I'm 50 pages into William Faulkner's "The Sound and The Fury" and now a question:

[CreekDog]

now that i'm at page 50, at say, page 100, will i know what the hell is going on? :banghead: :wtf:

[Lethe]

1. not sure, but at least you're not reading Catcher in the Rye

i still want my four hours back

[CreekDog]

2. at least i knew when he went to the bathroom in that book

:D

[1gobluedem]

3. Have you come to the end of the first sentence yet?

I can't read Faulkner; by the third page I just am hunting for punctuation marks.

[CreekDog]

4. i follow this as well as an Ingmar Bergman film

although the characters are louder in this one. :hide:

[redqueen]

5. Not sure if it happens by p 100,

but yeah eventually it starts to make a little sense.

I should re-read that. The last time I read it was in high school. Yeesh.

[CreekDog]

6. the novel was invented in order to take revenge on teenagers

for being young. :think:

[Orsino]

7. Just 'cause he was Captain Kirk, the man thinks he can write.

:eyes:

[TZ]

8. Ah stream of conciousness.....

Okay this is going to sound weird. But you need to try not to make meaning of what you are reading you have to just kinda "go with the flow" and eventually you will get there. But the more you try to analyze this, the more elusive meaning is going to be, in my opinion.

[CreekDog]

9. yeah i was thinking that

it occurred to me that if he wanted me to understand it analytically, he wouldn't have written it the way he did, or at least he wouldn't be the genius they say he is.

:rofl:

[TZ]

10. What he wants you to get

Is how someone else perceives the world, thoughts,feelings etc..unfiltered...Its kind of like abstract art I think, if you look for meaning, you won't find it. Its just an "experience"

[CreekDog]

11. and you're a scientist?

:wtf:

way to multitask! :applause:

[TZ]

12. My mother was an English teacher for a looong time.

We frequently had long discussions about literature. :)

[Lucian]

19. Ah...

now I understand. If I were to look at abstract art now, I can "get it".

Thanks. :)

[LSdemocrat]

22. This is probably why I hated the book

It was taught to us in a 12th grade English class by a teacher who insisted on "close" readings of the texts in his class. Going off of your analysis, we, as a class, were further annoyed because we actually attempting to discuss the book in parts, while not having been required to first read the whole book beforehand.

I should probably try to pick up a copy at some point to see if I would "get it" now, but I have so much on my "to read" pile, that I have no idea when I would get to it.

[LisaM]

13. I love this book. I envy you reading it for the first time.

It's got one of the most beautiful last couple of sentences in all of fiction, if you ask me. I think reading Faulkner is a true pleasure - not everyone agrees, of course - but if you finish this book, it will stick with you for a long time.

[CreekDog]

18. i will finish it

and i've resisted reading elsewhere about the book in the meantime (although i read the back cover when i couldn't figure out what was going on).

thanks for the encouragement. :hi:

[RoyGBiv]

14. It will make sense ...

. . .if you're open to it. I'm not sure exactly where it will start to make sense, but it will.

Faulkner isn't easy, but it's rewarding, imo.

[BurtWorm]

15. Why are you torturing yourself?

I'm an English major and I have never read The Sound and The Fury--not even when I had it on the syllabus for my AP English class senior year in high school. It's not on my list of Books to Read Before I Die, either.

The only Faulkner I've read is As I Lay Dying, which I loathed, and A Rose for Emily, which was all right. I don't think he's a must read author, now that modernism has lost its luster.

[Demoiselle]

16. Remember where the title comes from...

Shakespeare....MacBeth's "Out, out, brief candle" soliloquy, in which he opines that life is "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing..."
CHEERS! And keep at it. I'm told it's worth it, after all.
(And won't I be embarrassed if it isn't MacBeth.)

[Lyric]

17. It's not supposed to make much sense at the beginning.

That's kind of the point. You'll see. It'll be worth it, promise.

[Pacifist Patriot]

20. If you do, you're way ahead of me.

I'm pretty sure I never got to the end of that one.

[busybl]

21. doubt it nt

[texanwitch]

23. I think the book was made into a movie.

It was a good movie.

[Robeson]

24. Just hang with it. You'll get it.