Reading Faulkner with Philip Weinstein

William Faulkner — arguably one of America’s greatest novelist, and Nobel Laureate in 1949 — launched his career as a Joyce-inspired modernist.

As a lifelong Southerner, however, Faulkner found his supreme subject in his country’s ordeal of race. Following the poetic stream of consciousness of The Sound and the Fury (1929), the fallout of racial brutality in the South coils at the center of Light in August (1932), the human cost of racism attains its furthest historical and emotional resonance in Absalom, Absalom! (1936) and Go Down, Moses (1942), evincing Faulkner’s widest grasp of America’s racial nightmare. As we try once again to come to grips with the truth of our history — Faulkner presents a unique challenge. He allows us to consider at once the strengths and the limitations of a 20^th-century white Southerner’s understanding of race in America.

Each novel will be explored for three sessions:

Light in August on November 15, November 29, and December 13.
Absalom, Absalom! on January 17, January 31, and February 14
Go Down, Moses on February 28, March 14, and March 28

Absalom, Absalom! Reading:

• For Jan 17: Chapters 1-4
• For Jan 31: Chapters 5-7
• For Feb 14: To end