With host approval, I present to you a book report I wrote 8-9 years ago:
Faulkner, In a Sentence
For those who don’t know, William Faulkner was a great American writer who was (and still is, I suppose) known for being the exact opposite of a minimalist, in that he would write every detail of everything in his story, preferably cramming all of the information into one sentence, which is what I discovered when I was given the task of reading his novel,
Absalom, Absalom! (and, in fact, upon my first few glances at the text it had given me the impression that William Faulkner hated the grammatical period and that it was his life goal to use as few of them as conceivably possible), which my teacher said was possibly the greatest novel of the southern United States to date, and while I can believe this, as it is a well written and detailed piece of writing, I found that I was unfortunately unable to wrap my head around most of what was written as my short attention span quickly zoned out of what was being said after a sentence reached the fifth line or so, especially since any one sentence was capable of taking up the space a full paragraph, and a paragraph could cover several pages within this book and its miniscule type, which only made it even more difficult to read, and though I found it easier to focus on the text when reading it out loud, even then there were times when I was just simply not able to process the whirlwind of words in my head, and even if I was, it never took very long for my throat to become sore and my thirst to beckon me away to the kitchen to quench the thirst of my quickly drying throat; if you don’t believe this is possible, and/or that I am just a weak, little urchin, then I could direct you to one of the works of William Faulkner, but I suppose I could (and will) instead provide with some impromptu examples of the type of writing I was subjected to upon reading this text, and though they will be, admittedly, exaggerated examples of the writing method of Faulkner, I promise they will be no more punishing (and perhaps even far more humorous, given their design, context and intent) then the actual works of Mr. Faulkner, who was a man who would give you far more detail in a situation than you would possibly care for (even if they do, in fact, give you a crystal clear image of the action in your head), like if he were to write about the swatting of a fly, he might go into detail about the fly, a black, greasy pest that was about half an inch in length, which buzzed around in figure eights, followed by random zigzagging trajectories before settling on an elliptical flight pattern around the man’s head, the man being Ted William Johnson, a middle-aged man of around thirty-eight years, two hundred ninety-seven days, twelve hours, forty-three minutes, and sixteen seconds, sporting short, brown hair, each hair of which was about two inches long, with no hair going the same direction as any of the other hairs on his head, leading to a look of disarray over his jutting forehead, a forehead which had been passed down to him from his father, Joseph Stephen Johnson, who got it from his father, Michael Lance Johnson, who got it from his father, Robert Forest Johnson, who got it from his father, Wallace Trace Johnson, who got it from the originator of the familial forehead, Johnson John Johnson, a man of no real significance in the life of Ted William Johnson, let alone the rest of the world, and whose only legacy is the forehead now on the face of Ted William Johnson, a face that also produced green eyes, which he had gotten from his mother, Joan Velma Johnson, who received her eyes from passive genes in her mother, Marie Lark Forester, who got her genes from her mother, the source of the emerald mirrors now in Ted William Johnson’s sockets, Betty-Lou-Frieda-Lynn-Marie-Beth Sue Whittaker, the long forgotten ancestor of Ted William Johnson, who obtained the rest of the features on his face ---- the pointed nose with a bend in the middle, the sallow cheeks of an overworked, underpaid and loathsome undertaker, the almost non-existent chin that is found to be on his head only under the closest scrutiny, feminine eyebrows that has more than once gotten him an inviting eye from other men who all displayed far more resplendence than Ted William Johnson thought was suitable for a man, large ears than even a petit, white jackass could be found envying, and lips caught in a permanent pursed position as if he were ready to kiss everyone and everything that crossed his path at every possible moment ---- seemingly by accident, by some freak of nature unexplainable to man as to how he had acquired these features which neither originated from his mother or father, nor any of their many ascendants within their respective family trees, though it was no secret as to why this hardy man, thick in arm, leg, chest (and, as some would argue at least, in head) with skin which the sun had scorched many more evenings than a man would be willing to count, so as to give his otherwise pale complexion a leathery hue and feel, which had all come as a result of long days of laboring in the yards of his neighbors, removing trees, keeping lawns trim, and on several sporadic occasions, keeping the garden of Mrs. Anne Pamela Baker beautiful and lush, from ever begonia to every pansy (which Mrs. Anne Pamela Baker, now in the ripe old age of eighty-three years, eleven months, seven days, nine hours, forty-four minutes and one second, enjoyed showing off her garden to all of the local townsfolk), which he is now taking a brake from, at the moment, in the sweltering Florida sun, leaning against an aged oak tree, wearing tattered jeans that would have lost all semblance of usefulness to most men a decade ago, brown, mud-caked leather boots containing whole large enough to expose all ten holes, and a flannel jacket that the majority of the world’s lumberjacks would covet, perhaps even more than he tangled mane of fur on his arms, currently covered by the jacket and twitching in annoyance as the small, buzzing specimen, our aforementioned fly, continued its barely elliptical path around Ted William Johnson’s sweat-drowned head, that is, until it finally decided that the center of the protruding white flesh that was the man’s forehead would be a good landing point, and took its own rest on that very spot; now, as far as Ted William Johnson’s left hand was concerned, now was the time to strike, so with a swift flourish followed by a quick moved toward the forehead of its owner, the large, calloused and savage hand crushed the hapless fly, eyes, wings, antennae, guts, exoskeleton and all other bug essentials into the rough skin, all in a moment quicker than the blink of an eye, leaving the insect very much dead and the man very much pleased, though with a severe headache which would be sure to last him the rest of the day as he toiled in the southern heat on the lawn of a couple whose name he had not even so much bothered to obtain, and that, is the story of the swatting of a fly, as William Faulkner would have told it (well, maybe if he were on speed, or some other such drug as to write something that inane, and he probably would have used some different punctuation, like his long hyphen-like symbols, which I can only think to replicate on a keyboard by typing in “----” though in reality they are just one, solid line, and, like the dashes other authors use ---- smaller dashes, yes, but dashes all the same ---- they are used to create breaks within the sentence ---- a method perhaps devised by him so that his reader could take a breath while reading out loud, and ---- if that’s the case ---- it could be possible that the monstrous length of the dash was meant to signify that the reader needs to take one really long breath ---- unless they want to become blue in the face ---- a condition which might possibly lead to the reader losing consciousness ---- which is a bad thing to do ---- and while it may seem almost hypocritical of me, I have to say that these dashes ---- which Faulkner uses on a fairly frequent basis ---- while they actually give the reader a pause, actually only add to the confusion in some of his longer sentences ---- that is to say, all of them ---- as they often break up the action mid-thought ---- and, considering the length of his thoughts, this can make remembering what you read only five minutes ago ---- in the same sentence ---- difficult by the end, especially considering the lengthy of some of the thoughts he brings up mid-sentence ---- sometimes it’s if he ---- just puts them ---- there because ---- he feels like it ---- and they pop ---- up at --- more ---- and ---- more ---- ran ---- dom ---- intervals, but, fortunately, the hyper-extended dash is not the only grammatical tool he uses, as he also uses the parenthesis (which, I admit, is also a favorite tool of mine (that is to say, I use it a lot (really))) and while he often uses it well, there are times (a lot of times) when he uses so many (within the phrase (let alone the same sentence (hell, even the same paragraph (and then some)))) that you get lost in a sea of parentheses (which, come to think of it, is an interesting image (they do look a bit like little waves (that is to say, waves like one would find in the sea) and when you put a lot together (like Faulkner had a tendency to do) they do produce an image that looks a bit like a small, black and white body of water on the page)) and begin to wonder just where the closing parenthesis will pop up so that you may finally get to the end of the sentence (or at least give you hope of finding the end of the sentence, as it is more than likely going to continue on (and on) even after the parenthetical phrase has been concluded) though, by the end, parentheses or not, if the reader is anything like me, then they’ll have lost all focus and track of time, let alone the meaning of the words their eyes continue to involuntarily scan as their brain conjures up images of other things, such as space ships and/or ponies (as examples), in fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if you, reader, had already done that within this very parenthetical break, which I started back on page four (it is now on page six, in case you haven’t been counting) and are now considering doing some kind of harmful drug yourself, if only in the fading hopes of regaining that slowly fading sense of sanity, or of just trying to erase this horrible incident (reading the same sentence for about six pages now) from your mind, and for this very reason, I give you my pity, but no mercy at this very point, as, I’m afraid, we must continue (after all, I’ve been charged with writing (or, rather, typing) out a paper that is eight pages in length, though, I hope, for both your sanity and mine (and for the muscles in my right arm, which is the sole arm I type with) that they don’t have to be a full eight pages and that the paper will satisfy the requirements of the assignment by just reaching page eight with my insane endeavor, but, either way I suppose, that’s where I’m going to end it anyway, since it will be too late to ask about exact length before I hand it in, and meaningless to ask after I have done so, so do not break down just yet, fair reader, for there is still a glimmer of hope on the horizon)), he also uses
italics, and while, I admit, I can’t recall if he ever used them for emphasis, as I have earlier on this very page, I can assure you that his use of italics is mind-boggling, as there are times that you just have to stop and ask, “Why, why is everything written in the slanted fashion!?” since they just seem to be used at random moments for little reason (if any) whatsoever, and while I exaggerated the randomness of the super dash ---- which, I must say, I did pretty heavily exaggerate ---- I don’t think even I could exaggerate his use of italics, as there is one entire section (chapter, I suppose, but the chapters are so few that they’re practically books themselves) of Absalom, Absalom! Is written in italics, and no matter how much you care to study and try to get inside Faulkner’s head as to just why in the hell he would put a section in italics that, for all accounts, seems to be no less nor any more important than any of the chapters preceding it, or, for that matter, any of the chapters following it, which just makes them pointless, as far as I (and, as far as I know, anyone else) can tell: he just does it, but, really, I guess when you’re William Faulkner you get to just do whatever-the-hell you want, and Faulkner probably knew that anyway, so, whatever, the man just let his (apparently) perverse fascination with italics fly, just because he could, just because he was William Faulkner, the man capable of writing the best modern southern novel in the United States of America, italics or no, and so, he does it, just like he extends sentences well beyond the limit that a sentence should ever, ever go, just so he can fill your head with so much detail that, while it at first amazes you with how much detail and clarity they give you, you also wonder why you had to invest so much just to get an incremental increase for picture quality (which I suppose makes this the early ancestor of our current HD TVs), as it takes a lot of time and brain power to really focus in on the words ---- at least if you’re anything like me ---- and just like Faulkner gets the privilege of using the Kong sized dashes throughout his text, which are so large and frequent as to make you question whether he was just compensating for something, and just like he gets to use more parentheses than even God thought was possible to place onto a single paper, so many that the reader almost literally drowns in a tsunami of ink waves, and just like Faulkner gets to use italics for completely pointless, random and utterly useless reasons, because William Faulkner is one of the greatest writers to have ever have lived… and I hate him.