The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner




It was a chore to read this book. Yet, after I finished it, I felt as if I had lived among the troubled Compsons rather than read about them.

The stream-of-consciousness narrative isn’t for every reader to digest and to enjoy. And when it’s a stream of a person with a mental disability and the author does an excellent job of portraying how the mind of such a person works, it is, I believe, a huge stop-sign for many.

I admire the courage of the author who put aside the doubts I’m sure he did have and wrote the book like no other. Reading “The Sound and The Fury” was like being constantly slapped in the face and not waiting before the ringing in your head stopped, returning for more. I doubt any author nowadays would dare to create a story like that.

Countless times, I lost the thread of the narrative. Countless times, I put the book aside and days passed before I returned to reading it. I felt the frustration, the uneasiness, the impatience – the fury borne from the sounds William Faulkner made me listen to in my head.

While reading it, I’m not sure I understood even half of what was going on in the Compsons’ household and, in the second part of the book, with Quentin in Harvard. After closing the book, I felt like I watched a movie rather than read the words on paper. The things I thought I didn’t understand emerged from somewhere underneath my subconsciousness and pinned into my memory.

I am not sure if the most profound impression I was left with after reading “The Sound and The Fury” by William Faulkner means that I liked the book. That’s why I’m posting this review without a star rating. I might change it if I ever decide to reread it.

I agree with Richard Hughes, who said in the introduction that this novel should be read a second time at least. “The essential quality of a book that can be read again and again, it seems to me, is that it shall appear different at every reading – that it shall, in short, be a new book.” I also feel that the only way to truly enjoy this story is to do as Mr Hughes suggests: “…there is no need to disentangle anything. If one ceases to make the effort, one soon finds that this strange rigmarole holds one’s attention on its own merits.” I confess I wasn’t able to fully do that this time, but when I did lose myself in the narrative, giving up on exerting my brain to understand what should be felt not judged using logic, I caught glimpses of something flawing effortlessly, leaving vivid images etched in my mind.




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William Faulkner