Brain Pain discussion

This discussion covers the book as a whole.


And so we finish the second book in this Cluster Headache #1. Akutagawa explored multiple viewpoints in the context of a criminal investigation. Faulkner used multiple viewpoints in his exploration of a dysfunctional family. Our next book, Omensetter’s Luck, explores multiple viewpoints in the context of a small town.

In addition to multiple perspectives, Faulkner split the story in four non-consecutive days – three days of Easter weekend, 1928, and one flashback to the day in 1910 when the older son, Quentin, took his life while away at college.

What was your response to the different perspectives?

Did you have any difficulties with the Benjy section, written from the imagined perspective of a man with autism?

Were you able to piece together the James Joyce-like confusion of Quentin’s section?

Were you repulsed by Jason’s bigotry and misogyny?

In the Dilsey section, did you see the characters differently when the narration became third person and more neutral?

In general, did the author’s narrative choices enhance or detract from the story?

I had to beat down my general distaste for this family to get through the entire book. I understood immediately about Benji's section, I don't know why, but it was slow going reading it. The other sections had me puckering like an old prude, but my feelings were more about my gut reaction to their lack of character and spine, not their morality as such. To me, it felt like the family turned to their more ignoble animal natures as an excuse to avoid doing the hard work of maturation and making responsible choices. I can accept the dificulties caused by being autistic, not educated or being under the age of 18, but otherwise such poisonous families disgust me.

I have a great deal of admiration for Faulkner as an artist in writing this book. According to his interviews he did this to stretch himself, draw outside the box in order to explore the boundaries of writing. The fact it's readable and successfully pushed the art of writing as far as a writer can without losing meaning and still be using recognizable sentences must have been personally exhilarating and it certainly is inspiringly playful to me. Later, of course, as it became fodder for critical essays and literature classes, he had to get serious and formal. I'm glad he explained the work publicly quite a few times.

April the Cheshire Meow wrote: "I had to beat down my general distaste for this family to get through the entire book. I understood immediately about Benji's section, I don't know why, but it was slow going reading it. The other ..."

I always thought of this book as being a kind of public airing of this family's dirty laundry. His examination of these individual's faults becomes a broader critique and condemnation of public ideas of propriety versus the hypocrisy of what happens behind closed doors. Jason, for example, is horrified by what the town will think of his niece Quentin, but has no qualms about driving out of town to have out-of-wedlock sex with a woman he treats like a whore.