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Absalom, Absalom! (Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition)

Absalom, Absalom!, another Yoknapatawpha novel and another work with multiple structures, has different levels of narrator viewpoint; that of Quentin Compson and his Canadian roommate at Harvard University is the primary level. Shreve McCannon has asked Quentin to tell him about Mississippi; the result is a story told in true Faulkner fashion. It is far from chronological; sometimes Quentin speaks from his own observation, but most often he repeats a secondhand narrative as given him by Miss Rosa Coldfleld, Jason Compson III, and others. Some gaps are filled in by the boys’...

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