Auditory Exposures: Faulkner, Eisenstein, and Film Sound

Author(s): SARAH GLEESON-WHITE

Source: PMLA, Vol. 128, No. 1 (January 2013), pp. 87-100
Published by: Modern Language Association
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23489264
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12 8.1

Auditory Exposures: Faulkner, Eisens

and Film Sound

SARAH GLEESON-WHITE

1934, William Faulkner announces that he has "finished the

WRITINGfinalTOtreatment
HIS WIFE, ESTELLE,
of sutter" and FROMpostSANTA MONICA ON 20 JULY
adds, in an offhanded
script, that he has "[d]one a little on the novel from time to time" ("To
Mrs. William Faulkner"). It would be easy to think no more of these
passing allusions to two seemingly disparate projects—a film treatment
and a novel—one of which is unnamed. Finding this casual contiguity
tantalizing, however, I unravel in this essay as yet unacknowledged af
finities between "Sutter's Gold" and Absalom, Absalom!—the two texts
in question—that reveal their soundscapes and what I claim is Faulk
ner's auditory experimentalism. Scholarship on literary sound is rare.
Douglas Kahn has observed that modernism, for example, "has been
read and looked at but rarely heard" (Noise 4).1 Only Stephen M. Ross
and John T. Matthews have broached the topic of sound in Faulkner's
fiction. In a compelling account of the creation and use of voices in
Faulkner's stories and novels, Ross focuses on the southern oratorical
influences on speech in Absalom, Absalom!. Matthews argues that the
incorporation of a graphophone in As I Lay Dying enabled Faulkner to
"consider ... the effects of the novel's existence in print—the writer's
instrument of mechanical reproduction" (67). Faulkner's career coin
cided with the advent of new sound technologies and the increasing
SARAH GLEESON-WHITE, a senior lecturer
popularity of associated entertainments in the late 1920s and the 1930s:
in American literature at the University of
radio, the tape recorder, ventriloquist performances, and, of course,
Sydney, is completing a scholarly edition of
documentary and narrative sound film.2 Just as significant, Faulkner
Faulkner's Twentieth Century-Fox screen
first arrived in Hollywood to write for the talkies in May 1932, when
plays. She is working on a book project,
"The Mechanics of Regionalism,"thethat
most important developments in film sound were occurring.3
Faulkner wrote the 108-page "Sutter's Gold" treatment for
examines American regionalism (1880s—
Howard Hawks at Universal Studios in July 1934, nearly twelve
1940s) in the context of new broadcasting
and communications technologies. months before "he settled down to rewrite ... Absalom, Absalom!,"

» 2013 SARAH GLEESON-WHITE

PMLA 128.1 (2013), published by the Modern Language Association of America 87

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Auditory Exposures: Faulkner, Eisenstein, and Film Sound j PMLA

which he completed in January 1936.4 What Faulknerian imaginary with that of their
is particularly striking about the treatment sources' (Liénard-Yeterian 12; my trans.),
is Faulkner's almost palpable struggle with Eisenstein wrote his treatment of Sutter's
the problem of ideographically represent- Gold for Paramount Studios.9 Although I
ing sounds, not only dialogue but music and have not been able to establish how Faulkner,
sound effects too. The Soviet filmmaker Ser- under contract to Universal at the time, ob
gey Eisenstein also wrote a "Sutter's Gold" tained Eisenstein's Paramount scenario, it
scenario, in 1930, which Faulkner read care- is nonetheless clear that he read Eisenstein's
fully. There is clearly much at stake then in treatment with great care, as evidenced by
Faulkner's overlooked film treatment. The the many similarities between the two treat
all-too-common assumption that his so- ments, including a two-page montage se
called real work—the fiction—"was slowed quence that Faulkner repeats almost verbatim
by his having to serve some time in Hoi- from Eisenstein's treatment (Faulkner 66-67;
lywood" should be put to rest (Meriwether Eisenstein 174-75).10
693). Faulkner's screen writing, influenced by Additional features shared by both treat
Eisenstein's cinematic aesthetic, transformed ments and related obliquely to Cendrars's
his literary practice in terms of an evident novel confirm that Faulkner acquainted him
emerging interest in and grappling with the self with Eisenstein's redaction of Sutter's
ideographic representation of sound.5 Gold to write his own. Both Eisenstein's and
Faulkner's "Sutter's Gold" is an adapta- Faulkner's Sutter dresses as a "fakir" at a cir
tion of Blaise Cendrars's 1926 best-selling cus (Faulkner 25-26; Eisenstein 157-58). (In
novel of the same name.6 Cendrars's novel Cendrars's novel, Sutter appears as a "ring
tells of the transnational and then continen- master in a circus" [18].) Cendrars's Sutter's
tal travels of a nineteenth-century pioneering Gold briefly—and tantalizingly for the Faulk
colonel—Swiss-born Johannes Sutter—who, ner reader—alludes to Sutter's boxing "a giant
in his fanatical drive to execute his design, negro" (18). Eisenstein (159-60) and Faulkner
establishes an ill-fated empire, New Helve- (28) enlarge on Cendrars's hurried detail, al
tia, with the use of foreign labor (indigenous though in Faulkner's treatment the boxing
Hawaiians) on the Californian frontier. Even- contest is transformed into a slave whipping,
tually, his empire is destroyed by a fire that (Cendrars's and Eisenstein's pugilist slave will
also consumes his son. This skeletal outline appear in Absalom, Absalom!.)
of Cendrars's novel resonates with the plot of On arrival in New York, Sutter works as
Absalom, Absalom! and that novel's charac- an assistant shoe salesman (Eisenstein 158;
terization of Thomas Sutpen.7 Jay Bochner, Faulkner 24) and then as an animal dentist
in an important yet neglected essay about (Eisenstein 158; Faulkner 25). While Cen
the influence of Cendrars on American liter- drars's Sutter interrupts his continental
ary modernism, is the only scholar who has journey to settle in Missouri for some time
brought Sutter's Gold to bear on Faulkner's (20-26), Eisenstein's and Faulkner's Sutter
novel. Although Bochner can only speculate passes quickly through Missouri (Eisenstein
on its relation to Absalom, Absalom!, believ- 161; Faulkner 29). Indians attack Sutter and
ing that Faulkner's "Sutter's Gold" treatment his party on the journey westward in both
is lost (50),8 his essay is indicative of the work treatments (Eisenstein 162-63; Faulkner 51),
still to be done "en confrontant, dans le cas but there is no such attack in Cendrars's Sni
des adaptations de livres, l'imaginaire faulk- ter's Gold. Eisenstein's and Faulkner's Sutter
nérian, avec celui de leurs sources" 'in con- writes a letter from California to his wife in
fronting, in the case of the adaptations, the Switzerland, a detail not found in Cendrars.

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 Sarah Gleeson-White 89

Finally, Faulkner's description of the elderly, in the end constrained by a liberal outlook:
worn-out Sutter toward the end of the narra- "as a primarily parallel montage, [it] appears
tive resonates more closely with Eisenstein's to be a copy of [Griffith's] dualistic picture
characterization than with Cendrars's. Ei- of the world, running in two parallel lines
senstein (198-99) and Faulkner (90) dress of poor and rich towards some hypothetical
Sutter in a glittering gold uniform, and in 'reconciliation'" (235). By contrast, Soviet
both treatments Sutter is mistrustful of filmmakers "find in the juxtaposition of shots
the cheering crowd as he is paraded before an arrangement of a new qualitative element,
them. In Cendrars's novel, he is merely in- a new image, a new understanding" (245). In
credulous (141-42). stead of smoothing over cuts or resolving the
Such striking resonances between the two "dualistic picture of the world," Eisenstein
"Sutter's Gold" treatments prove that Faulkner ian montage disrupts temporal and spatial
was familiar with Eisenstein's film praxis— continuities to underscore "a worldview both
even if on the page alone—defined largely by monistic and dialectic" (235-36). In sum, Ei
its montage, visual and sonic. While Faulkner sensteinian montage is an art of "unresolu
names Eisenstein in If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem tion" (Kawin, Faulkner and Film 8-9).
(Wild Palms 157) and while first J. R. Raper In Eisenstein's "Sutter's Gold" the most
and then Bruce Kawin draw on Eisensteinian striking examples of montage are found in ac
montage to describe a comparable dynamic companying sketches—for example, a forest
in Faulkner's fiction, there has been no con- of "big trees (about 15-20 feet high)" placed
elusive evidence that Faulkner was aware of directly above a couple of "artificial cactuses"
Eisenstein's films, scenarios, or film theory. (167). Eisenstein also evokes visual montage
At best, Kawin wonders whether Faulkner in the scenario itself. The layering of images
encountered Eisensteinian montage—or ideas of a Swiss village—a fountain, and then a po
about it—on his 1925-26 European travels.11 lice station, a church, the Sutter house, and
Clearly, as early as mid-1934 Faulkner was fa- finally a mountain landscape (154-55)—is
miliar with Eisenstein's cinematic aesthetic. used not to indicate the lapse of time but to
More surprising, perhaps, the Eisenstein- present a multifaceted thick scene of largely
Faulkner nexus reveals auditory—not merely metaphoric significance: the encounter of two
visual—qualities that inform and characterize conflicting forms of justice, evoked by the po
Faulkner's industrial and literary writings. lice station and the church, that underpin the
Examples of visual montage pepper Ei- entire narrative and lead to Sutter's downfall,
senstein's and Faulkner's treatments of Sut- Faulkner, in his treatment of Sutter's
ter's Gold. While some elementary form of Gold, takes pains to specify the relation be
montage had been used in Hollywood since tween scenes with intricate technical direc
the teens, as David Bordwell notes, by the late tions indicating fades, pans, and trucks. He
1920s it had become safely installed in the also calls for dissolves and resolves, elements
classical paradigm, employed to indicate the of montage frequently used in classical cin
passing of time in the most seamless and thus ema to soften the transitions between se
least disruptive way and to offer insights into quences and images rather than to foreground
a character's psychology (Bordwell, Staiger, conflict. However, Faulkner's use of dissolve—
and Thompson 29). In his 1944 essay "Dick- for example, from Washington's face to Rous
ens, Griffith, and the Film Today," compar- seau's and then to Sutter's (20)—does not
ing Hollywood and Soviet montage practices, affect the passing of time or smooth over cuts.
Eisenstein contends that Griffith's "montage It is the (heavily ironic) relation between these
concept," while technically revolutionary, is images that matters, something that is crucial

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90 Auditory Exposures: Faulkner, Eisenstein, and Film Sound [ PMLA

to Eisensteinian montage. Sometimes Faulk- new technology, with its seemingly endless
ner imagines an even harsher cut, more typi- possibilities, "in an incorrect direction . . .
cal of Eisenstein's practice: double exposure, in which sound recording will proceed on a
whereby one image is superimposed onto an- naturalistic level, exactly corresponding with
other before the fade-out. The first instance of the movement on the screen, and providing
double exposure in Faulkner's "Sutter's Gold" a certain 'illusion' of talking people, audible
appears when Sutter, on arrival in New York, objects, etc," thus ensuring that cinema be
is thrown down the gangplank, clutching the comes nothing more than the "photographing
dog he has befriended: of plays." Eisenstein instead calls for a radi
cal disjuncture of sound and image—sound's
dog is flung back. "distinct nonsynchronization with the
DOUBLE EXPOSURE to: VISUAL IMAGES"—to create "an ORCHESTRAL
SUTTER being dragged aft along deck. counterpoint of visual and aural images."12
double exposure to: sutter being flung Stalin sent Eisenstein to Hollywood in
down companionway. 1929, instructing him (with Eduard Tisse and
double exposure to: sutler facing cap- Alexandrov, who were to accompany him) to
tain, prisoner, resolve superpose: title "[sjtudy the sound film in detail. This is very
(17-18) important for us. When our heroes discover
speech, the influential power of films will in
The work of the double exposure is clear in the crease enormously" (qtd. in Kahn, Noise 146).
(not too subtle) correlation of Sutter and the The possibilities of sound that Eisenstein
dog and is characteristic of Faulkner's imag- imagined are everywhere inscribed in his
ined use of editing and camera work through- "Sutter's Gold" scenario, which one scholar
out this treatment, revealing a knowledge of has called an "experiment with sound" (Fray
the technical aspects of moviemaking whose ling 18). This experiment's most notable corn
profundity is remarkable considering that he ponents include the frequent counterpoint of
had had only four months' screen writing ex- SOUnd and image as well as its purely sonic
perience, at MGM, before writing this treat- montage sequences. As Sutter gallops toward
ment. We can to some degree attribute his his burning house, the "tinkle" of "the trap
familiarity and willingness to experiment with pings Gf the horse ... the sound of the hooves,
cinemas technical possibilities to his aware- and the sound of the pantings of the belly of
ness of Eisenstein s Sutter s Gold scenario. the horse" soon "mingle ... [with] the sound
Double exposure, of which Faulkner is so Gf the burning ... [t]he crackling of burning
fond throughout "Sutter's Gold," is the term wood" until we are directed to see a horse
Marina Burke uses to describe Eisenstein s and hear burning wood simultaneously in a
conceptualization of the cinematic relation hne example of sound-image double exposure
between sound and image: Music, sound ef- (203), the counterpoint Eisenstein describes
fects and visuals would be sensed as a com- as "orchestral." A scene in "Sutter's Gold,"
posite, with what he theorized as the gestural which narrates the lust and greed of the forty
elements of both music and visuals creating niners who destroy Sutter-s land; records the
an effect of'double exposure.'" Sound, not just sounds of the gold rush in the form of a »sym.
the image, is crucial to Eisenstein's theory and phony" for over two pages:
practice of montage. Eisenstein, with V. I. Pu
domn and G. V. Alexandrov, produced a state- The sound of the sand moving in the wooden
ment on film sound as early as August 1928. working pans, the dashing of water, begins to
Here he denounces Hollywood for taking this creep over the forests and fields.

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 Sarah Gleeson-White 91

The sound of the picks, and the sounds of the attention to sound (including painstaking
stones that are discarded from the working instructions on the sounds of snow, gurgling
pans grows louder and louder— water, and tramping feet and on diegetic and
The sounds pervade the whole land— nondiegetic music) was unusual for a screen
Sutter deserted by his people, wanders wdter and particularl noteworthy in one
through this wasted desolation, hearkening to , , , ., TT ,, ,
. . , . . . r , . who had so recently come to Hollywood to
the symphony ot the working of the mines . . , ,
. j., r work in a medium and genre that only two
And then, from the depths of these canyons, 0 '
arrives a symphony of new sounds. years earlier were unfam
These sounds are the sounds of thousands of though Kawin identifies an e
feet tramping upon the stones.... montage in an earlier MG
Sutter is maddened by these sounds. . . . "War Birds: A Ghost Story
[T]his terrible symphony of sounds. (181-82) previous screen writing
clude the comprehensive sound directives
Immediately, we cut to "[t]he gentle, melan- the particular format fou
choly bell of a Swiss church tower . . . toll- (Faulkner's MGM Screenp
ing its song" (183), one of many examples of pays similarly scant atten
sound montage employed throughout the see- post-"Sutter's Gold," Twe
nario not to soften sonic and visual cuts but screen writings. Whethe
to render them more jarring. Faulkner to include those dir
One of the most distinctive of Eisen- "Sutter's Gold" treatment do
stein's experimental uses of sound in "Sut- matter. What matters
ter's Gold" is its choric voice. The chorus poised to transform "Th
appears in different forms throughout the Absalom, Absalom! at
treatment: the singers of "a song of Califor- lywood's most significan
nia"; the "chorus of girls and vigorous young sound technology, roug
men ... singing Swiss songs" (151); the crowd well, Staiger, and Tho
whose "chatter, singing, clamor, whistling" sound was clearly on his
define the fair scene (157); and the chant of experiments in sound in
"Gold," when James Marshall discovers gold have prompted Faulkner'
on Sutter's land, that "rings through the for- tion at this critical creat
est" (181), side by side with "the murmur of Faulkner's sonic ex
endless mobs" (182) that becomes the gos- the "Sutter's Gold" trea
sip accompanying Mrs. Sutter on her travels counterpoint of sound an
from Switzerland to California: "Sutter . . . stein advocates. This featu
Sutter ... Sutter ... Sutter" (184-86), looking realized in Faulkner's
forward to Faulkner's choric "Sutter Sutter" treatment because Faulkner's use of mar
(101) and further to Yoknapatawpha's "steady ginal instructions means that the reader can
strophe and antistrophe: Sutpen. Sutpen. Sut- see the relation. The opening of the treat
pen. Sutpen" (Absalom 32). ment is exemplary in this. We hear first the
In his "Sutter's Gold" treatment, Faulkner sound of wheels, then the sound of feet as a
takes as much care with the annotation of title appears—"(Town), Switzerland. January
sound directions as he does with camera di- 1830"—before a pan takes us to "brass plate
rections. The sound directions appear in type- beside door: German letters: Rittsmueller
script in the left-hand margins on 61 of the Brothers. Enter man's shadow" (1). The sound
treatment's 108 pages; on average, that means of footsteps continues for two pages, and yet
one on every one-and-a-half pages. Such close we do not see the feet's owner throughout this

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92 Auditory Exposures: Faulkner, Eisenstein, and Film Sound | PMLA

entire sequence; we see a shadow and then a pages. The opening "dry vivid dusty sound"
"grilled window with clerk behind it En- of sparrows and Rosa's "grim haggard amazed
ter hand showing paper to clerk.... Shadow voice" (7) are compact synesthesic sound
moves as clerk pointed;... dissolve through image montages ("vivid ... sound," "haggard
to: Countingroom, pan to vacant desk" where . . . voice"), or what Eisenstein calls "verti
sits another clerk (2). In the margins of these cal montage," which involves the abolition
first three pages are directions concerning the of "dualist contradictions and mechanical
sound of the feet: "One pair of feet approach- parallelism between the realms of sight and
ing," "feet cease, feet begin," "feet stop," "feet sound." He adds, "[P]roblems of the unity of
begin, grow fainter," and so on, until the final audio-visual synthesis ... are not even on the
"Angry feet begin, die away. Hushed feet of agenda of American researches" ("Dickens"
clerks" (1-3). Then, in a new scene, the cam- 254). Faulkner's vertical montage, predat
era finally pans to Sutter "playing flute" (3), ing Eisenstein's observation by at least eight
our first sighting of the owner of the feet and years, straightaway flags Absalom, Absaloml's
hand. This opening scene—which would have interest in sound, which is sustained right up
lasted for about three on-screen minutes—il- to the closing "sound of the idiot negro," Jim
lustrâtes the disembodied or detached way Bond, who is all that remains of the burning
of employing sound that Eisenstein favored; House of Sutpen (376), and Quentin's final "I
there is no real correlation between what we dont hate it [the South]" (378). Absalom, Absa
hear (the sound of footsteps) and what we see lorn! defies the strategies and effects of realism
(clerks writing at desks).13 In a further move (what Eisenstein termed the "photographing
away from classical Hollywood's preferred of plays") as it draws attention to voices and
naturalistic use of sound, Faulkner uses, like other sounds as sounds: the "rasp, rasp, rasp"
Eisenstein, another form of frequently un- of a saw (151);14 the townsfolk's "Sutpen. Sut
attributed voice: the chorus, which is heard pen. Sutpen. Sutpen" (32); and the oxymoronic
sometimes as voice-over and usually evokes a "quiet thunderclap" (8), "thunderous silence"
scene's tone or its argument by laughter, mur- (136), and description of Wash Jones as one
murs, shouts, or the chants "Gold! Gold!" (88) who "could . . . bellow placidly" (135). Absa
and "Sutter Sutter" (101)—seeming to repli- lorn, Absalom! is also a loquacious novel, with
cate Eisenstein's chanting chorus—and by its conglomeration of "garrulous outraged
gossip and rumor (e.g., "it is said of him that baffled ghosts, listening, having to listen" and
he is now the richest man in the world" [72]). to vie across time for their listeners' attention,
The experiments in film sound that including our own (9): Quentin Compson lis
I have identified in Eisenstein's "Sutter's tening (or trying to listen) to Rosa Coldfield;
Gold" and then traced through Faulkner's Mr Compson listening to General Comp
own treatment of Cendrars's novel reverber- son; General Compson listening to Colonel
ate throughout that quintessential novel of Sutpen; and Quentin and Shreve McCan
American modernism Absalom, Absalom!. non listening to each other. One of the con
But the cinematic qualities that scholars ceptual problems at the heart of the novel,
have noticed in the novel, such as montage then, concerns the inscription, audibility,
and tableaux, are exclusively visual. To read and transmission of ideographic sound, and
Faulkner's novel alongside his and Eisen- this, I suggest, arises in the wake of Faulkner's
stein's film-sound experiments recovers the Hollywood experiments in writing film
sound track of this cinematic Faulkner. sound and his awareness—indeed, his appre
Absalom, Absaloml's preoccupation with ciation—of Eisenstein's theories and praxis
sounds is striking from its first to its last thereof. It is thus difficult to accept whole

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 12 8.1 J Sarah Gleeson-White 93

sale Peter Lurie's observation that, although el's au

Faulkner's novels "engaged with filmic prac- sugg
tices at the same time as they invent new ver- and
sions of the novel form," the "scripts he wrote no
show Faulkner ... willing to subordinate his salom!
experimental tendencies to the need for accès-
sibility or narrative coherence" (21). Not only plif
is "Sutter's Gold" typical of Faulkner's cin- what R
ematic experimentalism; it also informed the phy
most formally groundbreaking of his novels. diffe
Indeed, Absalom, Absalom! marks a shift voice c
in Faulkner's creative practice, as several schol- ene
ars have noted. While Lurie links this shift to ored
"an ever stronger emphasis on vision" in the The
novels of the 1930s (170), for Joseph Urgo the grap
shift concerns speaking. In both The Sound and and
the Fury and As I Lay Dying, Faulkner's in Ab
salom, Absalom! is also indica
use of multiple narration is characterized by these
the individual narrators' lack of dialogic in- mark
teraction with one another. Benjy, Quentin, spellin
and Jason may each have a say in representing exam
the Compson story, but they do not say it to con
each other, only to the reader. Narrator inter- ., . . , . n
7 that ignore conventional roman type, spell
action in As 1 Lay Dyinv is similarly low, with . , r , ,7 ., , .
, „ , r , „ . ings, and so forth. The novel s textual voice
the Bundren family members talking into a ^ ,, ,
, . , c « t o j attests to Faulkner s continued preoccupation
kind of narrative space. ... In Sanctuary and r r
Light in August, perspectives on events clash with the ideographic rep
and collide with greater violence but still with- Many garrulous
out significant or productive interaction.... novel: the four char
In Absalom, Absalom!, however, the vari- Mr Compson, Quenti
ous narrators are not talking into space but voices seem recorde
directly at each other. (58-59) with and sometimes without quotation
marks; sometimes in italics); the voices of the
Carolyn Porter makes a similar observation dead that are transmitted second- and some
about the discernible shift from the earlier times thirdhand (Sutpen and Ellen, Charles,
novels to Absalom, Absalom!: "Although di- Henry and Judith, Wash Jones, and others);
alogues [in As I Lay Dying] are represented and finally the narrator, who opens the novel
within some of the monologues, the novel it- and intervenes throughout. There are such in
self exists exclusively in monologue form, a consistencies and ambiguities regarding the
form that is private by nature" (68). The rec- inscription and attribution of these voices—
ognition that what distinguishes Absalom, sometimes they are indistinguishable from
Absalom! from the earlier fiction might reside others, sometimes sourceless, and sometimes
in its auditory qualities remains overlooked unheard—that it becomes difficult and fre
in Faulkner scholarship. Connecting the two quently impossible to align speakers with
observations I make here—that film sound their speech. The disruption of the verisi
informs Absalom, Absalom! and that the nov- militudinous transmission and reception of

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94 Auditory Exposures: Faulkner, Eisenstein, and Film Sound | PMLA

sound of course concerned Faulkner in As in the individual, runs smooth, less claw than
I Lay Dying, in the evident incommensura- velvet: but which, by man or woman flouted,
bility of that novel's poor whites and their at drives on like fiery steel and overrides both
times sophisticated patterns of speech and weakly just and unjust strong, both vanquisher
thought. In Absalom, Absalom!, however, this and innocent victimized, ruthless for appointed
,. , , . , right and truth) brute who was not only to pre
disruption becomes a complete rupture: who ., , , , c
5 . . side upon the various shapes and avatars of
exact y is spea ing. Thomas Sutpen's devil's
5 ^ war that sound breaks UP in Faulk- at the last the fe
ner s novel contrasts with the norms of clas- and lineage s
sical Hollywood film, whereby sound and
image were considered analogous. Like Faulk- And so on, to
ner's "Sutter's Gold," Absalom, Absalom! bears and Noel Polk
out Michel Chion s insights about sound film what extent is
more generally: sound film "doesn't hang to- scription of wh
gether; it s decidedly not a seamless match Rosa's—if w
between voices and bodies, although "it does Rosa—parenth
its best to restitch the two together at the introduces a
seam" (125). This seemingly inherent quality soundscap
of sound film characterizes Eisenstein s theo- voice-over (s
retical pronouncements and film praxis, in narrator) of th
particular his resistance to the alignment of children, and
sound and its source and thus to the "'illusion' few men" (31
of talking people, audible objects." Absalom, students who
Absaloml's comparable sonic indecipherabil- about the So
ity is an effect of several different strategies of the voice-
the entextualization of speaking voices. These mentary and
include the mismatch between speaker and antecedents
speech,18 disembodied voices, and the fusion phone-this ch
of—and even confusion over—speakers. Eisenstein's an
Rosa Coldfield s italicized chapter 5 treatments.20
sounds suspiciously Faulknerian, as do sev- function is larg
eral of the monologues supposedly the in- the novel's w
ner speech of poor whites in As I Lay Dying. and forth am
The italics in this chapter only amplify Ro- 0f idleness an
sas rhetorical flourishes as she tells Quentin jn another
about the South, denaturalizing her voice to Rosa seems to
create a rupture and more, a gap, between signaled in the
speaker and words spoken. The following person to the
passage is characteristic of Rosa's rhetoric
throughout the chapter: [Tjhey will have told y
busque who had to turn to a demon
[Tjhat brute progenitor [Wash Jones] of brutes and therefore s
whose granddaughter was to supplant me, if father since if h
not in my sister's house at least in my sister's would not have
bed to which (so they will tell you) I aspired— and protection
that brute who (brute instrument of that justice field, lose h
which presides over human events which, incept couldn't keep

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 Sarah Gleeson-White 95

found a beau and was insulted, something heard of Quentin and Shreve with each other but
and not forgiven— But I forgave him. (169-71) also, frequently, of each of them with Henry
and Charles. It becomes impossible to deter
Rosa becomes a kind of sound-recording mine the vocal frame that attends the itali
machine as she reproduces the voice of the cized dialogue in this passage. Whose words
chorus, effectively fusing it with her own. are recorded here? Those of Quentin, Shreve,
Speaking voices fuse and so become confused or both, "compounded each of both yet either
throughout the novel, making it all the more neither"? Those of Henry, Charles, or both
difficult to determine who speaks.21 as Quentin, Shreve, or both? Or is this entire
Right toward the end of Absalom, Absa- passage an act of ventriloquism by the narra
lom!, as if in some last-ditch attempt to solve tor who introduces this scene? Absalom, Ab
once and for all the problem of the ideo- salom! refuses to "show lips moving in time
graphic representation of sound, Faulkner with the sound track," to use Rick Altman's
embeds the screenplay format to figure imag- conceptualization of film sound ("Moving
ined conversations between, first, Sutpen Lips" 69). Lips and sound track are frequently
and Henry and then Henry and Charles.22 out of sync or their connection ruptured
The screenplay genre here is characterized by throughout the novel. The illusion of "talk
present-tense scene setting and pared-back jng people," for which Eisenstein harshly
dialogue, which continue for seven pages: criticized Hollywood, is shattered in Absa
lom, Absalom! at that moment in Hollywood
Shreve ceased again. It was just as well, since when "nearly every important technological
he had no listener. Perhaps he was aware of it. innovation can be traced back to the desire
Then suddenly he had no talker either, though tQ ,ce a persuasive ülusion of real le
possibly he was not aware of this. Because now , . , , „ ,.,. T ^ j -a
. ' r , , _ , , . speaking real words (Altman, Introd. 7).
neither of them were there. They were both in * _ 0 . , . . , . ,
„ ,. , . . r One of the maior epistemological upsets
Carolina and the time was some forty-six years ' r or
ago, and it was not even four now but com- of Absalom, Absalom!, then, o
pounded still further, since now both of them auditory plane. Sound is a force
were Henry Sutpen and both of them were zation in the novel; it cannot b
Bon, compounded each of both yet either nei- convey the information need
ther, smelling the very smoke which had blown one's place in the world. Sound
and faded away forty-six years ago from the observes, "will always carry w
bivouac fires burning in a pine grove, the gaunt sion of the unknown until it i
and ragged men sitting or lying about them, sight"; every sound seems to
talking not about the war... the two picket ¿¡j ^bat sound come from?" ("
lines so close that each could hear the challenge 74) Ue use of asynchronou
of the other's officers passing from post to post AbsdomU possibly inform
and dying away: and when gone, the voice, in- . . , .. . c
/ 6 ' 0 stein s practice, means that we are frequently
visible, cautious, not loud yet carrying: .. _ . r . . .
IT _ , unable to answer this question definitively,
—Hey, Reb. . . . . ,.
_Yafo an experience that is disconcerting or dis
-Where you fellers going? orientating not only for readers. For disem
—Richmond bodied sounds, especially voices, have the
—So are we. Why not wait for us? effect in Absalom, Absalom! of creating, or
We air. (351) transforming men and women into, shadows
and "outraged baffled ghosts" whose speech is
This passage opens with one of several ac- heard secondhand at best: according to Rosa,
counts in the novel of the merging not only Sutpen is "a walking shadow" (171); Charles

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96 Auditory Exposures: Faulkner, Eisenstein, and Film Sound ^ PMLA

remains "shadowy" as if he had "never been" learned: "Sound achieves authenticity only as
(153); and Ellen is "unreal and weightless" a consequence of its submission to tests im
(106). As Mr Compson declares, "We have a posed upon it... primarily by sight" (Belton
few old mouth-to-mouth tales;. . . men and 64). In this instance, the failure of evocation
women who once lived and breathed are now equates to the failure of socialization; Sutpen
merely initials or nicknames out of some now is unable to insert himself successfully into
incomprehensible affection which sound to the southern class hierarchy, and this sets him
us like Sanskrit or Choctaw." "[SJomething on his demonic (according to Rosa) path to
is missing," he continues (100-01). Without execute his design.
the simultaneous projection of moving lips, Speech can either fail to evoke, as it does
to paraphrase Altman, the transmission of here, or vanish altogether to make way for
sound, and thus meaningful communication, the image. The dialogic situation of Quentin
is compromised or, worse, fails altogether. and Rosa in chapters 1, 2, and 5 pivots on this
Something that contributes to the unsta- very tension between sound (of the speaking
ble relations between the projected image and voice) and image (ideally, evoked for the lis
the recorded voice operating throughout the tener) and a related tension between speak
novel is the ability or inability of the spoken ing and hearing, not always a "marriage" in
word to conjure the image. For Ross "Absa- this novel. Rosa's voice cannot hold Quentin's
lom's representation depends upon the power attention—far from it. Indeed, on several oc
of voice to evoke a world—the world of past casions he appears not to be listening at all;
events and people for the narrating charac- or listening would "renege" (7). In the place
ters, the fictional world for the reader" (218). of listening, an image (of Sutpen) forms: "the
This means that as Quentin and Shreve ap- long-dead object of her impotent yet indomi
pear to sit by the bivouac fire among the rebel table frustration would appear" or "abrupt"
soldiers in the passage quoted earlier, Quentin "out of the biding and dreamy and victorious
can announce, "If I had been there I could not dust," so that Quentin seems "to watch" the
have seen it this plain" (190), such is the power scene before him (7-8). It is only when Ro
of the spoken word to evoke image. Indeed, it sa's voice vanishes that the image might be
is possible to conceive of the bulk of the final evoked (13). On another occasion, Quentin
chapter of the novel as a sustained evocation; ceases to listen to Rosa "because there was ...
there is nothing in the punctuation or typog- something which he ... could not pass—that
raphy to indicate that Quentin is speaking to door, the running feet on the stairs beyond
Shreve here. At first Shreve hears Quentin's it almost a continuation of the faint shot, the
narrating voice but then he sees, rather un- two women, the negress and the white girl in
cannily, what Quentin too can see "though he her underthings" (172). The transmission of
[Quentin] had not been there" (374). There are sound is intercepted and displaced by the im
significant moments in the novel, however, age that captivates, preventing further listen
where this dynamic of evocation fails, and ing and so disrupting the "happy marriage of
its failure arguably drives the narrative. Mr speaking and hearing" (316).
Compson learns that as a child in backwoods It is no coincidence that Faulkner's pre
Virginia, Sutpen "didn't listen to the vague occupation with sounds and with the "un
and cloudy tales of Tidewater splendor... be- rational hearing-sense" (145) in Absalom,
cause there was nothing in sight to compare Absalom! came about at the same time that
and gauge the tales by and so give the words he was immersed in the new medium of the
life and meaning" (222). Here the novel seems talkies and discovered Eisensteinian cin
to foreshadow what film-sound scholars have ematic practice, one of the most pressing con

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 Sarah Gleeson-White 97

Universal Studios for allowing me to reproduce excerpts

cerns of which is sound and the seemingly
from Faulkner's unpublished "Sutter's Gold" treatment.
endless possibilities of the new film-sound
1. It is not surprising that literary sound has been
technology. The auditory affinities between
somewhat neglected when film sound has attracted little
Eisenstein's and Faulkner's "Sutter's Gold"
critical attention: "The dominance of the image in cinema
treatments and Absalom, Absalom! coalescestudies [has prevented] sound from being recognized as
more
around Eisensteinian double exposure—that than a simple add-on' to the image" (Beck and Gra
jeda 2). Similarly, dialogue "in film has received very little
is, the nonsynchronous relation of sound and
attention in comparison to the technical and theoretical
image, voice and its source. Absalom, Absa
sophistication of image-based studies of cinema" (Price
lom! proves a troubling and thus productive
135). Mary Ann Doane reminds us that the cinematic ex
intervention into the examination of the audi perience is not limited to images but includes sounds and
text. The scholarly neglect of film sound means that this
tory culture of modernism, bearing as it does
"heterogeneous" medium has not always been comprehen
traces of the screen writing and film-sound
sively understood (163). Studies of sound in literary texts
technology that, I argue, contributed to it.
are even less common. Exceptions include recent schol
arship by Tim Armstrong, Angela Frattarola, Sarah Wil
While the idea of film might have reanimated
son, Philipp Schweighauser, and Kata Gellen. However,
discussions around literary modernism, sur
nowhere do scholars examine the literary engagement
prisingly little scholarly work has been under
with film sound, which is this essay's project. This is no
taken on the screen writings of the many key doubt also an effect of film's frequent conceptualization
modernist writers who worked in the motionas an exclusively visual medium. Michel Chion, one of the
first and most important film-sound scholars, has argued
picture industry and have become the focus
that even silent film was never really silent: it "was always
of these revisionary accounts, writers such asaccompanied by music from the outset... not to mention
F. Scott Fitzgerald, Nathanael West, Erskine
the sound effects created live in some movie houses. . ..

Caldwell, and of course Faulkner. Listen There were also the commentators, who freely interpreted
the intertitles that the audience could not read" (8).
ing closely to the sounds of Yoknapatawpha
2. Susan Douglas argues that radio "introduced a new
within their specific moment of technical orality into American culture" (12). For a contemporary
production dislodges the visual from its dom engagement with radio's possibilities, see Brecht, Brecht.
inant position in the project of rethinking lit On documentary film sound, see Kahana. On the signifi
cance of the invention of the tape recorder in the 1930s,
erary modernism. Kahn foresaw that "because
see Cox and Warner xiii-xiv; Schaeffer 81. Ventriloquist
of the visualist presumptions underscoring performances, such as Edgar Bergen and Charlie Mc
theories of modernity and representation, Carthy's, became increasingly popular on radio and stage
questions of the auditory have the potential during this era.

to reconfigure time-honored accounts and 3. Although 1927 has gained almost mythic signifi
cance in film-sound historiography because of the release
ask formerly unconsidered sets of question"
of The Jazz Singer that year, it was in 1932-35 that film
(Rev.). Film sound—including Eisensteinian sound became widespread and that the most important
theory and praxis—needs to be included in advances took place (Bordwell, Staiger, and Thompson
the compelling scholarship currently inves 300-01).
4. Meriwether 693. Although Faulkner started to write
tigating the intersection of twentieth-century
"The Dark House," which became Absalom, Absalom!, in
literature and the new sound technologies of January 1934, he acknowledged in a letter to his publisher,
broadcasting and communications.23 Hal Smith, that "when I took it up again [in March 1935] I
almost rewrote the whole thing" (qtd. in Blotner 346-47).
5. My project here is consonant with recent examina
tions of the intersection of high and low cultural forms.
Thomas Strychacz, for example, argues that "this move

Notes toward seeing the modernist text as irrevocably linked to

and penetrated by the dense, complex social formations of
i am particularly grateful for the generosity of Paul Giles a burgeoning mass culture is a crucial one, for it denies the
and Robert Jackson, who provided invaluable feedback on common view of modernism as being merely antagonistic
an earlier version of this essay. I would also like to thank to the cultural formations it defines itself against" (6). This

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98 Auditory Exposures: Faulkner, Eisenstein, and Film Sound PMLA

turn has been predominantly visual. Michael North's letterhead,

ten on Paramount ex which might indicate that
ploration of the roles that movies playedhe"in
had the
accessaesthetic
to the studio ("To Mrs. William Faulkner").
transformation of modern literature and art" character However, he could have obtained the stationery at any
izes film as a purely visual medium (206).time
This andvisual
by otherturn
means. The most appealing explanation
also typifies recent scholarship on Faulkner
is the
and possible
filmexistence
(e.g., of alternative routes of textual cir
Kawin, Faulkner and Film; Lurie). While, asbeyond
culation I mention
the oversight of the film studios.
above in nl, scholarship in the field of literary modernism
11. Faulkner scholars have long identified certain vi
and auditory culture is emerging, I have encountered
sual no
qualities and strategies in Faulkner's fiction—e.g.,
examination of literary modernism's specific engagement
"montage, freeze-frame, slow motion, and visual meta
with film sound, besides Frattarola's comment that "one
phor" (Kawin, Faulkner and Film 55)—informed by what
could argue that the advent of the talkieLurie
made [Dorothy]
terms "the film idea": "the manner of impression
Richardson keenly aware of the significance of accurately
and visual activity [Faulkner's] novels emulate from the
rendered voice in narrative" (141). cinema" (6). Kawin's examples of Eisensteinian (visual)
montage
6. Titled L'or in the original 1925 French in Faulkner's fiction include the radical inter
publication,
the novel was translated into English as cutting
Sutter's Gold
between in in The Sound and the Fury (19)
scenes
1926. All three narratives—Cendrars's, Eisenstein's,
and the "breakingandinto fragments (words and scenes)"
Faulkner's—are indicative of an international fascination
of the central Sutpen story in Absalom, Absalom! (130).
That Eisenstein
with the Sutter story during the 1930s. Universal's was interested in the work of another
Sutter's
Gold appeared in 1936 and was directed southerner
by James in Hollywood,
Cruze; D. W. Griffith—in particular,
Hawks and Faulkner had been taken offGriffith's
the project.
revolutionary
The editing techniques—adds yet an
film became the studio's flop of the year. Luis
other layerTrenker's
to our thinking about visual montage across
different
"Nazi Western" Der Kaiser von Kalifornien media and national cultures.
(Koepnick
100), which tells the same story, was released in Germany
12. Brecht's 1930 notes on The Flight of the Lind
several months later (1937 in the US). Trenker's
berghs, hanfirst performed in 1929, describe
his Lehrstiick
dling of the Sutter material differs from Eisenstein's
a comparable and
counterpoint between the sounds trans
Faulkner's. The synchronization of sound
mittedwas, accord
by a radio and the listener-speakers on stage: "a
ing to Koepnick, central to Nazi cinema—"The sensitive
collaboration develops between apparatus [radio] and
execution of film dialogue . . . was to play
participant"
an essential
("Explanations" 39).
role in [the] nationalization of mass culture" (112)—and
13. Chion designates disembodied voices in cinema
Der Kaiser's score, for example, "synthesizes sounds
"acousmatic." Takingand
his term from Schaeffer, he defines the
sights into one overwhelming experience" (121). as a sound whose source cannot be seen (18).
"acousmatic"
7. See Gleeson-White for a detailed account ofanthe
14. Surely echo of the "Chuck. Chuck. Chuck"
striking similarities between Cendrars's
of Cash Bundren's and
Sutter adze in As I Lay Dying (4).
Faulkner's Sutpen narratives. 15. The graphic nature of "textual voice" only high
8. Similarly, Kawin, not having read Faulkner's "Sut difficulty—and paradox—in liter
lights the inherent
ter's Gold" treatment, can only speculate that
ary Faulkner's
representations of sound. Ross also observes that
writing of it "may well have influenced [his] in
anaphora plans for
Absalom, Absalom! has the effect of ampli
Absalom, Absalom! since both are storiesfication
of drifters who by way of example, Rosa's repeti
(199). He cites,
'strike it rich' and whose love-lives reflect
tion of their ambi
"that brute" (Absalom 134-35).
tions" (Faulkner and Film 88). 16. Noel Polk and Stephen Ross have produced a color
9. Montagu recounts Eisenstein's Hollywood
edition of The experi
Sound and the Fury, published by the Folio
ences. Eisenstein's "Sutter's Gold" and Society (2012).
"American Trag
edy" treatments are reproduced in Montagu's volume
17. There and
is really no identifiable pattern in Faulkner's
include several of his scene sketches. For use of further comquotation marks, and dashes.
italics, parentheses,
mentary on Eisenstein's "Sutter's Gold," see
I agree withFrayling;
Ross; the most we can say about the typo
Richardson.
graphic variations is that they indicate some shift: a
10. Bordwell indicates one way Faulkner could havetemporal shift or a shift in voice, discourse, or levels of
received Eisenstein's treatment: "If a studio purchased a consciousness (Ross 145-46).
'property,' the other studios kept track of it in case they 18. One of the most cited examples of the mismatch
decided to buy it later" (Bordwell, Staiger, and Thompsonbetween Hollywood sound and image in scholarship is
322). Universal may have "kept track" of the original ParaSingin' in the Rain (1952), where Kathy Selden (Debbie
mount project. Paramount produced The Story of TempleReynolds) is hired to dub the voice of the nasally intoning
Drake (an adaptation of Faulkner's novel Sanctuary) in Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen) on the arrival of the talkies
1933, three years after Eisenstein worked at the same stu(e.g., Chion 133; Silverman 45-47).
dio. Perhaps this enabled Faulkner's entrée to the studio. 19. Silverman's psychoanalytic reading of the female
One of Faulkner's letters, postmarked 12 July 1934, is writvoice in Hollywood cinema provides another possible

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 12 8.1 Sarah Gleeson-White 99

way to account Bordwell, David,

for Rosa'sJanet Staiger, and Kristin Thompson.
arguably near
bility throughoutThe
the novel.
Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode
20. On the introduction in the 1930s of voice-over of Production to I960. New York: Columbia UP, 1985.
to documentary film, see Kahana: "By contrast with thePrint.
feature-film industry, where recorded sound tended to Brecht,
be Bertolt. Brecht on Film and Radio. Trans, and ed.
used to shore up the illusion of realism ... the indepenMarc Silberman. London: Methuen, 2000. Print.
dence of sound from image opened documentary film . "Explanations [about The Flight of the Lind
making to entirely new possibilities of assemblage" (105).berghs]." Brecht, Brecht 38-41.
According to Chion, another antecedent of feature filmBurke, Marina. "Eisenstein and the Challenge of Sound."
voice-over is the commentary of magic lantern shows (4).Kinema: A Journal for Film and Audiovisual Media
21. There are countless examples of the fusion and Fall 2007: n. pag. Web. 10 Jan. 2011.
subsequent confusion of the speaking voice throughout
Cendrars, Blaise. Sutter's Gold. New York: Harper, 1926.
Absalom, Absalom! (e.g., 174-76, 181-87, 212-15, 293, Print.
303, and 333-34).
Chion, Michel. The Voice in Cinema. Ed. and trans. Clau
22. Urgo makes a similar observation about the dia Gorbman. New York: Columbia UP, 1999. Print.
screenplay format (64). See also Urgo and Polk 188. Cit
Cox, Christoph, and Daniel Warner. "Music and the New
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observes that "Judith and Henry . . . are 'speaking to
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York: Continuum, 2004. xiii-xvii. Print.
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were popular in the movies of the 1930s, and Faulkner
had written some of his own in the film version of'Turn ulation of Body and Space." Film Sound: Theory and
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About' (called Today We Live [1932]) on which he worked
York: Columbia UP, 1985. 162-76. Print.
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Douglas, Susan. Listening In: Radio and the American
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Eisenstein's visual practice in modernist writing in the
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