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Initial Impressions: The Sound and the Fury, by William Faulkner- December 2019
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Tom, "Big Daddy"
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Nov 24, 2019 10:35PM
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If/when I read this there would be no better company than Trail members to help me through but end of the year everything makes for the worst timing and I see no opportunity to get to it. I'll follow along with the comments on this thread.
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Oh man I am so happy to have already read this one. I’m going to hop on the bandwagon with those who aren’t going to try and tackle it again this month.
I read "The Sound and the Fury" earlier this year, while on a Faulkner kick after having avoided him my whole life. It was in preparation for a seminar I took where we really dug into "Absalom, Absalom!" At some point I realized that there were characters, connections, and relationships with "The Sound and the Fury," which had been so difficult for me to plow through. When I saw it was the selection for December, I thought OK - let's give it another try! Faulkner is so infuriating, but so rewarding in terms of his depth. Looking forward to it, starting tomorrow! Hope some others will be joining in!
This is going to be my first time ever reading “The Sound and The Fury.” My first place on my Faulkner reading list was actually “Barn Burning” but his books are all so interesting. I know that sometimes his writing can be a little complicated and symbolic but I enjoy that kind of books so I hope it will not be a burden haha. I will start reading this week! So excited.
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So, I started reading TSATF last night and found the writing, a challenge. I am interested in the story although the references are very obtuse. I realize we (the reader) are a fly on the wall, so we must make conclusions without any explanation. Still, I am unclear of the various people seem to speak but we don't know always who is talking or how they are connected to others. Frankly, I am a little annoyed with it, although I think that is the author's test of the reader. Will we pass Faulkner's test and get rewarded?I can see how my reading preferences have changed. In my youth, the challenge Faulkner is making the reader to overcome would have been embraced, now I guess I am more lazy as a reader in my old age (closing in fast)...
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This second time through it’s a much easier and more interesting read, as I know the characters. I think Faulkner must have realized that the first "Benjy" chapter is almost impossible to decipher on initial reading - but it does put you in the interesting place of trying to comprehend this world and its denizens as Benjy experiences it. Faulkner writes from Benjy’s “baby-like” perspective, before the world has been explained and named, when it is still raw light and sound and motion. Faulkner writes an inner descriptive narrative (how can he not, in a novel?), but is able to create a voice locked off from dialogue, existing in a closed-off mind. We as readers can figure things out (eventually) that Benjy can only see/hear/feel. First thoughts/observations -
Shadows appear several times throughout this chapter - Benjy sees shadows (and mirrors) as substantial and real in a way most people do not. Shadows are also one way that he sees and measures his presence in the world: “We went along the fence and came to the garden fence, where our shadows were. My shadow was higher than Luster’s on the fence.” Faulkner, exploring further his Shakespearean title? "Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."
The importance of names? The two Quentins (male/female); the two Jasons; the two Maurys (one renamed Benjamin); the two Caddys (Caddy and the golf course “caddie").
Benjy’s birthday, 33 - Christ’s age at his crucifixion. Many people have observed Faulkner’s use of this age for certain characters in his books. Is Benjy the transformative character, the one who all others are judged by, forgiven by, revealed by? Or is it not so obvious?
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Susan, this is so much better than what I read so far in the Cliff Notes! Which play did you quote from?
Thanks Susan, I didn't remember that.
So lovely, Susan! I admit in getting out my Faulkner books, I got waylaid by Absalom, Absalom!; was in danger of wandering down that path with thoughts of poor dear Quentin...oh, echoing themes. But I think you may have pulled me back from the edge. After all, The Sound and the Fury was my first Faulkner book; and how I fell in love with Bill, our poet, our wandering man. Thank you for speaking to his use of shadows, and of Benjy’s visceral consciousness, where there is no future; there is just this exact moment, then ahh, thwack of the golf ball, switch!sensation!
This is the only Faulkner I have read and I read it earlier this year. I read it and listened to it as an audiobook. Whilst I didn't find it easy reading I certainly thought it was an excellent book. I look forward to other members reviews,
Susan wrote: "I think Faulkner must have realized that the first "Benjy" chapter is almost impossible to decipher ..."From what I understand, Faulkner suggested that the publisher use different colored inks for each episode that Benjy "speaks" of, so, as the narrative switches back and forth from one episode to the next and then back again, the reader would be able to keep track. There are some clues. Luster is Benjy's caretaker when he's an adult, TP when Benjy is a teenager, and Versh when he's a small child. As it is, nobody is sure how many episodes or events are referenced in the Benjy chapter. I read Jay Parini's biography of Faulkner - he says different scholars have found 7, 15, 11, 13, and 16 different episodes. Even with Faulkner's colored inks, I think the uncertainty about what Benjy is "talking" about is part of the point. Reality is filtered through our perceptions and everybody's narrative is different to some extent, especially when the narratives are from the viewpoints of the Compson brothers - some of the most unreliable narrators in American literature. I don't think we're supposed to know what "really" happened.
One of the episodes, where Quentin Compson is beating up on TP, Caddy's getting married, and the barn isn't there, and then it came, behind them, but Benjy didn't see it at first, and he wasn't crying but he couldn't stop - that one I'm not sure what's going on. I blame it on the sassprilluh.
I don't think Benjy judges or forgives. He just is. I like your thought about him being the medium through which the other characters are revealed. I think we get our best picture of Caddy in the Benjy chapter. He's the distorted mirror that somehow reflects the other characters' true natures.
As for the shadows, they're real to Quentin Compson too.
Susan wrote: "Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and is heard no more...."In the Quentin chapter, he speaks repeatedly of standing "in my shadow," stepping "into the middle of my shadow," and "tramping [it] into the dust." Leaning over a bridge, he even tricks it, so it "would not quit me." And if he had a shadow of the package of flat-irons he bought, he'd be able to drown it.
I was thinking that the shadows here represent Quentin's fascination with death. But the quote you repeat from Shakespeare makes me think that the shadow isn't death, it's life, or at least one's perception of what one's life is, and Quentin - the weight of his obsessions - and the weight of the world he/we live in, is grinding that life into dust.
Randall, would you suggest reading the biography? I hardly ever do, but Faulkner seems so deeply of, and yet out of place in the deep South of his era. He's so tapped into humanity, yet trapped as a well-off white male privileged by the brutally inhumane caste system of racism that was being seriously retrenched during the 1920s. Is Parini good to read?The life/death aspect of shadows you bring up is really intriguing. Being alive means casting shadows, yet they are typically seen as harbingers of doom/death. Using shadows to tie the immediacy of Benjy's perceptions to the deep obsessiveness of Quentin's thoughts gives me a chill. This whole book keeps reminding me that Faulkner first wanted to be a poet.
Susan wrote: "Randall, would you suggest reading the biography?"Sure. I don't know which is the best of the Faulkner biographies, but I enjoyed reading Jay Parini's.
One Matchless Time: A Life of William Faulkner
If you're white and grew up in Mississippi, and have any sense of humanity ... if you love it you'll also have to hate it. I wouldn't want that burden on my shoulders. But then again, you could say the same thing about being a white American. To steal a phrase: If the South didn't exist, the North would have had to invent it.
I can also recommend a memoir by Will D. Campbell, born of poor white farmers in the Mississippi Hill Country, who also spent his life navigating his humanity and the racism he was raised in. I believe "Brother to a Dragonfly" was one of our monthly discussion books, about two years ago I think. Maybe you've read it. If not, I recommend it highly.
Brother to a Dragonfly
Randall wrote: I don't know which is the best of the Faulkner biographies, but I enjoyed reading Jay Parini's. Thanks for the suggestions Randall!
Finally finished the second chapter last night - difficult reading, even the second time through! As Randall points out, Quentin is constantly referring to his shadow in this chapter - sometimes overmuch! Is he playing a game with his own being?
This chapter also reminded me of Virginia Woolf’s “Mrs. Dalloway” (1925) - all taking place in a day, marked by the chiming of the hours. Very formally structured and modernist.
Mostly however, I felt sad as Quentin descended ever further into his haunted memories and disturbed behavior. He and Caddy both were trapped by gender roles (she was sexually active, bold and wanted to be a “king,” he was too sensitive for his era, a virgin, not a good fighter). Quentin hated the way men treated women in general (“Did you ever have a sister?”) and Caddy in particular, as when Dalton Ames says to Quentin about her, “if it wasn’t me it would be some other guy.” Quentin is torn about the sister/whore thing - what he feels (tenderness/love) vs. what he’s been taught by the Southern macho culture he’s been reared in.
Not sure what to make of the episode where Quentin walks all over with the little Italian girl who turns out to have a brother who beats Quentin up for leading her on. It parallels his own story with Caddy and Dalton Ames, but what does it reveal or add to our understanding?
So far TSATF is pretty tough stuff. First Faulkner put us into the limited mind of Benjy, now into the disintegrating mind of Quentin. The last few pages of this chapter are especially intense, with a stream of consciousness that is partly a kind of conversation between an “i” and a “he.” These pages deserve another reading, yet they’re so depressing that it’s hard to do.
However, Faulkner’s writing! So great - just one example, taken midway from a two page sentence: “...man who is conceived by accident and whose every breath is a fresh cast with dice already loaded…” Wow.
Susan wrote: "Finally finished the second chapter last night - difficult reading, even the second time through! The last few pages are ... a kind of conversation ...."
That's Quentin and his father.
As you intimate, between Quentin and Caddy, he seems the more "feminine" of the two. (I really like the bit about Caddy always wanting to be the king when the children played make-believe.) Caddy also seems to be the most proactive and balanced of the four siblings, in childhood and even as an adult (though she does have her own problems) and yet, she's the only sibling whose point of view isn't given in the novel through section of her own.
In the appendix Faulkner wrote several years later, he expands on what Quentin "loved" about Caddy, and what Caddy loved about Quentin.
Family! Ya can't live with 'em, and ya can't live without 'em!
Question: where does all this Deep South angst come from? Very emotional, volatile situations. Not so commonly referred to in literature from the North. Or do they just keep a tight lid on it.
Hey Susan,Your last comment would have been better placed at the end discussion. Or maybe had a spoiler, that was really a shock to read without it being flagged.
Kathryn in FL wrote: "Hey Susan,Your last comment would have been better placed at the end discussion. Or maybe had a spoiler, that was really a shock to read without it being flagged."
Sorry Kathryn! Not sure which comment you mean, but I apologize! I'm about half-way through the book, so will post further comments on the "already read" stream.
Randall wrote: "That's Quentin and his father ...."Wow, that made it so much clearer. Thanks, I think I'm beginning to see through some of the murkiness!
Sorry Susan, my bad, it was actually Randall who made the original comment..."That's Quentin and his father. I imagine it takes place about the same time he tells his father he committed incest with his sister." I actually stopped reading after that.
I am not getting notifications for each post, I saw you respond thus I thought you wrote this spoiler.
Talking about a critical part of the story is not within the bounds of initial impressions without a spoiler...
Thanks everyone for being mindful of where you post comments regarding stories.
Kathryn in FL wrote: "Sorry Susan, my bad, it was actually Randall who made the original comment..."Yeah, that was me. Sorry.
I edited my comment to remove the spoiler.
Susan wrote: "I read "The Sound and the Fury" earlier this year, while on a Faulkner kick after having avoided him my whole life. It was in preparation for a seminar I took where we really dug into "Absalom, Abs..."Faulkner is one of my top three authors; I've read most of his books many times. True, you do have to get used to him--like figuring out the POV sometimes--but there is a vast reward for sticking with him, and when you've worked through a Faulkner novel, you're satisfied. What did you get from Absalom, Absalom!, considered one of the greatest novels of all times? It inspired my first novel and trilogy, but sort of inside out--I'm no Faulkner, nobody is. The Sound and the Fury is a quote from Macbeth when he's surrounded: "{Life] is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."
On the Southern Literary Trail
Books mentioned in this topic
One Matchless Time: A Life of William Faulkner (other topics)Brother to a Dragonfly (other topics)
