Go Down, Moses Book

When I'm away from Faulkner's works, I always think of them as "hard", "confusing", "over-the-top". You know, that sort of thing that only intellectuals read and pretend to understand and enjoy. But when I start to read them...

The first chapter is mysterious and deliberately obtuse. The reader is picked up in the middle of some strange goings-on and must try to decipher the characters and the allusive plotline.

But keep reading. No matter how much you feel like you're drowning, or lost in some maze, or hurtling down the hill aquiring more and more mass like that mythical snowball from your youth, just keep on reading. The prose, which seems at first glance to be so complex and without identifiable form as to be impenentrable, will soon charm you, draw you into its web, and you'll forget all about grammar constructs as you tumble over ideas, people, and events.

This is a sad, sad story of men's pride, women's degradation, the corrupting abuse of power and the corrupting influence of having no power when one man can be considered to "own" another. A moving exposition of the American South. Worth reading either to better understand both black and white culture, or to simply be carried off into another world by some astounding prose.