Faulkner's humor

"Absalom, Absalom!" shows how Faulkner can be really funny in his peculiar way - take the very long chapter 4 (I think) in which we learn about the friendship between Henry and Bon, which entails Bon's engagement to Henry's sister and ultimately Henry's shooting Bon to death on the eve of the intended wedding - F. has Quentin Compson's father (I think) narrate all of this to Quentin - Q., remember, had heard part of the story for Aunt Rosa, and apparently Compson senior needs to fill Q (and us) in on salient details: well, Compson narrates this in the most ornate Faulknerian prose for about 40 pages - in other words about 4 hours I would say and not a single passage in this entire narration sounds anything like what anyone in his right mind would ever actually say - it's pure writerly prose, you might say - and then, after hours of this - Q. breaks in with a word or two, something like: "Really?" - and then Compson sr. resumes. Why would Faulkner do this? Certainly not to make this chapter seem more like real dialogue - that's a lost cause by now! I think just for a kick, to make us laugh, to give the chapter a little bit of an edge. Then, there's also the dark humor that comes out of tragedy: some of F's description of life in the South and on the battlefront during the Civil War are as stark and realistic as anything you'll read, they remind me of Tolstoy in a way (though the prose is different by a mile) and they evoke pity for the South in ways I wouldn't expect - there are so many reasons to hold that society in contempt, but the suffering was real and universal (and in F much more stark and credible than in Gone with the Wind, that slice of baloney). And then the humor: one of the best scenes, recounted in a fragment (thank god) of a letter that must have been book-length! - the writer, Bon, describes capturing Union supplies, eagerly breaking into the boxes, and finding: stove polish. Who knows why? As he says: maybe there were orders to polish the stoves before burning the houses. He's using the stove polish as ink to write the letters - dark humor.