Absalom, Absalom!

I have just finished reading a novel of William Faulkner – no small feat. His prose is difficult though masterful. I had always wanted to read more of him, recognized him for the superb writer he was and, at this point, had a bit of time to do so. Absalom, Absalom! was a chance but fortuitous choice. I happened to be at hand at the library! I really did not know what to expect. It is a novel about the deep South of the 19^th century (1830s to 1910), published in 1936.

A short presentation of the plot is in order if I am to make any comments. It is the story of Thomas Sutpen in fictional Yokapatawpha County, (Mississippi) and of his children, especially his son, Henry. It covers the period before, during and after the American Civil War.

The story is told almost entirely through flashbacks provided by several persons involved in quite different ways with what happened as Quentin, the son of a friend of Sutpen, shares what he has heard with a Canadian (Alberta) friend in a student residence at Harvard University around 1910. The stories do not coincide on the facts or their interpretation and it is only toward the end of the novel that readers can attempt to piece together their own version.

What does not seem to be in question is that around 1830, Thomas Sutpen arrived in Jefferson, Mississippi with a gang of slaves and a French architect. Through sheer sweat and labour he builds a local empire symbolized by a large mansion cut right out the swamp. He has the intention of passing this on to his son. As the story evolves we also see how Thomas’ son, Henry, becomes the wayward son fighting what his father had built. Ultimately all is destroyed and very tragically. (It should be noted that the title of the Novel refers to a biblical story of the tragic death of Absalom, son of King David. David, too, built a small kingdom but was betrayed by his son who died tragically.)

Toward the end of my reading, I began to ask myself why I had stuck to my reading and finished the novel. After all, the Civil War period of US history, while interesting, is not at all at the centre of my interests today. Then it hit me that perhaps I could learn something from the novel about my last twelve years in Quebec.  There are similarities between the Old South and Quebec today. Both are territories that have been dominated for centuries by an outside force, in the case of Quebec, it would be the political and financial interests of Anglophone Canada. Both were subjected to a war of conquest.

The South depended on Black slavery to maintain its economy through a system of exclusion and oppression. How could this be true of Quebec? Today, it is immigrants who provide much of the hard labour that sustains the economy of Quebec. At the same time, there is a quiet racism that marginalizes them from much of the benefits of both the economy and Quebec’s social life. Like the Blacks in the South, they are appreciated for their music and dance, but largely kept outside the ranks of the privileged classes. In Quebec, these recent immigrants include Africans, Haitians and people from the Maghreb (North Africa). 

There is no worse racism than the racism that does not exist. In the Old South, there was no question. There was racism and everyone knew it. If one was against racism, there was a clear target. In Quebec there is no racism - officially. It is outlawed; there are laws and regulations that clearly indicate that discrimination is now permitted. Racism simply does not exist in the mind of Quebec. But, of course, it does exist and it is rampant especially in the work place and in rental housing.

At the very end of the novel, Quentin, who has been the recipient of all the various versions of the story of the Sutpen, lies in his bed at Harvard in 1920, muttering to himself over and over again, speaking of the South, “I don’t hate it!  I don’t! I don’t hate it!” But of course this is precisely his struggle, as is also that of Faulkner himself, who places in the mouth of Shreve, the young Canadian who has heard the story from Quentin, the prophecy that, in a thousand years, the Blacks will dominate the world scene: a remarkable statement for one writing in the 1930s.