Go Down, Moses

I have it in mind to re-read Go Down, Moses in April. I haven't read it in years, and it's one of Faulkner's novels I have generally neglected. If anyone else is interested in a read-together, here's where we can talk about it.

I've always wanted to read it, so I'm definitely in!

If I read a Faulkner in April I'll try to make it Go Down, Moses.

Sure!

Hello! Anybody reading? I've begun, and am enjoying myself. My goal with the book on this go-around is to decide how it fits together, and whether I think it's a 'novel' or not. As you may know or have discovered if you've picked the book up, it consists of several sections that may not seem to add up to a narrative whole. In fact many of them had a life of their own as magazine stories. But Faulkner thought they had a cohesion in combination, and I hope to discover that for myself.

I checked it out from the library, and am going to crack it open tomorrow. It will be my first time, and I'm really looking forward to it.

I'll do it, as soon as I finish with The Confidence-Man.

Oh jeeze, I read page one and page two and I'm hooked on Faulkner again. I read Absalom! in February, which may be my favorite read of all time or maybe it's just that I love this guy's sentences. I absolutely fall right into them as I read and don't care whether I come back out again. I haven't read Moses. Sure, I'll read it with you, but I'll probably be slow because I have other irons in the fire--which probably everyone else does too.

I've been working on some genealogy, and I had to laugh at the first sentence, since it sounds like the mess I'm trying to figure out right now:

his elder cousin, McCaslin Edmonds, grandson of Isaac's father's sister and so descended by the distaff, yet notwithstanding the inheritor, and in his time the bequester, of that which some had thought then and some still thought should have been Isaac's, since his was the name in which the title to the land had first been granted from the Indian patent and which some of the descendants of his father's slaves still bore in the land.

He sounds like my 4th great grand uncle, Benjamin Denton, who was living with his brother Reuben and wife Hannah in Rome, Georgia in 1850. I still haven't figured out who inherited what.

OK, I'm in.

#8 Excellent, Becky!! Glad you're here. Doesn't it just make you want to draw charts and things? Genealogy is one of my favorite pastimes too. Does your family have lots of men with more than one wife and two or three "generations" of children back in the 19th or early 20th century? I have that on both sides. Lots of fun.

>9 laytonwoman3rd:. Oh my yes. There's a particular cemetery in Flat Branch, Illinois that I would love to do a study of someday--find the death certificates for all the women there who died between 1830 and about 1860. Those women died off right and left, during their childbearing years, to the point that it almost seems that maybe there was a midwife in the community who was something of a typhoid Mary. Many of them belonged to my family. I know, off topic. {{grin}}

Here's a link to the McCaslin family genealogy, which will come in handy while reading Go Down, Moses.

11: And always keep your Faulkner A to Z handy, especially for his more labyrinthine aspects of Y. County's residents.

>11 laytonwoman3rd:: Linda, I'm not ready to read Go Down, Moses yet, but I sure do thank you for that McCaslin family tree. It is printed and tucked inside my copy of The Portable Faulkner. I'm still slowly making my way through that one before I tackle any more of his novels.

#12 Good point. I love that book to bits.
#13 Donna, that same site has other genealogies, too...Snopes, of course; Sartoris, Sutpen.

>11 laytonwoman3rd:. Thanks so much for that link. I did a head-first dive into my own genealogy last week and haven't made much progress on any of my reading. Oh woe, the days just aren't long enough!

I apologize for falling down on the group read for GDM. It would seem that this is just a bad time for reading for me. I'm very interested in this book, though, and I intend to come back to it soon (soonish?). The reading just isn't going well right now--no time.

No problem, Becky. I think this one will be a "drop in when you can" sort of group discussion. I'm nearly finished with it now...anyone else reading it at the moment?

I just dropped by and saw this. i haven't reread it but it is a wonderful book. I don't think it is a novel but I do think there are strong links between the stories.

A very interesting article, though brief, relating to an instance of "synthetic cubism" in Go Down, Moses.