CHRONICLE THREE
THE REPORTER
We have a few old mouth-to-mouth tales; we exhume
from old trunks and boxes and drawers letters without
salutation or signature, in which men and women who
once lived and breathed are now merely initials or
nicknames out of some now incomprehensible affection
which sound to us like Sanskrit or Chocktaw; we see
dimly people, the people in whose living blood and seed
we ourselves lay dormant and waiting, in this shadowy
attenuation of time possessing now heroic proportions,
performing their acts of simple passion and simple
violence, impervious to time and inexplicable.
—William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom!