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.