Another list, to be continued

I started reading The Sound and the Fury again, in my attempt to reacquaint or newly acquaint myself with the literature of Mississippi. Despite having such a boggy, backwoods reputation, the state has certainly outshown my homestate of Indiana in producing literary stars. Not that Hoosiers are known for being particularly poetic, considering the best known poet of Indiana is James Whitcomb Riley, whose poetry is rarely found in collegiate anthologies, but can be appreciated for its dramatic effect.  Lew Wallace had a home near where we were living in IN several years ago, so I finally read Ben Hur and enjoyed it more than I thought I would. Gene Stratton Porter's A Girl of the Limberlost was a favorite when I was in middle school; I should add it to my reread list.

On that list: in addition to Mississippians (and children's books), I've been trying to reread novels or authors I liked to try to remember why I liked them.  My adolescent reading was centered around reading a list of "classics" and "recommended for college" books that I plowed through without direction to get to the end of the list. The Sound and the Fury was one of these books, and a book I've read about more than I've spent time with. Faulkner has premier status among the American canon, and although I could tell you why others think so, I couldn't tell you whether I agree, except to parrot what I can remember of the lectures of Dr. Cowan, the mythological Southern Lit professor at UD.

So now I'm trying to figure out the chronology of what Benjy/Maury is perceiving.  This subjectivity of time reminds me of what my sister-in-law told me about 2012 and Mayan calendars, which led me to compare it to Pope B's description of the nature of time/eternity in The Spirit of the Liturgy. My head is starting to spin with the remembering.

But even though reading S and F is slow going, Faulkner's genuis is evident. What inspired him to take this perspective, and to take the risk of writing this back and forth chronology/ point of view that has been mimicked, often poorly (The Help comes to mind), ever since?

Other novels I relatively recently reenjoyed:
The End of the Affair and The Heart of the Matter
Cry, the Beloved Country
David Copperfield
Pride and Prejudice
Abel's Island
Mystery and Manners
Short stories of Eudora Welty
The Great Gatsby
Brideshead Revisited
A Severe Mercy (not really a novel, but...)

Wanting to reread:
More Faulkner
Tennessee Williams
Richard Wright
Shelby Foote
Walker Percy
My Antonia
To Kill a Mockingbird
Kristin Lavransdatter (if my lost copy ever shows up...)
Howard's End

But with all these good intentions, I sat up reading Matthew Pearl's latest, The Last Dickens, last night.