The following review has been copied from http://behnamriahi.tumblr.comRequiem for a Nun, written by William Faulkner and published by Vintage Books, is a three-act play following the life of Temple Stevens (formally Temple Drake in Sanctuary) in her recovery following the murder of her second child. Eight years after her kidnapping, Temple has become a mother and a wife, more articulate now than before and willing to face conflict head on to end her perpetual suffering. When her maid, Nancy, puts Temple’s child to death, Temple is faced with two choices: hang the woman that killed her baby or hang herself in contrition for her own misdeeds. Back to Faulkner again. I’m beginning to run out of books by this fella, though he’s definitely become one of the few authors that I will indeed go out of my way to purchase more of in the future. In fact, it might not be too long—those of you who have been following this blog have no doubt seen a strange assortment of books on here, from how-to-manuals to Christian reading to local favorites. Why, might you ask? It all began three years ago, when I really started taking this blog seriously. I spied my shelf and noticed that I owned a tremendous amount of books that I simply hadn’t read, collecting dust while their pages remained unturned. I had half a mind to give most of them away, but part of growing as an author is forcing yourself to read the things that you won’t like. Thus began my journey, reading anything and everything so long as it sat on my shelf, hoping to grow as an author and expand my literacy, while ideally saving money from buying too many other new books. I am proud to admit, that after going through roughly sixty books in the last few years, I have only about thirty remaining, not including poetry books. 60% through. In addition to pushing myself to read things that normally sit outside of my comfort zone, my writing has grown as a result of it. Though my work tends to remain in a novelist’s focus, I’ve picked up many traits from authors good-and-bad, in my attempt at understanding what’s effective and what isn’t. Thus, I’m proud to say that I’ve completed the sixth (and hopefully final) draft of my first novel, one that I’ve proudly handed off to four others to validate the work for quality and assist in trying to publish it. Maybe it will, maybe it won’t. Fingers crossed, either way. Thus, we’re back to Faulkner and the first play I’ve had the honor of reviewing. It isn’t the first play that I’ve read, by any means—after all, we all read Shakespeare in high school. I was awfully fond of Macbeth. But it certainly has been a while. As it were, it’s probably not the last play I’ll review either, since I’ve got a few more Shakespearean works waiting to be read through, though I think beginning at Faulkner is more beneficial for my overall judgment of the medium, bridging the gap between quality literature to quality play-writing. This specific book is especially well known for its line, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past,” quoted in a speech by Barrack Obama and featured in the literary film, Midnight in Paris. In addition to being a play following Temple Stevens, this book also provides an oral history, told in Faulkner’s voice, of Jefferson, with references to the Compson family (known primarily from The Sound and the Fury) and General Satoris (of The Reivers). It expands on how a gathering of huts and cabins became a town, the naming of such town, and the evolution of the town through the Civil War and the turn of the century. In essence, that makes this one of Faulkner’s most underrated and valuable works, because of how important it is to the defining of the setting that appeared so commonly in his works before. It’s only more poetic that it’s told in Faulkner’s own voice, instead of one of his characters, because of the intimate relationship between himself, his characters, and their setting, and interspersing this oral history between a play was an ingenious method of telling both stories.The play itself moves in correlation to the evolution of the town, beginning at the courthouse where Nancy’s fate is decided and ending at the jail, built in tandem with the courthouse, though one of the few, unchanged facets as the town transformed. Essentially, Jefferson’s jail becomes a metaphor for the town itself and in the same way, for Temple’s own unendurable struggle following the actions of Sanctuary. In that same context, how the town was named after its mail messenger, Temple herself is launched back into her own past when love letters she wrote once upon a time to her murdered lover resurface and send her on her crazy, nihilistic adventures again, though this time at the risk of her own family. The play itself plays out just as Faulkner’s prose, alluding to numerous ideas and events that don’t materialize into their true form until later, when they become the admissions and testimonials instead of mere events that once tragically turned the lives of the characters. Faulkner, as always, is a master of dialogue and with dialogue alone, examination of what his characters don’t say juxtaposed against what they do is that much clearer than in his other works, allowing the audience to understand his style from an approach of minimalism. As before, he distracts his audience with incessant worries and soft-spoken tragedies without really expanding on the truth contained within his narrative until later on and the play form makes it that much more effective by focusing primarily on dialogue and not the colorful description that ends to surround it.This is the first Faulkner book I’ve read where we get to continue on in a character’s life after her initial appearance in a different novel. This continuation done by other authors has proven to be a worthless feat—one that demeans both the original and the sequel because of how they become parodies of one and other. However, Faulkner sets this book so that Sanctuary doesn’t necessarily need to be read in order to glean the full emotional response to this work. The actions of Popeye, Temple’s former kidnapper, are not only clearly illustrated, but summed up in a way that best suits this work as a story-in-story, taking on the role as more of a sub-story to Temple’s own guilt for following the man that became her husband to the tragedy that became of her life to begin with. You know enough about Popeye from this to understand his actions in the previous work, but they don’t overshadow the current conflict examined within this work but become one more other event that crafted Temple into the woman she became.Those who have read both pieces will enjoy that for a subtly different reason, as we see that in some ways, Temple adheres to the lies that she told in the previous piece as though she’s come to accept them as truth and presents them as truths in this work. She’s convinced herself that Popeye, her kidnapper, wasn’t guilty of murdering Tommy and though there’s no mention of Tommy or the man accused of killing him, it seems as if the lie she chose to believe has in fact, become her truth, thus characterizing Temple further and making fans of Sanctuary that much more attracted to Requiem for a Nun. Stage actions are told simply in this, and not in Faulkner’s complex prose, making the actions that go on, on the stage, that much easier to follow. In a weird way, the play almost reads as Salinger-esque because of the use of gesture and movement versus Faulkner’s powerful metaphorical language. But each gesture, each movement, like in Salinger’s work, is very poignant and helps to set mood, create tension, and become metaphor in themselves in each scene and act, enabling Faulkner to write as he normally would while still establishing his versatility from one style to the other. However, there’s a lot less to be said for plays than there are for novels. Despite my preference to prose, the play has shown itself to be a very challenging and beautiful medium, though better yet in the context of a novel writer. Though most plays and their emphasis on dialogue instead of description and action tend to leave me wanting more, what Faulkner established in his previous pieces and what he establishes in the historical narrative set between acts makes this for a read that you can’t overlook if you enjoyed anything of Faulkner’s other works.
Preposterous in a variety of ways.The "novel" is structured in thirds: Act One, Act Two, and Act Three. Each Act begins with a prose section detailing in tedious adverbs the history of the setting. Act One gives a history of the Jefferson jail, Act Two of Jackson, Mississippi, Act Three of the Jefferson courthouse.Following the prose sections are sections constituting a stand-alone stageplay that is in no way aided by the prose sections, which are irrelevant. For example, what does all Faulkner's blather about the heavy lock on the jail door have to do with Nancy's conviction? It is peripherally relevant, at best. The plot is not informed by the history of the lock, and it is only mildly interesting. The prose sections rely heavily on verbal fireworks--on description, rather than on things described. This is what a writer does when he has little to say: rhetorical flailing.The dramatic sections are of the same caliber as the prose sections, but their flaws are different. Most obviously, all the characters speak like Faulkner, who is an eccentric even by Yoknapatawpha standards. Temple Drake, the promiscuous debutante (defeats the purpose of debuting) of Sanctuary gives us long Faulknerian exposition and gloss of Sanctuary for about half of the dramatic sections. Not only is the style preposterous and out of place but the backstory, as glossed in Temple's confessions, is incredible. She claims to have fallen in love with one of her captors, never been raped in the Memphis brothel where they kept her, and that Nancy only killed her child because she was running away from the alcoholic Gowan with her beloved captor, 8 years after her rescue. If you're still with me, get this: Nancy stoically accepts her execution with some kindergarten theology that "you just have to believe," which is of the same profundity as Gavin Stevens' famous line (the only famous thing about this little novel) that "the past is never dead; it is not even past." No, actually, it is. Sorry.I give it two stars because, even when Faulkner is committing his characteristic errors, he commits his characteristic brilliance. There are some great moments in here, scattered throughout Faulkner's descriptive ramblings. His greatest gift was always for the description of perception, and that, with the swiftness of the novel, saves it from being a 1-star work.
What do You think about Requiem For A Nun (1975)?
Not, so far as I can tell, one of Faulkner's better-known books - except for the line "The past is never dead. It's not even past". Understandable - it's a somewhat ungainly experiment, for one thing, with large chunks presented as a play. And, at that, a play which might or might not work on stage, but often feels rather overwrought (and not in a good way) in flat black and white*. You can't really stage it, though, because it would lose all its heft without the too-long-to-monologue stretches of knotty prose which intersperse the acts. And these are staggering - the first feels more like Twain than Faulkner in its wry account of how bureaucracy takes root even at the frontier, while later there are grand visions of the republic's blood-soaked rise and consumerist fall. Requiem was written some time after Faulkner's imperial period, and seeing his South give way to the fifties had clearly been a bittersweet experience, but with that comes a deep realisation that it was the intrinsic nature of that semi-civilised frontier world - more so even than the rest of the human world - never to last in ny aone particular form. The lead plot is not without its interest, as it considers the depths to which humanity can fall while still surviving, and the uneasiness of redemption. But for me, it's these background visions of America which give this book a sort of lamed greatness. *I say 'white', but given this paperback is as old as I am, sepia would be closer to the mark.
—Alex Sarll
Stevens living-room, 6:00 P.M.A center table with a lamp, chairs, sofa left rear, floor-lamp, wall-bracket lamps. The atmosphere of the room is up-to-date but has the air of another time – the high ceiling and cornices indicate an ante-bellum house, perhaps inherited from a spinster aunt. Sound of feet, then the door L opens and Temple enters. Her air is brittle and tense. She reaches for a cigarette on a side table and nervously lights it. ttttTEMPLE The best thing I can say is that it was over quickly. Gavin Stevens follows her into the room. He is a small town lawyer in his 40s. ttt STEVENS First I will dispense with the play: it seems as though Faulkner wanted to finish a few thoughts on “Sanctuary” and couldn’t come up with any other way –ttt TEMPLE (tightening rather than relaxing with each drag on her cigarette) Yes...I would rate the play a '2' and the prose section a '4'...ttt STEVENS -- unlike his Compson appendix which added to the family history before and after “The Sound and the Fury” and was further embellished with a humorous chapter in “The Mansion” concerning Jason and the land that had been the golf course that had been part of Compson mile… The lights go completely down. At this time in his career Faulkner began thinking about the overarching themes of his work and the mythology of his fictional world so the prose sections of “Requiem” are quite good and justifiably included in the revised “Portable Faulkner” although it is a bit confounding at first to read 30 pages that are superficially about a padlock, it is ultimately rewarding after one realizes that Faulkner has taken a unique approach to discuss how civilization takes root through the objects and actions that, when taken alone, have little meaning, but when seen in a broad context can carry the significance of history marching silently into the town that never had time to even be a village before it needed a jail and a courthouse and a town square that would be burned and rebuilt soon enough in the Battle of Jefferson, the vainglorious memory of which could cause the oldest ladies attending a screening of “Gone With the Wind” to walk out in the middle of the picture and into a city transformed by the automobile which had been banned so unsuccessfully by Colonel Sartoris (not the real Colonel who built the railroad with the man who would later shoot him, but his son Old Bayard who inherited the title and who was the only male in his tragic family line who had no war to get himself killed or decorated in, it wouldn’t have mattered which) that one of the first residents to own an automobile, Manfred de Spain, became mayor almost for the very fact that he looked grand behind the wheel;And then another 35 pages discussing the jail and the girl who was sometimes blonde and sometimes brunette who carved her name in the window of the jail who was based on a real girl whose name Faulkner had seen carved in a window in an article I read once about a family whose ledgers had inspired Faulkner to write the famed Chapter 4 of “The Bear” in “Go Down Moses”; and I don’t think it is proper to write run-on sentences and end them with a semicolon at a paragraph break, I think it’s a bit of a cheat and that’s why I prefer listen to Faulkner on audiobook, if only this had been available on audio which it probably never will as it’s considered a minor work even though there is some major writing within it; still I would recommend tracking down “The Courthouse” and “The Jail” in the “Portable Faulkner” and that should be enough to satisfy you and even if you have loved Temple Drake in “Sanctuary” there is nothing of interest for you in the play sections of this book.
—Martin
Четенето на Фокнър винаги леко ме обърква - залагането на дълги, протяжни, безкрайни изречения, които започват от една точка, а завършват толкова далече; препратките към различни времена, събития и произведения; на моменти небрежното и нехайно отношение към повествованието, което отвъд повърхността всъщност следва желязна логика. И на фона на всичко това - жестоки, морални, винаги актуални въпроси за вината, греха и спасението, тяхното зараждане, начинът, по който предопределят и живота на човека, и смъртта му.
—Galina
