Author: William Faulkner
Page count: 427
Format: Print, used
Start date: mid-April, 2011
Finish date: May 31, 2011
Thoughts/impressions:
Well, I suppose that this novel opened my eyes to what a challenge this project will be at times. Originally, The Sound and the Fury was my book for April. Now, I could make (legitimate) excuses about how busy my senior year became and how I had to finish my thesis and didn't have time to read. And, for the most part, that'd be true...except I could have made time to read. I read other books. I just really didn't want to read this book. It's been a long time since a book challenged me like this, and I suppose that's a good thing, but I really had to force myself to get through this to meet the May deadline, let alone the April one.
It almost seems like Faulkner was weeding out the "faint of heart" readers in the juxtaposition of style and format in The Sound and the Fury. The first of four segments is from the viewpoint of Benjy Compson, the mentally-challenged brother of the Compson family. In keeping with his view, grammar comes and goes, dialogue is often indistinguishable from memory and narrative, and the time line jumps all over the place. It was a fight to get through. The next section is only marginally better, from the viewpoint of the second Compson brother, Quentin. Quentin is similarly confusing, because so much of the narrative of his section takes place in his head, with his own conceptions coloring the events. By the time you get to the third section, with the next brother, Jason, it is a huge relief to have a relatively linear narrative, and the story finally begins to make sense after a combination of the three points-of-view.
Once I understood the plot of the narrative, the novel became more enjoyable. I'm glad to have made it through, though I don't think I'll be picking it up to re-read any time soon. It was a good learning experience for this project; for my next book, I think I'll keep notes as I go and try to read a little bit at a time, without getting distracted by other books. Hopefully the next book will capture my imagination at bit more.
Quotes:
"When the shadow of the sash appeared on the curtains it was between seven and eight oclock and then I was in time again, hearing the watch. It was Grandfather's and when Father gave it to me he said, Quentin, I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire; it's rather excruciating-ly apt that you will use it to gain the reducto absurdum of all human experience which can fit your individual needs no better than it fitted his or his father's. I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all your breath trying to conquer it. Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools." (93)
"Because Father said clocks slay time. He said time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life." (105)
"They all talked at once, their voices insistent and contradictory and impatient, making of unreality a possibility, then a probability, then an incontrovertible fact, as people will when their desires become words." (146)
"It's a curious thing how no matter what's wrong with you, a man'll tell you to have your teeth examined and a woman'll tell you to get married." (311)
"Then Ben wailed again, hopeless and prolonged. It was nothing. Just sound. It might have been all time and injustice and sorrow become vocal for an instant by a conjunction of planets." (359)
"He tramped steadily back and forth beneath the twisted paper and the Christmas bell, hunched, his hands clasped behind him. He was like a worn small rock whelmed by the successive waves of his voice. With his body he seemed to feed the voice that, succubus like, had fleshed its teeth in him. And the congregation seemed to watch with its own eyes while the voice consumed him, until he was nothing and they were nothing and there was not even a voice by instead their hearts were speaking to one another in chanting measures beyond the need for words, so that when he came to rest against the reading desk, his monkey face lifted and his whole attitude that of a serene, tortured crucifix that transcended its shabbiness and insignificance and made it of no moment..." (365)
"Some looked at him as they passed, at the man sitting quietly behind the wheel of a small car, with his invisible life raveled out about him like a wornout sock." (391)
Summary in one sentence:
A story in four parts about how three brothers in a Southern family relate to their sister and how her actions exemplify the decline of their family.
Progress:
__/100
