When You're Gone
New Episode of "Private Life"— 'Nadja' read by Gini Alhadeff
Night was come. Tree frogs remembering last night’s rain resumed their monotonous molding of liquid beads of sound; grass blades and leaves losing shapes of solidity gained shapes of sound—the still suspire of the earth, of ground preparing for slumber; flowers by day spikes of bloom became the night spikes of scent; the silver tree at the corner of the house hushed its never still, never escaping ecstasy. Already toads hopped along concrete pavement drinking prisoned heat through their dragging bellies.
That's just one of the many stretches of William Faulkner’s first novel Soldier’s Pay (1926) I noted while reading it over the weekend.
I devoured Faulkner in my teens and have been thinking of going back to his books for years. So I finally decided to start from the beginning (a “minor” novel I’d never read before) and there it was, that particularly overheated Southern glossolalia that I love: the multi-vocal steam-of-consciousness, acute visual/sensual description, Classical allusion, formal experimentation, and a precise ambiguity, by turns overwrought and subdued.
How do you say: style?
How do you say: swoon?
It’s not for everyone—but it’s definitely for me. And maybe you too.
This note is just to let you know that following on last week’s conversation with Mark Polizzotti about his translation of Andre Breton’s Nadja (1928) the new episode of “Private Life” is out now: “Gini Alhadeff reads from Andre Breton’s Nadja”
Hope you enjoy it!