Chance references often guide my reading, leading me meanderingly from one book to another. Discovering the influence of William Faulkner on Simone de Beauvoir was one such instance. Sartre remarked that de Beauvoir’s technique in Le Sang des Autres, cutting the chronological order of the story and replacing it with a more subtle sequence, half logical, half intuitive, was inspired by Faulkner.
Writing of As I Lay Dying, de Beauvoir admired Faulkner’s ability to harmonize multiple viewpoints: “Not only did he show great skill in deploying and harmonising multiple viewpoints, but he got inside each individual mind, setting forth its knowledge and ignorance, its moments of insincerity, its fantasies, the words it formed and the silences it kept. As a result the narrative was bathed in a chiaroscuro, which gave each event the greatest possible highlight and shadow.”
The contrasts in As I Lay Dying are striking, particularly the language: vernacular and poetic side by side. In the viewpoint of the confused child Vardaman, after a passage of rambling thought, the narrative offers a moment of dislocation: “It is as though the dark were resolving him out of his integrity, into an unrelated scattering of components—snuffings and stampings; smells of cooling flesh and ammoniac hair; an illusion of a coordinated whole of splotched hide and strong bones within which, detached and secret and familiar, an is different from my is.”
It is difficult to attribute this passage fully to Vardaman’s consciousness. Faulkner seems instead to permit the unconscious a voice: the Id, that talks even when silent. Among the fifteen fragmentary viewpoints offered, even the departed mother speaks; it is not too great a stretch to allow the unconscious its moment.
Beauvoir found the dark comedy of As I Lay Dying unsettling but powerful. There is a surreal humour in the Bundren family’s desperate journey to bury the odorous corpse of the family matriarch. Set pieces, like the near-loss of the coffin on the river, are both predictable and agonizing. De Beauvoir observes: “If objects or habits were presented to the reader in a preposterous light, the reason was that misery and want not only change man’s attitude to things but transform the very appearance of things.”
In Faulkner’s chiaroscuro of speech, thought, and action, the visible and the invisible intertwine with a stubborn, unforgettable force.
>I love the chiaroscuro metaphor – an apt description, I think, for the ways in which unclear boundaries can often accentuate contrasts rather than obscuring them. Certainly applicable to the Faulkner I've read, particularly Absalom, Absalom!.I continue to find it fascinating that Beauvoir was such a fan of Faulkner. Two authors I would never have considered pairing. The next time I read him I will definitely keep her in mind.
>I really need to revisit this. I think I was 14 when I read it, the only Faulkner I've attempted. Not one to read lightly, I don't think. I do love the idea of the vernacular and the poetic mixing. Sounds like a good read.
>Emily, I came across an interesting theory in Bernard-Henri Lévy's book on Sartre that the latter (and by implication the Beaver) used the Americans (Faulkner, Dos Passos, Hemingway) as cover:He used the Americans, so that he could write like Gide without saying so. The Americans, so as to put Mauriac behind him, without thereby simply writing like Gide. The Americans, little soldiers of the internecine guerilla war he was waging against the French novel, in which victory, ex hypothesi, must above all owe nothing to André Gide.
>Combustible material at 14, Rebecca, definitely worth rereading with an adult's experience.
>This remains my favorite Faulkner. And now I think I ought to read Beauvoir sooner rather than later.
>My favorite Faulkner, too, partly because it is hilarious, although "a good read" is not at all what I would call this book. I have no idea what that term means, though.Faulkner had a profound ifluence on numerous French writers, an almost bizarre number of French writers. Claude Simon is almost pure French Faulkner.
>Susan, I've yet to read Beauvoir's fiction, where the Faulkner influence is most apparent.This is only my second Faulkner, Sanctuary the other, and I far preferred As I lay Dying. It is funny, but the humour is dark and wicked.
>Amateur Reader: I'm intrigued by your linking Claude Simon to Faulkner. You are probably right — I'll have to reread and see… I don't think Faulkner has such a strong sense of form, though (here I'm thinking of works like Triptych). Any thoughts?
>I haven't read Triptych and barely remember the structures of the three I have read.Try this, though, from The Wind, tr. Richard Howard, early in Ch. 12:"(time not threadlike, filiform, like those knotted braids primitive Indians use for their messages, a conception of a one-dimensional duration along which the event-knots – the past, the present, the future – follow each other without conflict, well-behaved, single file; but on the contrary (time) like a sort of clotted magma in which the moment is a spade cutting into the dark earth, revealing the innumerable swarm of worms)"and that's just one parenthetical comment in a three-and-a-half page sentence.Try almost any page at random from The Wind or The Grass.
>I am currently reading Intruder in the Dust which is my first Faulkner novel and I am surprised that I'm getting on better with it then I thought I would, even with the paragraph long sentences.
>Jessica: As I Lay Dying is considered Faulkner's most accessible work. I've certainly got some niggling questions in my mind about viewpoint, but it's not too problematic. I am sure I will read more Faulkner, but feel no urgency to do so.
>Hi Anthony, I have tagged you over at my blog for a Versatile Blogger Award. Play along with you want to!
>I read it a couple of years ago and was mightly impressed. The viewpoints, the humour, the struggle of the journey. The language and dialects appear at one level to confuse (particularly if you are not used to hearing/seeing it on page) but on reading I found they drove the story on or at least my interpretation of it.I also loved the description of the cart moving on a dirt track like a piece of white ribbon unravalling from its bobbin.