The Sound and the Fury (Vintage classics)

This is actually a testing narrative, or a series of narratives, particularly the second by Quentin I found, with the continual movement in time frames, but it is without doubt worth the effort to persevere as the book is a piece of creative genius the likes that one seldom has the privilege to read, and relates much to the sentiments of the passage from Macbeth from where the title of the book is taken. It is really best to go with the flow as another reviewer has suggested and appreciate the different narratives from three brothers caught up in one family's fall from grace in the American south with the ever present racial intolerance and the shame of one of the brother's mental incapacity and a sister's promiscuity - made more remarkable by the first narrative being the inward voice/observations of Ben, the brother with mental incapacity and the second narrative by Quentin, whose depression leads to suicide. The third narrative is by the more volatile brother who seeks redress for his lot in the family downfall and the events that unfold when his niece steals his ill begotten savings in the final part that moves from the individual's subjective perspective.

We all know the great names of early twentieth century American Literature : Scott Fitzgerald, John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway. But William Faulkner doesn’t spring to mind so readily. Having just read ‘The Sound and The Fury’, I think I know why. His writing is virtually incomprehensible.Reading this novel, I felt stupid and angry at the same time. I imagined Faulkner sitting there, all those years ago, thinking with awesome prescience that in ninety years’ time some poor Scottish guy would be sitting there trying to take sense of his scribblings. I pictured his thoughts: ‘How can I make this as unintelligible as possible for the poor fellow? I know, I’ll write most of it in the obscure and impenetrable dialect of the Deep Southern United States.’ Then, realising that Hollywood might make this patois too accessible in the future, he decided to also employ the ‘stream of consciousness’ method of narration: random thoughts thrown on to the paper in any order. But, thinking perhaps back to Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’ and forward to Kerouac’s ‘On the Road’, he decided even this wasn’t enough to ensure the obscurity of his meaning. So he added the ‘coup de grace’, the frequent and unannounced movements in time, often in the middle of sentences. Job Done! Try and make sense of that, old boy! I couldn’t.As much as I could tell, it’s a sad story of a family on whom fortune has decided to frown. A hypochondriac mother; an alcoholic father, a severely mentally retarded son; another son for whom the family jewels were sold to pay for a Harvard education, for which he thanked his parents by committing suicide before even finishing college; a promiscuous daughter, rejected by her husband for bearing a child by another man; the resulting granddaughter following in the footsteps of her mother; another son, Jason, a habitual and resentful loser being taken to the cleaners by stockbrokers and his niece. Three generations in dire need of some ‘lucky white heather’, as we say in Scotland.It’s not as if Faulkner is an untalented writer. His depiction of the Southern USA speech patterns is masterly. His ability to create characters using only what they say is outstanding. The mother’s moral blackmail with her repeated insistence that she wouldn’t be a trouble to them for much longer; Mrs Bland, the doting mother of a spoilt college brat; the son Jason’s hatred for the sister and niece who robbed him of his ‘chance’: all brilliant portrayals. And when he abandons pretentious literary tricks towards the end of the book, it all comes together really nicely into something quite engrossing and readable. But too late, too late!So there it is. Great literature it must be (Faulkner won every major literary prize). But readers, be warned, it’s a challenge. This is a book to be read for academic enlightenment rather than instant gratificationReviewed by James Gault, author of Best Intelligence The Redemption of Anna Petrovna and Teaching Tania Ogg

This book is exceptional. It's not an easy read by any means so don't choose it as part of your holiday reading but the effort is definitely worth it.The book is split up into four parts which get progessively easier to read. They are by four different narrators and four different points of view of what is basically the disintegration of a once wealthy family in the deep south of America circa 1920's.It's well worth reading this book for Faulkner's prose alone.

The Sound and the Fury***Where to start? Well, anyone who says that they understood this novel first time around deserves,not one, but two gold stars! There are those who say it needs two to three reads of chapters 1 & 2, before the penny finally drops? I say that you still need to study the synopsis to truly understand it - ‘Spark Notes’ have a terrific summery of 'all things' on this book. It has been invaluable to me in the understanding of this novel.Let’s deal with chapters one & two, as 3 and 4 are very readable and not a challenge to the average reader. Chapter 1 is 63 pages but chapter 2 is a very long and hard 90 pages!The main problems in reading chapters one & two are that the story line constantly goes off at tangents – back into the past or the use of flashbacks, or just somewhere else, some are written in italics to help but not all. The story just rambles in places and you have no idea where it’s going or what the meaning really is. In parts there is no punctuation at all! Frankly, chapter two is an utter nightmare.I found chapter one very hard work and not particularly exciting, but just about bearable with a lot of patience. Benjy's age ranges from 3 to 33 and people and events are mentioned that haven't come into the storyline thus yet! I was hoping that chapter two would be easier! However, I found chapter two utterly impossible and on finishing it I had to consult the aforementioned synopsis for guidance.Very tellingly, that told me that all of the main events of those two first chapters had totally passed me by! Even re-working these chapters to find these events was not easy, as a lot of the events are ‘implied’ and left to your imagination or detection, but none are totally obvious or crystal clear! Nothing is simply stated.Once again we have the question of brilliance or self-indulgence?I read ‘As Lay Dying,’ which I found reasonably easy to read, interesting, witty and thoroughly enjoyable – but his is a totally different animal and you have to spend an awful lot of time on it to truly understand it and get to the bottom of it. It takes study more than reading! Had I read chapters one and two, a couple times, I still think that I would have missed some of the salient points! Of course when you’ve read the synopsis things start falling into place on a re-read, but here an overview here is pretty much essential.I loved parts of this book – I really enjoyed the passage when Quinton met the little Italian girl in the bakery, and chapters 3 & 4 are very good with some excellent storylines concerning the nasty, horrible Jason. I also thought the description of the Sunday church service absolutely lovely.I’m glad I persevered, as the story when finally grasped is worth the effort. Would I recommend it? I’m not too sure about that! I was determined to crack it, but I can see why a lot of people would give up on this read!