Why write a thesis on Nick Cave’s And the Ass Saw the Angel  by Kenneth Hognestad

            Right. The first thing I would like to point out is that I think that it is a very good book. As a matter of fact I think that it is too good a book not to be properly commented upon. The fact that there is not very much written about this book, at least not in literary circles, is both negative and positive for the writer of a thesis. It’s negative in the sense that there is not much support in secondary literature to back up whatever findings that I might make. Also, there are very few already expressed thoughts and ideas about the work that I might work from or expand upon. For a student of literature at an English department in Norway, this might seem a rather daunting task. After all, my theoretical background is limited to a 5-vekttall survey-course in literary theory, and this is obviously not very impressive. My thoughts on how to handle this was to look at ATASTA, with the little knowledge that I have, and see if I could somehow place it somewhere within a literary tradition or mode, and work from there. I will, of course, come back to this point later on in this paper.

            The positive aspect when writing something on ATASTA is precisely the same as the negative one, only from another point of view. Since there is so little written about this book, I am sort of sailing into uncharted territory, and making the map along the way. I can virtually go anywhere I like with this, and I am not bound to respond to or comment upon any kind of ongoing debate of particular aspects in the book. I am pretty much free to choose what areas of the novel I want to look at. I am also free, if I choose, to consider the circumstances surrounding it. That is, if I find that this is somehow valid or important, I can look at the conditions under which the novel was written, or the outside world’s perception of the author, or also, perhaps most likely, how his other work is reflected in the novel/how the novel has influenced his other work.

Speaking of his other work, there is a great number of his song-lyrics from particularly the first half of the 1980s that seem to relate rather directly to the moods, themes and symbols of his novel. One song in particular, "Swampland", seems to be sort of a blueprint of the novel. "Swampland" depicts a man caught in quicksand, who in a Deep Southern accent tells us that he is awaiting the arrival of his "executioners": "So cum mah executioners! Cum Bounty hunters!/Cum mah county killers - for ah cannot run no more". The situation and the language is so similar to that of Euchrid's in ATASTA that it is no question of their kinship. An interesting topic for comment in this case could be the development of  the original idea in the form of a song to the finished vision in a novel. There are several songs that have sort of a "kinship" to the novel, particularly songs from the albums "The First-Born is Dead" and "Your Funeral, My Trial". It is enough to mention "Tupelo" from TFBID: Here we are presented with a little town in a harrowing rainstorm, where a drunken mother gives birth "[i]n a clap-board shack with a roof of tin".  It is no surprise to learn that "a child is born on his brother's heels/Come Sunday morn the first-born's dead/In a shoe-box tied with a ribbon of red". It could be interesting to identify the songs from this period that has a certain "relationship" to the later novel, and see if they functioned as a sort of "first draft" to certain ideas or images, and in what way they might have influenced the writing of the novel.

            So, what is of interest in this novel? This might just become a more or less wild jumble of ideas, but here goes: The first thing that comes to mind is the big issue of communication. How can we express ourselves in a way that makes sure that we are understood? This, I believe has been an issue that Cave has been dealing with for years. In the early eighties, Cave was the lyricist/singer of an Australian band called The Birthday Party. They recorded a song called "King Ink", in which there is a line that goes "Express thyself, say something loudly". During live shows, Cave would be harping on this line, challenging his audience, and sometimes hitting them over the head with his microphone (The Birthday Party had a rather antagonistic relationship with their audience).  The fact that Cave made such a big deal of that one sentence, and that he, when he in 1988 published his collected lyrics, chose to name the collection King Ink, is to me indicative of his interest in the issues of communication. In his essay "The Flesh Made Word", published in King Ink II, Nick Cave speaks of Euchrid Eucrow, the mute protagonist of ATASTA.

            Throughout the story, God fills the mute boy with information, loads him up with bad ideas, "hate inspiration straight from God," as he calls it, but with no one to talk to and no way to talk, Euchrid, like a blocked pipe, bursts. For me Euchrid is Jesus struck dumb, he is the blocked artist, he is internalised imagination become madness.

Euchrid tries throughout the novel to communicate with others, constantly failing. In the end, his only means of communication is violence, but even here he fails. He, being unable to fill any role in society, begins to see himself as an instrument of God. His actions are always, as he puts it "impotent", he is totally unable to make a difference, to communicate. Therefore he tries to change his role "from snitch to saboteur". He thinks that his main task on earth is to kill Beth, and that this is an answer to his instructions from God, but, as I mentioned, Euchrid fails yet again. He is not even able to communicate fully through violence. Euchrid is of course not the only one with communication problems in the novel. His parents are unable to communicate at very basic levels. When Ma Crowley first meets Ezra, she actually thinks that he is her long gone husband, and at first he does nothing to tell her the truth. He seems to fear the consequences of communication, while it is the consequences of the lack of communication that is to be feared, as we are shown throughout the book. Let me present a few instances to illustrate my point. Like Euchrid, Ezra’s inability to communicate culminates in violence. When Ma has one of her drunken outpourings, her main way of communicating, Pa’s repertoire of communication is almost used up, only violence remains. He kills her.          

            This is not the only instance in the book where lack of communication leads to violence or death. Ukulore Valley is a community dominated by the religious sect of the Ukulites. Their religion is a rather twisted, puritan and flagellantic version of Calvinistic Christianity. Rebecca Swift, the wife of Sardus Swift, the leader of the Ukulites, therefore has a rather disturbing view of her own function in life. She sees herself predominantly as a uterus. When she is told that she is "barren", she tries to kill herself. She writes a letter to her husband, but typically, it is not found, and there is no more communication between them. Rebecca is saved from hanging herself, but is sent away forever to an asylum. The lack of communication between the spouses is striking, and it leads to disaster for both of them. Sardus loses his will to live, and locks himself up for years, refusing to communicate with anybody.

            This is a bit of a side-track, but I find that it is worth mentioning here. The view of the female as a birth-machine in this novel is one mostly carried forward by the female characters of the novel. First, as mentioned above, we have Rebecca Swift, who can not see that she has any purpose in life if she cannot produce any offspring. Then, in the epilogue, when Beth is giving birth, we learn that that the doctor assisting the birth might have to choose between Beth and the baby, one of the townswomen, Wilma Eldridge says: "He has had his instructions. There is no choice". We once again see the treatment of women as just a vessel for procreation, and once again it is communicated by a woman. These instances might serve as an example of the twisted paths religion has travelled down in this novel. The Biblical message of Jesus has been askewed and over-communicated. The townswomen read Biblical messages of the second coming in coincidental events, and over-interpret the male dominance in the Bible up to the point where they sacrifice Beth in the belief that they might have lost a "Mary", but gained a Messiah.

            The role that the women play in this novel is also a very interesting topic for research. Cave has been branded misogynist by a number of feminists, and he has admitted that his relations with women are problematic. In the novel we are presented with mainly four or five women that play important roles in the narrative. We have of course Ma Crowley,  Cosey Mo, Beth,  Rebecca Swift, and Wilma Eldridge, the unofficial leader of the Ukulite women. Several of these women can be considered as strong and somewhat independent, while others seem almost to lack a will of their own. Euchrid's relationship to the three former is certainly interesting. His intense hatred for his mother seems to block out his sense of being let down by her. He seems to want her to love him, and even though his abuse of her is tremendous and to a certain degree justified, I can not help but think that there is more to it than hate in their relationship. Cosey Mo is a character that is depicted as a sort of personification of the "classical" male dream, according to some feminists; she is both Whore and Madonna. At least she is to Euchrid. He has visions of her as an angel, and he has been watching her through the window of her caravan as she was taking care of her customers. Cosey Mo is the only one that shows Euchrid some sort of sympathy, and being a stranger to kindness, Euchrid becomes obsessed with the thought of her, and when she is gone, he gets obsessed with her daughter. The relationship he has with Beth is also very worthy of study. 

            In fact, one of the interesting things in this novel when it comes to the issue of communication (which was what I was talking about before I got side-tracked)  is the "near-communication" between Euchrid and Beth. She is raised to believe that she is a holy person, and that one day she will give birth to the saviour. When she notices Euchrid stalking her, she believes he is God, and that he will make her pregnant. Euchrid believes that he is on a mission from God, that he is "the hunter". They both have a sort of similar way of looking at his role; Euchrid is (a man sent from) God. However, their attempts of a more direct communication are somewhat flawed. Beth writes a letter to "God", in which she intimates that the wise ladies "say that I am ready ever since the sign of the blood". Euchrid does not understand that Beth is talking about menstruation, and wonders if she has been experiencing the same kind of nosebleeds that he has. To show that he has received her letter, Euchrid writes a ‘G’ for ‘God’ in blood on her window, only to discover in her next letter that she has identified it as a sickle of blood. Also, her letters communicates her wish to be impregnated, but Euchrid reads them as her message to him saying she is ready to be sacrificed. 

In a way, they are both very innocent, but at different levels. Euchrid perhaps knows that he is seeking sexual contact with her, and that that is part of his "drive". What makes him "innocent", however, is the fact that he is not able to formulate such thoughts, and he is not able to relate to them at all. This is why we never hear from Euchrid's "mouth" that he has had a sexual encounter with Beth; He is not only unable to express himself on that issue, but he has also surpressed the whole incident. He is not, however very innocent when it comes to his violent plans: He intends to kill Beth.

 Beth, on the other hand, is very innocent and naive when it comes to the threat of violence. She has never experienced anything like it, and does not expect it to happen to her. However, she seems very "ready" to be impregnated. Her upbringing has in part focused on this being a "goal" for her. Their relationship is very complex, and it seems to me fruitful to have a closer look at. It seems to lend itself very well to psychoanalytical close-readings. Also, I think that some theories dealing with signs, signifiers and signifieds might be useful when talking about the theme of communication in their relationship.

            Then there is the title of the novel. The quote "and the ass saw the angel" is taken from the Bible, more precisely from Numbers 22, 23-31. An interesting topic for research would be to identify the various manifestations of this Biblical parable in the novel. The parable depicts how Balaam fails, unlike his donkey, to see the angel of the lord standing in front of him. There are several ways of interpreting this parable, one might be that it represents man’s lack of noticing the rather obvious.

The incident regarding the preacher, Abie Poe, and the town harlot, Cosey Mo, is an example worth mentioning in this respect. In order to stop the rain, Abie Poe prescribes the removal of "sin" from Ukulore Valley. "Sin" is of course represented by the town whore. The townspeople, her former customers and their wives, beat her half to death, and drive her out of town. Like Balaam, they, in their violent rage, fail to see that Cosey Mo has done them no harm, and that she is not to blame for their misery. Their eyes are opened when they see that despite the things that they have been promised, the rain does not stop. They then realise that Cosey Mo rather had had her function in their society, and that her beating was unnecessary. In fact, the whole incident is a perversion, or rather a reversal, of the ideals of Christianity itself. It opposes directly Christ's actions when he saves a whore from being stoned. The Ukulites have definitely been blind. They decide to get rid of the false prophet, Abie Poe, and by that action the Ukulites might, like Balaam, have recognised God. But instead, they once again choose to ignore the obvious. 

Issues of religion are of course ever-present in this narrative, and one of the themes in the novel reflecting its title would be the inherent paganism of the Ukulore society. They  worship God, but they are unable to see that they in reality have strayed from the norm in their worship. They fail to see the obvious, that they in fact are committing idolatry; they are regarding Beth as a holy person, and direct their worship towards her rather than towards God. Unlike Balaam, however, the villagers eyes are never opened. Even before Beth dies, they have found a way to continue their idolatry; they will worship Beth’s son. Actually, there is a hint that they might open their eyes: In the epilogue, when Beth’s son is born, we notice that the rain has started once again. If the rain will lead to the same kind of desperation one more time, the Ukulites might react as they did before: They will realise, as they did with Abie Poe, that they are being led by a false prophet, and like Balaam adhere to the Biblical God.

            Of course, one of the more obvious manifestations of this parable in the novel is that of Euchrid representing the ass. He is, like the donkey, mute, and therefore unable to express himself adequately. He also have visions of an angel inspiring him, and he is beaten severely on numerous occasions because he is unable to explain the intention of his actions. Euchrid is, however, unable to open the eyes of his tormentors. He is not able to show them the divine inspiration of his actions. Euchrid, however, sees himself not as the ass, but as the angel of the parable. He even talks to the family mule, and upon hearing Euchrid’s words, seemingly, the mule rises from the dead. From Euchrid’s point of view, the mule, apart from various other representatives of the animal kingdom, is the only one who can see him and know him for what he is: an emissary from God. Later on, Euchrid even acts out the role as an avenging angel in his encounter with Kike. He communicates via writing, but Kike does not believe that the "voice" of the text can belong to Euchrid the mute. Only when Euchrid has poisoned Kike, he reveals himself to the dying hobo. Like the angel, Euchrid lets Kike see what was hidden, but also rather obvious; Euchrid knows how to read and write, and has tricked the unsuspecting hobo.

            These variations on the theme of seeing/understanding one’s surroundings is well worth looking at. This theme can be very well linked to the traditions of modernism and post-modernism, in as much as it represents the estrangement of man towards each other and their environment. I will have to come back to this at a later stage, but I do find that this is an area worthy of exploration, and that it might me linked to the issue of communication. I find that I keep coming back to the issue of communication. As Nick Cave said in a lecture called "The Love Song" that he held in Vienna in September 1998:

"...God lives within communication. If the world was suddenly to fall silent God would deconstruct and die. Jesus Christ himself said, in one of His most beautiful quotes, "Where ever two or more are gathered together, I am in your midst." He said this because where ever two or more are gathered together there is language. I found that language became a poultice to the wounds incurred by the death of my father. Language became a salve to longing."

 Euchrid is also starving for communication: He finds that God speaks to him through the pages of the Bible, and later he hears the voice of God and his angels directly in his head. The only problem for Euchrid is that he is unable to communicate it further, and that he inevitably, in the words of Nick Cave, "bursts". Having said that, I should probably mention that the narrative voice of Euchrid Eucrow is worthy of study in itself, not only as the voice of a mute, but also linguistically. Cave himself describes the story as told through

"the voice, or non-voice of Euchrid Eucrow (and) was written in a kind of a hyper-poetic thought-speak, not meant to be spoken - a mongrel language that was part-Biblical, part-Deep South dialect, part-gutter slang, at times obscenely reverent and at others reverently obscene."

A point that must be made when it comes to the "non-voice" of Euchrid Eucrow, is that it is a language Cave has created for this character alone. His Old Testament-like rhetoric is mixed with Deep South accent, and creates a certain "gothic" mood whenever Euchrid speaks. The language is extremely rich, and sometimes almost overloaded with adjectives. A linguistic approach, that could examine the effect this kind of language has on the narrative, on its moods and its progress, might be fruitful.

Another interesting aspect in this area could be a discussion on the topic of narrative voices. As far as I am able to see, there are at least three different narrators at work in this novel: We have the voice of the protagonist, Euchrid Eucrow, then there is the 3^rd person omniscient narrator, and finally there is the crow at the beginning of the novel, who is describing Ukulore Valley to us from a bird’s perspective, and is never to be heard from again. The two main narrators, as I see it, Euchrid and the omniscient narrator, drives the narrative forward, and share the narration between them, sometimes bridging each other's narrative, and sometimes repeating the action from another point of view. The relationship between the narrators and the relationship between the narrators and the readers of this text is extremely interesting. First of all; how is this text related to us, the readers? How do we "hear" Euchrid? By what means are we witness to his story? Obviously, Euchrid’s "present"-time in the novel is when he is about to die. He is lying in the swamp, sinking in the quicksand, waiting to be dragged under and die. At this point in, he tells us his life-story. How does he do it? Who is he addressing? Why is he telling us all this? At one point, it seems as though his medium is written, because suddenly he says: "Below is a page", and then presents us with a page taken from his father’s diary. Or is it really Euchrid that says those words? It could be the third-person omniscient narrator. He/she is also very interesting, because it seems as if he is coloured or influenced very much by Euchrid’s opinion’s and feelings. He is certainly not objective. Particularly, his use of adjectives convey strong feelings of sympathy towards  Cosey Mo, and antipathy towards for instance Fists Wiggam. The omniscient narrator also produces pages from a local history-book, a poster and statistics to tell us the story of Ukulore Valley. This, of course, makes him seem very personalised, and, I think, an interesting topic for study.

I must admit that I am not that good at picking up symbols in a text without being made aware that they are there, but in some cases even I can spot them. The first thing I would like to comment upon when it comes to this, is the number three. First of all, the novel is divided into three "books". The first thing we are presented with, is the trio of Balaam, the ass and the angel, which, since it is a quote from the Bible, should immediately make us think of the significance of the number 3 in the Bible. Then we see Ukulore Valley from the perspective of three crows, before we are introduced to the threesome of  Euchrid, Ma and Pa. Euchrid’s relationship with Cosey Mo and Beth forms yet another strange triangle worth mentioning. As if this was not enough, the three years of rain start with three heavy raindrops in a pan before Euchrid’s feet. Also, the text seems to me to be laden with images and symbols of birth and of the womb. Of course, we have the actual births of the novel, but throughout the story, Euchrid lies in the mud, being sucked back into the womb so to speak. If we examine the text, we find that Euchrid constantly seek tight and narrow places, as if he is longing back to the womb. In fact, for Euchrid, the womb was the only place he was able to communicate with anybody: He claims that he and his twin brother had developed a system with which to communicate with each other. Euchrid’s longing for the womb might then be seen as a longing for communication. When it comes to metaphors of wombs/births, the entrance to the valley from the south, is by the crows described as "shattered knees of land (that) rise and open to make a crease between". It seems like the whole valley is contained within a protective uterus, and the only way out of there is through the crease over the knees. (Maybe this sounds a bit far-fetched, but I found worth jotting down, anyway.)

There are of course other aspects of this novel that I find interesting, but do not quite know what to make of yet. Into this category I would place items as the symbolism connected with blood and dreams. It is certainly worth noticing that the image of blood is a recurring one. These images, as far as I can see, turn up in connection with Euchrid and Beth. Euchrid has frequent nosebleeds in his "later years", as he calls his early adulthood, and he communicates with Beth through his own blood. Beth’s "function" in the Ukulore society can only be fulfilled after she has had her first menstruation. I do not know how fruitful an investigation of this is, but at least I’m aware that it is there. Another recurring image is that of birds, feathers and/or winged creatures. We easily remember the crows that haunt the novel, as well as Ma’s nickname ‘Crow Jane’, and there is also the silver feather that falls from Euchrid’s be-winged angel, and in one of his early dreams, Euchrid sees his brother flying with the wings of an insect.

Speaking of dreams, another interesting thing to look at are the dreams (mostly nightmares) that Euchrid are having. I have not yet gone into any analysis of them, so I can not say too much about it, other than that it looks interesting, and would probably lend itself well to a psychoanalytical reading. (I am well aware that characters in a novel are not ‘real’ people, and that a ‘real’ psychoanalysis of the characters is impossible, but I think that such an analysis can at least unveil something of who the author intends the character to be.)

Having said this, I would like to go back to something that I mentioned in the first paragraph of this paper. As you will remember, I said that I would see if I could place the novel within a literary tradition or mode, and then work from there. I certainly see And the Ass Saw the Angel as a post-modern work, but that is a very inclusive statement nowadays, so I have tried to look at it from the angle of magical realism. This was a possibility that occurred to me while reading about Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ One Hundred Years of Solitude. I was told that this novel was one of the main works within the genre of magical realism. I discovered that, like ATASTA, it deals with a secluded American society in which some unexplainable events occur. What caught my interest is that in One Hundred Years of Solitude there is a rain that goes on unabated for almost five years, during which the entire economy of the village Macondo is ruined. This bears an almost striking resemblance to Book One: The Rain in ATASTA: Ukulore Valley experiences a rain that lasts for three consecutive years, and their economy, being based on the sugar cane crops, is ruined. Now, I have never heard of any rainstorm lasting that long in real life, so I guess ATASTA disqualifies as realism. But does it qualify as magical realism?

The trouble with magical realism is that there is no single definition of the term that is generally agreed upon. It was first used by the German art critic Franz Roh in the 1920s. He applied it to the work of a group of painters who wanted to get away from expressionism. They wanted to return to the representation of reality, but under a new light. They wanted to paint as if the object was discovered by the painter for the first time, with fresh eyes, so to speak. W. Spindler says in his article "Magic realism: A Typology" that "Magical realism, as it was then understood, was not a mixture of reality and fantasy, but a way to uncover the mystery hidden in ordinary objects and everyday reality". Later on, a critic called Flores came up with another definition of magical realism, that seems to be the exact opposite of what the original term signified. He said that magical realism is an "amalgamation of realism and fantasy."  According to Spindler, "he included in this category all those narratives which achieved a ‘transformation of the common and everyday into the awesome and unreal’ and where ‘time exists in a kind of timeless fluidity and the unreal happens as a part of reality’."

Apparently, much debate has been caused by these two different ways of understanding the term "magical realism". The question remains, however; are either of these definitions applicable to ATASTA?      

            The original one refers to a type of literary work which presents reality from an unusual perspective without transcending the limits of the natural, but which induces in the reader a sense of unreality. This, I must say, does not work very well on the aspect of the novel that first caught my attention to the idea that ATASTA could be a work of magical realism, namely the rain. The rain is objectively there, it transcends the limits of the natural, and is acknowledged by everyone (i.e. all the characters in the novel, as well as the narrators) as something that actually happens, it is real. Stylistically, this usage presents the natural and the ordinary as supernatural, while structurally, it excludes the supernatural as a valid interpretation. This, if not true in the case of the rain, can be applied to other "supernatural" occurrences in the text: Euchrid’s meeting with the angel can be seen as mere visions during epileptic fits, his communication with his brother in the womb as fantasy, and his communication with animals as coincidences. According to this approach, these instances could be considered as valid markers of magical realism, they are certainly presented as real in the narrative. Euchrid tells us what he has experienced, and some of it seems ‘magical’ indeed. Structurally, however, we do not need to believe that Euchrid actually met an angel, that he actually communicates with God, or that he actually spoke with his brother in the womb. These things can be explained with reference to Euchrid’s psyche. Not so with the rain, however. The rain falls more in line with the later usage of the term of magical realism.

            According to Spindler’s article "the current usage, (which) describes texts where two contrasting views of the world (one "rational" and one "magical") are presented as if they were not contradictory." This usage refers to texts where "the supernatural is presented in a matter-of-fact way. Structurally, it considers the presence of the supernatural in the text as essential for the existence of Magic Realism." This usage certainly fits in with certain aspects of ATASTA, especially the rain, and the instance where Mule seems to be dead, and Pa goes of to dig his grave, and Euchrid brings him back from the dead by "speaking" to him. This usage, I must add, is also the most fitting to One Hundred Years of Solitude, which is referred to as a canonical work of magical realism. While it seems that ATASTA is a little in both camps here ( a clearly post-modern trait, I would say), it can be argued that there is a slot in which it (partially) can be placed. In his article Spindler proposes a typology that will unify the different definitions of magical realism. He proposes three types of magical realism (Metaphysical magical realism, Anthropological magical realism, and Ontological magical realism), between which many points overlap. The mode that Spindler coins as Ontological Magic Realism is particularly interesting when it comes to ATASTA. He says:

"This type of text can be interpreted sometimes at the psychological level, and the events described seen as the product of the mind of a "disturbed" individual, as in Gogol’s "Diary of a Madman". They should be regarded as magical realism, however, for these "subjective" views are endorsed by the "objective" impersonal narrator, by other characters or by the realistic description of events that take place in a normal and plausible framework. Instead of having a subjective reality, therefore, the unreal has an objective, ontological presence in the text."

Clearly, this mode easily hooks up the instances that I have mentioned in ATASTA with magical realism. The rain, the angel, the voice of God, the communication ‘in utero’, and Euchrid’s communication with animals. The question that now remains is how to utilise this information. I will certainly look at more articles on magical realism to try to find out why this mode is used, and what it does to a text, and how it functions. This will hopefully shed a light on Nick Cave’s choice of narrative technique and his use of "supernatural" incidents.

            Another link that is interesting when it comes to the literary tradition within which this novel could be placed, is that which connects it to the work of William Faulkner. Faulkner has written several works dealing with enclosed societies in the South States, and of particular interest is his novel "The Sound and the Fury" from 1929. The novel depicts the decline of the once-aristocratic Compson family, and it is divided into four parts, each told by a different narrator. The first part is told from the point of view of Benjy Compson, a 33-year-old "retard", as he is called. Benjy is practically, if not technically, mute. His vocal cords seems to be intact, he just cannot speak. Unlike Euchrid’s, his language is fairly simple. To put it bombastically, Euchrid becomes an "idiot" (term taken from The Sound and the Fury) because he cannot speak, and Benjy cannot speak because he is an "idiot". Also, Benjy has no concept of time or place; sensory stimuli in the present bring him back to another time and place in his past.

            Needless to say, a comparison between the two mute protagonists would be very interesting indeed. The way the authors deal with the problems of having a mute narrator is certainly worthy of study. Why they chose to use mute, mentally challenged boys as narrators is a question that also deserves some attention. Is there a particular reason for depicting the imaginary  Deep South in the first half of the 20^th century through the eyes of mad mutes? I think that a comparison between The Sound and the Fury and ATASTA might be fruitful, at least in the areas of narrative technique and point of view. I am sure there is lots of secondary literature written on these subjects concerning The Sound and the Fury.