{"id":30978,"date":"2026-04-20T22:21:48","date_gmt":"2026-04-21T02:21:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/?p=30978"},"modified":"2026-04-30T22:32:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-01T02:32:08","slug":"william-faulkner-the-sound-and-the-fury","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2026\/04\/20\/william-faulkner-the-sound-and-the-fury\/","title":{"rendered":"William Faulkner: The Sound and the Fury"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><span style=\"color: #003366;\"><em><strong>The Sound and the Fury<\/strong><\/em><\/span><br><span style=\"color: #808080;\">by William Faulkner (1929)<\/span><br><span style=\"color: #808080;\">Modern Library (1992)<\/span><br><span style=\"color: #808080;\">368 pp<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-drop-cap\">I\u2019m absolutely loving getting better prepared to talk about Faulkner in June with Paul for our next author focused episode. I\u2019ve been intimidated by The Sound and the Fury for years and years. My parents got me this book for Christmas in 2001 (thanks Mom and Dad!), and so it\u2019s made its way around my shelves for just shy of a quarter century.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But no regrets. I\u2019m so glad I finally read this. That\u2019s not quite the right word. I\u2019m glad it finally experienced this. Because perhaps more than any other book I\u2019ve ever read, The Sound and the Fury was an experience.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For the first section, I had no real idea what was going on. The story is told through a stream-of-consciousness narrative by Benjy Compson, who moves from past to present often without much indication of the shift. Things are happening around him, but we (like him) cannot capture it fully. I found the raw immediacy surprisingly emotional.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We get to understand the story in more detail in the next two sections, told by his two brothers, Quentin (on his last day on earth) and the deeply unlikable Jason. The final section goes to a third-person narrator, which probably helps clear plot points up, but the parts that stay with me are the three brothers. Somehow Faulkner made those sections terrifyingly real as they often fussed about their family, in particular their sister Caddy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I\u2019m looking forward to more. I\u2019ve already started Absalom, Absalom!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I had it on my shelf for nearly a quarter century, but I finally read Willam Faulkner&#8217;s <em>The Sound and the Fury<\/em> . . . and I loved it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30979,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"libsyn-item-id":0,"libsyn-show-id":0,"libsyn-post-error":"","libsyn-post-error_post-type":"","libsyn-post-error_post-permissions":"","libsyn-post-error_api":"","playlist-podcast-url":"","libsyn-episode-thumbnail":"","libsyn-episode-widescreen_image":"","libsyn-episode-blog_image":"","libsyn-episode-background_image":"","libsyn-post-episode-category-selection":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_thumbnail":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_theme":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_height":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_width":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_placement":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link_text":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_custom_color":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-explicit":"","libsyn-post-episode":"","libsyn-post-episode-update-id3":"","libsyn-post-episode-release-date":"","libsyn-post-episode-simple-download":"","libsyn-release-date":"","libsyn-post-update-release-date":"","libsyn-is_draft":"","libsyn-new-media-media":"","libsyn-post-episode-subtitle":"","libsyn-new-media-image":"","libsyn-post-episode-keywords":"","libsyn-post-itunes":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-season-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-type":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-title":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-author":"","libsyn-destination-releases":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-enabled":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-input-enabled":false,"libsyn-post-episode-premium_state":"","libsyn-episode-shortcode":"","libsyn-episode-embedurl":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[800,1530],"tags":[956,1027],"coauthors":[505],"class_list":["post-30978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-william-faulkner","tag-1920s","tag-1027"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/The-Sound-and-the-Fury-Featured-Image.jpg?fit=700%2C400&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pqqvZ-83E","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30978"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30978\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30980,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30978\/revisions\/30980"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30978"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=30978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}