Saturday, July 4, 2009

Syllabus: A Way Into William Faulkner

Texts, in this order:

Sanctuary
The Sound and the Fury
Light in August
As I Lay Dying
If I Forget Thee Jerusalem (The Wild Palms/Old Man)
The Reivers
Absalom, Absalom!
A Fable
Go Down, Moses
Soldier's Pay

Film:

The Big Sleep
To Have and Have Not

Speeches:

1949 Nobel acceptance

Field Trip:

William Faulkner's house--Rowan Oak, Oxford, Mississippi

Course Objectives:

If you read them in this order, you'll get Faulkner. Is Joe Christmas not the best name. Anyone who pronounces Yoknapatawpha on the first day of class gets a really large pencil. No really, what is the South really like, the post Civil War South. (Did you know FDR spoke at the funeral for the last Civil War veteran?) Is it still in shambles. If you see your sister's underwear while you're holding her up to peak in on talking adults and her underwear was soiled, what happens when you fall in love with her. There are three ways to tell a story and you've never used one of 'em. What is a sentence. Be mindful of this dialogue, honey. I bet you didn't know about all those outlines hanging on his office wall; someone may have wanted us to discuss stream of consciousness, but that's bullshit. We could look at the original covers all day. You know what a swamp rabbit is. Fine, we'll read Mosquitoes. Novel as form: novel in parts, parts mixed up, holy cow nonlinear story telling, novels that switch with other sections of other novels within the same novel. You've never been to a horse race, have you.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I just grabbed Sanctuary today and am actually going to do this in the order you suggested. I've had trouble getting into Faulkner for years. I'm excited.

Dan Magers said...

I've never read Faulkner. Please don't tell!