In the opening of Faulkner’s perhaps greatest work, Absalom, Absalom!, a young Quentin Compson listens to Miss Rosa Coldfield tell a long, winding history of a man named Sutpen and the Old South. It was a story that Quentin, whose body Faulkner describes as “an empty hall echoing with sonorous defeated names,” had known since birth.

What does Absalom, Absalom! mean to the South in 2026? Two generations out from the Birmingham Campaign, just as Compson stood two generations out from the Civil War, what do we make of Faulkner’s “back-looking ghosts still recovering?”

Leading this discussion is Dr. Candace Waid, a Birmingham native, who taught American literature for four decades at Yale University and UC Santa Barbara, where she recently retired as Professor of English. Waid is an award-winning Faulkner scholar and the author of The Signifying Eye: Seeing Faulkner's Art. Her Faulkner work won The Faulkner Journal's Jim Hinkle Memorial Prize, which is awarded once every five years.

The discussion will take place on Saturday at 3PM in the backyard of the Folk School House on Southside.

Please RSVP: https://partiful.com/e/R5nJwW1hJydEP44QlPIh