The Sound and the Fury

When I was in my 20s, Faulkner's, As I Lay Dying was one of my favorite books. I loved the stream-of-conscious writing, and the way that Faulkner used it to penetrate the beings of his characters. A short book, it was dense and cryptic, but penetrable. The Sound and the Fury takes stream-of-consciousness writing up a magnitude in difficulty. It begins with 75 pages of thoughts and flashbacks of Benji, a cognitively impaired (presumably, autistic), 33 year old man. It is a bear to get through. After critical uproar about the book's difficulty, Faulkner put an appendix (with lots of spoilers) at the end of the book and encouraged readers to read it first. Readers are optionally advised to consult a reader's guide which helps to decipher the story even as it gives spoilers.

The story is that of the Comspon family: Jason and Caroline, their four children, Quentin, Caddy, Benji, young Jason and Caddy's daughter, also named Quentin. Other major characters include their black housekeeper, Dilsey, her husband, the estate caretaker, and their offspring,Versh, TP and Luster who are caretakers, in turn, for Benji.

This is not an easy family to belong to. Mother stays in bed and ignores her children (except for her favorite, Jason), demanding that everyone keep Benji quiet so that she can get some rest. Benji is certainly not easy to be with. He is noisy, demanding and requires constant supervision. Father is a nurturing sort of guy in that he gives hugs and spends time with his children, but he is cynical to the degree that his fatherly wisdom destroys the hearts of his children, in particular, Quentin, who is a very sensitive boy. Caddy, having little parental supervision is a wild girl. She is a headstrong, risk-taking beauty who takes one risk too many that spirals into tragic/near-tragic outcomes for each family member in turn. The youngest brother Jason is a cold-hearted, villainous sort of guy who terrorizes Caddy's teenage daughter, Quentin. Quentin for her part is wilder than her mother. Countering all of this neuroticism is the down-to-earth Dilsey, a nurturing, sensible woman who helps keep things together. The antics of her sons and grandson provide the book's comic relief.

The story covers the time period of the children's youth, 1898, to the present, Easter 1928. The book's structure has an outer story that takes place on Benji's birthday, and multiple inner stories that occur as flashback memories of Benji, Quentin and Jason to the years of 1898 - 1910.

The first chapter is seen through Benji's eyes. This is a hard read and bears 2-3 readings as it gives important clues to the events that occur, primarily involving Caddy, whom he adores. Following that is Quentin, the son's story which takes place in 1910 and follows him while a student at Harvard as he painfully relives events with Caddy and his father that took place two years earlier. Next is Jason's story and it takes place mostly in the present. It also relates the story of Caddy's daughter, Quentin. The last chapter takes place on Easter day and mostly follows housekeeper, Dilsey, as she tries to manage the whimperings of both Caroline and Benji while putting on an Easter breakfast and getting herself ready for church. The Sound and the Fury thus begins with the clouds of thoughts in Benji's head, ends with the firmly-rooted Dilsey taking care of the family.

The reader of The Sound and the Fury becomes a detective, slowly piecing together several events from the flash-back thoughts of the brothers. But it is the telling of the story, not the story itself, that is most important. Faulkner's characterizations are incredibly rich.  One gets a tremendous appreciation for his ability to get inside the heads of people. And it is primarily for this talent that he won his Nobel Prize in Literature.

The book is ripe with symbolism, with title and themes coming from Macbeth's soliloquy. (...it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.) I am sure that many a master's thesis has been written on the topics of death, recorded time, shadows and of course, sound and fury - all taken from Shakespeare's verse.

The appendix provides details of the Compson family ancestry, gives a summary of major events in the book and also acts as an epilogue of outcomes for the parents and children. As I mentioned in my last post, Faulkner hoped that people would read the appendix first, spoilers and all. For him, the thoughts and thought patterns of the characters were more important than the story itself and he was concerned that the reader be able to comprehend the cryptic stream-of-conscious story telling. However, because I was unable to avoid spoilers in the appendix and a reader's guide, the actual reading of The Sound and the Fury was a disappointment for me. Had I lots of time on my hands, I would have patiently decoded the book and gotten wonderful rewards.

Spoiled book, aside, was it a great book? Absolutely. Could it be better? Yes, put a family tree with family history for both families at the front of the book, and save the spoilers for an epilog at the back.

Getting Through Chapter 1, The Sound and the Fury

You should approach Joyce’s Ulysses as the illiterate Baptist preacher approaches the Old Testament: with faith. - William Faulkner

And with faith that the reader would prevail, Faulkner followed in Joyce's footsteps with  76 pages of the stream-of-consciousness thinking of a 33 year old cognitively impaired man named Benji Compson. Benji's thoughts move freely from the present to a variety of scenes in the distant past. The reader is left to guess the time frame as well as the narrative context. Faulkner provided a single clue to decoding the text: he italicized the first line of each time shift. What a difficult book this is!

I made it through As I Lay Dying, but for this book, I had to track down (on Wikipedia) the key that would unlock the time frame. There is a trick. Benji had 3 care takers: one who was with him when he was a child, a second who cared for him as a teen and the third, his current care taker. Note which care taker is telling him to "quiet down" and you know how old he is at that time. That is a huge help, but the context is still tricky, and unless you read the Compson story in the Appendix, you probably have to read the chapter twice. There is one last difficulty. Some of the characters have the same first name and so you need to know that there are 2 Jasons (father and son - easy) and 2 Quentons (one a boy, the other a girl - yikes!).

Twenty years after writing The Sound and the Fury, Faulkner felt bad about the demands he had placed on the reader and wrote a history for the Compson family to be included in the book. (Did his friends, family and other readers send him ranting letters?) He suggested that the new material be placed at the front of the book. The publishers instead made it into an appendix - presumably because it contains spoilers.

Having conquered chapter 1, I am now resting before attempting the next stage of the book and hoping that the worst is behind me.

Making Peach Pies

Today was peach pie day. I bought a box of about 40 Michigan peaches for $8 at the Ann Arbor farmer's market on Wednesday. They were only slightly bruised but oh, so sweet.

I put a pot of water on the stove to boil while I made pie crust dough from flour, nuts (pistachio and walnut), salt, oil, brown sugar, oatmeal flakes and lemon-water.

When the water was rolling, I put 4-5 peaches in at a time for a minute or two, then dunked them into ice water for a second and set them to drain on the counter before removing their skins. I did this for 18 peaches - 3 pies worth.

The next step was to press the dough into the pie plates. It's a cross between a crumble and pie dough, and presses easily. That done, the crusts went into the fridge to stay cold.

Back to the peaches. Now it's time to slice them and coat them with a little tapioca flour and cinnamon.

Finally, I put the peaches into the pan, added more crumble dough on top and baked them in a 425 degree over for 15 minutes and then for another 40 at 350 degrees.

I had enough dough left for a small tart (cook's tart, I call it), so I peeled one more peach and assembled the tart. It was done in 20 minutes. Mmm!

Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates

Summary: Revolutionary Road is an emotionally charged look at the dysfunctional marriage of Frank and April Wheeler, two city-loving sophisticates now living unhappily in the suburbs with their two young children. "Unhappy" is a key word here and something needs to give, or their marriage will come apart. April comes up with an incredible plan to change their lives for the better (no spoilers here). Their relationship is energized with every step they take to put the new plan into place and they return to being the lovers they once were. But big plans rarely go smoothly in the best of worlds, and this isn't the best. As "stuff" happens, the Wheelers are emotionally challenged to their limits.

Yates is a master of emotional analysis and his insights into human nature are spot-on. He sets up characters and situations that speak to the reader as if to reveal the reader's hidden secrets. It can be that intimate. It is that real of a story.

Yates keeps the story open so that it never paints itself into a corner. At any given point there are a myriad of outcomes, and for me it was impossible to predict where the tale was headed. Even when I predicted a general direction, his story-telling skills were great enough to surprise me with the telling of it. I contrast this to Follett's, "The Pillars of the Earth, which was so transparent that I put it down after 80 pages. It's no fun out-guessing the author.

While it is cited as being one of the most depressing books in literature, what I got from Revolutionary Road was less a sense of depression than of nihilism. April and Frank's lives have little meaning. April was raised by a series of aunts and saw her parents only occasionally. She says repeated, "I don't know who I am". Frank was the "unwanted child" born to middle-aged parents who had already raised their family. He spends time in the mirror creating his image with clothes that are "just so". He practices making his jaw protrude as a way of projecting confidence. Neither of them is secure in their own self, and so they do not have the ease or emotional wisdom to connect with others.

Frank is the healthier of the two and he honestly tries to be a good husband to April. She is just not available. But it is the children of this marriage who are the true losers. If April and Frank are unable to deal with the world, they are even less capable of nurturing their children. And Yates makes you wonder if "what goes around comes around" will be the outcome for these kids.

That's all I'm saying about the plot. No spoilers in this review. I recommend Revolutionary Road to all serious readers of fiction for its insight into the American emotional makeup as well as for the historical insight into the beginnings of huge social changes that made up the 60s. (See my last post.) It is a powerful tale and a satisfying read.

Walking Revolutionary Road with The Feminine Mystique

In the late fifties and early sixties we lived the lives of Ozzie and Harriet - or we thought we should - or wished we could. The suburban dream was rampant - and according to Richard Yates, boring. His book, Revolutionary Road, paints a grim view of that life for both Frank and April McClure now reaching 30, wondering if they can still find the dream they shared 8-10 years earlier. The point of view through much of the book is Frank's - a man's view.

Shift to the other side of town (presumably) where in 1957 Betty Friedan began researching why affluent, happily married housewives with college educations were so unhappy with their suburban lives. We have in Revolutionary Road and and The Feminine Mystique, two different sides of the same coin. Within 2 years, Yates gave spark to what would become counter-culture (his book was a cult classic) and Friedan set off the second wave of the feminist movement. It was a painful transition as men weighed sticking heroically to lifeless jobs vs. opting out, and women struggled to find meaning outside of their homes and families. It would take another decade to begin to sort that out. 

I am 1/3 the way through Revolutionary Road. I know that Frank and April don't stand a chance - this book is thought to be the most depressing book ever written, but I'm still rooting for them.

Naked Lunch

The Title means exactly what the words say: NAKED Lunch --a frozen moment when everyone sees what is on the end of every fork."

 --  William S. Burroughs

What's on the end of Burroughs' fork is not pretty. Not too many people are going to be able to look at it without getting queasy. Burroughs created the pages of notes that ultimately became Naked Lunch  during the 15 year period (age 30-45) he was a junkie. He doesn't recall writing them. After rehab, he rewrote the notes into short vignettes and with Alan Ginsberg's help, organized them first into a European (Grove Press) edition, and then the American (Olympia Press) edition.

The book is political and social satire from the view of a debauched gay junkie genius. It took about half of the book for me to be able to get past the debauchery and see the "naked" social satire. There was one multi-page segment,  "Atrophied Preface", that was fairly incomprehensible. There were other parts in which the genius shone through clearly. There is a 20 page section, "A.J.'s Party", that is indescribably horrendous.

There is no plot and no linear story, but I'm okay with that. The satire is excellent. Burroughs takes on good-old-boys, racism, child molestation and slavery, pornography, corporate greed, medical research, etc., using addiction and sex as metaphors. As I said, it's not pretty, but he makes his points.

Would I recommend this book. No. Not that way. But it begs to be read in the context of the "best books of the 20th century". As I mentioned in my last post, it holds a critical place in literature. There is a "before" and an "after" Burroughs.

Reading Naked Lunch - Time 100 Books

One of my finds at the Borders' going-out-of-business sales was the 50th anniversary version of Naked Lunch by William Burroughs. It is, of course, one very strange book. (I seem to be on a roll with strange books these days.) But it is not as daunting as I feared and I'm making good progress with it. I will review it in a few days.

Naked Lunch is a tale chock full of obscure references and thought provoking, off-the-wall ideas. A number of people have become enthralled with the book, and so there is "online help" in the form of web sites with prefaces, background info and footnotes. One site, Naked Lunch @ 50, provides contextual and background information about New York, Tangiers and Paris, identifies some of the characters and even provides pictures of a few. The Naked Lunch entry on Wikipedia has biographical material. There is even a study guide at Bookrags.com. Naked Lunch was made into a film and the online material about that very different "story" provides insight into the book. (The film has little content in common with the book except that both are composed of a series of autobiographical vignettes seen through Burroughs' drug-hazed eyes.)

As strange a book as Naked Lunch is, it deserves its place on the Time 100 list. The book draws on earlier books on the list such as Brave New World. (Burroughs was a fan of both Paul Bowles and Aldous Huxley.) Alan Ginsberg thought  that Naked Lunch was a work of genius and helped Burroughs edit and find a publisher for it. Burroughs' other great friend, Jack Kerouac, (On the Road) looked up to him as a mentor and teacher. Burroughs' style and subject matter inspired great authors such as Thomas Pynchon (The Crying of Lot 49) and David Foster Wallace (Infinite Jest).