Absalom, Absalom! The Questioning of Fictions

Considered by many scholars to be the greatest work of America's greatest novelist, William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! is remembered for its lavish experiments with language and form; its anguish over personal, regional, national, and social fears; and its celebration of storytelling. In this complex novel, Faulkner layers story on top of story until his novel becomes as much about storytelling itself as about any of the individual stories he tells. As the most inventive experimenter in American modernist prose, Faulkner often seems to leave later American novelists looking back fearfully at his shadow, either imitating him or trying their best not to.

Robert Dale Parker's Absalom, Absalom!: The Questioning of Fictions presents an interpretation of Faulkner's 1936 classic for the full range of readers, from the thoughtful beginner to the Faulkner scholar. Parker's work not only delves into the mechanisms of Absalom, Absalom! but also marks one effort to bring to the study of Faulkner and American literature a wide range of contemporary critical methods, including structuralism, psychoanalysis, feminism, and cultural and social historicism. In lively, thought-provoking prose, Parker examines the questions and difficulties readers find in Absalom, Absalom!, providing a practical, accessible yet challenging discussion of the novel.