The first thing that springs to mind when thinking about "The Sound and the Fury" is Eliot's "a heap of broken images." Deciphering TSTF is akin to reassembling a shattered mirror. It is an arduous task, and likely to culminate in pain.

On the other hand, it is difficult to refute that it is a great book, at least from the perspective of craftsmanship. The skill required to create this piece, composed of numerous separate perspectives, confined to such a narrow and specific moment in time, makes one think of interlocking puzzles carved from a single piece of wood or stone. Whether one likes it or not, one has to admire the workmanship.

That being said, I am of the opinion that this book is highly regarded precisely because of the qualities that render it inaccessible to the majority of readers. If one has the patience to finish it and the tools to decipher it, one becomes one of the select few, the literary elite. It is esteemed because it excludes. Regrettably, many lovers of literature desire writing that requires decoding; they yearn for layers of meaning that are inaccessible to the uninitiated. I am not among those readers.

After all, once one has decoded the book and reassembled the shattered mirror, is the image one sees truly that unique or captivating? I admit that I do have a certain degree of sympathy for the characters in TSTF; I believe in them. They feel real to me. However, it is hard not to care about the characters after one has exerted so much effort to understand precisely what is happening to them. One has already invested so much time with them that they are practically family. It faintly gives the impression of manipulation for an author to employ such a device to engage his readers with his characters.

Finally, I suppose that my issue is not with Faulkner, a master of his craft who accomplished what is nearly impossible, to do something new in the field of writing. My issue is with the literary community, which chose to hold in such high esteem such a difficult nut to crack.

"The Sound and the Fury"; a masterpiece of form, and one of the most inaccessible books I have ever picked up. Once again, it is difficult to dispute the quality of the book; I would recommend the book to very few readers, but I have still been compelled to write a couple of hundred words about it.

The Sound and the Fury is a novel that demands to be read with great care and attention, step by step. One should approach each sentence as if cracking a nutshell, patiently seeking to reach the sweet kernel within. Only by doing so can the true enjoyment of the novel be fully realized. Otherwise, it will simply remain as "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

Some days seem to fly by in the blink of an eye, while others crawl along at a sluggish pace. Some days are filled with the warmth and brightness of the sun, while others are dampened by the steady rain.

Clocks slay time... time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life.

Time, in and of itself, does not force us to move forward. It is we who have the power to make time move, to shape our experiences and create our own stories within the framework of time.

Reading this book brought to my mind Remains of the Day and other contemporary novels of the post-WW1 era that delved into the death of a particular society and the alterations in the social structure. Just like in Remains of the Day, the servants Dilsey and her family witness the decline of a once-great family. And similar to Evans, Dilsey mourns the loss of what the Compson clan once stood for.

Changes are rampant in the South. The code of behavior is being flouted, and even the patriarch seems to recognize the inevitable nature of the change, opining that the virginity of his daughter Caddy is of little consequence – a sentiment that her brother Quentin is unable to agree with, being romantically attached to the values inherent in being a Southern man. By the end of the book, Jason, named after his father, doesn't so much give up his position as head of the house as have it taken from him by the actions of his niece Quentin. Equally, the family's decline in status is evident when the local sheriff refuses to assist Jason and even criticizes the way he runs his household.

The race issue is also addressed. By the end of the book, Dilsey's black family is almost the keeper of the house. Without them, the home and family wouldn't function. Jason, the remaining brother and thus the head of the house, has a menial job in a farm supplies shop where he works alongside a black worker. The tables are slowly turning. Dilsey won't allow her grandson to plead for a ticket for the fair from Jason, who, in an act of incomprehensible spite, burns the tickets he got for free in front of Luster, despite knowing Luster lost the nickel he had to buy one for himself. Benji, the intellectually disabled brother, is almost exclusively cared for and loved by Dilsey and her clan. The only interaction he has with his hypochondriac mother and brother by the end is when they threaten to hit him for making too much noise. The race lines are beginning to blur, or at least become a little fuzzier. Dilsey takes Benji to her black church, and on Easter Sunday, they have a visiting preacher who shocks the congregation by sounding like a white man when he speaks.

Amid the losses keenly felt by the family, I sensed hope in the book. Maybe not for the protagonists here, but in society. In the near future, perhaps men like Jason will make their own way in the world and not become bitter and twisted by the unfulfilled promise of a prospect. Divorce and pre-marital sex will no longer be reasons for a mother to cut off contact with her daughter. Shame would be reserved for things one has done that are worthy of the emotion, rather than an inherited feeling that contradicts the code one has been taught to live by.

I can only imagine how explosive this book was when it was published – not only because of the subject matter but also the structure. The stream of consciousness, the lack of punctuation, and the voices given to those who are usually unheard make it a difficult read (I found Benji's section easier to follow than Quentin's), but a rewarding one.

They say you are either a Faulkner fan or a Hemingway fan. I'm not sure if that's true, but I never did like The Old Man and the Sea.

First of all, I will say a few words about the margins of this book and its author and express my opinion about it because probably most of my friends will not read this text completely.

"The Sound and the Fury" is one of the most argumentative books I have read. The argument that has taken the pleasure of reading this book from many people and I was also captivated by it.

Apparently, in a direct conversation with Faulkner about "The Sound and the Fury", the difficulty of reading and understanding it is raised. It is said to Faulkner that even after reading it three times, it is still not understandable for the questioner and what should be done? But Faulkner's answer is very attractive and intelligent: "Read it four times!" In fact, this book is designed in such a way that it requires rereading and reviewing the previous pages, which is not a pleasant feature.

The point of this book is that with the acceptance of all the difficulties that must be endured for its progress, but it is absolutely and never impossible.

Unfortunately, the path that we are usually accustomed to in reading leads to nowhere for "The Sound and the Fury". This path is a completely ideal quality path for us, at least in the field of the story, we do not expect a complex and elaborate text with different depths and pitfalls. In most of the negative reviews, we encounter this that the story should be smooth and easy on the palate, because it is supposed to amuse us and be relaxing! Just like that. But is the function of the story really only this goal? It is true that this goal is also included, but it is a great injustice to a great and famous writer like Faulkner to reduce the value of his writings to this extent.

With respect to the range of readers of this book, I do not consider the negative reviews valid. It is obvious that most people gave up reading the book without finishing it just because of its complexity and lack of patience. The next large group is only looking for reasons for this type of narration with consecutive whys and is saying bad and unkind things about Faulkner, but these whys only end with one answer for those who endure the pain of reading and go through it to get the pleasure that should be obtained. I also saw an interesting review in Persian here and the title was interesting with the content that they give one star to the book and five stars to the reviews of this book! Because from this volume of rubbish, they managed to extract a considerable amount of allusions and meanings, and in their answer, I can only smile.

But when we return to the book itself and its contents

The book refers to important matters clearly and unclearly, but surely one of the most important of them is time.

The book is narrated in the first three parts by different first-person narrators who are brothers. The passage of time is similar for all of them, but each has a different and complex understanding of it. In the fourth and last part, which is narrated in the third person, the center is Dilsey, the black servant of the family.

Benjy is almost unaware of the passage of time and has a wrong understanding of it because he is suffering from a certain type of mental disability. Quentin, who is very intelligent and acts precisely, sees himself caught in time and cannot find a way to stop it, so he decides to commit suicide to get rid of the pain. Jason also, with excess and self-will, always looks back at time and sometimes even manages to buy back lost time with money. The only person who seems to have a correct understanding of time is Dilsey.

Each of the narrators, of course, has a tendency to their own personal interests, so they are completely unreliable and we must follow their narrations with doubt. The Compson family usually manipulates the timetable according to their own will in such a way that at least in the narration of the events they escape.

Faulkner puts all his efforts into making the first half of the novel progress with the greatest difficulty. In fact, the progress and arrangement of the scattered pieces of this puzzle, which has been skillfully scattered, is very costly. But if we have the ability to pay this cost, in the second half, as the puzzle is completed, the return is greater and we can get the pleasure that should be obtained.

Part of the difficulty of the book is that since the narration is not for a third person and we are in the mind of the narrator, in fact, all the thoughts of the narrator are written without any special classification. Identifying the agent of the sentences, especially in the Benjy chapter, is difficult, and it is not possible to distinguish the personalities whose names are only mentioned in the first pages and no explanation is given about them and their relationship with each other or even whether they are black or white. The existence of three common names among the characters increases the difficulty even more. Benjy or more precisely Benjamin is sometimes addressed as Maury, who is the name of the children's uncle, the father of the family and the second son have the same name, but surprisingly, Quentin is the common name of the eldest son of the family and the daughter of the family.

But the most important challenge that we face in reading is the lack of linear narration in terms of the central time. The range of events includes nearly sixty years, and Faulkner has tried to interweave the events as much as possible. For example, the first chapter alone includes fourteen different moments, without any artificial signs to distinguish these times from each other.

The first chapter has a multiple challenge. All the difficulties are on one side, but Benjy's disability has torn the space on the other side. Incomplete sentences, the lack of correct punctuation marks, etc. throw Benjy's every feeling into a time and memory that are the turning points of his life and have remained well in his memory, but we are not in a regular and orderly presentation. The sentences are half-finished one by one, and with a new feeling, we are thrown into a different time and memory, while the present time is also flowing and the events of that are also being narrated. Sometimes we encounter a font that shows the change of time, but that is also not reliable. In this way, it can be inferred that Benjy himself is also suffering from a disorder in the sequence of events and is looking for a connection between them, and Faulkner has also involved us in this disorder with this technique. With these difficulties, we finally realize that despite the disability and in a relatively short time, more events have remained in Benjy's memory and the events have included very important points.

For example, on the first page, when Benjy hears the voice of a person playing basketball and calls his teammate Caddie (meaning pick up the ball), he remembers his sister Caddy, and just the similarity in pronunciation has caused this mistake.

In general, a complete and accurate connection with Benjy is not accessible, and we, who are reviewing the contents more and more during reading, must put the thoughts and feelings together, and only with the end of the book will we understand the importance of Faulkner's work.

Faulkner's argument was that people get involved with time in different ways. In this book, Benjy does not have a correct understanding of different times, but he creates a connection between the past and the present very well, which probably the others do not have such an ability because the Compson family has a special reputation in the past, and the others, because of the events that have spoiled this reputation, put pressure on them, but Benjy does not hide or deny something because of a certain defect. Quentin, who feels himself a prisoner of time and cannot get rid of the memories of the past, is looking for escape from time, but when he destroys his watch by hitting it on the table and removing the hands, but still the ticking sound reaches his ear, and he has no choice but to commit suicide to escape from time and memories. Quentin, who is definitely very intelligent but is caught in a different type of madness. His father, who is given to him at that hour as "the grave of hope and aspiration" and is considered a special inheritance of the famous Compson family. Later, his father tells him a sentence that has become very famous among the sentences of "The Sound and the Fury": "I give this to you not because you may remember time, but because you may forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all your breath trying to conquer it. Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools."

Jason, who feels his lack of success is due to the problems of the family and the insignificance of his father compared to himself, hates everyone. Jason always looks back at time and the timely occurrence of events. Sometimes he tries to buy time for himself with money, but it is a wrong and vain thought. Almost with the beginning of the Jason chapter, we feel the ease in reading completely because he seems to be a calm and precise person, and because of this, we progress with a regular and relatively clear narration. But how does this stormy beginning end with this amount of simplicity? Faulkner's different technique here refers to the character of Jason. He, who is extremely self-willed and has a bad image, has an unreliable narration of the events, and probably we should doubt his truthfulness. Maybe he leaves some things unsaid or things of this kind. The only person who has a reliable understanding of time is Dilsey, the servant of the family, who has raised the children from childhood and has a proper and accurate knowledge of everyone. She, despite being black, is the only character in the book who seems to be a kind and affectionate person, the only one who tries to keep the family together and is a deeply religious messianic person. The fourth and last chapter is narrated with the centrality of Dilsey and Easter.

As time has been played with in the narrations, the order of the chapters has also been reversed and forward in terms of time. A little patience and perseverance is needed to get through that confusion and not understand or even not understand. With the progress of the pages, the reading becomes easier and more understandable because the puzzle has taken a certain shape, but with the end of the book, some of the pieces disappear.

This was the second book that I read from Faulkner after "Light in August". I have almost come to the conclusion that the stories he wrote can be summarized in a few lines, but that volume expands to such an extent that it reaches several pages and nothing seems to be added at all. The type of narration and suspension is unique for sure.

And especially about "The Sound and the Fury", it is a kind of tolerance that we do not find any general description or explanation about any character. The characters are only thinking and talking, and within these lines, we must follow the type and quality of each one.

During the story, allusions and hints to religious and historical topics are plentifully arranged, and in different Persian and English articles, it has been sufficiently dealt with and I will not enter this topic. But an interesting point is the time of the narrations, which is related to Easter and the resurrection of Christ, and on the one hand, Benjy is similar to Christ in terms of age and the time when he was crucified. This topic, that a disabled person is compared to Christ, has drawn the voices of many religious people, but surely Faulkner has done this work with intelligence and precision. Christ was also considered crazy in the eyes of the people and was not given any importance.

The end of Saleh Hosseini's translation is several valuable articles that are very helpful in understanding the topics in question. Especially the article by Roland Barthes, which talks about time in "The Sound and the Fury" and at the end also makes a reference to the search for Proust and encourages me to go to that seven-headed monster earlier than Melm.

The translation was also smooth. In such a way that I did not feel any problem. Reading the English text is also difficult for an English speaker, which has increased the problems of translation, but I also did not understand the reason for the fuss about the problems of Saleh Hosseini's translation.

Talking about this book and its depth is endless. So far, if you have endured, it is time to say thank you. So I will be brief.

Contrary to the general perception that considers footnotes and parentheses, I enjoyed it and I will say a sentence that Faulkner himself described his son with it to serve you:

"A real son of a bitch."

"Our father said that man is equal to the sum of his misfortunes. Our father said: Maybe you think that one day the misfortune will be tired, but at that time, time itself will be the womb of your misfortune."

3/02

Since this is about the Classic, it is best (albeit a little, and somewhat ironically) to hide behind two quotes:

Number one is a shining quote from good old Billy: "Life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." This opinion here ranges from the "borrowed" title to the transcendental ethics that Billy advocates in his dramas, which, in the paraphrase of the popular mind, amounts to the fact that he who does not pay at the bridge, his descendant will at the bridge, except that the declension in "Macbeth" is pushed into the life of one, or rather two "heroes", while here it is a somewhat longer overview of the decline. Certainly an important link with Shakespeare is also the fact that the founders of the "tree" are warriors and politicians or that, with the subsequently added introduction, here we also have something like five acts,...

Number two is a dialog-comment with a recent GR quote from Vald Emerson (see in the presentation of StefanaP): "The offspring of good stock are all of natural virtues, not painfully acquired." It is worth asking what will happen to the children of bad stock and where will they be?! Leave them to painfully wallow in the possession of the Compsons: optimistically in limbo!

Besides the irony, attention, because here comes the diva talking, there are countless brilliant moments and extraordinary details here:

Starting from the >

Faker must be loved, endured, and persevered with. One must seize the opportunity and go towards it with courage.

As soon as you pick up the book, you will understand that you are accomplishing a great task with all its difficulties and hardships.

Perhaps during the reading, you may not like it, or even hate it, but without a doubt, in the end, you will fall in love with it.

Note!!!: Definitely have a brief study about the characters and the overall story before starting the book, so that you are less annoyed and enjoy the book more.

Second note!!!: Feeling the need to reread the book after finishing it is completely natural. Don't worry.

Contrary to what I had imagined, "The Sound and the Fury" is a book that engages in a struggle with the reader. Reading Faulkner, being so in love with Steinbeck, brought American writers to the top of my favorites and America to the focus of my interest and curiosity. Reading it during the trip to New York will make it unforgettable in my memory because reading on the road is always special.

How to simplify the reading and the emotions triggered by a book that I only understood after a lot of parallel research, a lot of going back, and that now, as I reread that first difficult chapter, moves me to tears?

There is something tragic, gloomy, and very heavy and suffocating in Faulkner's narrative. I read somewhere that it is "too dramatic", but I think the opposite, and that's what hurts. The reasons for the explosion are there, burning in the chest of the reader, but Faulkner's characters hold them tightly within themselves, contain themselves and implode.

In this novel, published in 1929, which narrates fictional events from 1910 and 1928, Faulkner introduces us to a family from Jefferson, which is reportedly an invented locality. He presents us with an aristocratic southern family that is always in decline throughout the narrative. There is financial failure, but worse than that, we witness the moral collapse of the Compson family, to the extent that an uncontained and inexplicable aversion seems to sprout from one to another, and undermine everything during the eighteen years that separate the first glimpse we have of the family and the last.

The main core of the novel are the four children of Caroline Compson: the deficient Maury, renamed Benjamin, Jason, Quentin, and Candace. Caddie, as the only woman and the only character without a chapter in which to express her voice, ends up having a major influence on the main character, since it is to her that the responsibility for the degeneration of the family is channeled, and it is also around her and her actions that the other characters revolve.

The book is divided into four parts, the first from the perspective of Benjy (1928), the second is a day in the life of Quentin (1910), the third is narrated from the daily life of Jason (1928), and the last is a more general view, a little more focused on the old black servant of the family, Dilsey.

If the first and second parts left me disoriented because I couldn't distinguish the overall picture, on the other hand, the richness of the narrative kept me glued to the words, to the vivacity of each character and their speech, and I was sipping small meanings from the disconnected passages that were coming to me. The brook. A boy holding on to the gate of the house. "She's not coming back, what is she waiting for?". "They told me to shut up, and I shut up". "But he's already gone back to the stable, but why, they won't tell me?","Give him a flower and he'll shut up, see?". I understood, even before reading about the novel, because I didn't think I would need support to understand it, that the voice that inaugurates the book is that of a mute character, a child or a mentally deficient person.

Faulkner was sowing clues in that first part: the age of the narrator appears in dialogues (and what dialogues!), referenced at thirty-three years old, and then comes a passage in which someone picks him up in their arms, and we understand that we are in another corner of Benjy's memory, and everything is blurred but very intense, and what stands out is the fact that this child is a burden, an inconvenience, and an embarrassment, and so often the only words addressed to him are to ask him to be quiet. At his pace, the voices, the times, the characters, were all wrapped up. With the progress of the novel, and it requires concentration, we are assembling the puzzle.

We are understanding the passage of time through the myriad of blacks who served the house, once a large property with full stables, and how everything is reduced to an old woman who stops to catch her breath when climbing the stairs, and to a carriage with only one exhausted mare, and how Benjy is again reneged on for the company of the youngest in each new generation of the Compson family and the Dilsey family, and how he is always caught in the schemes of the children who are in charge of distracting him and taking him out of the house, where Dilsey wants to work quietly in the kitchen, and the mother is always sick and locked in her room, convinced that she has been cursed.

It is interesting that the reason for the Compson's decline is not clear. Perhaps the father's weakness of character, the mother's victimization, the alleged promiscuity of the only female, the fragility of spirit of Quentin and the rancorous rudeness of Jason, but the faults are, undoubtedly, channeled to Benjy and Caddie, the weakest links, the woman and the deficient. Let's think that America was on the verge of the "crash", and that Prohibition was already taking its toll, and perhaps it is considered that the Compson are only being whipped by the times, but perhaps their aristocratic past prevents them from seeking support from each other, as the Joads do in Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath".

Faulkner masterfully explores the relationships between siblings, the fabric of authority among them, a girl and then a woman much more determined than anyone else in her clan, and her sweetness and patience for those who needed it most, as well as the blind love that a man who will always have three years of mental age dedicates to the one who showed him the most compassion and affection. Benjy may be retarded, as they call him, but he understands what it means to be loved and that's why his loyalty is so anchored to his sister Caddie. Also, the old South and the blacks - "I'm still to meet a black who's good for something" - come to life and gain clarity, sometimes even a very particular cruelty, not the obvious one, in a time when society was beginning to shed its traditions, and when everyone aspired to new opportunities.

I am rereading the first two parts, just to revisit those lines with the new doubts that the reading raises, and to be moved and amazed by the details that now gain meaning in each paragraph.

I have no doubt that I will keep it in the drawer of my favorite books.

"Sound and Fury" unfortunately was at the top of the works that I had been waiting to read or had been made to wait for a long time. The reason I use the word "made to wait" is that the work does not have a structure suitable for easy reading. Of course, I had picked up such an important novel before and tried to read it. However, the novel, which confronts the accustomed functioning and laziness of the mind in a very harsh way, is a task, an experience on its own. Faulkner invites the reader to an archaeological excavation very carefully, without touching the ground.

In the beginning, the consecutive pages do nothing but confuse the mind. It even creates a feeling of anger in the person towards the novel. It makes one say, "This is too much!" But the patient reader begins to receive his rewards later. Over time, the fog gradually dissipates and everything becomes clearly visible with the last page of the book.

In the shortest possible way, "Sound and Fury" tells the tragic history of the Compson family in rural America. But it does this in a very unusual way, with a very ambitious example of stream of consciousness. If you have read writers like Proust, Woolf, and Joyce before, you have already witnessed various uses of this narrative technique. Since I am a big fan of Proust and have read every text of his with enthusiasm, before reading Faulkner's example, I was prejudiced and thought that I would find something consisting of a successful copy. But I was completely wrong. Faulkner has passed stream of consciousness through his own filter and has signed a fragmented novel that I would define as a "literary experiment". He has written one of the books that sometimes annoys but ultimately manages to taste only the pleasure that literature can give.

The story of the Compson family has been written in four parts. The first part flows from the mouth, that is, from the mind of Benjy, the mentally handicapped member of the family. The second part is told from the mouth of Quentin, the eldest son. The third part is from the mouth of Jason, the youngest son. And the last part is told from the mouth of Dilsey, the black servant of the family. Also, Faulkner thought it appropriate to add an extra part to the novel, and fortunately he did; because this part has become the part that sticks everything you have read until then and after like glue and completes the whole with its meaningful details.

The first part, the part told from Benjy's mouth, is the most difficult part of the book. At first, it makes one look stupid. But after a while, after understanding the names and identities of the people and getting used to the jumps of the events, we embark on a journey in Benjy's mind (covering very long periods of time). What is told in this part is very important because it is a kind of guarantee of what will be told later. This part is the part where everything is given secretly in short pieces. When writing this part, Faulkner suggested to the publisher in the first edition of the book to print different times in different colors in order to make the time jumps more understandable. But since this would be a costly operation, the suggestion was not accepted, and Faulkner thought it appropriate to insert italic paragraphs between the paragraphs. Fortunately, he did, because this part is on a fine line between understandable and incomprehensible, and the italics are very helpful. An important detail about this part is also the first question Sarthe asked about this book before, which is why the narration of the mentally handicapped member is at the beginning of the book. I was able to understand this only after the book was over. Unlike the Compson family, the book starts with the broken one and takes a path towards the meaningful/complete one in both a formal and content sense.

When we come to the second part, we move away from the year 1928 when the events in the other parts took place and return to the year 1910. Here we witness the questions that Quentin, the eldest son of the family, is struggling to understand and define. Faulkner has revealed the disarray of Quentin's mind here, mostly without using punctuation marks. The parts that challenged me the most as a person were here. It even searched for the chaos of the first part. But at this point, the stream of consciousness becomes more systematic and regular, and it is easier to read with understanding.

In the third part, the writer now returns completely to the classical narrative and we begin to listen from the mouth of Jason, the third child of the family. At this point, Quentin, the illegitimate daughter of Caddy, is fully included in the story and we reach most of the answers we are looking for.

The last part is told as if from Dilsey's mouth but actually from the writer's mouth. It takes us to the conclusion. With the extra part, we learn in detail the before and after of the family members that we have not read throughout the book.

My biggest criticism was that I thought a section could be put at the beginning of the book saying who is who and what is what. But after the book was over, I realized that if this had been done, it would have closed the door to a literary excavation event. These difficulties in meaning are also related to the book, as I said, it is a complete experience.

"Sound and Fury" will not be my favorite book, nor will it be one of the books that I recommend everyone around me to read. But it will be a book that will never leave my mind with its use of every possibility of literature as a weapon and its presentation of the formal opportunities of the work as if it were a performing art. Since I have just finished the book, my thoughts are flying in my head and I can't think much. I recommend this book to those who are curious, as it is a book that will be very enjoyable to read the criticisms written on it!

The infinite itself can emerge from the mud-filled pants of a girl. The very infinite, if there is an enlightened writer who leads us through rivers, cities, scents, moans, and furious shouts. And one must let oneself be carried, even though absolutely nothing makes sense. To smell trees and love fire and hold on to a sneaker as Benji, a 33-year-old child, does. And to fall into a spiral of guilt, jealousy, and total incoherence, as Quentin does. And to submerge oneself deeply in meanness and rancor, as Jason does. Three brothers tightly attached to the fourth, Caddy, the only sister, the essence of the Compson family. The one whose decisions will mark the fates of all.

It ended up being an admirable work for me, although it started with a smell of frustration. The thing is that there is no normal narration. There is a novel to assemble. A beginning that is almost unintelligible and will only make sense at the end (And with a little luck). Continuing to read is a true leap of faith. But one must let oneself be carried...

This book truly demanded a great deal of effort from me. I had to read it not once, not twice, but three times just to have a glimmer of understanding about what on earth it was all about.

I first picked up this book during my college days. I was completely and utterly lost. Sure, I have a grasp of the whole stream-of-consciousness concept, but as I read this particular work, all I could think was, "What the f@k?"

I was so incredibly freaked out about taking the test on this book that I resorted to getting the Cliff notes. I read those notes, and then I actually turned back to the cover to double-check if I had the right ones. I mean, after reading them, I found myself asking, "What the f@k? Is this the same book I read?"

A few years after graduating, I decided to give it another go. I just couldn't bear the thought of letting this book defeat me. However, I still had no clue what was happening.

Then, a few years ago, while I was browsing the audio books in the library, I came across this one. I thought, maybe, just maybe, this time around, I would finally get it. I've noticed that sometimes I read too fast, and audio books have the advantage of forcing me to slow down. You're at the mercy of the reader; you can't skim.

And finally, with the audio version, I FINALLY understood this book. I could see the brilliance of what Faulkner was attempting to do, but it still managed to piss me off.

Why? Because in my opinion, the essence of a book is to communicate, to share an idea, an emotion, or an experience. It shouldn't be some convoluted, self-indulgent exercise in showing off how brilliant and profound the author is.

I'm well aware that not everyone shares this perspective. They'll talk about "pushing the boundaries of writing, exploring new styles," and all that jazz. But for me, damnit, I'm not dumb. I graduated with honors from a prestigious college on a merit scholarship, majoring in English. I've read numerous books that others consider a "difficult read." I'm not some schmuck who only reads supermarket paperbacks. And if a book is as damned inaccessible as this one, to the point where a college graduate, writer, and dedicated reader can't understand it without three readings, then it can go to hell. For me, this book is a failure and a perversion of what a book is truly meant to be.

That's just my two cents. Your mileage may vary.

At this stage of the game, praising The Sound and the Fury is like preaching to the choir. Recognizing this: what a deluge. I just finished the book a moment ago, including in my reading the "Appendix" (307-325) included in this edition, where a brief profile of the characters is made, adding in the addition a certain theatrical version of the work. The impression of the reading will accompany me all day, with a brutal certainty: I will not forget this book and I will reread it from time to time.

The Sound and the Fury is not only the lucid and lucid display of an author capable of moving skillfully among the disparate registers of his characters. It is, above all, a light shed, liquid gold, between the cracks of human vileness incubated in pride and vanity. The tragedy of decadence is not in the loss of the fields and in the Compsons finding themselves economically ruined, but in the impossibility of love within their particular circumstances.

Abandoned by the image they have constructed of themselves, the characters in the novel can only advance in self-destructive directions, either directly, in the suffocating suicide at the bottom of a river where an old trout is never caught, or indirectly, destroying what has been entrusted to them as a sacred duty by considering that destruction as a necessary step towards their freedom. Each character, in their own way, manages to be likable to the reader. Even Jason, in his meanness, does not lack the necessary density to embrace him, to love him.

The formal challenge, accompanying the previous thematic development, seems to me another of the praiseworthy points of this effort. The Sound and the Fury cost me, in terms of structure, what a novel didn't cost me a long time ago. Such a challenge is not in vain. The fragmentation, the concealment and the play with the points of view allow the personal closeness with the characters and gives greater meaning to a reading experience where the understanding of the theme depends on the reader being able to put himself in the place of the characters.

The first chapter, narrated from Benjamin, is worthy of being read on one's knees, out loud. Faulkner's ability to present that discursive current is enchanting, and prepares the reader for the subsequent development of the novel. It functions as a warning sign, and pays its rewards as we progress in the work. Fitting the intuitions chapter by chapter, explaining the doubts, correcting the false steps of the premature conclusions: such would be, ideally, the objective of any reading. Here it is the only possible reading. Reading Benjamin forces a poetic understanding of the world. The prose shows, from the beginning of the novel, to have ritual powers.

I will return, as I have already said, to read this book. To love Caddy again, to pity Jason again, to suffer for Quentin again, to support Quentin again, to look at the flames in the fireplace with Benjamin again. It is a beautiful novel, in its desolation, from beginning to end.

Desolate and beautiful.

When you initially pick up a book, it might seem extremely dull and lacking any real purpose.

You might find yourself having to reread a single line multiple times just to make sense of it.

I truly wish that, like Benji, I could be oblivious to the passage of time.

I firmly believe that one must possess a great deal of patience in order to read this particular book. :)

"Man is equal to the sum of his miseries." This profound statement makes one stop and think about the nature of human existence and the role that hardships play in shaping us.

It implies that our experiences, both good and bad, contribute to who we are as individuals.

Perhaps this is the underlying theme of the book that requires such patience to uncover.

As we persevere through the seemingly difficult passages, we may begin to gain a deeper understanding of ourselves and the world around us.