Voice and Eye in Faulkner's Fiction.

Abstract

In Voice and Eye in Faulkner's Fiction, Hugh M. Ruppersburg examines structure and its influence on characterization, plot, and meaning (p. 2). Stressing Faulkner's to establish authoritative standards of behavior, knowledge, and truth (p. 161), he notes that structure compels the reader to experience Faulkner's world from the same vantage point as his characters (p. 162). Ruppersburg contends that these structural issues demand far more critical attention than they have as yet received, and he directs us to a number of significant questions, most notably the nature and complexity of what we usually call the authorial voice, the interrelationship of author, narrator, and reader, and the textual density of narrative voices within all the novels. Faulkner's own continual insistence on the centrality of perspective easily justifies Ruppersburg's claims for the importance of his topic and even for his claim that narrative form is the key to understanding of Faulkner's artistry. Certainly the four novels he chooses to examine in detailLight in August, Pylon, Absalom, Absalom! and Requiem for a Nun--illustrate the great variety of Faulkner's use of point of view, a term that, for Ruppersburg, is synonymous with both narrative structure and voice and eye. The care that he devotes to sorting out the narrative patterns in these novels is impressive and provides clear evidence that such approach can yield valuable material for the student of Faulkner's experiments with style and narrative form. Moreover, Ruppersburg maintains a clear and consistent balance between impersonality and intentionality in the novels. He rightly notes that Faulkner's consistent withdrawal from the text is in itself aesthetic and perhaps even a moral choice. Faulkner's world is one of ineluctable absolutes (p. 161), says Ruppersburg, who might have taken the words out of Faulkner's mouth, and Faulkner's refusal to define and thus to destroy by limiting these concepts is indeed at the heart of his narrative strategy. Ruppersburg further insists that the mind behind these structural configurations is strictly disciplined, sophisticated, deeply philosophical (p. 151). Faulkner was, he says, an innovator. He saw novelistic form as a potential way of reflecting meaning (p. 150), and to approach that meaning, we must not only examine Faulkner's narrative but also participate in it. Faulkner often said that he wanted his novels to last as a testament to his existence, but this is more than a desire for immortality. It expresses his realization that his art takes its existence not only from his active desire to create-and thus to communicate-but also from his readers'