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Author
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Topic: "Quentin at Peace" (Read 1414 times)
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gerrydodge
Full Member
Posts: 3
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When reading "Quentin at Peace" it may help readers to know that this is based on Faulkner's Quentin Compson and her mother Candace from his novel THE SOUND AND THE FURY. I have been toying with the idea of making this story into a novel called COMING OUT OF THE DARKHOUSE. I don't know if this short story makes much sense without that caveat.
Gerry Dodge
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Gregor Milne
Administrator
Poster Monkey
Posts: 72
The best friend I ever had
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I think it does. The reader doesn;t need to know the background to the piece in order to understand the central character's motivations. In fact, it's arguable that an explicit statement about the influence and background on the cover copy could indeed turn a reader's attention away from you as the authr and towards Faulkner. I accepted this piece because it stands on its own merits!
DAMMIT!
Happy new year everyone!
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Al Facinha
Full Member
Posts: 15
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Of course the story makes a lot of sense! I for one have inmensely liked the soft, precise, catlike style, the careful approach of memory, between the obvious and the hidden. No reference to Faulkner is needed to entice the reader. In fact it might spoil the game. Good literature. Thanks author, thanks editor.
Happy New Year to all
Al Facinha
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maria
Full Member
Posts: 4
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I love how this story identifies with the myths of our pasts and our families. Quentin spends so much of her life in motion as a means to escape her family's mythology and their myth-making that finally, at the end, she is able to sit safely, quietly and without movement at the edge of her terrace as she embodies all that came before her and all that she will still experience or wonder. The coupling of this ubiquity with the careful and delicate prose results in a story that encapsulates our thoughts which we believe are quiet within our own microcosms or consciences, but instead they are truly expanded through to the universal. This author is quite talented. I enjoyed this immensely. Regarding a previous message, I would definitely read the novel.
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Chuck
Full Member
Posts: 2
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I liked this story too! I am a little confused as to why the author felt it necessary to post on his own work, but agree with the previous posts that the self-promoting author's excerpt stands on its own two feet. 5 stars minus one for egoism.
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maria
Full Member
Posts: 4
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I would love to see this story as part of a novel, but I don't think egoism was part of the author's comment--if you don't believe in your own work, who will?
But back to the novel. . . for the same reasons Faulkner created entire towns and geneologies, I think Quentin at Peace would do very well with a 21st century readership. I think readers are going to begin desiring more of the mystique and granduer that reading used to provide before James Patterson swept readers away. Patterson provides us with a mystique, but it seems not as eloquent or grand, I guess.
Anyway, I think, in general, readers are shifting away from the beach-read trend and searching for something a bit more meaningful. That's not to say that significant literature is not published now, but that it the kind of lit. I think will be moved to the forefront. This author is one, I think, who will be recognized as a result of this new search. Not that others won't be noticed, but I do believe Quentin at Peace, and Turning over a New Leaf have that quality that makes it timeless and yet quite conversely, precisely the time we are in. It's that duality of voice--a dialogic one--that makes this piece seem so significant.
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