Please note the following essay contains some spoilers for The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner. (Ed.)

I really want to like William Faulkner.  But I just don’t.  I want to be able to say: “Do you know William Faulkner?” as nonchalantly as Jean Seberg’s Patricia Franchini in Jean-Luc Godard’s À Bout de Souffle, but I fear I am as ignorant of him as Jean-Paul Belmondo’s Michel.

I just can’t read Faulkner.  I have said before that I can’t read Hemingway, but this is different.  I mean, I clearly can read Hemingway.  The whole point of Hemingway is that everyone can read him, it’s just that I can’t read him.  But with Faulkner, I really can’t read him.

Take The Sound and the Fury.  It is a book in four parts.  The first part is notorious for being difficult to read because it is narrated by an idiot––the rather un-pc description widely justified since Faulkner’s inspiration for the title of the book was taken from Macbeth’s speech: “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury.”

So, I started reading The Sound and the Fury prepared for a few challenges right from the get-go.  But, do you know what?  I found the first section of the book a breeze.  Really rather enjoyed it.  Quickly found that I got in tune with Benjy’s narrative; managed to work out all his own family’s relationships, plus the relationships of his family’s servants, too; enjoyed the reveal that he was standing beside a golf course for much of the time; admired the clever double meaning of ‘Caddy’; just went with the fact that Quentin appeared to oscillate between being both a man and a woman––but hey-ho, never been to Mississippi; in no position to judge; live and let live, that is my opinion.  In fact, I finished the first section of The Sound and the Fury and I was feeling quite pleased with myself.  If this was meant to be the difficult section, the rest should be plain sailing.  I thought the hard work was done.  I began to practice the inflection I would put into my voice when I said: “Do you know William Faulkner?  Do you know William Faulkner?”

But then I started reading the second section of The Sound and the Fury, and it wasn’t any easier.  In fact, I found it harder.  Yes, it might have been more immediately intelligible, but the problem was I found myself increasingly disinterested in the story that was being revealed.  I was reminded of different experiences listening to various church services.  Benjy’s account was like listening to a Latin Mass: barely understandable, but all the better for that, where it was possible to simply get wrapped up in the pure cadence and the overall spiritual effect.  The second section of The Sound and the Fury, told by Quentin, was like listening to a Church of England vicar: ostensibly comprehensible, but irritating, soulless and tedious as a result.  Ultimately, I found I just wasn’t interested in the story.  Either story.

Richard Hughes, who wrote the introduction to my Penguin Modern Classic edition of The Sound and the Fury said: “I shall not attempt to give either a summary or an explanation of it: for if I could say in three pages what takes Mr Faulkner three-hundred there would obviously be no need for the book.”  I fear that I could sum up the book in three lines, not three pages, and I am left with that precise feeling that there is no point in the book.

But maybe that is because I don’t know William Faulkner.

© Fergus Longfellow

Fergus Longfellow looks to expand his literary relationships.