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

Traveller’s comments from the On Paths Unknown group.

I do feel a slight bit discomfited by the fact that so many of us are consulting side materials - I just hope it won't take away the feeling of how it must have been for Faulkner's original readers who went through a confusing experience and had to make sense of it by themselves, but I suppose nothing is going to change that - one has only one life to live after all, and there are still so many books to read out there. 😂

What I'm trying to say, I think, is it would be cool if, at least initially, we try and immerse ourselves in the reading of the actual novel, and see how it strikes us - us ourselves and not what some scholar or critic had to say.

Bonitaj wrote: "If I may introduce another spoiler that doesn't take away too much from the story line please.
Were it not for some additional reading at the outset, I honestly doubt that I could've ploughed thro..."

Those Norton Critical Editions are absolutely fantastic, aren't they? Yes, I have mine lying next to me on my desk, but I've grown so lazy to read treebooks that I've been consulting my e-books instead. I'm glad to hear that it's helping you through this. Believe it or not, the first time I read through Benji it was stone cold right into the deep end with no supplemental matter.

But since most of us are casting around for side commentary in any case, I do want to say a thing or two about Benji. Although the story isn't just about Benji, apparently his viewpoint was a very important one for Faulkner. For some of the story, Faulkner was looking through the eyes of children and wanting to portray how the magical innocence of children has to make way for the harsh realities of adulthood. He then had the thought of how it would be if you never had to grow up; never had to lose your innocence by always remaining a child- and the idea of Benji was born.

Voltaire also used the trope of the "innocent idiot" with his character of Candide, and though Dostoevsky's "idiot" is not a literal idiot, he is also a character portraying the goodness of innocence, which is something we see in Benji as well.

Mishek wrote: "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, b..."

I see you've already read it, Mishek, great that you're popping in to the discussion! Yes, indeed, that is quite a well-used phrase in literature, and of course originated with The Bard - thanks for pointing that out.

PS. A lot of T.S. Eliot's poetry also reminds me of that Shakespeare passage.

Bonitaj wrote: "Linda, Thank you! That link I have found and will continue to return to. It's just so quiet there I thought it was the "incorrect one"! Perhaps all this confusion is because I have been operating f..."

It was quiet there because you hadn't commented yet, Bonitaj! 😏
I was going to ask you next which device you were using and which method you were using to get there, but glad to see that the admin problem has now been ironed out. Now that you have commented there, it should be easier for you to get there again.
See you there! :)

Thanks for helping out, Linda!

Bonitaj wrote: "hi Traveller, was wondering if I could continue to comment here as the link you gave doesn't work for me..."

Bonitaj, it must work, we've started commenting in it already and you're going to miss out as well as put spoilers into the convening thread. Please just click on the link below:

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

EDIT: I've asked other friends to test the link as well, and it works for them as well. All you have to do is click on it, and it should take you right there?

One of the characteristics of this type of work such as the work under discussion, is that we see the world in a subjective manner through the eyes of the narrator; the narrator is NOT the author, but is part of the story, and so, we have to kind of "read between the lines" to figure out what type of person the narrator him-or herself is.

Oh, and back to a comment I had made earlier as to the stylistic genre of the novel; it is of course stylistically a modernist novel due to the stream-of-consciousness narration made popular by authors such as James Joyce (especially in his famous work Ulysses, and author Virginia Woolf; but for me it already carries the seeds of post-modernism in the piecemeal fashion that the unreliable narrators revolve around the central story; (yes, Virginia Woolf did something similar in her modernist works; but she doesn't make you work quite as hard for clarity as Faulkner does).

...and yes, to me Ulysses also has some of the seeds of postmodernism in how extremely highly referential it is; the two genres should, in my opinion, not be seen as completely separate, and especially because the eclectic nature of postmodernism makes it so hard to pin down as a genre; basically I see postmodernism in the arts as artistic freedom; one is free to be as eclectic as you please.

All right, more about the background of books about the American South such as those of Faulkner's: one has to keep in mind what happened to the South due to the American Civil War of 1861-65; before the war it was prosperous; after the war it was decimated economically in part due to the loss of slaves, and in part to the destruction of infrastructure, and a great many taking part in the war had lost life or limb.
The average income of Confederate states plunged from people being more prosperous on average than those belonging to the Union, to less than half the income that they previously had.

This may seem a bit unfair, but Southerners had basically dug their own graves by relying so heavily on slavery (besides the fact, of course, that slavery is morally reprehensible), because slavery had skewed their economy and made it less resilient.

Because of the fact that Southern industry was so labour intensive, (mainly cotton-growing) their agrarian practices impeded the development of industry and cities and contributed to soil exhaustion, and a lack of technological innovation.

Be that as it may, I'm sure the trope of the "poor Southern white" is reasonably well known to readers here, as well the racism that had gone along with the slavery, etc. In any case, one of Faulkner's themes tend towards portraying the decaying South; and The Sound and the Fury is set roughly in the period between 1900 and 1928. Long story short, the South experienced many years of turbulence after the war and it struggled to recover economically and socially amid civil unrest and political turbulence.

Bonitaj wrote: "oh that's just great news! Thanks a lot. I already have something to report so I'll come back in a couple of hours!"

Take your time, Bonitaj, though keep in mind that if your settings are on default, you should be getting updates if people post in a thread that you have commented in. So those of use that got our toes wet in the Benji thread will get notified when you comment there. However, as you pointed out, we might be in different time zones, so patience might be required!

Ok,folks, a bit about the background. I've been dipping into a book called William Faulkner: The Sound and the Fury'. Literature Insights. by Michael Cotsell.
Cotsell says: "...to understand Faulkner, we need to
understand that his imagination works very powerfully through the local...." but then goes on to say that Faulkner's work opens out from the local to the global through his enormous literary skill, psychological depth, and sense of history, which give his work global cultural and political significance.

But to get back to the setting of the novel: Most of his novels are set around the area where he lived for much of his life, Oxford, Mississippi, a small college town in the northern part of the state and home to the University of Mississippi .
In his fiction Faulkner called Oxford ‘Jefferson’ and the surrounding Lafayette County which he actually lived in, he called ‘Yoknapatawpha County’ .

Oh, and don't worry about what global timeline other participants might be operating in, just post as soon as something occurs to you; whether it be a question, a realization or an idea; remember we're divided into threads so that spoilers have less of an impact, and we will have a separate spoiler-rich end-discussion at the end in any case.
I will put up threads for the other parts of the book soon for those that like to go faster and may find themselves skipping ahead.

Hello everyone, apologies that I've not posted a bit more background about the author and genre and so on as we usually do, but things are a bit busy in my life at the moment. Will try to get to it soon. :)

Bonitaj wrote: "So here I am on page 28 and it's hard going. Every bit as chaotic as it's poised to be, for starters. Good luck. let's get this collective journey started tomorrow!"

Hello Bonitaj, mm-hmm, I will refrain from saying I told you so! 😜😂
Don't worry, we're all in this together!

The thread where we can start discussing the first part of the book in detail, is here: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Linda wrote: "I don't think, were it not for looking something up, I would have understood that this is Benji at several points in his life.."

That is exactly what happened to me. I have been thinking, though that perhaps the first time one should go in cold, and the magic of the whole thing is that it only falls into place at the end, much like Gene Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun cycle.

EDIT: ...but ok, I also got exasperated, because not much seemed to make sense

Linda wrote: "I'm in for all things Halloween! ..."

Good, good! Luckily there's a lot of short to novella length fiction that can be used as Halloween fodder, and I'm quite fine with putting a few works up that will give members a choice, and of course your own suggestions. I've read quite a lot of creepy stuff in the last year or two that I don't mind discussing as well!

Amy (Other Amy) wrote: "October would be lovely. I'll be traveling over Halloween, but I can always manage something spooky. Same for December."

It's a date! 😎 We shall attend!

Sounds good! Yeah, I love audiobooks for when I'm busy with a hands-on project like housework or driving. ..and now I find myself extremely curious as to how Benji's voice would be narrated!

Amy (Other Amy) wrote: "I don't know if I can make time to reread Sound & Fury right now (or any time the rest of the year really), but I will eagerly follow along the discussion and comment if I can. I really enjoyed it ..."

Sorry to hear, but also glad to hear you will be popping in!
We should definitely do something for Halloween this year though, shall we? And maybe over December too!

Bonitaj wrote: "I'm perfectly happy with your choice. I started Sanctuary and so far so good - I can only imagine The Sound and The Fury will supersede it and I'll still be intrigued to go back and finish it. He s..."

Glad to hear, Bonitaj!
Regarding the time, we don't meet in real time, so any time more or less on the correct date is fine, whether you find yourself in Australia, America, or in-between. Of course there are huge gaps in time from someone on the US West coast, to Greenwich time, to someone living in Australasia, so when I'm commenting some other member/s are probably sleeping and vice versa. No problema! :)

Linda wrote: "I spent my younger days reading Latin American authors who cited him as an influence, now I'm back to the source!"

Great! In a sense, and taking into account this was published as far back as 1929, Faulkner was actually one of the pioneers of modernist<->postmodernist approaches. So as we explore TSATF in that context, maybe now the weirdness of those who followed will start to make more sense! 😂😏

Hi everyone! How are you guys enjoying Benji's narration? It's... unusual, eh?
Please tell us what you think of Benji as a character, a narrator and how he fits into the structure of the novel! Please contain your commentary to the Benji section; - we'll deal with storyline spoilers in the last thread when things become a bit more clear.

EDIT: Threads to be found here:

Thread 1. Benji . April Seventh, 1928 . https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Thread 2. Quentin. June Second, 1910. https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Thread 3. Jason . April Sixth, 1928. https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Thread 4. Omniscient Narrator. April Eighth, 1928. https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Thread 5. End spoiler discussion . https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...