The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

This is the Year of Faulkner for me, I guess. Faulkner is just one of the notable authors I've neglected in my reading life, but I'm catching up now. This summer I read As I Lay Dying and Soldiers' Pay, and now I've finished this one. I think I prefer Dying.

Most are familiar with the MacBeth quote that provides the title to this book, but I'll supply it here for those who aren't:

She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word.
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

I admire the hell out of what Faulkner did with this story, but two of the reasons I couldn't really enjoy it are contained in that quote. First: the first ninety-odd pages of this tale are told by an idiot. By Benjy, the retarded man-child. Faulkner nails the character and the narration, but while I admired this accomplishment it was flat-out painful to read. The next hundred pages are narrated by Benjy's suicidally depressed brother Quentin. It's stream-of-consciousness, and easier to follow than the first section, but still doesn't feel like it goes anywhere. I really admire what Faulkner did with this section, though. In the first, he's employed a narrator who can be easily identified as an "idiot." Quentin's no dummy, though. He's a freshman at Harvard, and until his emotional troubles had been getting good grades. Quentin is more literally an idiot than Benjy is, though--at least in the classical sense. The original definition of an "idiot" is one who behaves as though he is the only being of real worth, who disregards the considerations of others and acts unilaterally in all matters. In this sense, Quentin is the true idiot.

My second problem reading this story is that the tale signifies nothing. The Compsons are the guttering candle, and they are small, petty people. This story is a masterpiece of demonstrating the shallowness and insignificance of life, but in the end you've experienced something that, by design, doesn't matter.

This really is a monumental piece of literature, worthy of study and emulation, but I don't know if I'll ever open it again. As I Lay Dying is just as impressive and it's enjoyable, to boot.

Next up: The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins.

Soldiers' Pay by William Faulkner

Professor Girl asked for my impression of William Faulkner’s Soldiers’ Pay when I finished reading it. I finished reading it yesterday, so I have some impressions. This is the second Faulkner novel I’ve read, the first being the better known As I Lay Dying, and the similarities in his craft are as striking as his development from Soldiers’ to Dying. As in Dying, this first novel contains some great passages—some of the most beautiful descriptions I’ve ever read. He also employs phrasing that surprises, more often effective than not.

The themes of this book seem to be disappointment and futility. Life gives you what it will, and what you want doesn’t much matter. The first example of this comes on the first page, with Cadet Lowe’s regret that the war (WWI) ended before he could fly in combat and fight and die as a hero. There are many other examples, but to detail them here would be to ruin the story for those yet to read it.

These characters inhabit a society completely alien to me, so formal and defined even those who do wrong acknowledge their deviation from accepted norm and embrace their villainy. Also, the characters interact in such strange ways it has a twofold effect on me: the tension of the story never lets up, which compels me to read on to find some kind of relief; and it reinforces my impression of the surreal, which opens me to anything that might happen in the story.

In Soldiers’ Pay Faulkner manages to build a reality that is perfectly believable, and then pushes through that to present surreal elements that remain plausible, like when I stand too quickly and get a headrush, and my vision seems to intensify, distinctions sharpen and glimmer, and I feel hyperaware until my circulation recovers.

This surreal element is well employed in the scene in which Joe Gilligan chases Januarius Jones, which reminds me of the scene in Lolita when Humbert pursues Quilty. Both sequences are delightfully bizarre, and their resemblance may rest with the similarities between the two villains.

While Faulkner shifts his point of view frequently in this story, only once do we get into the thoughts of Donald Mahon, the catalyst character, which I think is perfect. Faulkner’s world operates in spite of the wounded man, not because of him. The point is not lost: this is true of all of the characters.

I only have a few problems with the novel, none of which should suggest that Faulkner should have written it differently. I won’t workshop a novel that’s been published for 77 years, and I won’t give Faulkner advice, because he’s dead. However, I have some trouble with his occasional ambiguous pronoun use. If it’s intentional, and it must be, I can only imagine Faulkner wants the reader to be as unsure of what’s happening as the characters are about their futures. I don’t think my appreciation of the story is enhanced by not knowing who “he” is until “he” is identified as Dr. Mahon in the next sentence.

The biggest quibble I have is that I can’t be sure who the principal actor is. Margaret Powers’s actions are the most significant, but she’s present at neither the beginning nor the end of the story, and her motives are almost entirely opaque. No one person sits at the spine of this story, except possibly Donald, and he’s practically furniture.

The element of the story that saddens me is the casual racism in Faulkner’s world, both this created reality and the world in which he created it. Blacks and whites are seen as fundamentally different, and the “Sambo” caricatures depress me as much as the characters’ offhand use of the word “nigger.” Maybe even more disturbing is the narrative insistence on labels such as “Negro cornetist” and “Negro driver.” I know it’s a fruitless presentism that motivates my disappointment, but it always irks me that artists who can so completely transcend the mundane works of their times can entirely fail to elevate themselves above the failings of their social milieux. I need to just let this go and accept the novel as a product of its time, but I find that difficult.

In all, I enjoyed this novel, and I’ll probably return to it after a while. There is some truly beautiful language at work here, and the characters and setting are well established. I want to take a closer look, though, at Faulkner's plot and dialogue, both of which bewilder me at times.