Faulkner, William. Novels 1926 – 1929: The Sound and the Fury. The Library of America, 2006.
Reason read: December is Southern Fiction month. Luckily, this is the last Faulkner I have to read.
I wish I could say I adored The Sound and the Fury. I feel like I have an obligation to at least like Faulkner’s writing style because it is so close to another author I actually love, James Joyce. Faulkner appears to be heavily influenced by the Irish author.
Even though Sound got easier and easier to read as I went along, I couldn’t like the characters. Getting into the minds of the three Compson brothers didn’t help. Benjamin, Quentin, and Jason’s narratives all blur together and become one complicated and tangled stream of consciousness. I learned early on that the trick to Faulkner is to remember chronology is of little importance, the duplicity of names can be confusing, and for The Sound and the Fury, you must be comfortable with themes of mental illness, incest, and suicide. Virginity is a commodity in southern fiction. The moral of the story is every tree has a few secret nuts.
Lines I found myself liking: “She approved of Gerald associating with me because I at least revealed a blundering sense of noblesse oblige by getting myself born below the Mason and Dixon, and a few others whose Geography met the requirements (minimum)” (p 947), and “Honeysuckle is the saddest odor of all, I think” (p 1007). Not a line, but I liked the random illustrated eye.
As an aside, I would like to see the Sound and the Fury movie. I think I might understand the plot a little better if I did.
Author fact: Faulkner skipped the second grade and his surname used to be spelled without the ‘u.’
Book trivia: the appendix includes 46 years of Compson history, some helpful and some not so much.
Nancy said: Pearl called all of Faulkner’s novels “enduring.” Just how they endure, I don’t know.
BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Southern Fried Fiction” (p 205).
~*LunaSea*~ 