The Sound and the Fury

Oct 05, 2011 Stephen rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: audiobook, classics-americas, literature, easton-press, gothic, 1900-1929

A review paying homage to BENJY COMPSON'S uniquely disorienting narration:

BENJY...narrator... lacks sense of time...merger of past and present merge...all the same...disorientation...1928...Easter... Mississippi...Compsons...aristocrat family...hard times... Benjy... mentally handicapped...33rd birthday...Luster...guardian... quarter lost... minstrel show...golf course... golf balls... memory cues... flashbacks... clothes... nail... sister... Caddy... CAAAAAADDDYY!.. 1902... flashback... argume...more

142 likes · like · see review

May 04, 2013 Aubrey rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 1001-06-12, nobel-prize-people, 1000-guardian, bring-it-on, on-hand, 5-star, reviewed, heartbreak, cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-die

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...more 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, the story 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 to fill with 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 their furthest ancestor, and you'll know their ignominious 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 concerned with 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.(less)

48 likes · like · see review

Apr 09, 2009 Bram rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2009, favorites

Whew. This is a devastating book. Probably one of the most depressing stories I've read. Incest, castration, suicide, racism, misogyny—this one has it all. Even at the beginning, when it is possible to make out only pieces of the events, a nauseating sense of dread permeates Benji’s narrative per Faulkner’s pungent writing style. And this feeling never really dissipates.

Jumping into The Sound and the Fury with no prior introduction is like driving through an impenetrable fog or into a blinding...more Whew. This is a devastating book. Probably one of the most depressing stories I've read. Incest, castration, suicide, racism, misogyny—this one has it all. Even at the beginning, when it is possible to make out only pieces of the events, a nauseating sense of dread permeates Benji’s narrative per Faulkner’s pungent writing style. And this feeling never really dissipates.

Jumping into The Sound and the Fury with no prior introduction is like driving through an impenetrable fog or into a blinding glare—you can't quite tell who is who; male or female; black or white; first, second, or third generation; relative or friend or stranger. But gradually, before frustration has a chance to set in, the fog begins to burn off and the glare becomes less direct. By the time the omniscient narrator closes things out in part four, the scales have been fully removed and you are left with a crystal limpidness in which you can smell the sweet southern honeysuckle and feel the rotting wood of the old barn.

It’s interesting to confront another modernist’s take on the human experience of time while concurrently reading In Search of Lost Time. While Proust gently but thoroughly leads us through the inner-workings of our past, present, and future, Faulkner attempts to capture the continual and forceful vying of these elements within the mind—at the intentional cost of a coherent linear narrative. The results are disorienting, yet powerfully emotive. Adding subtly to this effect, Faulkner often relays visual experience egocentrically, particularly in the case of Benji, for whom objects and views vanish before his eyes when he has simply shifted or been turned by Luster or Caddy.

Because the first section takes place on the day between the third and fourth sections, I skimmed through some of it again before reading the final part. I was surprised by what I could glean from snippets that had initially seemed inscrutable and incomplete. This is a book made for rereading; an American masterpiece, undoubtedly.

(less)

77 likes · like · see review

Mar 03, 2008 Paul rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 20th-century-american-literature, favorites

Somehow I earned a degree in English Lit w/o ever reading Faulkner. This was the first book I’ve read of his and I can’t say enough about it. This book haunts you. Here’s the thing. You know that feeling you get when you hear a song or see a face that sparks some vague memory? The memory may have been a dream, or may have been something you saw in a movie. It might well have been something that never actually happened to you, but was some fantasy you had years ago. Maybe there’s even a physical...more Somehow I earned a degree in English Lit w/o ever reading Faulkner. This was the first book I’ve read of his and I can’t say enough about it. This book haunts you. Here’s the thing. You know that feeling you get when you hear a song or see a face that sparks some vague memory? The memory may have been a dream, or may have been something you saw in a movie. It might well have been something that never actually happened to you, but was some fantasy you had years ago. Maybe there’s even a physical reaction? There is a connection, but damn it if you can put your finger on it. Still, it occupies your mind for an afternoon and inspires a train of thought you might not have had otherwise. That’s good right? Of course. That’s what you get with this book. you're trying to find that connection. Another reviewer said reading the Sound and the Fury was like trying to assemble a jigsaw puzzle with 50% of the pieces missing. I understand the point, but I don’t know if that’s exactly right. I don’t think there are any missing pieces. you just have to alter your expectation of what the completed puzzle will look like.

I've come to understand what people mean when they say "Faulkner is not just chronicling the fall of the south.” I think the more important themes here have less to do with the post-reconstruction era/turn of the century south, and more to do with a broader examination of time and history as it relates to the human/family experience. This is a book that unfolds like nothing I’ve ever read. You're sort of lost for the first 70-100 pages. Our understanding of time as a linear process will confound your experience with the first section of the book. Benjy’s narrative is difficult to be sure, but when the book is said and done, his is the most memorable and maybe the most important. In all, the book is divided into four sections with four different viewpoints. We see through Benjy the past, present, and future existing on a plane rather than a line; Quinton's inability to accept time’s passing at all and his longing for the past (a past he was not necessarily a part of); Jason living only in the present and obsessing over an up to the minute existence; and finally Dilsey who seems the only member of the household with the ability to absorb the past as a part of the here and now, and lives without fear the future. This theme is explored through style. The book is filled with sentences that have no beginning or end, some tete-a-tete with no indication given as to who’s speaking, and all throughout the punctuation isn't exactly wrong, but it certainly isn't correct. Lots of flashbacks, shifts in perspective, and often pages and pages with few if any paragraph breaks. Each character’s perception of time is understood through Faulkner’s experiment with language. It’s like reading a dream. The idea is to pull together all these moments, images, and broken bits of dialogue in order to get to the heart of that feeling I was talking about earlier. “where did this come from? why am I thinking about this? When will I be able to pull it together and figure it out?” you might not get there but it’s heartening to try.

5 stars, A+, thumbs up... all that shit. read this book.
(less)

35 likes · like · see review

Jan 29, 2013 Lou rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: re-read-list, classics, best-reads

The Compson family, Benji a man of innocence has kin of ignorance and self-centeredness,
they will have terrible awakenings in this story
this family tragedy of an American household,
the fall of the Compsons during the era of the 1910-1930's.
This novel was published in a turbulent time when America was going through some changes in October 1929 the month and year of the Great Stock Market Crash.

William Faulkner uses an unconventional way to tell this tale of his that has some truth in that ther...more

20 likes · like · see review

Dec 26, 2012 Mariel rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Jesus saves

Recommended to Mariel by: my mother, though I found out many years later she never read it

I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire. I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all your breath trying to conquer it. Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools…Like Father said down the long and lonely light-rays you might see Jesus Christ walking, like. And the good St Francis t

...more

I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire. I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all your breath trying to conquer it. Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools…Like Father said down the long and lonely light-rays you might see Jesus Christ walking, like. And the good St Francis that said Little Sister Death, that never had a sister.

Have you ever had a sister?

The three Compson brothers are obsessed with theirs, Caddy. She belongs to them in The Sound and the Fury. We never meet her as her own Caddy. The door is closed to her and their feet are slammed in its shut-up memory. Darkened doors, blind soul windows and shapes bent out of their shapes. Benjy moans all of the time when that time is before, when Caddy was gone, and now when Caddy is gone. He cries, his eyes go pale blue like he was a babe again and he smells trees. He smells where they have been. Caddy smells like trees. Caddy climbs trees and Caddy is fearless. Caddy doesn't care if you see and she doesn't care what they think, then. The golfers are on his favorite pasture that the father sold to raise the money to send brother Quentin to Harvard. Benjy waits to hear them call "Caddy!" and he cries and he waits. Today his mother will not allow her daughter's name spoken. He hears her name spoken but it isn't spoken for her, the same way that she spoke for Benjy by intuiting what it is that he wanted. He doesn't speak for himself. He doesn't hear himself cry. He is always crying. He Quentin killed himself. It was a wordless act of I can't have you, no one can. It was as loud and as wordless as Benjy's cries for his sister. Brother Quentin never joins Caddy wherever she is. We don't see where Caddy is. She lurks outside of their memory, the door never opening. She gives them money. The money burns on a wick her mother lights and never warms them. The money is extorted and hides as a secret behind brother Jason's door. Her Quentin doesn't get a dime of her sister's money until she goes behind that door and grave robs the money. That was going to be Jason's life, borrowed on his that he never lived. He didn't get the bank job he wouldn't have had if Caddy hadn't married the guy who kicked her and baby to curb. She doesn't take anything else. Girl Quentin doesn't take anything else. Her lip quivers the same as her mother's did, in helpless anger, when she can't say anything in the face of Jason's this is how it is going to be. I felt that helpless anger when faced with Jason. The standardized test version of society. Jason is the cold and mean answer to everything. I'm talking to you. Didn't you go to school today? Good girls don't... Benjy doesn't have his own words. Caddy's words for him made me sad. If she already knew what he wanted was she listening to him? I wonder if she wouldn't be used to his crying the way that he was used to his own crying. We hear Benjy wailing when it isn't Benjy. Caddy has less of a voice than Benjy. Brother Quentin wants to take away what was there and replace it with something else. Honor and virginity are just words to me, too. I wish I could take all of the people who are born in the wrong place and put them somewhere they can be quiet enough to hear their own crying, if there can't be a place where a Jason can decide you can't have sex if you want to, or you have to go to school if you don't want to. I was sad that they sold Benjy's pasture to pay for Quentin to go to Harvard. I've been fixated for a long time on a "Save yourself" side of trouble families. My grandmother had a sister who did that. No one knows what happened to her because they never heard from her again. Their mother, Caroline, wanted to "Save" Jason for HER side of the family. What little Benjy had was sold to "Save" Quentin. Quentin didn't want to save Caddy. If he did he would have seen her again after the family cast her off. He would have at least talked to her. He wants to borrow from her to pay for a vision of the past. She named her daughter after him. I guess she wanted to do the same, or she just hoped for something they once had. Probably on a day she smelled like trees. Daughter Quentin takes the money, that Jason was saving to "save himself". What does she do with it? Does she follow the red tie, does she feel the pulse as her mother did when she was just thinking about Dalton? Dalton she had to give up to appease Brother Quentin. What did he ever do for her? Caddy was a little girl with muddy drawers because she didn't care what anyone said or thought. I guess the dirty underpants were symbolic of a fallen woman. I don't care about that. I wish that if they were family they would have at least listened to each other. Not think about "saving" one person away from the rest of them. What good does that do? I wish I could take all of the people away from "save yourself" situations and just love them. Caddy did that, though. I don't know if she ever loved Jason (poor Jason, no one ever loved him. His mother only wanted to see herself) but she did love brother and daughter Quentin and her poor brother Benjy. Benjy didn't know how to love only to hope for someone to talk for him. We start out wanting love, when we are babies. Benjy ends with baby eyes. He's always starting and ending at the same time. Chasing girls who looked like Caddy by the school gate. They castrated him. I don't even know what to hope for that. It seems like everything you could do there would be wrong. I don't want to take anyone away from anything if that means you are Caddy playing house and playing in charge and speaking for Benjy. (It is terrifying. Autistic kids aren't covered by their parents insurance after the age of nine. "Regular" kids who don't go to college are covered until they are twenty-one or twenty-two. Jesus.)
Does Daughter Quentin love or is her lip going to quiver in the face of standardized test answers in the doors of everyone else? What do you do to stop beginning and starting at the same time? Go look for Caddy and ask her and listen to her when she has something to say. I'm giving up on Brother Quentin because he gave up. Girl Quentin... did she save herself? I don't want to know any more Jasons. I'm afraid they win. I should have had, me, me, me.

I’ve got to marry somebody Versh told me about a man mutilated himself. He went into the woods and did it with a razor, sitting in a ditch…But that’s not it. It’s not not having them. It’s never to have had them then I could say O That That’s Chinese I don’t know Chinese. And father said it’s because you are a virgin: don’t you see? It’s nature is hurting you not Caddy and I said That’s just words and he said So is virginity and I said you don’t know. You can’t know and he said Yes. On the instant when we come to realise that tragedy is second-hand.

Where the shadow of the bridge fell I could see down for a long way, but not as far as the bottom.

I loved this book because I felt helpess in a world with all the answers already supplied for you. I felt hopeless with them that would throw Caddy away because they couldn't ask her who she really was. I loved it because I knew something important about her already. I knew that she had a big old heart and I don't care what her undewear looks like. I don't care what she smells like. I wish that someone had told her she wasn't crazy and could have at least loved her daughter. No one else did. I cared about them and it means a lot to me to have that. But screw Quentin and Jason. And Caroline. Those are cold ass people. Why are they like that? Because they never shut up and let a person speak. The book is frustrating because they are the ones with voices or crowding out other people's voices. My lip is quivering.(less)

18 likes · like · see review

Feb 12, 2013 Ginny rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: romanzi

Campo di grano con volo di corvi

description

Mi è sempre piaciuto associare la lettura del momento ad un'opera figurativa o ad un brano musicale, per individuare corrispondenze espressive o analogie nell'impatto emozionale.
Naturalmente lo faccio da profana, seguendo criteri istintivi e del tutto personali, sia nella scelta dei parallelismi, sia nelle conclusioni che traggo.
Ritengo tuttavia che chiunque abbia letto L'urlo e il furore non possa che essere d'accordo nel rilevare una marcata analogia tra le tema...more

12 likes · like · see review

Jan 06, 2008 Ryan rated it 2 of 5 stars Recommends it for: The autisic and those who want to prove their literary chops.

Recommended to Ryan by: Random House Top 100 Novels list

The first thing that comes to mind in regard to ¨The Sound and the Fury¨ is Eliot´s ¨a heap of broken images.¨ Deciphering TSTF is like reassembling a shattered mirror; difficult, and likely to end in pain.

On the other hand, it´s hard to deny that it´s a great book, if only from the standpoint of workmanship. The skill it took to create this piece, composed of so many seperate perspectives, confined to such a narrow and specific moments of time, makes me think of interlocking puzzles carved from...more The first thing that comes to mind in regard to ¨The Sound and the Fury¨ is Eliot´s ¨a heap of broken images.¨ Deciphering TSTF is like reassembling a shattered mirror; difficult, and likely to end in pain.

On the other hand, it´s hard to deny that it´s a great book, if only from the standpoint of workmanship. The skill it took to create this piece, composed of so many seperate perspectives, confined to such a narrow and specific moments of time, makes me think of interlocking puzzles carved from a single piece of wood or stone. Whether you like it or not, you have to admire the workmanship.

That being said, I believe that this book is so highly regarded for exactly the qualities that make it inaccessible to the majority of readers. If you have the patience to finish it, and the tools to decipher it, you become one of the select few, the literati elite. It´s regarded because it excludes. Unfortunately, many lovers of literature want writing to need decoding; they want layers of meaning inaccessible to the uninitiated. I am not one of those readers.

After all, once you do decode the book, once you´ve assembled the shattered mirror, is the image you see there really that unique or fascinating? I admit that I do have a certain sympathy for the characters in TSTF; I believe them. They feel real for me. However, it´s hard not to care about the characters after you´ve worked so hard to understand exactly what the hell is going on with them. You´ve already invested so much time with them that they´re practically family. It vaguely smacks of manipulation for an author to use such a device to get his readers invested with his characters.

Finally, I guess that my issue is not with Faulkner, a master of his craft who managed what is nearly impossible, to do some thing new in the field of writing. My issue is with the literature community, who chose to so highly esteem such a difficult nut to crack.

The Sound and the Fury; a masterpiece of form, and one of the most inaccessible books I´ve ever picked up. Again, it´s hard to argue with the quality of the book; I would recommend the book to very few readers, but I´ve still been moved to write a couple of hundred words about it.(less)

61 likes · like · see review

Feb 12, 2013 Ginny rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: riletti

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Campo di grano con volo di corvi

description

Mi è sempre piaciuto associare la lettura del momento ad un'opera figurativa o ad un brano musicale, per individuare corrispondenze espressive o analogie nell'impatto emozionale.
Naturalmente lo faccio da profana, seguendo criteri istintivi e del tutto personali, sia nella scelta dei parallelismi, sia nelle conclusioni che traggo.
Ritengo tuttavia che chiunque abbia letto L'urlo e il furore non possa che essere d'accordo nel rilevare una marcata analogia tra le tema...more

8 likes · like · see review

Mar 31, 2007 Jeffrey rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Those Interested in the American Experience

Shelves: favorites

While everyone salivates (rightfully so) over The Great Gatsby , William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury languishes as the stepchild of United States literature-it is there, but it is not heard. Faulkner's odd story of The Compson Family, an detailed, troubling, and honest allegorical representation of the American South, is a stew of styles and tones that change as rapidly at the South. The story, told from four distinct points of view, remains not only the most deftly written piece of Ame...more

18 likes · like · see review

Dec 13, 2012 Emilian Kasemi rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: heavyweights, favorites, read-and-reread

“Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”

― William Shakespeare, Macbeth.

16 likes · like · see review

Aug 14, 2012 Bettie marked it as off-tbr-and-into-wpb

Review for Celebrity Death Match only

I have a helluva headache, you carry on.

Win for The Sound and the Fury

6 likes · like · see review

Aug 16, 2010 K.D. Oliveros rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: No one (none of my friends would appreciate this I guess)

Recommended to K.D. by: 500 Must Read Books; Oprah Books List; 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die (2006)

Shelves: 1001-core

Jefferson, Mississippi 1910-1928. This is a story of an American family's economic and social status' decline and fall. The Compson family used to be rich right after the Civil War but due to alcoholism (Mr. Compson), hypochondria (Mrs. Caroline Compson), suicide (the eldest son Quentin), promiscuity (the only daughter Candance or Caddy), greed (the second son Jason) and idiocy (the youngest son Maury, Benjamin, Benjy), the family got disbanded by death and separation.

This is the hardest book I...more

12 likes · like · see review

Dec 27, 2008 Jeanette rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: started-it-hated-it

Okay, here I go with another one of my dissenting viewpoints. This was my first attempt at reading Faulkner, and I assure you it will be my last.

I don't know how this pile of crap ever got published, let alone became a classic! It's absolutely unreadable! Pure upchuck in print. (As always, just my opinion, so don't be offended if you like the book.)

25 likes · like · see review

Jul 23, 2011 Steve rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: The Easily Distracted

Shelves: fiction, 2d-readings-the-good-stuff

Not my favorite Faulkner. The Benjy part, which is difficult, can be magical, if you figure out the various time shifts (I did this time around). It's the kind of book (see Finnegan's Wake) that makes you want to grab something cheap and trashy to read ASAP, in order to remind yourself that it is OK to enjoy reading.

10 likes · like · see review

Jan 10, 2012 Brad rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: faves, classic, lost-reviews

This review was written in the late nineties (for my eyes only), and it was buried in amongst my things until recently when I uncovered the journal in which it was written. I have transcribed it verbatim from all those years ago (although square brackets may indicate some additional information for the sake of readability or some sort of commentary from now). This is one of my lost reviews.

This is a mesmerizing display of authorship. Every one of the four parts is powerful in its own right. Benj...more

8 likes · like · see review

Jul 05, 2008 Judy Vasseur rated it 5 of 5 stars

"A house divided...."
self-absorption, alcoholism, hypochondria, unwed-motherhood, sarcasm, cruelty, suicide....a perfectly average family! You might recognize some behaviors! ....oh and did I mention castration?

Faulkner used the Compson family tragedies to illustrate what happened to wealthy, notable southern families following the Civil War. there is lengthy discourse and focus on racism. Also, misogyny.

I purchased this book used from Housing Works book store in NYC which benefits homeless men...more "A house divided...."
self-absorption, alcoholism, hypochondria, unwed-motherhood, sarcasm, cruelty, suicide....a perfectly average family! You might recognize some behaviors! ....oh and did I mention castration?

Faulkner used the Compson family tragedies to illustrate what happened to wealthy, notable southern families following the Civil War. there is lengthy discourse and focus on racism. Also, misogyny.

I purchased this book used from Housing Works book store in NYC which benefits homeless men with Aides. I'm glad I got it used because whoever owned it previously wrote very helpful notes in the margins.

Some sections are extremely opaque. With some research and patience I realized what was going on, it is something of a puzzle to interpret. This novel was radical when it came out, with its switching narrations and time changes. It allows the reader to look at a situation from different perspectives, so there are different versions of reality.

This book opens with a confusing narration coming from the mind of the autistic/mentally handicapped manchild Maury/Benjamin. He jumps back and forth through three different time periods. Benjy's moaning, weeping, bellowing comes from a place of instinctual awareness of the cruelties and sadness going on around him. It is his only means of expression and it is deeply existential. He is aware of sensations but not a slave to time. He "smells" death in the house and recognizes sickness ( smell of camphor ) on the wet towel laid on his mother's forehead. He thinks "Caddy smells like trees"

"blue gums": Someone with bluish gums whose bite is supposed to be poisonous, also, African people with very dark skin supposedly have bluish black gums.

The following chapters are written from the perspective of the two other brothers of the southern family which over the years falls into ruin and misfortune, loosing their land to a golf course among other worse tragedies.

there's some comic narration when Jason Jr.'s sarcasm and fatalism get extreme: he gets a pounding headache caused by smelling gasoline, has a flat tire, gets torn by thorns, has the sun shining straight into his eyes and puts his hand on some poison oak.

There is hope in the family caretaker Dilsey who nursed all the children, cooked all the meals, etc and is the only one, along with Benjy, to escape the trap of time with her Christianity, belief in the eternal, and ability to love. Benjy finds peace only during the church service on Easter Sunday, the day following his 33 birthday—which lead some to call him a Christ-figure in the novel. (less)

9 likes · like · see review

Mar 16, 2007 Ben rated it 5 of 5 stars

The breaking of many conventions of writing can quickly become passé and merely distracting. Others cause the uninitiated reader a healthy dose of frustration. When you have to read a work like The Sound & the Fury for a class, the frustration may not easily be overcome: Faulkner narrates the story of a family in turn-of-the-century northern Mississippi (or "Missippi," as many, including the state's current governor, call it) through the eyes of its sons and its female house servant. Said di...more The breaking of many conventions of writing can quickly become passé and merely distracting. Others cause the uninitiated reader a healthy dose of frustration. When you have to read a work like The Sound & the Fury for a class, the frustration may not easily be overcome: Faulkner narrates the story of a family in turn-of-the-century northern Mississippi (or "Missippi," as many, including the state's current governor, call it) through the eyes of its sons and its female house servant. Said difficulties surface on the first page, since Faulkner tells the first section of the story with the thoughts (thankfully not the thoughts others hear) of the grown, but mentally retarded Benjy. The first line, "through the curled flower spaces I could see them hitting," provides a foil to American Literature's more famous first line, "call me Ishmael." [Book: Moby Dick]'s first line, if you stop there for a moment, conjures up a lot of description without saying it, in simple language. The childlike Benjy, paradoxically, provides very little in very difficult language.

But it's all for a reason. The more the reader works at slogging through the language until she can "get it," the more rewarding this, as with most of Faulkner's work, becomes. The second section provides a change, though no relief, in language, tone, and themes. While Benjy's section displays displaced innocence, Quentin's displays the innocence of his life that he rejects for the more mature brokenness that comes with experience in knowledge. In either case, both characters prove unable to cope.

Oh, yeah, and the narrative is not temporally linear either.

So why in the world would I love this book like I do? Well, I was born in Missippi and my family hails from there, so Faulkner's imagery of the natural really sticks with me. As stated before, the confusing language actually results in increased clarity as to what's happening the characters' minds. As the text reveals, surprisingly little actually occurs in the book that would sustain most readers' attention. But several events are referenced many times and color the characters'/narrators' view of the world they live in, in a way that lends this events otherwise rendered prosaic in a traditional narrative ("his sister Candace slept with the big university boy she had met. Quentin was so mad" - doesn't quite have the same effect....).

We all blow things out of proportion and perceive events and people as occurring or living in a world that doesn't exist. Here's what you get when an author puts that phenomenon into print.(less)

9 likes · like · see review

May 29, 2012 aPriL MEOWS often with scratching rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, literary, read-a-second-time

This is a grand book which I'm rating five stars because it is an amazing experiment by an author desiring to push the boundaries of writing. Faulkner played with all the elements of writing a novel: first, Time, second, construction (beginning, middle, end), punctuation in making a readable sentence, and character point of view (3 and a half). On consideration of the experimentation only, this book is worth reading. The author must have had as much fun meeting the challenge creatively as I do i...more This is a grand book which I'm rating five stars because it is an amazing experiment by an author desiring to push the boundaries of writing. Faulkner played with all the elements of writing a novel: first, Time, second, construction (beginning, middle, end), punctuation in making a readable sentence, and character point of view (3 and a half). On consideration of the experimentation only, this book is worth reading. The author must have had as much fun meeting the challenge creatively as I do in knitting an intricate pattern.

What is wrong with the literary genre today is the cookie cutter product that is published. I suspect it's a combination of the current MFA programs, the New Yorker Magazine, the Pulitzer and Nobel Prize committees, the 'independent' bookstores, the focus within the genre for mining 'The Iliad and The Odyssey' endlessly as a symbolic palimpsest for every official literary product currently published. It's induced a sterility. I wish they would open up the genre to literary science fiction, chick-lit, mystery, horror, military, etc. 'American Gods' certainly was a genre-opening literary blockbuster that was almost unconsidered by the official Literature canon mavens.

That said, while 'The Sound and The Fury' is a noble and interesting book, it is a failure as a novel. The author had to publish explanatory Forewords and an Appendix to explain the plot. The experimental writing disconnects the reader from entering the story and caring about the outcomes. However, nonetheless it still has the power to shock. Faulkner maintains the gothic elements of an American South novel, which hold up. I had to read it twice and I finally liked it, but I enjoyed it for the experimentation rather than the plot.

For the record, I hated Jason, loved Caddie, despised the parents, was frustrated by Quentin the son and Quentin the daughter, who you can see are going to drown in living their lives, because they are making bad choices, and was jarred by the southern speech mannerisms and prejudices, and shook my head over the usual petty cruelties inflicted by people everywhere for the usual reasons.(less)

3 likes · like · see review

Apr 27, 2012 CandyStripedBlue rated it 5 of 5 stars

At some point I'll have to rework this review into the more organized, less discursive version that this both famous and famously difficult Modern classic deserves. I can’t resist, however, devoting at least a few scattered thoughts to such a strange and uniquely-composed novel: a novel at once brimming with such profound and tender intricacy, replete with all its sad, decadent beauty, all of its disastrous and mutually agonizing character relationships -- all of which is slowly and subtly revea...more

4 likes · like · see review

Nov 14, 2011 Stephanie Sun rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: dead-tree, yummy-broccoli, desert-island, friendcommendations, will-make-you-want-bourbon, reread-in-2014

Faulkner stretches the formal conventions of the novel until the key tools of the realism box, such as dialogue, plot, and scene, are barely recognizable in The Sound and the Fury. Faulkner chooses impressionistic symbolism and innuendo over clear exposition nearly every time. However, there is one storytelling fundamental he never forgets: character.

Somehow, from wistful recollections of honeysuckle, the buffering chatter of 3 generations of black caretakers, and half-read telegrams jammed in p...more Faulkner stretches the formal conventions of the novel until the key tools of the realism box, such as dialogue, plot, and scene, are barely recognizable in The Sound and the Fury. Faulkner chooses impressionistic symbolism and innuendo over clear exposition nearly every time. However, there is one storytelling fundamental he never forgets: character.

Somehow, from wistful recollections of honeysuckle, the buffering chatter of 3 generations of black caretakers, and half-read telegrams jammed in pockets, Faulkner masterfully constructs three-dimensional characters and relationships whose bitterness, betrayal, blood allegiance, hypocrisy, destructiveness, and heartbreak poetically distill the brutalities and proud beauty of the American South in the early 20th century.

Only when I finished the entire book did I fully appreciate The Sound and the Fury’s brilliant construction. It is, itself, a collapsing patriarchal dynasty. Three first-person chapters, each told by one of Jason and Caroline Compson’s 3 sons, from eldest to youngest. After the claustrophobic half-sentience and impotence of Benjy in Chapter 1, we turn gratefully to the erudite and sensitive perspective of Quentin, the middle son at Harvard, in Chapter 2. Once Quentin betrays with his fragile spirit and unwieldy idealism, Jason (Jr.)’s practicality and straight-shooting tough love (Chapter 3) at first seem to us every bit the saving grace that Caroline believes her youngest son to be. However, Jason — too — falls short before his chapter is up.

In Chapter 4, The Sound and the Fury's final chapter, it’s Easter Sunday of 1928, and Jesus seems to be the only one around with a clear path to redemption. However, Faulkner’s expansion (emancipation, if you will) of the perspective from first- to third-person succeeds in showing the greater progress that has been gained by society as a whole by the degradation of the strictures which had protected the Compsons’ status and comforts in the past. Faulkner breaks our hearts and then lets them soar.(less)

4 likes · like · see review

Sep 04, 2012 J.S.A. Lowe rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I am not one of those women who can stand things.

Rereading this for class on Tuesday and I'm STILL mad at Faulkner for putting Dilsey in such a removed third person.

ETA: Okay, read the second half of the book, all the supplementary essays, for the first time and boy howdy are THEY ridiculous, and repetitive (except for the Sartre one, which is pretty good—apparently, because all the other critics keep quoting it) (though J-P does have to work in his plug for existentialist glory at the end, tire...more

4 likes · like · see review

Feb 10, 2013 Jason Koivu rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, favorites

Images...I see them. They are beautiful, but I...The images...There goes someone. What is she doing?...Those images, what do they mean?...There she goes again...

And then, as if you weren't confused enough, in the second section of The Sound and the Fury, the narration is taken over by Quentin, a quick-witted, but nearly no more reliable a narrator than before. He is the somewhat confused but chivalrous Harvard-educated brother, who clings to Southern ideals. He is so passionate about his fight t...more

16 likes · like · see review

Aug 22, 2008 Jason Pettus rated it 3 of 5 stars

(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted here illegally. Sorry -- because of Goodreads' word-count limitations, the last paragraph today got cut off!)

The CCLaP 100: In which I read for the first time a hundred so-called "classics," then write reports on whether or not they deserve the label

Book #22: The Sound and the Fury, by William Faulkner (1929)

The stor...more

20 likes · like · see review

Jun 18, 2008 Kristopher Jansma rated it 4 of 5 stars

by William Faulkner

So let me begin with a note here - I'm currently on a two-week vacation in the Florida Keys, on a chartered catamaran, doing some snorkeling and writing and research for another book. But there's an awful lot of down-time, so I've been doing an awful lot of reading, and so I'm hoping that in the next few days I can make up for the brief lull in posts on this site over the past month.

So let's begin with the book I read on the flight down - a little light airplane reading, proba...more by William Faulkner

So let me begin with a note here - I'm currently on a two-week vacation in the Florida Keys, on a chartered catamaran, doing some snorkeling and writing and research for another book. But there's an awful lot of down-time, so I've been doing an awful lot of reading, and so I'm hoping that in the next few days I can make up for the brief lull in posts on this site over the past month.

So let's begin with the book I read on the flight down - a little light airplane reading, probably one of the top three most confusing books I've ever read.

My inclination to try to re-read The Sound and The Fury came while finishing Cloud Atlas. During the "Sloosha's Crossing" episode, I was amazed at how smoothly I was able to read the choppy English of the narrator and it reminded me of Faulkner somehow. I tried to read Sound for the first time in college, during a graduate class with John Irwin (who has an essay in the back of the Norton edition, how cool is that?) and all I remember was showing up on the first day and realizing that we'd been expected to read prior to the class beginning, so I was already behind. Irwin's lecture was mind-bogglingly amazing, as all his lectures for that class were (Faulkner, Fitzgerald and Hemingway) and so when I got home I cracked open the book and immediately began to read. Unfortunately I couldn't understand a word of it, even after he'd thoroughly explained the story and the chronology and the characters in class. Soon I gave up and started reading A Light in August which was due for the following week.

So, The Sound and the Fury round two. After 5 years and another degree, does it make any more sense?

Yes, yes it does! I still had to look in the back at the chronology, and I still had to puzzle through, but I made it through the first two sections in a few hours while waiting for my flight to arrive. Unfortunately I got stalled again after boarding the flight, which will forever after be known as The Flight of Obnoxious Kids and Screaming Babies. I gave up during the third section and flipped ahead to the essays in the back, which were a little easier to digest while distracted.

The Irwin essay was just as good as I remembered, and brought back a lot of things from his lectures that I'd thought I'd forgotten (somewhere I still have my notebook from that class...) But the essay that really caught me this time was by Sartre. As you may remember from earlier posts, I'm not all that impressed by JP's attempts at fiction, but if it's bleak philosophy you want, he's a good man to try. Sartre examines the messy chronology of The Sound and the Fury. He argues that the way to read it is not to try and separate the confusing muddle of perspectives or reorder the jumble of time, but to embrace the disorganized flow and see that Faulkner is trying to show us that reality is not about what's happened in the past but an ever-unfolding series of presents. What happened in the past is relevant as it shapes our every present moment, but no more real in and of itself than the future that hasn't happened yet. Sartre goes on about this at great length, explaining much better than I can here, but concludes by saying that while he admires Faulkner's attempts, he does not agree that all of this temporal shuffling exposes the essential absurdity of human life. Sartre still seems to think life is absurd, just not because of this. Anyway.

The last little tidbit that I got out of the back was something that came up in several of Faulkner's letters and interviews. Apparently he wrote the various sections thinking he could tell this as a short story. First he tried Benjy's point of view, but it didn't get the whole thing somehow. So he tried again from Quentin's and still felt like it was missing. So he tried writing it from his own voice and still felt like it wasn't quite there. In the end it was only the sum-total of all these short stories that finally got around the heart of the matter. I don't know if it quite justifies the difficulty, but it certainly does help me understand why he'd try and write something like this.

Anyway, maybe in five years I'll try a third time, when I'm not on a plane, and manage to get all the way through it.(less)

6 likes · like · see review

Jun 01, 2007 Jack rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: masochistic literary nuts, and those who ascribe to become one

Shelves: jackrecommends, reallygoodstuff

Faulkner’s “The Sound and the Fury” infuriated me. In my youth, I tried his “Light in August” and gave up after about fifty pages – just too difficult. “The Sound” makes “Light” seem like a first grade reader. Some maturity in hand, I took the Faulkner challenge once more.

In what many consider a classic and a masterpiece, Faulkner blazes away with, not just stream of consciousness, but with multiple first-person narrations by multiple characters, all with some serious problems including their...more

7 likes · like · see review

Apr 29, 2012 ميّ أحمد rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: روايات

لقراءة هذه الرواية يجب أن تقرأ مقدمة الرواية التي كتبت بيد المترجم حتى تستطيع أن تجاري الكاتب فوكنر التي كتبها بطريقة مختلفة نظرا لطبيعة الشخصية التي بدأ بها دفعني الأمر للتساؤل ما ضرّ فوكنر لو لم يبدأ بفصل بنجامين فلا أدري كيف يمكن أن يضمن الكاتب أن القارىء بإمكانه أن يقرأ مئة صفحة دون أن يعي
ماذا يقرأ
يبدو الأمر كأن الكاتب ترك حروفه كلعبة البازل وتصبح مهمة التركيب عليك
يبدأ الأمر بصعوبة ثم تتضح معالم الصورة شيئا فشيئا
هكذا كان لولا مقدمة الرواية التي توضحت فيها الأمور والتي لا أجزم أبدا
إنها ل...more

10 likes · like · see review

Jun 25, 2007 Kelly rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, truly-dreadful, 20th-century-early-to-mid

I have only memories of a high school English class to go off of here, where I wasn't a huge fan. This book did have to compete against Love in the Time of Cholera, Portrait of the Artist and Hamlet, so. Do not trust my starring! To be revisited at some point.

3 likes · like · see review

May 11, 2011 Joy Gerbode rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I really didnt like this book ... for several reasons. First, it was very hard to read, because of the disjointed way it was written. This made it a real challenge to figure out what was going on as I read, and I prefer to read a story for enjoyment. Second, it was basically the story of the moral deterioration of an American family, and in the end, left very little hope for any kind of enjoyable future for any of them. In this it was a totally depressing book. I've said before, I can live witho...more

1 like · like · see review

May 17, 2011 Chris rated it 4 of 5 stars

I don't remember much, other than that the writing itself was like a crushing hangover after a fireside encounter between head and table brought about by an excessive consumption of Singapore Slings. Benjy cried, an awful fucking lot, and didn't make a lick of sense when he wasn't bawling. Written from the perspective of the retarded, which isn't actually a skip through the park. There was a ditzy, cuddling, consoling bit o' crumpet who kept flashing knickers long overdue for a date with some so...more I don't remember much, other than that the writing itself was like a crushing hangover after a fireside encounter between head and table brought about by an excessive consumption of Singapore Slings. Benjy cried, an awful fucking lot, and didn't make a lick of sense when he wasn't bawling. Written from the perspective of the retarded, which isn't actually a skip through the park. There was a ditzy, cuddling, consoling bit o' crumpet who kept flashing knickers long overdue for a date with some soap and water, and might have slept with her brother. Nasty business. One of the brothers moped and shuffled about, watching boats floating and gargling rocks and obsessing over a bridge and then snuffing his own candle, if you can believe it. He might have had at his sister, but maybe not. The misty wafts of bourbon angst cleared a bit with another brother who actually had a bit of get-up-and-go, a spring to his step, even if everything he did seemed to be in the service of assholery, southern-style. Called black folks niggers more than seemed decent or necessary, but wound up getting bested by the latter, which couldn't have helped but to piss him off even more. Looked good on him. Seemed to be a dink to his sister, who wasn't very happy. She might have been preggers without a ring on her finger, and, frankly, that just didn't cut the mustard back in the day. Hitched up his pants and drove about somewhat, but grumped and groused and generally brought a pervasive sense of that annoying prick who's always glancing at his watch and kicking at the floor and muttering for fuck's sakes under his breath in the queue for the lone teller wicket open at the bank. I don't think this one ended in any manner that could be described as cheerful, but it made one think. I guess.

I liked Light in August better. Joe Christmas carried the mother-loving tune.

*Hearty apologies to the spirit of the great Mr. Faulkner and those who might be ranked amongst his more sensitive admirers for this particularly crude and lazy attempt at garnering a chuckle and adding to a certain GR member's review count. This tricky puppy was a goodly amount more invigorating and impressive in its consumption than the above gravel-crunching might seem to indicate; indeed, worthy of a full-flush-fiver, if only I could honestly state that I understood the entire thing without cribbing from healthier and more perceptive minds. I did want to throw out a shout for Joe Christmas, though, who really was the biscuit. Thank you.(less)

8 likes · like · see review

topics	posts	views	last activity
Brain Pain: * CH1 - The Sound and The Fury - Schedule/Questions/Resources	25	71	Mar 02, 2013 02:28am
Brain Pain: Discussion - The word “nigger” in The Sound and The Fury	11	97	Sep 21, 2012 07:44am
Brain Pain: Discussion - Week Four - The Sound & The Fury - Part Four "Dilsey"	2	27	May 28, 2012 11:34pm
Brain Pain: Discussion - Week Three - The Sound & The Fury - Part Three "Jason"	3	32	May 28, 2012 11:05pm
Brain Pain: Discussion - Week Two - The Sound & The Fury - Part Two "Quentin"	5	37	May 28, 2012 05:48pm

title link	preview: The Sound and the Fury
avg rating	preview: The Sound and the Fury Goodreads rating: 3.84 (77505 ratings)
small image	preview: click here [close]
med image	preview: click here [close]
BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10975.The_Sound_and_the_Fury?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1350949394l/10975.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10975.The_Sound_and_the_Fury?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner[/url]

The Sound and the Fury

Friend Reviews

Lists with This Book

Community Reviews

new topic
Discuss This Book

combine
Other Editions (39)

Genres

Readers also enjoyed similar books

About William Faulkner

Books by William Faulkner

Share This Book

Share This Book on Your Website

Trivia About The Sound and the...

Quotes from The Sound and the Fury