Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner. New York, NY: Random House, 1936.
William Faulkner’s ninth novel, “Absalom, Absalom!,” focuses on the life of Thomas Sutpen, a poor white Virginian who moves to Mississippi during the 1830s with aspirations of becoming a wealthy planter. Sutpen’s story is told through flashbacks narrated mostly by Quentin Compson. Quentin’s roommate, Shreve, at Harvard University listens and periodically offers suggestions and conjecture. It takes a long time to get Sutpen’s actual story as events are reinterpreted. “Absalom,” while it has been one of the most praised Southern novels of all time, is also one of the most challenging (yet rewarding) to read.
Certainly, no one was more aware of the complexity of “Absalom” than Faulkner himself. After much editorial work, Faulkner created three reader’s guides to appear at the end of the book: a genealogy, a chronology, and a map of Yoknapatawpha County. The map was special because the publisher had to pay extra to have it tipped in to the first 6,000 copies; the map was also printed in two colors. Random House was eager to make the book as beautiful as possible because “Absalom” was Random House’s first Faulkner book to publish. Earlier that year, Bennett Cerf of Random House had bought Smith & Haas, a small publisher that had been struggling to make a profit even though it had a line of great authors. Cerf wrote in his memoir “that getting [Faulkner] on our list was the best part of the deal.”
A tradition of issuing a signed limited edition had already been established with Faulkner’s previous publisher Smith & Haas. Blank sheets would be sent to Faulkner’s Rowan Oak residence and he would sign them and then the pages would be tipped in, or bound in, to a limited number of specially designed books. Faulkner was very particular about signing books. If he did sign a trade edition, he often inscribed them. In Joseph Blotner’s biography, Faulkner commented on signing books in a conversation with the famous publisher Alfred A. Knopf:
“’People stop me on the street and in the elevators and ask me to sign books, but I can’t afford to do this because special signed books are part of my stock-in-trade. Aside from that, I only sign books for my friends.’”
Faulkner reportedly signed just one of Mr. Knopf’s books.
When Faulkner received the blank sheets from Random House to sign for the limited edition of “Absalom, Absalom!,” he didn’t sign them. He had been hospitalized for drinking. Finally, he recovered enough to sign them. The first sheets were set aside for shaky hand writing, number one was inscribed to his lover Meta Carpenter “wherever she may be,” and the other 299 copies went up for sale. “Absalom” is one of the most beautiful of the limited editions with green and white decorated boards, a green cloth spine with gilt lettering, a hand drawn fold-out map, and William Faulkner’s signature.
See all of Lemuria’s first editions by William Faulkner here.
Written by Lisa Newman, A version of this column was published in The Clarion-Ledger’s Sunday Mississippi Books page.
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