I'm usually a scifi fantasy guy. I like wizards and aliens and shit. Unfortunately, my partner has read a lot of my suggestions and cashed in her credit to make me read Faulkner. There are worse fates. Here are my thoughts, which are as disjointed as the narration:
Everyone in this family sucks. Everyone in this family suuuuuuucks. The only exception is Vardamam, who is too young to suck.
In the beginning, as mom Addie is dying, dad Anse insists on sending half the kids off on an errand to earn three dollars. He repeats this a lot. (Actually, every character repeats everything a lot. I can't tell if this is because they're infuriating or because that's how people talked a hundred years ago.) I thought: "Well, they're simple rural farming types, and it's probably a big deal to them to earn the modern equivalent of like $300." There is a lot of grumbling from people in and out of the family about trading $3 for the ability to be present while a family member dies, but hey, it's not my place to judge. Then after a while I decided to plug $3 in 1928 dollars into an inflation calculator and holy shit it's only $55 in 2024. That's it. Man, there's poverty and then there's greed and idiocy.
Every time a character insulted Anse, to his face or not, was very satisfying to me.
It's fascinating how much interiority and emotional depth the children had given how awful both their parents are.
Seeing how language changes over time was super interesting (cows "low", not "moo"; they'd say "you bring me that" whereas we'd say "bring me that"; countless other little things). Even more interesting was seeing all kinds of things that didn't change, that I'd have expected to be more modern.
I'm not an English major but I suspect this was the first or at least a major early influential example of multiple narrators, which clearly casts a very, very long shadow on modern lit. Cool to see.
I tackled this book by reading the sparknotes chapter summary before each chapter. This cost me some tiny window of spoilers, but it didn't bother me here, because the alternative was not understanding major events at all. The writing isn't shakespearean-level difficult, but a lot of seriously important plot points are written so obtusely that I couldn't notice them even while watching for them after the summary. I highly recommend this strategy for anyone who wants to engage with this or similar works without struggling so much it becomes unfun.
Also, there were neither wizards nor aliens by the time I finished, which was very disappointing.
5/5 overall
by returnofheracleum