n apocalypse. Adding to this is a sense of a world about to explode, a world where progress could no longer be taken for granted. Another aspect of style is the growing anguish over race relations in American culture in the 1930s to 1940s, causing many of the writers, including Faulkner, to include in their novels the topic of mixed racial ancestry.Secondly, for the narrative to be more than just characters conversing, one must know the importance of the parts of the novel. As the storytelling begins, it depends more upon the character's actually telling the story to each other, which suggests a commentary on the art of storytelling itself. This is called metafiction, or fiction about fiction. Absalom, Absalom! is considered the greatest work of America's greatest novelist, one of that handful of American writers who challenged readers the most pleasurably and provocatively (Parker 11). Its capacity to challenge does not lie literally between the covers of the book, but rather in the exchange of language and thought between the words on the page. Such as, the later characters' speculative uncertainty setting the earlier characters in a like position as the reader's. As one reads and speculates about both sets of characters, it provokes an awareness of how one's shifting judgements and knowledge about the story itself becomes a story as much as the actions and judgements of the characters. This effectively exposes the way any story is an act of mind. Absalom, Absalom! is mainly remembered for its lavish experiments with language and form, its anguish over personal, regional, national, and social fears. And its celebration of storytelling. Not to mention the way it layers story on top of story until it is as much about storytelling as any individual stories. Plus, the action of the novel is seemingly always in motion, moving forward and backward in time and constantly adding meanings. It is similar to a vortex, the character...
