A classic dark tale from the deep south. Faulkner's technique of using the voice of a different family member (beginning with the intellectually handicapped brother) for each chapter adds a strangeness and intensity to the story.

Theoretically, my latest journey through Faulkner's southern Gothic masterpiece was a re-read. I knew I'd read it before, long ago, but I wasn't sure exactly how long ago until I riffled through it and discovered, nestled between the pages, a three-day visitor pass for the New Orleans public transportation system. I've only been to New Orleans once, which means I last read The Sound and the Fury at the tender age of fourteen, over a chilly January weekend in a hotel in the French Quarter. You have to admire my sense of effective setting. The ironwork grilles, pedestrian arcades and melancholy street performers must have made an evocative backdrop to this tale of familial disintegration in the American South.

Needless to say, however, considering my former youth and relative lack of familiarity with modernist literature, I remembered almost nothing about the novel before picking it up again this time. In fact, I remembered SO little about it that I actually made a list before I started re-reading. This is literally every single thing I could bring to mind about the novel, besides my assumption that, being Faulkner, it would be set in Mississippi:

• Four sections told from different perspectives;


• Siblings/family saga


• First section is from the perspective of the mentally retarded brother;


• Brother/sister incest (?);


• A scene where a young girl climbs a tree and a boy (her brother?) can see her underwear.

As you can see, my grasp of the finer plot points was incomplete. Although my question mark in "Brother/sister incest (?)" turned out to be surprisingly accurate, I think the last item actually conflates three different scenes, two in this book and one in Vladimir Nabokov's Ada (in which the girl in question is actually not wearing any underwear! Salacious!). And while the first three items are true as far as they go, they don't exactly add up to the most memorable reading experience.

This time around, though, I thoroughly appreciated The Sound and the Fury. Having read other Faulkner since (most recently Absalom! Absalom!), I was prepared for consistently ponderous, florid-seeming prose, but Faulkner really carries off four distinct narrative voices in his four different sections. We get Benjy's jumpy, grief-stricken stream of consciousness, in which past, present and future are compressed into a single pane of existence; Quentin's obsessive, impotent gallantry and inability to reconcile his past with his present; Jason's flinty-cold, self-justifying righteousness; and the final section, the only one told in what I think of as "Faulknerian" prose, which is told in the third person and focuses on the inexplicably faithful servants in the Compson house. In each section, the same basic story is refracted through a different sensibility, revealing a new set of separate but overlapping facets, until the reader gradually pieces together what happened to the Compson family: how they loved each other, hated each other, and tore themselves to pieces.

If we could have just done something so dreadful and Father said That's sad too, people cannot do anything that dreadful they cannot do anything very dreadful at all they cannot even remember tomorrow what seemed dreadful today and I said, You can shirk all things and he said, Ah can you. And I will look down and see my murmuring bones and the deep water like wind, like a roof of wind, and after a long time they cannot distinguish even bones upon the lonely and inviolate sand.

This is one of those books, so many of them modernist, which are sometimes charged with "ruining the literary scene" and "turning literature into an exclusionary, unreadable mess." Forget that I think such claims are a big pile of poop; I'd still like to talk about why I think Faulkner's decisions here are so effective. Because basically, my opinion is this: while the style of the novel is indeed challenging at times, it's all in the service of something that's the OPPOSITE of exclusionary. To me, The Sound and the Fury operates on the same set of audience-baiting techniques that fuel the public's perpetual interest in crime novels. As a reader, Faulkner feeds me just enough information to whet my appetite about what's happened in the Compson house, yet denies me complete understanding until the very end. This doesn't seem to me obnoxiously elitist; it seems like good, solid storytelling technique.

The Sound and the Fury takes, no doubt, more effort on the reader's part than a more standard, whodunit-style story. But there are also many more levels on which the mysteries unfold, and all of those levels are interrelated, making it also much more interesting, at least to me. A reader beginning Faulkner's novel must first ascertain what's going on with the narrating voice: being thrown into Benjy's world, which isn't separated into past, present, and future, is disconcerting, a melange of jerky transitions, italics and effects without causes. As I began to get my bearings, I realized that italicized text signaled that Benjy was beginning to experience something, a scene from the past that had been triggered in his mind by the thoughts or events just preceding in the narrative (often themselves things that happened in the past). He relives these scenes with such vivid feeling that they're indistinguishable from the present, and, as his story progresses, the implied "triggers" that cause him to transition from one scene to another provide intriguing clues about the family's past and present. Why does Benjy cry when he looks at himself in a mirror? Why does Quentin seem sometimes to be male and at other times female? Why are certain places - the basement, the tree by the window - so packed with triggers for Benjy? How did the family decide that saying a certain name is taboo? Moving from one's first impressions to the point of asking questions like these is a bit like emerging from an atmospheric fog bank, and watching the landscape take its gradual shape.

With the transitions from one section to the next, Faulkner even creates cliffhangers: at the end of Benjy's section we share Benjy's priorities, and want to learn the answers to the questions he raises. Instead, we're spirited eighteen years back in time to Quentin's narrative, which introduces us to a whole new set of obsessions and motivations. By the time we're done meandering with the morose Harvard student around the Italian slums of Boston, we feel tenderly frustrated with him, and invested in his ominous trajectory - but we're suddenly yanked back to the day before Benjy's section, where we encounter the thoroughly unpleasant Jason. Every section helps to fit more pieces into place regarding plot, causes, and effects, but the author entices his audience masterfully in the meantime, and lets us swim in the stream of each character's thoughts and associations. It's not only a beautiful example of the old writing-class chestnut "Show, don't tell," but it allows the gaps and jumps in each narrative to reveal as much as the words that surround them. The prose takes on the texture of a canyon landscape, whose real substance is contained in yawning chasms not immediately visible from the ground.

(As a side-note, the sections in the Italian slums around Boston in 1910 were particularly intriguing to me because my partner David's paternal family are Italian-Americans from the greater Boston area. His grandmother was born in 1916, but the area in which she lived would have been very similar to that around which Quentin leads the little girl he meets in the bread shop.)

My point is that Faulkner's difficult prose serves a concrete function in terms of the narrative, and I think it performs that function extremely well. The Sound and the Fury felt more taut and well-controlled to me than Absalom, Absalom!. I think the structural challenges Faulkner set himself in this novel really brought out the best in him, and made for a gorgeous and suspenseful reading experience for me.

Some books are so great -- and so complex -- that you can finish the last page, start again on page one, and it's as though you're reading an entirely new novel. The Sound the the Fury is one of those books.

Faulkner tells the story of the Compson family from the point of view of three of four siblings: Benjy, who is mentally impaired; Quentin, who has started his freshman at Harvard; and Justin, who is the bitter youngest son.

The story begins in the mind of Benjy with a first chapter that is one of the greatest virtuoso performances in the English language. It's also one of the most difficult to read. If you can make it through that, the narrative becomes increasingly easy to follow and you start to understand the dynamics of the Compson family.

If you have the patience to go back and re-read Benjy's chapter after completing The Sound and the Fury, the seemingly impenetrable shifts in time make sense and you get a much more nuanced picture of all the events detailed in the novel. Not an easy read by any measure, but a rich one if you stick with it. ( )

This is on several "OMG you must read these books before you die" lists so I decided to try it. I was not prepared for how remarkably difficult it is to follow. It is divided into four sections, the first three narrated in (unreliable) first person and the fourth in third person omniscient. The first section is narrated by Benjy, a man with severe mental retardation; next is Quentin, a neurotic with a tendency to interrupt himself mid-sentence; and finally we have Jason, an evil man with an apparent distaste for proper nouns, often going entire scenes talking about "her" without letting the reader know who "she" is. The fourth section would be a breath of fresh air, tying everything together, except it's so strangled with purple prose it's almost unbearable. To be fair, this should never have been an audiobook. Gardner is an excellent narrator, but with no way to obviously set apart the italicized sections from the rest it all becomes one big jumble, jumping back and forth through time without any indication to the reader of what's happening when. (Multiple characters sharing the same name doesn't help either.) Not that I think I would have liked this book had I experienced it in print first. The characters are despicable. The mother especially got under my skin, with her self-centered mewling about what a martyr she is. Now, just because I didn't like it doesn't mean you won't. I can see how this book would appeal to people who enjoy an extra challenge in their reading, who define "classics" as books that require multiple reads to fully understand. I actually gave some thought to rereading it, but I didn't really want to spend any more time with the Compsons than strictly necessary. In short, if you're just looking for a good story the first time around, I would strongly suggest skipping this one - or at least having a study guide close at hand while you read.

After finishing this, I read its corresponding Wikipedia entry. Though usually not a fan of spoilers, I wish I'd read this synopsis before tackling the actual text. It may have been easier to parse. ( )

probably one of my top ten favorite books. four chapters written from four perspectives, and Faulkner really nails each one. The atmospheres are completely believable, and I think it's the second (is that the one with the depressed Harvard student?) and fourth ones that really just blow my mind. Lots of rich language and interesting commentary on how the human memory/mind functions. ( )

It's becoming so clear to me now that one truly doesn't appreciate things in one's younger days. Faulkner was forced on me as a teenager, explained and dissected to the point where I was completely antagonistic towards him and his work.

At 46, I now see the wonder of Faulkner, especially this book. Language, story, characters, everything in The Sound and The Fury touches me beyond anything I've ever read. It's truly a journey and allowing myself to just fall into Faulkner's rabbit hole has been an amazing experience.

Studied at university, therefore I have very little memory of it (except it helping me get and Honours degree). Must read again. I shall do a proper review once I've done that. The first few chapters at least stay with me.

Needed explanation to tolerate first chapter, so glad I did. ( )

Do not think that you can just dip your toe in and understand what is going on here. You must dive in and just let the bits and pieces you are given slowly gel. And it will be worth the effort. The story of the Compsons is told in decreasingly confusing points-of-view, starting from the viewpoint of Benjy – the idiot. This disturbingly convoluted kickoff to the story can be off-putting. But pay attention to what is being said and how it is being said, because this section not only sets the tone for the tragedy that unfolds, but also begins the showcase of Faulkner’s writing skills. As the narrative then moves to the viewpoints of other members of the family it does not immediately mean the voyage has become easier – each family member has there own issues that are well-reflected in the style of writing. The pieces are finally brought together in the final section where we are given a servant’s-eye view of events. It is a fascinating book and worth the initial struggles you may have getting it started.

(One small note about this particular edition. Find another one. The end notes indicate this edition is produced from a copy of the first printing which “has fewer errors than the 1946 setting.” If this is fewer, I’d hate to see that original. Reading this book is enough of a challenge without trying to determine which are the typos and which are the intended spellings/etc.) ( )

This is one book where I wish I would have read the reviews before I read it. Through the entire first half of the book I was thoroughly confused and continuously contemplating putting it down. If it had been written by just about anybody else but Faulker, I probably would have ditched it. I'm glad I didn't because it all came together at the end, which was beautifully done. If you can stick with it, the pieces fall into place at the end -- but I'm giving it four stars instead of five because of the torment and frustration it put me through to get that fulfillment. ( )

http://www.fnordinc.com/2009/06-28/bo...

the sound and the fury -i picked this book up at goodwill, for a buck and change. i had heard it was good, but never got around to reading it.

turns out, it is one of the best books i have ever read.

set in a combination of locals and times, varied themes and ideals are put forward depending on which section you are reading. the story is broken into 4 parts, each part is told from the perspective of a different individual, all related in some way to the Compson family.

it mainly breaks down the destruction of a family and all they know. mentally, physically, emotionally, you watch as they self destruct.

i will not go into too much detail on the actual story as the book is 80 years old. you can find fantastic plot break downs all over the web.

————

the first section was absolutely unbearable. i almost put down the book and gave up entirely. carried out in about a hundred pages, it is told entirely from the view point of Benjy Compson.

sound/fury is presented as stream of consciousness. benjy has no internal clock. he swaps back and forth mid stream giving narrative from 4-5 different times in his life. characters are mixed around and nothing makes sense in the slightest.

…….. from there the book gets phenomenal.

luckily, were you to reread the first chapter after finishing the book, it is far more intelligible.

i highly suggest reading this book.. even if it takes you 2 weeks to make it through the first chapter as i did.. it is worth slogging through it in order to get to the next portion. the second reading makes far more sense, but would utterly fail if you skipped it and went back to it later. it sets the mood and gets your brain mixed up enough to easily assimilate the next three.

that's all i have..

mmm. good..

I could not appreciate or understand the apparent power of this novel until it was finished, or nearly so. Upon reaching the final chapter, Faulkner's long beautifully structured prose appears, and it is a marked departure from the stream-of-consciousness, fragmented sentencing that so characterizes the early chapters. It is then that his narrative and descriptive power finally, finally... finally provides the stable narrative reference point I hungered for throughout the early chapters.

It is a great tragedy that these Comptons must blunder and bluster through their lives as the family slowly falls in on itself. They seem caught in a deterministic mold, which is partially genetic, partially cultural, and mostly familial. Watching this process becomes compulsive after a while, and you keep returning to the book, despite its complexity. I am not a great fan of Faulkner, but I appreciate a finely wrought story. An innovative technique in it's time, we have become accustomed to the stream-of-consciousness style of writing and the wholesale lack of narrator intrusion that characterizes much modern literature. Nevertheless, a 21st-century reading of it - given our familiarity with Faulkner's greatness - is no less challenging. I should like to re-read The Sound and the Fury at some point.

Totally dysfunctional family.
Rantings of a madman?
Incomprehensible.
Brilliant.

You want to put it aside but can't until you have finished it.
Keeps you thinking and pondering - what's going on? ( )

This is a wonderful book that requires some patience and focus to read. But it is worth it. Ultimately it is about a family-- the good, the bad, the ugly. This may not be your family but there's something in here that everyone can relate to. There's a nice review posted already that I think would be an excellent reading guide, chapter by chapter and character by character. (I'd read the book first, and then go back and use a guide if needed). Faulkner's ability to offer the different perspectives and voices is unsurpassed and really highlights his versatility. For those who are daunted at first: the first chapter is by far the most challenging to read and decipher, it gets easier. If you are a reader who just wants to know what happens and does not revel in the language and telling of the tale itself you should not read this book. ( )

This is a very powerful book, though that is not what you think about the book as you begin reading it. In fact through the first half of the book you feel many things, not very many of those feelings are very positve. The book is broken down into 4 chapters with the first 3 chapters being narrations by the three brothers and then the final chapter being Faulkner's voice as he finishes the story that he is trying to tell.

Faulkner starts the book with Benjy narrating the first chapter in what has to be one of the most unreadable, frustrating, incomprehensible chapters ever written. Benjy is an autistic, mentally retarded son of an old southern family that has slowly faded from the grand old days of the south to near collapse. But you won't actually know that after the first chapter, in fact you won't know a whole lot about anything. As you begin the second chapter, which is wrritten by Quentin, there is still a disorganized, discombobulated structure to the narration. But as I read it, I felt a sublte difference in the second voice of Quentin and the original voice of Benjy. The second chapter is confusing also but in the first chapter, Faulkner is attacking the reader.

All readers come to a book with simple, straight forward, linear ways of percieving the novel that they are reading. Faulkner could have chosen his own voice to start the book, one that explains and gets the reader hooked into the story before introducing the narration of Benjy. But Faulkner does not do this, instead he chooses Benjy to begin the narration and as he does this he attacks the reader's perceptions and stability; he does not ask us to understand or empathize with the characters, he forces us to feel what they feel. Faulkner wants us to feel the Sound and the Fury.

Benjy does not attack the reader, Benjy just is. He has little or no logic, no real ability to think in a linear or even in an elliptical fashion for that matter, Benjy just percieves the world viscerally. He hears, he tastes, he smells, he touches, he sees and in his narration he swirls all that together and narrates it for us. But what Faulkner does is take that swirl and disorients the reader, frustrates the readers perceptions so that the reader begins to understand the Sound and the Fury that all the characters feel as they live in the midst of Sound and the Fury. We get the ability to understand, not the events that have occured to the characters in the past 33 years (or more to the point, in the past 100 years), but the result of what has happened to them for the past 33 years in a very visceral way. We end up being angry, frustrated, disoriented and dazed from reading the onslaught that is Benjy's narration. As he describes his own consternation and rage at the life he is in, we feel the Sound and the Fury ourselves because our perceptions are being attacked by the writer. As the moaning, and the wailing, and the "bellering" occurs page after page, the reader feels the overwhelming Sound of that narration. You may not understand what he is saying, but page after page you are attacked with the sound and the fury of his narration. As Benjy experiences his life, there is precious little happiness or comfort, there is only an ongoing expression of outrage and of Fury. The first time you read Benjy's chapter, there is a feeling of having been attacked, not by Benjy, but by Faulkner. He leaves you feeling the Sound and the Fury.

As the second chapter begins, Quentin's voice is also disorganized and unreadable, except that there is a subtle difference. This time reader is not being attacked, but rather we are reading the narrative of someone who has lived so long inside the Sound and the Fury that his thinking has been compromised. Quentin is not autistic, he is in fact bright and capable. And through his narrative we begin to see that the Sound and Fury is not just a crazy family, but that this crazy family is inseparable from it's legacy and history as a part of the genteel Southern ruling class of the old plantation days when their family owned slaves and ruled with impunity. That the loss of this structure has made it impossible for them to move froward but rather to slowly sink into alcoholism (the father), chronic hypochondria (the mother) and sexual addiction (the sister). The first two are not important to Quentin but his sister is his lifeline and without her he will sink. He does everything he knows to do to stop her but in the end he fails. He offers to kill her and she agrees but he can not cut her throat. He offers to committ incest (or does commit incest) with her to break the spell other men have on her, but in the end she continues on with the other men. In an effort to save his son, the father sells some of the land and sends him North to Harvard to give him a chance to escape. But without his sister he can not go on. The North and his friends and Harvard mean nothing to him. He is more foreign in that land than the immigrant Italians that he meets. When he is accused of child molestation, his friends are horrified and come to his rescue. But Quentin thinks it is funny. Everyone is acting as if the accusation that he would molest a child is a terrrible thing, but Quentin knows what terrible is. It is the Sound and the Fury that his father tried to give him a chance to escape from, but he knows he will not escape it. And as the reader we know it to. I know 7 people who have tried to read this book. Three of them have never finished it and three more of us had to try a second time in order to be able to finish it. We experienced the Sound and the Fury and quit reading the book before finishing the first chapter. Quentin did not have to just read a chapter of the Sound and the Fury, he lived it all his life and like many of us that start the book, he just did not care how it ended. He just wanted to quit also; and so he does.

The third chapter is the voice of Jason, the youngest son. The ambiguity and disorganization are gone. This is one cold hearted bastard. There is no sign of compromised thinking or morality. He is amoral, ruthless and oppurtunistic. He wants what he wants and is willing to do what it takes to get it. His hatred of Jews and Blacks is unrelenting. He is attached to his mother but this does not keep him from being repeatedly cruel to her or from hating women. But he is not just angry, he hates everyone else. Not just for what they have done to him personally either, but for what has happened to his class, the ones that owned eveything and controlled everything. He hates everything that has happened to them and to himself. His voice is the loudest and the clearest. It is also the most frightening and chilling. Jason is the embodiment of the Sound and the Fury.

The fourth chapter is the voice of Faulkner. When you read about Faulkner and his "genuis" you expect to read his book and it be a thing of beauty. And so is the fourth Chapter. He ends the story of the Compson family and then brings front and center Dilsey the Mammy that has been with the family since birth. She has done everyting she can to keep the family together and tries to keep finding a way to help the family heal from the Sound and the Fury. But she has her heart broken in the end by Jason who's cruelly runs the last of the family (Miss Quentin) away to a fate that will be the same as the other family members, "I have seen the beginning and the end". But then Faulkner ends the book with hope and seems to predict that what will bring about a new South is not the North, or government, or whitemen or women, but the new South will arise and be resurrected by Blacks that were born and raised in the South. It is Dilsey and her family that go to a "new" Easter service at the end of the book. One where the only white person there is the emasculated Benjy. Faulkner wrote this book in 1929, long before a lady by the name of Rosa Parks said, "No I won't sit in the back of the bus no more", and a black man from Georgia gave a speech that said "I have been to the Mountain Top, and I have seen the Promised Land". And the "Sound and the Fury" did not go down easily even in the 60's. But just like Faulkner said, it was a black woman named Rosa Parks and a black man named Martin Luther King Jr that brought it to it's knees and helped all of us to reach the new South where the Sound and the Fury no longer strangles us all. ( )

Earlier this year I read another one of Faulkner's Gothic Mississippian novels, As I Lay Dying. His portrayal of the South and his occasional splendidly incoherent dialogue drew me in to his works, and it was this that influenced me to read The Sound And The Fury. It follows the fall of the Compson family- an interesting cast of characters, to say the least. The first quarter of the book is narrated by Benjy, a mentally challenged man-boy who has no sense of time, something that is reflected in the way he narrates his section. Next chapter the reader hears from Quentin, his brother, who is neurotic and incapable of dealing with his sister Caddy's promiscuity. His section is even more unintelligible than Benjy's, and by the end he has deviated from any type of sentence structure or logical thought. While hard to initially comprehend, these unreliable narrators are what give the novel, and Faulkner's South, its voice and power.
In dealing with our study of cultural identity, we look at the South that Faulkner portrays. The main conflict at hand here is the old Southern code of chivalry and honor, strongly believed in by Quentin, struggling to stay important amid the new generation of southerners. The whole portrayal is tragic in its overall despair.
I would highly recommend this. The way the first half of the novel is told is nothing short of masterful, as we see the South and the fall of the Compson family through our unreliable narrators. I really enjoy books that place extra meaning in the way that they are written- like Anthony Burgess's "nadsat" language in A Clockwork Orange. Faulkner's sometimes deteriorating, sometimes utterly incoherent dialogue does this exactly in The Sound And The Fury, and is my favorite thing about this book. For anyone who can appreciate a book for not only its plot, but also the way it is written--please go read this book. ( )

Frankly, this book bored me.

I am not going to consider whether this book is well written or not here. Many have already thought this one of the best books ever. I don't doubt that, not at all, as I could identify, myself, a lot of elements in the book that would qualify it a substantial and significant work.

My comment is just this: this book requires a lot of patience and concentration to read and understand. It's appropriate, I suppose, as a piece studied by a literature course. For pleasure, leisure reading, this seemingly thin book is going to surprise a lot of people with its heaviness and thick passages that are near impossible to wade through. I only made sense out of what's going on with the aid of study guides.

It's unfortunate that I lost interests as I got deeper into the book and only skimmed through the last bit. I am also not too entirely sure with what actually happened in the book. It's interesting that the rivalry between Hemingway and Faulkner was so well documented that, upon discovering that Hemingway didn't exactly entertain me as much as it did others, when I first picked up this book I thought I was going to join the Faulkner camp. But now I find myself preferring Hemingway. Ultimately, I have to say that I think this book is out dated in this modern world, for me at least, and I prefer contemporary British writers.

To be fair, however, even though as a whole the book failed to grab my attention, there were some very touching pages in there: Quentin and the little Italian girl, Jason and Miss Quentin's exchanges... It's just a difficult book, that's all. ( )

Read this for class with, at first, a groan (Having read As I Lay Dying I wasn't ready for another Faulkner experience) I found that this book (and the class experience with it) was so much better. All the symbolism, and character intensity, caught me and held me. I needed to know what was happening to these people, which was pleasantly surprising. ( )

2d reading ( )

4 siblings, 2 stated disastrous endings (death and dismemberment) and one implied (living in Vichy France). 3 of the siblings get chapters, and the last character-driven chapter is given to Dilsey, the family's cook/nanny/all-around-help. Sister Caddy doesn't get to narrate her own perspective, as the lack of understanding of her motives is the backbone of the narratives of Jason and Quentin.

The Sound and the Fury is often described as difficult to read, because of the stream-of-consciousness format of two chapters, one being the consciousness of a character who is mentally ill (autistic?). I don't find it difficult to read; after all, isn't stream-of-consciousness meant to mirror our interior monologues? Benjy's chapter puts you in sensory touch with the landscape and characters far more powerfully than a remote third-party description. And since he ranges all over time and space (as do we all) you have some history to start with as well.

I also don't think Faulkner would have described the story as one of the decline of an aristocratic family and of the South in general. The last chapter, a recitation of the Compson family history, makes it clear that any success they enjoyed was merely temporary, and through no fault of their own.

Dilsey is an enigmatic character, if only because her chapter gives out lots of information about the other characters, but not much about herself (it's told in third-person). There is the resurrection theme (surely not about the Compsons, but there is even less evidence that it relates to the black south), and there is her palpable disinterest in her employers (Caroline she rightly treats as a child, Jason she clearly dislikes, and her treatment of Benjy and Quentin II is really only human decency, although it can seem motherly in comparison to the behavior of the actual mothers). Does she not take interest in Caddy's situation because of what she feels is the fate of the family, or because she's not about to board a boat to France, or because it's not that realistic to care about a former employer without a decent pension plan? ( )

My first impression of the book's narrative can be summarized as; (1) Everything has a smell for Benji, (2) Quienten notices his shadow, (3) Jason is angry, and (4) Dilsey sees the light. If this summary doesn't clearly communicate a story to you, welcome to The Sound And The Fury! The book doesn't tell a story. Rather it is a description of a condition from four different points of view. The condition being described is that of the corruption of Southern aristocratic values. The first three views of the four being expressed are from the perspective of the three brothers in the family. Their views are that of a southern family aware of their aristocratic past but with a present psychological condition of utter demise. The fourth view is described from the view point of an omniscient narrator describing the life of the African-American house servant and her family. This last view together with the Easter timing gives a theme of possible resurrection and renewal for the future. It's interesting to note that the family in degenerate condition is made up of descendants of the slave owning class, and the productive workers who are the hope for the future are descendants of slaves.

The very end of the book contains a clash that is symbolic of the future conflict to come as the Old South changes into the New South. Luster, the black grandson of Dilsey, is driving a horse and wagon into the town square where a marble statue of a Confederate soldier stands. Luster decides to turn toward the left. Suddenly, the youngest son, Jason, jumps up into the wagon and forces the horse to turn right instead. This disagreement between whether to turn left or right appears symbolic of disagreements over directions for the future.

Readers are likely to feel a bit lost while navigating through the interior monologs, tricks with time, jumbled narrative, play of memory, and also saga of decay and decline of a southern family. Appreciation of the book begins after the reader has finished reading the book. The fun comes from trying to put the pieces together and to begin marveling at the abundance of meanings that can be gleaned from the book. Perhaps it is a 20th Century version of Shakespeare's Macbeth. Is Benjy a Christ figure? Is there a message of resurrection and renewal? Is it only about corruption of Southern aristocratic values? Is it about false and true visions? Why does the time motif keep showing up? Is it a contrast of order and chaos? What is the meaning of the frequent references to shadows. What is the symbolic meaning of Quentin's watch? How about the role of water in the story? Or is the book a prime example of the failure of language and narrative by being itself a failure to communicate?

How do you rate the number of stars for a book that is torture to read, but a pleasure to interpret? Well, for me it's three stars. ( )

http://hansel25.livejournal.com/27489... ( )

The only book that I ever finished, and was so captured by it that I started re-reading again. An amazing work of art. Powerful, hypnotic, disturbing, marvelous. ( )

I'd not read any Faulkner prior to picking up The Sound and the Fury, and I must admit that I was a bit apprehensive about this book. But I was also looking forward to getting some Faulkner under my belt, and this was my book group's selection, so I had added incentive. The metanarrative of this book is the decline of an old southern family in a tale told by three brothers: one disabled, one suicidal, one horrible. All of the brothers are obsessed with their sister Caddy, and their three narratives explain their lives through their thoughts of and interactions with their sister. Caddy's own decline, in the form of an affair and resulting pregnancy, fundamentally shapes the life of all the family members. Each member of the Compson household is afflicted in one way or another, and these afflictions collectively bring the family into a downward tailspin. I enjoyed reading this book, though it's difficult for me to explain exactly what makes it a classic. It might be the beautiful prose, it might be the deep complexity of the story, it might be the investment the reader must make in getting through it. While I'm certainly aware of Faulkner's importance to the modernist movement and his place in the literary canon, it's something else that makes this classic literature for me. I did think that Faulkner's evocation of the New South was masterful, and for those who've not studied the history of the New South, this is an excellent snapshot. By the time I'd reached the final section of the book I wanted to devour it all in one sitting. I'll be exploring more of Faulkner's canon in the years to come. ( )

William Faulkner compels his readers to think, and sometimes to think mightily. This is one of his books that underscores mightily. The reader will be richly rewarded in availing himself of this masterpiece. ( )