Traveller’s Comments (group member since Jan 14, 2015)

Traveller’s comments from the On Paths Unknown group.

Oh, ok, and the children's father's name is Jason ; and of course they have an "Uncle Maury" that is often mentioned, who is their mother, Caroline's (“Miss Cahline") brother. They call their grandmother "Damuddy".

Of the four children, Quentin is the oldest, then Jason, then Caddy, and Benji is the youngest.

Oh, and I remember seeing somewhere that Proust had been one of Faulkner's influences, and of course Proust is big on memory, the passage of time and how memories are stimulated by the senses - so, we seem to get that Benji's various memories are stirred by what he sees, feels and smells, and his sense of smell seems to play quite a big role; for example where he mentions that Caddy smells of trees, and there are various other places where he mentions what he smells.

Bonitaj wrote: "The other theme that comes up repeatedly at the beginning of the chapter is the concept of TIME. I particularly like How Faulkner has juxtapositioned "Time", as offering both -"all hope and desire"..."

Yes, the passage of time and the futility and ephemeral nature of human life certainly seems to be one of Faulkner's themes. Thanks for that input. :)

Bonitaj wrote: " Could someone please explain who is the protagonist "speaking/thinking", in italics? Is it Quinton?
..."

I'm, not sure, Bonitaj, but as mentioned in the Benji section, Faulkner does like to mark changes in chronology with italics. However, I have read somewhere that there was quite a bit of controversy regarding Faulkner's publisher not liking how he used italics and changing them; and Faulkner got upset, but at some point he also admitted that his use of italics and other punctuation markers are not consistent.

Why, do you have more for us about shadows and the italics?
Also, re shadows, you might remember that shadows are mentioned a lot in the Benji section.

Bonitaj wrote: "I was wondering if anyone would care to comment on the subject of "THE SHADOW" in relation to Quinton ? ..."

I'm not at the Quentin section yet, but I think for a "shadow" theme, we can certainly look at the Shakespeare passage that Faulkner got his title from, and which certainly seems to point at what the novel is getting at, namely the fleeting nature of human life, which would also fit in nicely with the "passage of time" element? I do remember that the Quentin section starts with a clock and an obsessing over time.

Oh, and the Versh clue helps with the Patterson letter incident - Caddy and Benji must have been reasonably small then when they took the letter to Mrs Patterson.

EDIT: Apparently Versh looked after him until he was around age 13, so they could have been teeny-boppers.

Linda wrote: "The wiki character list helped me. Versh takes care of Benji when he's young, then the younger of Dilsy's boys when he's a teen, the her grandson, Luster, once he's an adult.."

Yes, indeed, thanks, Linda, that is a good guide to use - when Versh is there, Benji is small, when T.P. is with Benji, they are both teenagers, and when Luster is looking after him, he is an adult. Thanks for pointing that out!

Hm. I was thinking that the presence of Luster would indicate a time that Benji is close to being an adult, since Luster is Frony's son, and Frony is around Benji's age. See? Faulkner DOES leave clues, but admittedly, one does have to do at least a modicum of side-reading to know about those clues in the first place. XP

Anyway, so the event where he rides in the carriage with their mother must be with an older Benji, since it is mentioned that Quentin is playing with Luster.

Oh, and don't worry if you've not read the entire Benji yet, I didn't put any big picture spoilers in the first message there; I thought we could develop the plotline message by message; so if you're not past a certain point, simply stop at the point up to where you've read. So far I only put down what one can figure out from the first 20 pages or so.
And please, people, contribute! 🙏

Oops, I forget the scene where Benji and mother get into the carriage to go somewhere - there is a Quentin baby present here, but I'm not too sure if it's Benji's brother Quentin (which would mean Benji is still very small there), or, (I'm cheating here) it might be another Quentin. (I don't feel bad cheating about mentioning the name, because I feel Faulkner is a bit unfair in all the devices he uses to sow confusion - as if the time-jumps and weird points of view aren't bad enough, he messes around with names as well).

Timeline plot structure thread made, please access it here: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Bonitaj wrote: "Good enough! Thanks"
Bonitaj, please just post your message here; the suspense is killing me! And like you say, knowing about your angle would probably enrich our reading of the novel, so please share!

So far this novel seems to me to be, even if one were to start with the title alone, to be a rather existential novel, since it takes it's title from one of Shakespeare's more nihilistic/fatalistic passages: (as already mentioned by other members)

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
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.

There are a few things to be noted about this passage; first, its preoccupation with the passage of time, (tomorrow and tomorrow; day to day; recorded time; yesterdays; brief candle; his hour). Besides that, it seems pretty fatalistic in it's acceptance of nihilism: "signifying nothing". What immensely bleak words! No wonder Shakespeare is so timeless.

So yeah, fitting then, that the existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre wrote a piece on this novel where he comments: "...it is immediately obvious that Faulkner’s metaphysics is a metaphysics of time.
Man’s (humanity's) misfortune lies in his being time-bound.
..... And if the technique Faulkner has adopted seems at first a negation of temporality, the reason is that we confuse temporality with chronology. It was man (humanity) who invented dates and clocks.

And yes, indeed, the first complaint people seem to have about reading this novel, is the confusion. ..and what is the initial confusion caused by? It would seem, by two factors:

Firstly, the initial narration is told from a child-like point of view which necessitates interpretation by the reader, and secondly, this narration jumps around wildly in the chronology of events.

So let us, dear reader, try to tease out the structure of the storyline from these confused bits. I would really appreciate if all of you would participate in this, I really don't enjoy posting in an echo-chamber.

So I will start the ball rolling by making a few observations:
Like I've already mentioned in the Benji thread, the novel starts off with 2 or 3 milestones in Benji's life. It might be a good idea to mark these episodes in time by noting Benji's age in each of them?

1. We start off with Benji's present. He is crying about something, but we don't know what, so let's save that thought to figure it out later. Here he is 33 years old.

2. His thoughts then jump to a scene where the kids are playing, Caddy, his older sister gets her dress wet, the kids go home, and are told to be quiet. We soon find out what the reason is that they had to keep quiet - something of consequence was going wrong that changed their young lives; and the adults are trying to shield them from that by not immediately telling them what is happening. Here Caddy mentions that she is 7 years old, and (ok I'm cheating) since we know that Benji is a few years younger, here he is about 4 or 5 years old – readers who have progressed further and know the exact age difference, please correct me on this.

3. Then we jump to a scene where Benji gets drunk at a wedding and we deduce from what the servants say, that he is now 15 years old. This scene is also of great consequence in the storyline, and we can flesh it out later. (I'm just putting the bare bones now).

4. I do know there's another milestone or two; one of them happens close to the wedding where Benji is 15 years old.

Ok, so how about you guys help me flesh it out from there? As the narration unfolds, what do we learn more about each of those situations, and perhaps milestones in time that I have missed in the initial barebones structure?

Bonitaj wrote: " I just wish I could override it with this one superimposed revelation...? It gives nothing away of the story line but rather matures conceptually, as you read along. Yes, once you're aware of it, it'll stand out. I think we should take a vote....?..."

I would vote you put it in the end discussion thread, and then we can expand on it there, since we'll be taking an overview of the novel in that thread in any case - does that sound like a plan?

Apologies, I'll have to do the timeline thread tomorrow, ran out of time for today. If anybody else is eager to start on it here, in the meantime, I/we can always copy and paste the material to the time thread.

Dianne wrote: "My plan is to read each section cold, and then do the ancillary reading to catch up!."

Yes, I like to do that, and sometimes as I go along to look up relevant bits of history that may become necessary for full understanding of what I am reading. Glad that the bit of input helped clarify. The thing is that this is my second time through Benji, so I was nervous of spoiling that full-on bewildering and confusing effect that the first time of starting with Benji can cause - but I think we all know now what that feels like! 😅

Ok, in response to the above, I've thought about it, and doing the timeline here might then make it hard to find it every time, as we continue posting messages, because believe it or not, I think there is actually more to say about Benji.
Also, as Bonitaj points out in the next thread, time, the passage of time, and chronology is a very important element of this novel, so how about we do a thread just on the time element! I'm sorry to dump so many threads on you, but I love keeping things neat and tidy and easy to access from a central point. :P

PS, just click on the header right on top of this page: FAULKNER'S SOUTH- SOUND and FURY to get to the central place from which you can click on any of the sub-threads.

Thanks for that, Bonitaj - apologies, now it is I who have ran out of time again - will try to catch up tomorrow!

People, I've actually been feeling bad, because of my wanting to stick to my way of doing the reading/discussion, when that is perhaps not what the group wants or needs. If you guys feel better bringing in outside aid via additional reading, by all means, let's do so!
I was thinking that perhaps the best way to find more sense in Benji's stream-of-consciousness narration, would be to tease out and separate the different chronological points in the timeline of the story that Benji jumps around to and from all the time?

Would you like to do it in this thread, or a separate one so that we can keep revisiting that thread as we make progress?

..and by all means bring in your complimentary reading, I apologize if I sounded as if I was discouraging it - I was just afraid that if we spent all of our time on reading ABOUT the novel, that we may perhaps not make any progress with the novel itself, but as Bonitaj said, perhaps Faulkner went a bit over the top in demanding too much of his reader, and it would benefit us to take note of explanations that would help us along.

Bonitaj wrote: "I didn't elaborate on what the anchor was for me, but I would at some point wish to introduce it to the discussion - to flesh out its significance in Faulkner's writing of the novel...."

Perhaps add it here under spoiler tags, Bonitaj? ...or is it not really a spoiler as such? I must admit that you have me very curious now! Or if it relates to the book's storyline as a whole, how about you put it in the end discussion here?

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Hmmm, and yet they -do- mark the transitions that would have been simply too confusing without them, like the jumping between the scene where as a 7 year old girl Caddy gets her dress wet, and the weird scene in the barn? at the wedding where "T.P." is obviously drunk and it looks like Benji as well, and back again to where the kids get home after Caddy got her dress wet; note there is a small bit of italics there between every jump.