Yeah, I said some fairly dismissive things about William Faulkner, but you Faulknerheads out there can take comfort from the fact that I did so from pure ignorance.
And here’s something else to make you feel better: Even though everybody and his brother is going on and on and on about the new book by Sarah Palin (there’s something oxymoronic in that combination of words, “book by Sarah Palin,” don’t you think?), I can assure you, with no doubt of ever breaking my promise, that I will read Faulkner before I read Palin. Trust me on this.
There are a lot of things I’m going to read before I get to Faulkner — that new Trotsky book I got for my birthday, that biography of Alexander Hamilton that’s been on my shelf for several years now (I asked for it for my birthday or Christmas after Fritz Hollings recommended it), the Bible from cover to cover, those last few books of the Aubrey-Maturin series that I’ve been saving, and definitely The Grapes of Wrath, which my wife can’t believe I haven’t read yet, to name but a few.
But there is no way that a book by Sarah Palin will ever make that list. For one thing, I never read those books that “everybody’s talking about,” especially books by or about current political figures. The only reason I read those autobiographies by Obama and McCain last year was as pegs for those two really long columns (“Barack Like Me” and “Faith of Our Fathers“) I was going to write anyway. In other words, purely for work and not for fun.
But even if I read books like that, I can’t imagine why I’d be interested in one by Sarah Palin. Not so much that I have an aversion as the fact that I completely lack any positive motivation to do so.
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You might enjoy looking at the list of novels partially published in The State yesterday and found at http://www.oxfordamerican.org/articles/2009/aug/27/best-southern-novels-all-time/
I promise to read the Koran in Arabic before I read Palin.
Who needs to read it? The pundits (on both sides) are going to tell us a-a-lll about it.
I believe I’ll need to re-read War and Peace before I read either Palin or attempt another Faulkner.
Any one of the three qualifies as
one of those books you have to force yourself to read.
Why do you hate America?
I mean, how long before Palin actually reads her book?
Its a toss-up. Who is going to read the Health Care bill or Palin’s book first? From different perspectives, both are full of it and the sponsors have no idea of what is in either one. Reid and Pelosi on one side, Palin on the other.
They’ve started reading Palin’s book to the prisoners at Gitmo.
I had to read a lot of Faulkner in college (Flannery O’Connor too) because my English prof wrote his dissertation on Faulkner. Since then, the only time I can read him is when I’m on a long cruise. For riveting after-dinner reading, nothing beats Dennis Lehane.
Burl, What? More abuse??
Burl–
There you go with your gotcha journalism….and you aren’t even perky.
Steve–I’ll take Flannery over Faulkner any day!