendered a variety of new formations in the home that were non normative at the time. 

Faulkner biographer Jay Parini writes, “It is in the nature of things for violent acts to repeat themselves, even though the original source of the violence is lost to view. In many ways, Faulkner’s writing is about uncovering these hidden sources of disruption, about following their echoes and unconscious reenactments down the decades” (Parini 2). I would like to explore the disruptions Faulkner traces through his writing about Native Americans in Go Down, Moses (and possibly additional short stories.) How does Faulkner write the story of Mississippi before the Sutpens, Sartorises, Compsons, Coldfields, and other white American families create the Old South/New South? How are the first white civilizations represented; how is identity inscribed? Faulkner’s story “The Old People” in Go Down, Moses begins: “At first there was nothing” (155). But for Native Americans in this land, there was all they needed, before the white settlers came- or does that depend on who tells the tale? How does Faulkner use the time/place when Mississippi was the frontier, a liminal territory, to write his tales of Indians and origins and how do they complicate his narratives of the black and white history of the South?

Annette Trefzer provides interesting insights as she explores how modernist forces shape the “discursive constructions of the Native American signifier” and seeks to “recover the significance of the Indian body that slumbers as a ghost in the (textual) landscape” focusing her critical analysis in the South “at the time of its most self-conscious articulation of regional identity” (Trefzer 4-5). Looking at the historical and symbolic significance of nation-building, westward expansion, and removal, Trefzer proposes that Faulkner’s “displacement of the narrative voice from Anglo-American culture to Native American culture achieves two main goals: one is to estrange the familiar American logic of economic production and consumption; the second is to signify on nineteenth-century discourses about ‘savagery’ and ‘civilization’ from the more unfamiliar perspective of the ‘savage’” (Trefzer 159). An issue of the Faulkner Journal provides some history and several additional interesting perspectives, exploring a variety of issues centering on Faulkner’s Indians: Gene Moore citing them as “historically inaccurate” and “politically incorrect”; Patricia Galloway studies “real” Choctaws and Chickasaws in comparison; Benjamin S. Lawson raises the question of who has the right to speak for the Indians; Jay S. Winston investigates Faulkner’s transformation of Indians from “antagonist to ancestor” in the vein of Walter Benn Michaels “Nativist Modernism,” to cite just a few.

On a drive back to Mississippi from one of his script-writing gigs in California in 1937, with Ben Wasson, Faulkner looks across the land and states: “This was theirs … All of it. The whole country. We took it from them and shoved them off onto reservations. I reckon it’s bad enough the way we treat the black folks …” (Williamson 257). How we got here, how we get to be who we are, and how we identify ourselves in our place, our time are questions that Faulkner constantly seeks answers to, digging further back for answers in the Native American stories that provide linkage to modernist struggles to represent identity.

Works Cited

Faulkner Journal 18.1/2 (Fall 2002/ Spring 2003).

Doyle, Don H. Faulkner’s County: The Historical Roots of Yoknapatawpha. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001.

Faulkner, William. Go Down, Moses. New York: Vintage, 1942. 1994.

Parini, Jay. One Matchless Time: A Life of William Faulkner. New York: Harper Perennial, 2004.

Trefzer, Annette. Disturbing Indians: The Archaeology of Southern Fiction. Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama, 2007.

Williamson, Joel. William Faulkner and Southern History. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.