An Expression of Thoughts from Reading Jean-Paul Sartre's "On 'The Sound and the Fury:' Time in the Work of Faulkner" and Various Colleagues' Comments

First thing to note: I have now experienced the sadness of having too many words for a blog comment. Second thing to note: This blog title just fits the space allowed for a blog title. Third thing to note: I truly apologize for bumping the entirety of the previous blog and preceding blogs to the "Older Posts" section.

However, the saddest thing that happened while reading the article wasn’t me picturing a needle or something poking at a hollow blob labeled “conscious” in my mind, but reading about Faulkner’s idea that there is no future, only the past and what seems to be a continuous rate of change, or derivative, of the past, in some interval dt, which I guess doesn’t exist so the derivative doesn’t exist either, nor is this analogy appropriate but still I find it funny – that represents the ever-fleeting present. I know several have already mentioned this, but it was a very gloomy concept. How upsetting it is to realize that there is no future for the Compsons, the morally decaying family in the morally decaying county that he wrote so many books about. Benjy’s being sent to Jackson, which I don’t think will be very much fun. Caddy’s gone so it doesn’t matter anyway. Quentin’s dead, that’s not much of a future. Of course, he didn’t see any future in his life before that, which is why he committed suicide. Jason’s hanging around the house, being mean to l’il Quentin and not really doing anything, just coming home to a “mad house” that he doesn’t seem bothered to actually change. In response to Rebecca’s post, I’m not so sure that Faulkner is such a strict advocate for the old South, or what the extent of time that is covered by the term “old.” He was born in 1897, so much of what he hypothetically wants to preserve is not out of pure experience but out of knowledge of history, I would think. I thought that Faulkner simply did not like the future that he saw the South going towards, that there was no future in what they were doing. The book is a means to express his feelings about this, not to revert back to the old South, but to avoid the South it was becoming, one with no optimism. So, I was pleased when Sartre expressed his own opinions of an existent future. It really brightened me up just before I went to sleep and when I woke up, now typing this. There must be a future, because as Sartre notes, “Man is not the sum of what he has, but the totality of what he does not yet have, of what he might have.” Sounds like a great motivational speaker.

Matt, it seems like all this talk of time frustrates you, and it has evoked some cynical response in me as well. Therefore, I think the conclusion of Sartre’s article is actually great, not only using a quote from some guy named Heidegger (a really cool name, by the way), but also being quite cynical himself when he refers to the “particular absurdity which is so un-novelestic (I believe he meant “novelistic,” but that’s ok, he’s French) and so untrue.” Still, I don’t think Faulkner was a one-note guy. I think he really wanted the South to head in a better direction. But he didn’t know how, or may not have seen a better direction for the South in his years, or even an optimistic direction for his own life, and so turned to writing for expression of feeling.

I agree with Marie-Louise that time was relevant to Faulkner. Perhaps not in his drunken states, but surely in his everyday life (unless being drunk was the norm). It’s not the same about not seeing a future. He still sees no future for the South, but he acknowledges that the concept of future, of being events that have not yet come, exists. That is why he writes, to express his desire for change, his critique of the direction the South was heading.

As did Haley, I enjoyed Sartre’s end comments. They are certainly discussable. There must be a future for there is always anticipation in humans, because as humans we live for the future. We are not creatures who think of the present, hunting down cute little bunny rabbits and gnawing their raw hides off to chomp on their cute little bunny rabbit flesh. We have goals, we look forward to events, we anticipate our future. We have a complex mind that can be explained, and even then far from completely, only through a biopsychosocial approach. It takes so much to even begin to explain the mind; we are truly complicated beings.

So, I’m just curious about some posts, which include Haley’s and Marie-Louise’s. Who the heck is Sarte?