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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
It's All Up to You, Fair Reader..., November 30, 2009
This review is from: Sound and the Fury (Vintage Classics) (Paperback)
...whether you find value in this notoriously difficult novel, or whether you hurl it into the fireplace in frustration. You needn't feel ashamed of either response... assuming you're free from the bonds of high school English classes. You'll need all your resources of unflagging attention, tenacious memory, and orthographic competence with dialect just to grasp the central events of the story, but even then you may be frustrated by the realization that the story isn't the centerpiece of the book. I could give you ten reasons not to bother for every one assertion that you must sometime in your life read The Sound and the Fury... and read it intently, in a few concentrated reading sessions with absolutely no competing distractions. But as I said, it's up to you.
The title comes from Shakespeare, from Macbeth: Life "is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." Really, the narrative of the novel is told by three idiots, the three Compson brothers, although only the first narrator, Benjy, is a certified 'loony' by the definitions of his community. The second narrator, brother Quentin, is usually identified as 'neurotic' but that diagnosis falls short of recognizing how desperately ill his mind is, right to the point of his suicide. The third brother, Jason, might be regarded as sane in some societies, but he too is deranged and dysfunctional. The father of these three boys is a lifelong case of clinical depression, self-medicated with booze. The mother is a monster of borderline psychotic hypochondria. Sister Caddy is described in the Clif Notes as 'beautifula and tragic, but her basic tragedy is a personality disorder. Her illegitimate daughter, from whom she is separated, may have some sparks of sanity, enough at least to escape, but she's hardly a person you'd seek out for a daughter-in-law. The Compsons are surrounded by -- kept alive by -- the descendants of their ancestors' slaves. Sorting out the generations of the black folk that share life with the Compsons is one of the ways to keep the narrative somewhat chronological; the idiot Benjy is portrayed in the care/custody of three distinct black teenagers, that is, Benjy as a child, Benjy as an adolescent, Benjy as a 33-year-old helpless bellowing hulk. I suppose the true centerpiece of the novel is Faulkner's indictment of the stagnant post-Civil War South for creating the conditions in which a family, and by implication a whole society, could degenerate into such moral and mental idiocy. All the passion and pride of the tale told by the Compson does indeed "signify nothing." They're done. Finished. Defunct, and deservedly so.
All three Compson narrators are represented by stream-of-consciousness fragments of memory, occasionally cogent but often lapsing into babble. Does any person's "consciousness" really resemble what Faulkner sets down in words? I tend to think not; what Faulkner offers is a literary convention. He brings powerful verbal energy to his fragmenting depiction of "consciousness", and that's wherein his greatness as a writer lies.
The fourth 'chapter' of narration is largely third-person, centered around the enduring ancient cook/servant Dilsey, the nurse of all the white Compsons and the mother of most of their un-slaves. Is Dilsey, with her sons, the sole anchor of order and decncy in the Compson world, or the will-less willing co-dependent of such stagnation? Dilsey says she "seen the beginning and the end." I reckon she thought so sincerely, but in retrospect she was wrong, and Faulkner was wrong with her; the worst was not over in 1928, when this book was published, and fortunately the future didn't belong to the Compsons, or the Snopeses, or to any of the baleful stock of Faulkner's vision. Amen and hallelujah.
Faulkner's portrayal of human nature, based on 'blood' (i.e. race) and inheritance of sins unto the seventh generation troubles me a lot. I've already been hammered, in other reviews, for expressing my discomfort with that perception. The Sound and the Fury is hardly free from what I dislike about Faulkner, but it's such a stark, fierce, sustained tragedy that intellectual reservations fall aside and only the shared agony remains.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
The Sound and the Fury, July 26, 2010
This review is from: Sound and the Fury (Vintage Classics) (Paperback)
All right, I'm not going to lie and say I understood this one.
It's a tough read -- the downfall of a Depression-era family in the American South, as told through three brothers: Benjy, Quentin and Jason. What makes the read tough (and absolutely fascinating) is that Faulkner flips POVs often within the novel, and writes sometimes without any punctuation.
** (SPOILER follows) **
What I find remarkably fascinating about this author's writing is the way he plays with the devices. The novel begins in 1928 in the POV of the mentally handicapped brother Benjy. I was confused and blown away (in a good way!) by the technique within the first quarter of the book. Benjy doesn't view the world or his own memories in a way that is easily translatable in writing. He can't say "I like looking at the pretty jewelry box with all the pretty sparkles. It calms me down." He can only refer to the sparkles without knowing what they are, and we the reader are left to infer what's happening based on the few hints Benjy is able to provide.
Fascinating!! And pretty ballsy, since he opens the book like this.
The writing hops all over, sometimes mid sentence/mid-paragraph, into another memory. Often the memory is instigated by something in the present scene. For example, Benjy likes watching a golf game that's played near his house because the players call out Caddy -- his beloved older sister's name. Hearing the game takes him crackling along childhood, though in his main story, he's a full-grown man.
In contrast to the rough writing within the first quarter of the book, Brother #2's section is written beautifully. Quentin's tale happens in 1910, a couple decades before the first quarter of the book, and it unfolds the day Quentin kills himself. (Though you don't find out he died until the third brother takes over the tale.)
Quentin's passages are philosophical in contrast to Benjy's patchwork sections, but mid-way through, as insanity and suicide take over, punctuation is lost altogether. Paragraphs go on for pages with no break, and stream-of-thought takes over. Confusing? Absolutely! But I just can't get over the technique. Brilliant, I think -- the contrasts.
Section Three is told in the same time frame as the first section, 1928, by Jason, the pragmatic and monstrous brother whose been left to work laboriously supporting his sister Caddy's illegitimate daughter, his mother, Benjy, and a handful of house servants. He is miserly, bitter and prone to malicious tempers. He hates Caddy as well as her daughter but is considered by his mother to be "the only good one of the batch."
Jason should have gone to Harvard, but he gave it up (under duress) so Quentin could go. When Quentin killed himself, the chance was lost. Now Jason works a dead end job, stealing money from Caddy¡¯s daughter into a private savings. Jason's passages are far more clear. (No lost punctuation!) But he's so mean and negative, by the time you finish with him, you're itching for some good news. Again, smart on Faulkner's part. I FEEl the tightness of the man; I experience it.
The final segment is told in third person in 1928 and hops viewpoints between Jason and Dilsey. The writing is beautiful again, the passages easy to follow.
What I think is remarkable about this work, beyond the symphonic quality of the "snapshot" of a fallen Southern family not long after the American Civil War -- is the writing itself. Faulkner circles his prey (the climax). He begins at the outermost point and slowly revolves (making the reader dizzy!) until he reaches the final line. And what irony in that final line. (I won't spoil it by sharing.)
Absolutely worth the read. But don't read it if you're looking for "escapism." This isn't for entertainment; it's art.
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0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Dreadful - this work has got The South a bad name, October 23, 2011
This review is from: Sound and the Fury (Vintage Classics) (Paperback)
I must be odd or poorly-educated (or both) for I cannot for the life of me see how William Faulkner could have won on merit a Nobel Prize for literature nor two Pulitzer Prizes. Admittedly, I had not tackled the gentleman's work before 'The Sound and The Fury,' but, having struggled with this book and having attempted 'As I Lay Dying,' I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that I wasted my money buying the books, that Mr Faulkner's English and writing abilities were dreadful, and that the author's story-lines are incomprehensible. It appears that Faulkner's stories are almost all placed in The South of the United States. I love The South. I fear that William Faulkner and his works, especially this one, have got The South a bad name.
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