Sound and the Fury Review

I think this book is too southern and weird for me. It’s a deep fried catfish po boy. It’s blaring country music with a flag welded to the bed of your pickup truck. I didn’t grow up in the south, and maybe that’s why I didn’t connect with this book.

It reads like a car accident, the telling of a series of tragedies are you can’t help but rubberneck. But it’s also a nearly impenetrable mass of old school southern dialect.

Faulkner is also a raging asshole. I’ll explain how I can tell.

The book itself is evenly cleaved into four parts. The first three are first person POV. The first one is from the POV of Benjy Compson, a mentally disabled family member that sort of follows whatever drunken meandering Faulkner wants his thought process to be. The only positive of this part of the book is that I think it increased my overall blood pressure therefore driving out any tapeworms that I might have. The next two parts are written from the POV of Benjys brothers. One section for Quentin and one for Jason. Both are less difficult but still follow this sort of southern dialect and stream of consciousness that make them difficult as hell to read. And they concerningly fixate on their sister. I don’t have a sister, so again maybe I just don’t have the background to get this book.

But the last part. And this is why I know Faulkner and I would get into a fight if we ever had the misfortune to be invited to the same cocktail party. I imagine him cackling with glee as I describe my frustration with his insufferable style of writing. Swatting whatever whiskey he has out of his hand to call him a despicable man. I imagine him telling me that we could take it outside, and as I march into the backyard, rolling up my sleeves, I hear the door shut behind me. he laughs, walks out the front door, hops in his car and goes home. I’m left standing in the backyard like a fool.

In the last part Faulkner switches to a third person limited POV and it’s excellent. Clear prose. The dialogue is constrained in a formatting that makes sense. The cute colloquial way of talking is limited to snippets between good writing. What this does is basically flip the reader the bird. “Hey youssir, youse gon reed a buncha difficult fancy talk, but I’m goin to close wit tha fact I coulda mad dis whol book moor digestible the whole time.”

So, Fuck you Faulkner.