#sutpen

Ok so we just read Absalom, Absalom! and this perfectly encapsulates the essence of the book. Thomas Sutpen couldn’t keep it in his dang pants

"Because there is something in the touch of flesh with flesh which abrogates, cuts sharp and straight across the devious intricate channels of decorous ordering, which enemies as well as lovers know because it makes them both:---touch and touch of that which is the citadel of the central I-Am's private own: not spirit, soul; the liquorish and ungirdled mind is anyone's to take in any any darkened hallway of this earthly tenement. But let flesh touch with flesh, and watch the fall of all the eggshell shibboleth of caste and color too."

"They were too much alike. They were as two people become now and then, who seem to know one another so well or are so much alike that, the power, the need, to communicate by speech atrophies from disuse and, comprehending without need of the medium of ear or intellect, they no longer understand one another's actual words."

William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom!