Customer Reviews

Doubling and Incest / Repetition and Revenge: A Speculative Reading of Faulkner

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Irwin's book was recommended by a professor years ago, when I was reading Light in August. I bought it then but I found I needed to read Absalom! Absalom! and The Sound and the Fury closely before I could get anywhere with this book. Though Freud is pivotal in Irwin's review, his use of Freud is flexible, not dogmatic. Jungian snippets (the shadow nature of the unconscious)emerge from time to time as well. The book is essentially an investigation into Quentin Compson's struggles with incest and impotence that leads to his suicide, yet it also applies to the South's loss of the Civil War and general outrages resulting from human frustration.
Irwin's connections between S&F and Absalom are most helpful to my understanding of Faulkner's larger vision of generation and life. Irwin is a true scholar of Faulkner, well read in Freud, tragedy, and of course William Faulkner. I have not seen a better portrayal of the problem of revenge against time and Oedipal fury in any other book. Elements of Nietzsche are coupled with Freud-- Irwin is well aware of the connections between these two-- and the connections between fate and the psyche's imprisonment in endless repetitive frustrations are very well developed. I hate to use the cliche "a must read", so I'll say that Faulkner readers who need a little something extra -- not pedantic, nor too academic, but informative-- will want to read this one.

repetition and revenge:a speculative reading of faulkne