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. The first time I attempted this book, I made my way through a mere three pages before deciding it would be a waste. This is a book made for rereading an American masterpiece, undoubtedly.

I was surprised by what I could glean from snippets that had initially seemed inscrutable and incomplete. 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.īecause 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. The results are disorienting, yet powerfully emotive. 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. It’s interesting to confront another modernist’s take on the human experience of time while concurrently reading In Search of Lost Time. 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. But gradually, before frustration has a chance to set in, the fog begins to burn off and the glare becomes less direct. 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. And this feeling never really dissipates. 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. Incest, castration, suicide, racism, misogyny-this one has it all.

Probably one of the most depressing stories I've read. COMPSON = Life sucks and then you die.SO DIE ALREADY!!.

COMPSON = Somebody please shoot the BITCH MISS QUENTIN = Rebellious/Low Self Esteem lacks sense of rger of past and present merge.all the. A review paying homage to BENJY COMPSON'S uniquely disorienting narration:īENJY.narrator.

Faulkner william the sound and the fury