Mark Murphy is a native of Savannah, Georgia. He's worked as a fast-food worker, marine biologist, orderly, ordained minister, and gastroenterologist, his current "day job." When he's not healing the sick, he writes anything he can-newspaper columns, short stories, magazine articles, and textbook chapters.
Rose Dhu is his third novel.
At The Nerd Daily Murphy tagged seven novels in the Southern Gothic tradition that inspired hi. One entry on the list:
Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner (1936)Read about the other entries on the list.
Thomas Sutpen, a white man born into poverty in western Virginia, moves to Mississippi in the 1830s. Ruthlessly pragmatic, he wishes to riseabove his nondescript beginnings through the product of his own formula, which he terms his “design.” He builds an ostentatious plantation (Sutpen’s Hundred), takes a wife and embarks on a quest for an heir. His obsessive search for power, status and immortality, driven by pride and scarred by past humiliation, is ultimately undermined by his lack of empathy and inherent blindness to the human costs of his own design. Presented in fragmented fashion, largely through other characters’ recollections and with conflicting, sometimes unreliable narratives, this is a challenging read, but Faulkner himself said it was “the greatest novel of the 20th Century.” Many critics agree.
Absalom, Absalom! also appears Nicola DeRobertis-Theye's list of five notable novels of biographical detection, Brenda Wineapple's six favorite books list, Jacket Copy's list of sixty-one essential postmodern reads, Sarah Churchwell's list of six books on the American Deep South, and Thomas Perry's favorite books list.
--Marshal Zeringue
Posts
