Faulkner is all “virgins” and “niggers.” And fuck that shit. The one word hardly needs discussion. But the other–I think that Faulkner is fascinated by the idea of a woman’s body that no one has ever been inside of.
And that’s the problem with all his women, isn’t it? A man being inside of one ruins her. But he can’t imagine that there was always already a person in that woman’s body. And that, for that reason, virginity as he understands it, doesn’t exist.
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All that is true. And I do not love Faulkner myself. But I always remind myself that Toni Morrison does, despite it all.
Faulkner is hard. I mean, look, there’s some reprehensible shit going on there. I’ve always found it hard to separate the literary value from the reprehensible shit. I know it’s there, but, dang.
I am really grateful to have read AS I LAY DYING and THE SOUND AND THE FURY when I did, but I swear, I just… I tried to get into ABSALOM and was just like “I could literally be reading anything else in my house” and that seemed like a better idea.
Wow, his hatred of men must be staggering, to portray having sex with one even once as some kind of horrific defilement.