The Sound and the Fury (1929)

The first time I attempted this book, I made my way through a mere three pages before deciding it would be a waste. To date, it is the only book that I had the good sense to leave until later, as my usual response is to barrel through the pages come hell or high water. Perhaps it was a good thing that I had just finished slogging my way through a monstrous tome that left my brain incapable of facing down the beginning of Benjy's prose. I don't remember the title of whatever book left me in that state, but I do remember staring at the beginning pages of this one, my mind wandering in frozen disbelief over the contorted fragments that supposedly made up a story. So I left it until later, four years later if I remember correctly, and I'm glad that I did.

The writing in this book is notoriously difficult. Insert reference to quote from Macbeth, something something signifying nothing and all that jazz. You've heard it before, and I won't waste anyone's time reiterating it. However, now that I've finally reached the end, I can't say that I would change any part of it. Had the entire book been written in the style of the last section, largely cohesive with rare flares of descriptive prose and sudden jumps in point of view and timeline, it would not have been nearly as powerful. The story IS sound, and it IS fury, and you can't convey that without dipping the prose in that septic pool of chaotic madness. If I hadn't battled my way through Benjy, if I hadn't pulled myself inch by inch through Quentin, I wouldn't have understood the horror of Jason, or the final tragedy of the conclusion. To be frank, I wouldn't have cared.

But I did care. I did care because the haphazard mess of the beginning readied my mind for a reading that, instead of demanding a tenacious follower, asked for a bucket in which to fill errant drops. A drop of plot-line here, a drop of context there, many drops that filled in the blanks of the neurotic frenzy that is the Compson family. Nature versus nurture. Nature planted a singular seed of madness in the blood, and nurture drove each along different paths. You'll be gathering bits and pieces of this tangential story, wondering what it's all for, and then a single phrase will narrow the story to a focal point of singular rage and despair. When that happens, you'll understand what all that seemingly headless running about was for. All the disconnected hints and teases will culminate in an awful truth, and it isn't a feeling that any sort of linear timeline can convey.

For, if you read an edition that contains the foreword appendix written by the author, you'll be given that linear timeline right at the beginning. You'll know the hard, cold facts of this family long before the story begins. You'll know how they begin, and you'll know how they end, and you'll even get the major, notable events in between. You won't care about Benjy's plight, or Quentin's, or Jason's, or the whole family's, this Southern strain of blood that ends in a lost oblivion of death, bitterness, and idiocy. All you'll have is context, that collection of straightforward no-nonsense tidbits that make perfect sense and ultimately mean nothing. You can't expect them to, long before you have delved into the lives of these characters, the agonizing push and pull each one of them suffers in their respective place. You can't expect them to if you still wish to put this story in its place with each character neatly categorized and every loose end resolved in a satisfying conclusion.

This story is one involving the long slow death of lineage, the inexorable tugging and tearing of ideologies and timelines on a collection of souls that have been slung together in a collusion of familial blood and social connections. No one escapes the hell on earth that was apportioned to them, embodied in poisonous words that are fueled by a poisonous life conditioned by a poisonous world. Not even the idiot, who does not know the context and yet feels the agony, much as we the reader feel our way through the chaotic text of this story with an underlying sense of grief and despair, one that cannot be contained in a single quote, paragraph, page, or section. Not until it's much too late, and somewhere along the twisted path we lost our hearts to this tragic mess of a family that we knew was doomed from the start.

Somewhere amongst the sound and the fury that pain touched us, and the most we can do is join Benjy in the bellowing in response to that fearful anger. We know it signifies nothing. We know it does, much as anything with a beginning and an end will eventually be lost in the mists of time, and the world will roll on in ignorant bliss of its history. We know that. But it sure as hell doesn't feel that way. ( )

I struggled with this book, and though I can partially appreciate the aesthetic merits, it was not a rewarding reading experience for me. I suspect that it requires a substantially higher level of commitment, including multiple readings, to really appreciate. Many books gain additional value upon re-reading, but the barrier for entry is much higher here. The second and third reads seem almost mandatory to really appreciate the book.

The Sound and the Fury is a difficult book filled with difficult prose. The prose is not difficult without purpose. It is supposed to bring us into the heads of the characters that we are with. As such, the prose changes considerably over the various sections of the novel. At some points it is clear and readable, and at others, nearly inscrutable.

While I admire the aim, it fell flat for me. The problem was that it failed to draw me into the minds of the various characters, but instead, pushed me consistently outside of them. Around the same time I was reading this, I was teaching Hume's Enquiry, and the section on the modes of association of ideas. That is, there are certain natural ways, according to Hume, that we associate our ideas such that when we have one idea, another idea is more likely to follow. Ideally, Faulkner's prose would work in a similar way. We might be pulled along by the inertia of the associations, so that we experience the thought of the characters as we experience our own thought.

However, I can make sense of my own thought because I have a bulk of other beliefs, dispositions and contextual details available to make these associations clear. We have none of this in this novel. Indeed, much of the plot has to be constructed post facto as additional details are revealed to the reader (such as the mystery of the gender switching of Quentin early on, before we realize that there are two Quentins). This changes the prose from a reflection of a mind that we can identify with, to one that we are forced to puzzle over. I kept getting switched out into a more academic mode, trying to piece together what is happening and how that plays into the reactions of the character.

This is a novel that might reward careful academic study (as indeed it has). I am sure that I would get a great deal more out of it if I read it again (and again and again). However, as a novel read for the experience of the novel, The Sound and the Fury fell flat. It consistently forced me out of the minds of the characters in order to make sense of the prose, changing it from an evocative stream of consciousness to a nigh on inscrutable novel.

slightly incoherent but worth every word. I don't know how he does it but Faulkner creates such a beautiful and tragic world out of this seeming mess of prose. At a certain point, it all comes together and you realize that you understand exactly what and who he's talking about.
A wonderful read when it's hot outside. ( )

I had to read the first section twice to "get it," but the four narratives in this book chronicling the decay and collapse of a prominent southern family plays with time and structure in a way that creates a confuonding sense of dread. I was overwhelmed from the emotive experience of reading this book and haven't tried any Faulkner since. ( )

i'm not really sure how to review this.

certainly it isn't a pleasure to read this book, at least for most of it. it's a trial to have any idea what is happening for so long; it's the kind of book that really needs (at least for the vast majority of people) to be read in an english literature class, and with a lot of help throughout. i am not opposed to having to do a little work and to have to have extra focus and concentration when reading, but i do think that, in the end, it should be understandable. i'm not sure this qualifies. i do feel like i got a good part of this book, at least in terms of plot, but it wasn't easy. (i read the first two sections slowly and then started the book over, and the second time around understood much more. i also consulted the internet along the way the second time around, so i could see if i missed anything in what i'd just read. this helped quite a bit, even though it still seemed like there was more that i wasn't getting.) i really don't mind doing a little work, but this book seemed to require more than should be asked of readers. especially readers 70 years ago without analysis on the internet at their fingertips. i hesitate to write this, though, because i do believe strongly in a writer writing not for the benefit of their audience, but because they need to write, and because they have a story that needs to be written. or even just because they want to do it a certain way. i think, in the end, for me, it seemed like faulkner didn't 'dumb down' his writing for the general public (as i think he shouldn't), but that he might have intentionally convoluted it (as i think he also shouldn't). he apparently wrote an appendix about 15 years after publishing this book (that my edition didn't include) that explains some of the story. i don't think that a book can be legitimately called such a success when a subsequent published explanation is required of the author to elucidate the original text. frankly i'm more than a bit surprised that this was published at all in the first place. that said, i am tempted to rate this higher because of what he did manage to do for writing and for storytelling. i might not particularly like it or have enjoyed it, but what he did was important and innovative, and changed literature. so that's something. and there are passages that, when they're understood, are quite nice. but it is so hard to read this that i don't think i can rate this any higher, and even feel kind of like that half star is awfully generous of me.

i've read 3 of faulkner's books now, and have been wondering what his style is this whole time. he is so very good at writing in the voice of other people, that i don't feel like i know his voice at all. perhaps this is his major talent - writing so truly in the voice of his characters. that said, maybe, just maybe, we see his voice come out in the fourth section of this novel, the only one told in the third person. to me, this section read a lot like a play, without all of the overt stage direction. stylistically, after the struggle of the first two sections, the last two didn't ring true for me. jason's section, the third, felt like an assignment someone else was writing to give jason's perspective, while filling in as many puzzle pieces as possible that were left out from benjy and quentin's sections, the first two. and the play-like narration of the last section didn't fit in well for me, although i was glad to get the point of view it gave.

i don't know. as i write this review i realize more and more how much i wanted to appreciate this book but just didn't. i like to think of myself as a lover of literature and that includes the classics, so it's always disappointing when i don't like books that are considered so important to the literature canon. i'm sure i would have liked this book (and understood it far better) had i read it in english class, but foundationally i just don't think that's fair to require of your readers. so i guess that's it then - i wanted to like this book but mostly just didn't, and i'm kind of annoyed at faulkner.

some quotes, only one of which was pulled to show how hard it is to read this book:

"His hair was parted in the center. The part ran up into the bald spot, like a drained marsh in December."

"Hats not unbleached and not hats. In three years I can not wear a hat. I could not. Was. Will there be hats then since I was not and not Harvard then. Where the best of thought Father said clings like dead ivy vines upon old dead brick. Not Harvard then. Not to me, anyway. Again. Sadder than was. Again. Saddest of all. Again."

one of the lovely passages that on first pass i didn't really get:

"her face looked at the sky it was low so low that all smells and sounds of night seemed to have been crowded down like under a slack tent especially the honeysuckle it has got into my breathing it was on her face and throat like paint her blood pounded against my hand I was leaning on my other arm it began to jerk and jump and I had to pant to get any air at all out of that thick gray honeysuckle"

"Then Ben wailed again, hopeless and prolonged. It was nothing. Just sound. It might have been all time and injustice and sorrow become vocal for an instant by a conjunction of planets."

and i will take a love of "Caddy smelled like trees." and "honeysuckle all mixed up in it" with me as i go. although i've heard quite enough of the word "hush" to last me a lifetime. ( )