Absalom, Absalom!
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."
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4people
2009–2024years
33% recommend56% neutral11% critical
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What Hacker News says
- “From a little after two o'clock until almost sundown of the long still hot weary dead September afternoon they sat in what Miss Coldfield still called the office because her father had called it that—a dim hot airless room with the blinds all closed and fastened for forty-three summers because when she was a girl someone had believed that light and moving air carried heat and that dark was always cooler, and which (as the sun shone fuller and fuller on that side of the house) became latticed with yellow slashes full of dust motes which Quentin thought of as being flecks of the dead old dried paint itself blown inward from the scaling blinds as wind might have blown them.”
— Absalom, Absalom by Faulkner
Read Faulkner or Dos Passos to experience heat as people did a century ago.
- Very influential in my teens:
Absalom, Absalom by Faulkner
USA by John Dos Passos
Cache Lake Country by Rowlands
First adult book I read all the way through (I was fascinated! Re-read it recently and enjoyed it.):
The Mysterious Island by Verne
- Gravitation by Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler
The Road to Reality by Penrose
The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli
"For a long time, we have tried to understand the world in terms of some primary substance. Perhaps physics, more than any other discipline, has pursued this primary substance. But the more we have studied it, the less the world seems comprehensible in terms of something that is. It seems to be a lot more intelligible in terms of relations between events.
...
We therefore describe the world as it happens, not as it is. Newton's mechanics, Maxwell's equations, quantum mechanics, and so on, tell us how events happen, not how things are...we understand the world in its becoming, not in its being. Things in themselves are only events that for a while are monotonous. But only before returning to dust, everything returns to dust.
The absence of time does not mean, therefore, that everything is frozen and unmoving. It means that the incessant happening that wearies the world is not ordered along a time line, is not measured by a gigantic tick-tocking. It does not even form a four-dimensional geometry. It is a boundless and disorderly network of quantum events. The world is more like Naples than Singapore.
If by 'time' we mean nothing more than happening, then everything is time. There is only that which exists in time."
Very influential in my teens:
Absalom, Absalom by Faulkner
USA by John Dos Passos
Cache Lake Country by Rowlands
- 1) There's no way to have a set of readings that every Xth grader is going to enjoy. It's just impossible. There is a wide range of interests and predispositions and reading ability among people of the same age. It's obvious just from this sub-thread; everyone pipes up with a different set of books they disliked in school and they therefore think no one should have to read. I loved reading Julius Caeasar in high school and hated The Catcher in the Rye. I loved Dandelion Wine and hated Absalom, Absalom. Them's the breaks.
2) Part of the point of reading literature is to see things from a different perspective. i.e. to read things that are not necessarily "relatable", and thereby possibly expand your mind about the range of human experience. It's an opportunity to learn about history and learn about cultures other than your own.
- From a little after two oclock until almost sundown of the long still hot weary dead September afternoon they sat in what Miss Coldfield still called the office because her father had called it that—a dim hot airless room with the blinds all closed and fastened for forty-three summers because when she was a girl someone had believed that light and moving air carried heat and that dark was always cooler, and which (as the sun shone fuller and fuller on that side of the house) became latticed with yellow slashes full of dust motes which Quentin thought of as being flecks of the dead old dried paint itself blown inward from the scaling blinds as wind might have blown them. There was a wistaria vine blooming for the second time that summer on a wooden trellis before one window, into which sparrows came now and then in random gusts, making a dry vivid dusty sound before going away: and opposite Quentin, Miss Coldfield in the eternal black which she had worn for forty-three years now, whether for sister, father, or nothusband none knew, sitting so bolt upright in the straight hard chair that was so tall for her that her legs hung straight and rigid as if she had iron shinbones and ankles, clear of the floor with that air of impotent and static rage like children’s feet, and talking in that grim haggard amazed voice until at last listening would renege and hearing-sense self-confound and the long-dead object of her impotent yet indomitable frustration would appear, as though by outraged recapitulation evoked, quiet inattentive and harmless, out of the biding and dreamy and victorious dust.
— Absalom, Absalom - Faulkner - first two sentences
- I'm a professional writer and editor. This is extremely cool to me. The comparison between Blood Meridian and Absalom, Absalom! really says all you need to know about this tool. Personally I find it to be a really fascinating and original way of looking at prose.
Link to the actual tool the author made for creating your own punctuation visualization: https://just-the-punctuation.glitch.me/
