Plaque honoring Faulkner character to be reinstalled on Charles River span

Thursday, July 20, 2017 - 12:22 in Paleontology & Archaeology

Not long before Quentin Compson, Class of 1913, jumped to his death from the Great Bridge on June 2, 1910, the Harvard Corporation chose crimson over magenta as the University’s official color. The trolleys were strictly local and the Red Sox were still playing at the Huntington Avenue Grounds. Had Quentin lived to graduate, he would have seen the Great Bridge become the Anderson Memorial Bridge, the Red Sox win the World Series in their inaugural season at Fenway Park, and the opening of the Red Line, named for the University’s recently designated color. Weighed down by Southern sin, the stress of saving his family’s reputation, and two flatirons tied to his feet, Quentin sank to the bottom of the Charles River. Left with a suicide note was his grandfather’s pocket watch, the glass shattered and bloody and the clock hands ripped out, an eerie expression of his resistance to the...

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