Literature as Diagram

I just wanted to add a passage of Faulkner's to expand on Deleuze's description of Faulkner as "the great literary illuminator" and perhaps you'll notice the irony in that statement. This is from The Sound and the Fury, June Second 1910 pp. 214-217. The syntax is all taken directly from the book. What is important is the overlap of time; Faulkner breaks the book into 4 sections, each comprising one day, this particular one day is described over 100+ pages. The passage is mainly in reference to the eldest son of the Compson family; Quentin, as he commits suicide in a bathtub while at Harvard. While the exactitudes of this situation aren't understood until much later in the book, certain information is divulged which elucidates earlier references in the chapter (day) and earlier chapters. The key to the writing is Faulkner's movement of language, time, syntax, point of view and senses to describe a single situation. A single situation so complex that it can not even be understood directly after its occurrence, not until years later:

I turned out the light and went into my bedroom, out of the gasoline but I could still smell it. I stood at the window the curtains moved slow out of the darkness touching my face like some breathing asleep, breathing slow into the darkness again, leaving the touch. After they had gone upstairs Mother laid back in her chair, the camphor handkerchief to her mouth. Father hadn't moved he still sat beside her holding her hand the billowing hammering away like no place for it in silence When I was little there was a picture in one of our books, a dark place into which a single weak ray of light came slanting upon two faces lifted out of the shadow. You know what I do if I were King? she never was a queen or a fairy she was always a king or a giant or a general I'd break that place open and drag them out and I'd whip them good It was torn out, jagged out. I was glad. I'd have to turn back to it until the dungeon was Mother herself she and Father upwards into weak light holding hands and us lost somewhere below even them without even a ray of light. Then the honeysuckle got into it. As soon as I turned off the light and tried to go to sleep it would begin to come into the room in waves building and building up until I would have to pant to get any air at all out of it until I will have to get up and feel my way like when I was a little boy hands can see touching in the mind shaping unseeing door Door now nothing hands can see My nose could see gasoline, the vest on the table, the door. The corridor was still empty of all the feet in sad generations seeking water. yet the eyes unseeing clentched like teeth not disbelieving doubting even the absence of pain shin ankle knee the long invisible flowing of the stair-railing where a misstep in the darkness filled with sleeping Mother Father Caddy Jason Maury door I am not afraid only Mother Father Caddy Jason Maury getting so far ahead sleeping I will sleep fast when I Door door Door It was empty too, the pipes, the porcelain, the stained quiet walls, the throne of contemplation. I had forgotten the glass, but I could hands can see cooling fingers invisible swan-throat where less than Moses rod the glass touch tentative not to drumming lean cool throat drumming cooling the metal the glass full overfull cooling the glass the fingers flushing sleep leaving the taste of dampened sleep in the long silence of the throat I returned up the corridor, waking the lost feet in whispering battalions in the silence, into the gasoline, the watch telling its furious lie on the dark table. A quarter hour yet. And then I'll not be. The peacefullest words. Peaceful words. Non fui. Sum. Fui. Non sum. Somewhere I heard bells once. Mississippi or Massachusetts. I was. I am not. Massachusetts or Mississippi. Shreve has a bottle in his trunk. Aren't you even going to open it Mr and Mrs Jason Richmond Compson announce the Three times. Days. Aren't you going to even open it marriage of their daughter Candace that liquor teaches you to confuse the means with the end. I am. Drink. I was not. Let us sell Benjy's pasture so that Quentin may go to Harvard and I may knock my bones together and together. I will be dead in. Was it one year Caddy said. Shreve has a bottle in his trunk. Sir I will not need Shreeve's I have sold Benjy's pasture and I can be dead in Harvard Caddy said in the caverns and the grottoes of the sea tumbling peacefully to the wavering tides because Harvard is such a fine sound forty acres is no high price for a fine sound. A fine dead sound we will swap Benjy's pasture for a fine dead sound. It will last him a long time because he cannot hear it unless he can smell it as soon as he came in the door he began to cry I thought all the time it was just one of the those town squirts that Father was always teasing her about until. I didn't notice him any more than any other stranger drummer or what thought they were army shirts until all of a sudden I knew he wasn't thinking of me at all as a potential source of harm, but was thinking of her when he looked at me was looking at me through her like through a piece of coloured glass why must you meddle with me dont you know it wont do any good I thought you'd have left that for Mother and Jason.