Mine is Go Down, Moses. I like this novel for many reason. First, I think top to bottom, it has some of the best writing Faulkner ever did. Also, it has one of the greatest opening lines, in my opinion: This is quite possibly my favorite opening line in all of fiction. It is unbelievable. The book also includes a central text of his cannon: the bear. I know that the Sound and the Fury get a lot of notoriety, but I simply found that text to be cold compared to Go Down, Moses. The next best novel of his, in my opinion, is Absalom, Absalom, but I'm not going to pretend that I understand that text at all. The last section of Absalom, Absalom is on par with Ulysses for greatness, but the story is so dense at that point that you can't follow what's going on.
Just curious, have you ever read Black Water by Joyce Carol Oates? It has a similar narrative construction as As I Lay Dying, which you would probably enjoy. There is also another book, Getting Mother's Body by Susan-Lori Parks, the playwright. Here was her first novel, and it is very similar to Faulkner's book. I myself wasn't a big fan of As I Lay Dying. I didn't really think the different perspectives narration worked that well. Black Water works better, and Getting Mother's Body also was a pretty great book. I've never read the fable before.
Oh yeah, I also thought the Unvanquished was a pretty great book. It's probably my second favorite faulnker book. I forgot about it, but I loved it.
On literary merit, probably As I Lay Dying, but I really like The Reivers. It was his last book, and maybe he was too tired to do all the artsy shenanigans of his major works. So, it's pretty straight-forward storytelling, but very well-crafted, funny, and engaging. It's artsy without hitting you over the head with it, which I appreciate. The first time I tried to read Absalom, Absalom! I stopped after 70 pages or so. I'm not sure if I finished the first sentence. But it was to dense. But, I picked up years later and read the whole thing. It's good, but the first part is so hard to get through.
Absalom, Absalom. Some great quotes. Here are some shorter ones: “Tell about the South. What's it like there. What do they do there. Why do they live there. Why do they live at all.” “I dont hate it he thought, panting in the cold air, the iron New England dark; I dont. I dont! I dont hate it! I dont hate it!” “I am older at twenty than a lot of people who have died.” “I was wrong. I admit it. I believed that there were things which still mattered just because they had mattered once. But I was wrong. Nothing matters but breath, breathing, to know and to be alive.” “He had been too successful, you see; his was that solitude of contempt and distrust which success brings to him who gained it because he was strong instead of merely lucky.”
