Absalom, Absalom!

The Corrected Text

by William Faulkner

ABSALOM, ABSALOM! is often considered to be Faulkner's greatest book, and one of his most compelling explorations of race, gender, and the burdens of the past. The plot revolves around the character of Thomas Sutpen, son of poor whites in Faulkner's fictional Yoknapatawpha County. Densely written and notoriously "difficult," the novel explores the question of why Sutpen's son, Henry, killed Charles Bon, his friend and classmate, and the suitor of his sister, Judith. The action shifts from the early 19th century, when this event took place, to the "present" (1909-1910), when Quentin Compson, a student at Harvard, becomes obsessed with discovering the truth about his ancestor Sutpen--and hence about his family's past--and the relevance of that truth to the present.

Available editions of Absalom, Absalom!

	9780783881386, Hardcover, Thorndike Pr, 1997 $8.24 (Good ) Other copies of 9780783881386

	9780394556345, Book, Random House, 1986 $29.93 (Very Good ) Other copies of 9780394556345

	9780394747750, Paperback, Vintage Books, 1987 $1.99 () Other copies of 9780394747750

	9780824068172, Book, Garland Pub, 1987 None currently available

	9780075536574, Paperback, McGraw-Hill College, 1972 $3.96 (Fair) Other copies of 9780075536574

	9780394717807, Book, Vintage Books, 1972 $1.00 (Good ) Other copies of 9780394717807

	9780375508721, Hardcover, Random House Inc, 2002 $26.02 (Used - Good) Other copies of 9780375508721

	9780808576136, Prebinding, Bt Bound, 1999 None currently available

	9780679732181, Paperback, Vintage Books, 1990 $5.50 (Fair) Other copies of 9780679732181

	9780679600725, Hardcover, Modern Library, 1993 $10.00 (Near Fine) Other copies of 9780679600725

Publisher Notes

Quentin Compson gradually learns about a secret from the past that threatens to destroy the Sutpen family.

Media Reviews

"'Absalom, Absalom!' is no Southern costume drama about bygone times. It has an all-American theme and a present-day relevance. Sutpen's virtues are those of a typical twentieth-century man. So are his vices--his dismissal of the past, his commitment to the future, and his confidence that, with courage and know-how, he can accomplish literally everything."

First Line

From a little after two oclock until almost sundown of the long still hot weary dead September afternoon they sat in what Miss Coldfield still called the office because her father had called it that--a dim hot airless room with the blinds all closed and fastened for forty-three summers because when she was a girl someone had believed that light and moving air carried heat and that dark was always cooler, and which (as the sun shone fuller and fuller on that side of the house) became latticed with yellow slashes full of dust motes which Quentin thought of as being flecks of the dead old dried paint itself blown inward from the scaling blinds as wind might have blown them.

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