William Faulkner - The Sound & The Fury (1929)
Novel – 200 pages – my copy (a splendid Norton edition; 1994) bought for £3 from the Beardie Bookshop on Plymouth Barbican in 2008
- 5 nods out of 5 -
The Sound & The Fury is, quite simply, a breath-taking must-read of a novel. Written by William Faulkner in the late 1920s, the book charts the Compson family in the south of America in the early part of the twentieth century. Cut into four parts, the first three are narrated by the brothers of a generation: each unique and different from the other, but all consumed by their obsession with their sister, Caddy.
Faulkner is quoted in stating that the image of the young Caddy climbing the pear tree in her dirty drawers is enough for his literary legacy. Boisterous and bossy, Caddy figures heavily in the novel, yet does not narrate herself. Benjy, the confused first narrator – he of the sound and the fury signifying nothing – feels the loss of Caddy – she who smelled of leaves; whilst her elder brother Quentin feels the loss of her honour. The last of the brothers, Jason – most straightforward and yet perhaps most deceitful of all narrators – strikes at Caddy and her memory at the loss of his own perceived happiness and future.
What happens? Well, ultimately, nothing. But it is the explanation of the family’s loss and inertia that compels the reader. The novel is hailed as a modernist classic, and indeed, it has all the trimmings of Joycean fiction, notably the stream of consciousness (something Faulkner employed to great effect in As I Lay Dying). Yet The Sound & The Fury is much more than this: it is the dying Compson family and the dying American South.
To add icing to the cake is the Norton Edition bonus features (like a well packaged DVD of a classic movie). Compelling articles range from letters between Faulkner and his editor to critical reviews, including Jean Paul Satre and Ralph Ellison: a real treasure trove for the Faulkner enthusiast (and that surely is you, right?).
Groundbreaking, breath-taking and must-read are statements thrown about all too often. The Worm rarely utters such applause. If you do one thing this month, buy a copy of this novel and enter Faulkner’s world.
