SARTORIS

It’s difficult to know what direction to turn in when one makes the vague goal of “reading more Faulkner.” Once you’ve read the ones that everyone talks about (The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying, in my case) where do you go next? Short stories? Random other novels? In an effort to forge a clearer path I decided to start with what was offered in my local public library. This ultimately led me to choose Faulkner’s Sartoris as my next step. Though I’ve read that this isn’t often considered to be one of Faulkner’s best works, it is nevertheless an important one because it lays the foundation for his later novels and stories. Though the events of this novel take place in the early twentieth century, “the thematic action of Sartoris takes place not over a period of months but in a time span covering four generations, flanked by the Civil and First World Wars and by the two John Sartorises”