Product Description

Ever since the first furore was created on its publication in 1929, "The Sound and the Fury" has been considered one of the key novels of this century. Depicting the gradual disintegration of the Compson family through four fractured narratives, "The Sound and the Fury" explores intense, passionate family relationships where there is no love, only self-centredness. At its heart this is a novel about lovelessness - 'only an idiot has no grief; only a fool would forget it. What else is there in this world sharp enough to stick to your guts?'

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6754 in Books
• Published on: 1995-01-19
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

From the Back Cover
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY RICHARD HUGHES

'Faulkner has inexhaustible invention, powerful imagination, and he writes like an angel' Arnold Bennet

Depicting the gradual disintegration of the Compson family through four fractured narratives, The Sound and the Fury explores intense, passionate family relationships where there is no love, only self-centredness. At its heart this is a novel about lovelessness - 'only an idiot has no grief; only a fool would forget it. What else is there in this world sharp enough to stick to your guts?'

'One of the most important works of American literature this century' Observer

See also: As I Lay Dying

About the Author
Born in 1897 in New Albany, Mississippi, William Faulkner was the son of a family proud of their prominent role in the history of the south. He grew up in Oxford, Mississippi, and left high school at fifteen to work in his grandfather's bank. Rejected by the US military in 1915, he joined the Canadian flyers with the RAF, but was still in training when the war ended. Returning home, he studied at the University of Mississippi and visited Europe briefly in 1925. His first poem was published in The New Republic in 1919. His first book of verse and early novels followed, but his major work began with the publication of The Sound and the Fury in 1929. As I Lay Dying (1930), Sanctuary (1931), Light in August (1932), Absalom, Absalom! (1936) and The Wild Palms (1939) are the key works of his great creative period leading up to Intruder in the Dust (1948). During the 1930s, he worked in Hollywood on film scripts, notably The Blue Lamp, co-written with Raymond Chandler. William Faulkner was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1949 and the Pulitzer Prize for The Reivers just before his death in July1962.

Customer Reviews

A challenging book that's worth the effort
Not for the beach, this one. But certainly worth ploughing through if you want to stretch your brain and think about life and death and consciousness. Most people will dismiss this book in the first few pages - it is notoriously difficult to get to grips with, and actually requires two readings before it starts to make any sense. But, as a reflection on the incomprehensible nature of life, that's not bad. Most of us make little or no sense of our three score years and ten; in relative terms The Sound & the Fury is a breeze! This is a tragic story, and all the more so for the choked narrative voice of the dead. The repression in these pages is countered by the rebellious and almost unpunctuated text, and the contrast is stunning. It soon dawns on you - as a reader who is impatient at the challenge to traditional literature - that we're all victims of a man-made environment, and by social mores that cripple and destroy our souls. Faulkner's novel is not, by any stretch, the most enjoyable or entertaining that you will ever read. But it is certainly one of the most brave, and I would recommend it highly if you want to confront your own demons.

Avoid Preconceptions
Faulkner is often regarded as a "difficult" novelist, and this book is indeed a densely dilineated, complex tome. It is also, however, incredibly straighforward. It is one of those texts that you just have to go with. Too many readers approach this book with trepidation, because they have been told they are not going to understand it. Turn loose of your preconceptions about fiction and about narrative, and you will be amply rewarded.

Faulkner, along with Joyce, was a master of stream-of-consciousness narrative, and this is his masterpiece in that regard. To appreciate such a technique, you must as the Beatles exhorted, "turn off your mind, relax and go downstream." Go with the flow, no matter you noxious that sounds these days. If you let yourself think for a while as Benjie does, the whole patchwork makes perfect sense.

This is a family novel, more than anything else, but it is obviously not about the Waltons. Faulkner made a career out of delineating the disfunction of not only Southern families, but of the South itself in the era following its ignominious Civil War defeat and surrender . The whole social structure broke down from within, and though no apologist, Faulkner was enough of a realist to depict the society in all its infirm decline.

Southern revisionists can come along and deny its accuracy, but for a true picture of ther region in the first half of the 20th century, Faulkner is more accurate than any social historian.

Simply wonderfull!
I was somewhat curious to see what the other reviewers made of this book, and I am somewhat surprised (not of the praise, that's of course expected) with comments that it isn't "enjoyable", and has to be read a number of times. Now please! I'm hardly some intellectual old English teacher unable to believe the "simple people" can't keep up, I really just scrapped through school but this book makes perfect sense, and I had no problems reading it at all. Seems a perfect beach book to me! To be honest I find someone like George Elliot more difficult!
The first part is written by a mentally handicapped man, but I found it both touching and real. The rest of the book rolls into your heart like a steam train, with an explosive climax you're never forget.
It is simply the best book ever written. Simple if you take it as it comes, don't re-read every sentence searching for the hidden meaning. Read it like a child and let the wonderful writing and story capture your imagination!