Book # 24 The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner - A Second Opinion

For a few months now Lucinda has been wanting me to read The Sound and the Fury so that we could discuss it. She didn't like it at all but she thought I might enjoy it since I tend to like books/movies/music that fall on the weirder/experimental side of things. And she was right. I did enjoy it. I reread what she wrote about it and saw that she gave a pretty detailed synopsis of the plot of the book already. So I won't do that... but that has me thinking that this isn't a book that a reader enjoys for the plot and is probably a big reason that Lucinda did not like it.

The book is divided into four major sections and each of the first three sections gives us a glimpse into the mind of a different Compson brother. The first section shows us what the mind of someone with severe mental handicaps is like. Everything is disorienting and the only hope to make sense of things are to find the reoccurring patterns and try to stick to them. Time seems meaningless to this character and details just fly by without having a chance to make sense. The entire first section is a challenge to read, but it is meant to confuse the reader since it is narrated by someone that is completely confused. Trying to make too much sense of it isn't the point of the section. Being confused by it helps the reader better understand the limitations of the character and makes us feel bad for him. The second section is also a challenge because that narrator is totally depressed and gets lost in his own negative thoughts about the past quite frequently. The text goes from normal narration right into a long stream of disoriented thoughts about the past and the narrator's sister. Knowing that this character is so sad and has such hopeless thoughts made me feel really sorry for him.  I think it would have been difficult to really show this character's despair if the book had been written in a more traditional manner. The third section shows the youngest brother's thoughts and really show how horrible of a person he is. Almost every thought shows how he is totally bitter against everything in his life. He hates his family, steals money from his niece, is hung up on losing a job fifteen years earlier and is completely sexist and racist. Being able to see how his mind thinks really is unpleasant, and again would have been difficult to show in another way.

The book is written in a very experimental and difficult way, but I think it pays off quite well and is a unique reading experience. I wouldn't recommend it though if you don't like depressing book. I don't hold a book's depressing nature against it though. It gets an A.

Oh yeah, the book also mentions another book on the list, Tom Jones.

An updating of my rankings :
1. Les Misérables
2. Invisible Man
3. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
4. The Hobbit
5. A Farewell to Arms
6. Great Expectations
7. The Stand
8. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
9. Pale Fire
10. The Chronicles of Narnia
11. The Name of the Rose
12.The Sound and the Fury
13. Frankenstein
14. Things Fall Apart
15. Wind in the Willows
16. Anne of Green Gables
17. Rebecca
18. Anna Karenina
19. Sons and Lovers
20. War and Peace
21. Winnie-the-Pooh
22. Charlotte's Web
23. Possession
24. Mrs. Dalloway
25. Atlas Shrugged