Indeed. I am enthralled by Faulkner’s use of sound, of imagery, of juxtaposition and fragmentation and stream of consciousness. Of the insights offered through his most seemingly incompetent and innocent characters.
“And I will look down and see my murmuring bones and the deep water like wind, like a roof of wind, and after a long time they cannot distinguish even bones upon the lonely and inviolate sand.”
Yet there is the fury, too. That it takes me 78 pages to learn to read the first “day” of the book only to change days and perspectives and move into a completely different tone and voice on the second “day.”
I refuse to read any commentary on the text before reading it once through, though I am open to hearing other responses to the writing itself (though, please don’t speak of the end just yet; I’m at page 98 with plenty to go).
I remember starting As I Lay Dying four times before getting past page 50, so I feel like I’m getting somewhere, considering that I just started this yesterday, though I will say that this book is causing me some confusion that As I Lay Dying simply did not. I learned to read it a great deal faster.
If not for the sound, the eloquence, the jarring nature of language itself, the fury might overtake me. I might just put the book back on the shelf. Then, I think I’m falling for Mr. Faulkner. What can I say. I love a worthwhile struggle.
4 comments:
Faulkner is amazing. I'm more of a Cormac McCarthy person but it's nice to see Faulkner appreciated like this. Love the blog, too. Following.
http://eddieski.blogspot.com/
Eddie,
Thanks for following along.
Almost done with the latest installment of Faulkner, but I agree, I'd sooner revisit The Road than The Sound and the Fury; though, As I Lay Dying's pretty exceptional as well. In any case, no book has held my attention more than The Road this year. My hair blew back. My dreams were taken hostage in the same way they were while reading Paradise Lost (and, of course, the influence of the latter is evident in the former).
I ramble.
Thx for the thoughts.
Lisa
I hadn't thought of any connections between Paradise Lost and The Road. I haven't read it since undergraduate classes, but now I have to read it again.
The Road is just amazing. I am hoping the movie will somewhat live up to that novel.
Probably no reason to re-read the entire poem (though, it's worth it on its own anyway), but the parallel I was thinking of is with PL and Blood Meridian. In Book VI, Satan introduces gun powder from "deep underground, materials dark and crude," which certainly calls to a scene in which the judge and his pals mine and piss on some crude to prepare their own explosive defense.
But, I could also stretch and say that Eve is very much like the wife in The Road (and the husband like Adam), in that she has no desire to be alive if it means living in fear, even in a so-called paradise; whereas Adam goes on and for what (more like the man in The Road, of course)? What is Milton asking if not, why humanity at all? Perhaps I'm reaching, but it's there. Obsidian ... fruit? I see it.
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