Book Review: The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner

"Are you a good book, or a bad book? "

Were this book able to talk, it would have said, "Oh, well I'm not a book at all. I'm a piece of trash, from hell."

I don't really mean that. But I do feel like it sent me through six out of the nine levels of hell.  Let me open by saying that last year I embarked on Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Cien Anos de Soledad, or, One Hundred Years of Solitude. I have yet to finish it--I really will, someday. When I'm ready. I stopped reading it because it took so much thinking juice what with the purposely misleading writing style. When half your characters share the same name, span several decades and the writing is very cut and dry, it becomes a bit of a struggle, not unlike trudging through metaphorical quicksand.

So when I realized about thirty pages into Faulkner's masterpiece it felt like that same journey all over again, I knew the road would be long.

The pros: I have an innate respect for southern writers. I love folk talk and dialect and humor. There were many lines that thoroughly tickled my fancy. The story involved and developed very deep characters whom you get to know, one perspective at a time. It was broken into four parts, each part by a different character through their recollection of the accounts. The first was incredibly disjointed and confusing as all get out, until you realize that's intentional because the subsequent three parts shed light on what was taking place (the first character is a 30-year-old mentally challenged man, so it's told through his limited perception of events around him). I also have immense respect for authors who are able to intertwine and develop plotline in a way that takes an ordinary tale and keeps you intrigued, giving you the full story in short insights that gradually pull into full awareness. It's a talent.

The cons: What isn't a talent is completely disregarding written conventions because you consider yourself above them. I read several interviews with Faulkner, in which he explicitly and smugly states that it will take the average reader three or four times of rereading his novel to piece it all together. I'm sorry, since when is accomplished writing supposed to be a basic-reading-level test trying to sort through your disheveled thoughts? It reeks of pretentiousness to me.

I can't say I'd recommend this as a fun reading. If you enjoy a challenge, and want to get something a little different from the usual tale, then maybe take a gander.