Genres: Fiction, Classics
Most of the times when you see a book, you read its blurb at the back of the cover and then only few remains in your memory. Until you go to a deep sleep or you pick the book and start reading it. That’s what happened with me when I took William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury in my hands.
The title of the novel is taken from Shakespeare’s Macbeth, act 5 scene 5. It’s a tragedy. This is not a spoiler, I am just making you aware of what you have to deal with once you are deep down a hundred pages. The tragedy is about Compson family in America, featuring Caddy, Benjamin, Quentin, and Jason. Four siblings who are synonyms of rebel, immature, sensitive and obsessive, and brutal. It consists of four chapters, and the first two ones are the most difficult ones I have read.
The first chapter use a narrative technique known as the Stream of Consciousness. You might have seen it in James Joyce’s Ulysses but in Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, the mode is at its best. Nobody could have written it better. Or someone might, but that’s just a rational hypothetical converse. The second chapter is the silver lining between intelligence and torment. It stretches the narrative technique to its extreme. There are no punctuation at times to associate with the stream of text so one has to read it very carefully. The non-linearity of both the chapters will highly demand one’s attention.
The last two chapters drives the story forward and to a conclusion followed by the Appendix which is a reference about all the characters and what happens to them in later years along with the complete Compson family history.
The book is surely a classic but it’s the work of modernist. Faulkner’s writing really surprised me in first two chapters when it’s challenging to keep a tally of the past and the present for a reader, how hard would it have been for a writer to write in such a way. The conclusion of the book is adrift but highly emotive. The book is rich in imagination and one reader will have a great visual experience while doing so with characters and scenes in it.
4 out of 5!
I struggled through it. Not as much as Ulysses though. One day I plan on rereading it, but not any time soon.
The prose is better than Ulysses I think. I struggled when reading Ulysses.
I’ve heard of it and I’ve always wanted to read it. Just haven’t had the chance to read it just yet. But it definitely sounds like something I should check out.
It deserves a glance at the least!
I try to read Serious Mainstream Literature, but it’s tiresome. From now on someone has to pay me to do it.
Haha that’s a good!
This has been on my TBR for so long. Never got to it
Try it someday, the fun part are the first two chapters.
I loved The Sound and the Fury! We studied it my senior year of High School and I was blown away by it at first. Didn’t understand the first two chapters at all. Now it’s one of my favorites. If you liked the style of this one, As I Lay Dying by Faulkner is also a great one. Happy reading!
Thanks for your recommendation. I will be reading As I Lay Dying. I want to explore more Faulkner’s writing. I feel in The Sound and the Fury, the prose is a match with his writing style.
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