Middle names, and Faulkner

[Sanjay Krishnaswamy]

Murthy Yenamandra wrote: 

>Well, for one, the guy insists on using his middle name, which we all
>know is just a pretension to grandiosity and an open invitation to
>acronymize.  David Wallace doesn't work and who wants to say David
>Foster Wallace all the time? So then why do we say TRP, even though he

Or camouflage -- I was once at an event where Joyce Carol Oates was
present.  She was introduced as Joyce Oates.  Naturally nobody figured it
out 'til later.

Stefan Schuber wrote:
>The Pynchon-Faulkner comparison is telling: After rereading _Absalom_ 
>last summer I think it's Faulkner's best writing and should supplant 
>_Sound_ (but then again I think Flaubert's _Education sentimentale_ is 
>much better than the _Bovary_) in the canon.
>
Oh, God, yes -- I think that's the common take among Faulkner scholars, too
-- either you like _Absalom_ or _Light in August_ best.  I think Friedrich
Karl has called _Absalom_ the Great American Novel and I for one would have
to say that, if there is a Great American Novel, it's either _Absalom_ or
Dos Passos' _USA_.  I particularly adore when Q. and Shreve are telling the
story, of an event they're only imagining, of someone wlse imagining an
event, which they've only heard about third hand anyway ("Daughter?
Daughter? Daughter?")  

>But back to P &F: F is constantly interested in the limits and 
>boundaries; think of the map of Yoknapatawpha (sp) county, the heavy 
>sense of "this is the limits of how far I know and how far I go," and the 
>boundaries of & limits to & contstraints on human intercourse. Pynchon, 
>on the other hand, blurs out beyond the assumed/presumed limits and is 
>concerned about how events beyond our conventional and current knowing 
>can (with frequently deleterious effects) affect his characters.
>
Not at all!  Quentin kills himself over the purely imagined, mystic
"Daughter? Daughter?" -- _Absalom_ is about how the sort of blurring
between real and imaginary boundaries -- like the blurring of "Science" and
superstition in M$D -- manifests itself in real consciousness.  Another
casual thing -- the way M&D's line seems so unnatural, artificial -- like
the numbers in _Absalom_ -- so many steps up to the house from the road, so
many square miles, one eighth or one sixteenth or one thirty-second part
black.  I think the similarity is pretty profound there actually.

SK
____________________________________________________________________________
Sanjay Krishnaswamy
sanjay at visidyne.com