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by: William Faulkner  List Price: $7.95 Price: $4.95 You Save: $3.00 (38%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Dewey Decimal Number: 741 EAN: 9780394747743 ISBN: 0394747747 Label: Vintage Manufacturer: Vintage Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 378 Publication Date: February 12, 1987 Publisher: Vintage Release Date: February 12, 1987 Studio: Vintage Related Items:
Browse for similar items by category: Click to Display Editorial Review: Amazon.com Review: The ostensible subject of The Sound and the Fury is the dissolution of the Compsons, one of those august old Mississippi families that fell on hard times and wild eccentricity after the Civil War. But in fact what William Faulkner is really after in his legendary novel is the kaleidoscope of consciousness--the overwrought mind caught in the act of thought. His rich, dark, scandal-ridden story of squandered fortune, incest (in thought if not in deed), madness, congenital brain damage, theft, illegitimacy, and stoic endurance is told in the interior voices of three Compson brothers: first Benjy, the "idiot" man-child who blurs together three decades of inchoate sensations as he stalks the fringes of the family's former pasture; next Quentin, torturing himself brilliantly, obsessively over Caddy's lost virginity and his own failure to recover the family's honor as he wanders around the seedy fringes of Boston; and finally Jason, heartless, shrewd, sneaking, nursing a perpetual sense of injury and outrage against his outrageous family. If Benjy's section is the most daringly experimental, Jason's is the most harrowing. "Once a bitch always a bitch, what I say," he begins, lacing into Caddy's illegitimate daughter, and then proceeds to hurl mud at blacks, Jews, his sacred Compson ancestors, his glamorous, promiscuous sister, his doomed brother Quentin, his ailing mother, and the long-suffering black servant Dilsey who holds the family together by sheer force of character. Notoriously "difficult," The Sound and the Fury is actually one of Faulkner's more accessible works once you get past the abrupt, unannounced time shifts--and certainly the most powerful emotionally. Everything is here: the complex equilibrium of pre-civil rights race relations; the conflict between Yankee capitalism and Southern agrarian values; a meditation on time, consciousness, and Western philosophy. And all of it is rendered in prose so gorgeous it can take your breath away. Here, for instance, Quentin recalls an autumnal encounter back home with the old black possum hunter Uncle Louis: And we'd sit in the dry leaves that whispered a little with the slow respiration of our waiting and with the slow breathing of the earth and the windless October, the rank smell of the lantern fouling the brittle air, listening to the dogs and to the echo of Louis' voice dying away. He never raised it, yet on a still night we have heard it from our front porch. When he called the dogs in he sounded just like the horn he carried slung on his shoulder and never used, but clearer, mellower, as though his voice were a part of darkness and silence, coiling out of it, coiling into it again. WhoOoooo. WhoOoooo. WhoOooooooooooooooo.What Faulkner has created is a modernist epic in which characters assume the stature of gods and the primal family events resonate like myths. It is The Sound and the Fury that secures his place in what Edmund Wilson called "the full-dressed post-Flaubert group of Conrad, Joyce, and Proust." --David Laskin Product Description: First published in 1929, Faulkner created his "heart's darling," the beautiful and tragic Caddy Compson, whose story Faulkner told through separate monologues by her three brothers--the idiot Benjy, the neurotic suicidal Quentin and the monstrous Jason. Average Rating:
 Rating:  - A Great American Classic that Deserves to BeThis novel shows the weakness of the star system. So many novels are getting five stars and probably deserving them, but only a mere handful can compare with The Sound and the Fury. It transcends the five star system. This novel is absolutely gripping, brilliant, fascinating, and charming despite being dark in the "Southern gothic" sort of way. In my opinion, The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner goes on the shelf with the greatest American novels--Moby Dick, The Great Gatsby, and a few ... Read More Rating: - I HATED this book until I realized it was a masterpiece...The Sound and the Fury is gonna be a demanding book to read. The first two hundred pages will be TOUGH...you won't know what the hell is going on, and you won't know WHY what's going on is going on. Your patience will be tried. Your eyes will glaze. You'll manage five pages and then say "That's enough for one night!" I don't know how I lasted up to the Jason Compson section...but I'm glad I did because THAT was the inflection point. That's when I realized the book wasn't highfalutin ... Read More Rating: - If only we all could be blessed with such failure.This is William Faulkner's fourth book and considered by many to be one of the greatest pieces of literature ever written...and after reading this book and writing this review I share those sentiments. And yet, when you listen to Faulkner describe his depiction into the decline of the aristocratic Compson family, he considered it to be his best failure. The book comes at you in four sections with each being told by a different narrative...so let's explore Faulkner's best failure, shall we? ... Read More Rating:  - Precious Time... I Want It Back!Incontestable Fact: Any book that can't be understood without the aid of the author explaining it or some kind of synopsis derived from the author's explaination is a failure. The truth is, only Faulkner himself understands this story. Even college professors rely on aids to teach this book. Many of us down here on the 1 and 2 star level have said that this book is only regarded as a classic because of its stream of conscienceness style and we're absolutely right. I personally ... Read More Rating: - A Difficult ClassicThis book is surely an American classic from one of our quintessential American novelists, but it is best appreciated by literature majors with an entire semester available to study it. Faulkner's use of literary devices like the unreliable narrator and stream-of-consciousness prose is highly compelling, with great results from fractured personality types like the mentally handicapped (Benjy), the disturbed (Quentin), and the hate-filled (Jason). Faulkner was a brilliant observer of the deteriorating state ... Read More 
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