l narrative through Quentin and the telling and retelling of a story or incident. However, in Chapter Eight it changes from a satirical external narrator to Shreve and/or Quentin, and in Chapter Nine the narrative remains external through Quentin's thoughts and memories. With the amount of changes in the narrative, it is no surprise Faulkner is known as the most inventive experimenter in the American modernist prose, and that later American novelists look back fearfully at his shadow (Parker cover). Throughout each of these chapters Faulkner has presented the story in non-sequential bits and pieces, with many flashbacks into the past through the minds of several different people. Each mind consisting of its own prejudices, blind sides, and mental sets. He withholds elements of the story, until he is ready to divulge them, whetting the reader's appetite and completely involving them in what is perhaps his supreme story of the human heart in conflict with itself (Brooks 328).The critical reception of Faulkner and his novel Absalom, Absalom! has always been and remains very controversial. During the late 1930s through the mid 1940s, books by Faulkner were banned by the Nazis in occupied France, making them a sign of resistance. During this time, Faulkner's books went out of print in America, but after the war American interest in Faulkner grew as literary criticism in America became a professional industry, providing a means of distribution for his novels. The focus of many critics became interpreting Absalom, Absalom!'s text, using it to represent the work of its individual author. Robert Penn Warren once said, "William Faulkner has written nineteen books which for range of effect, philosophical weight, originality of style, variety of characterization, humor, and tragic intensity, are without equal in our time and country (O'Connor 124)." At the time of its appearance, Absalom, Absalom! left many mystified by its intensity of e...
