Friday, November 9, 2012

William Faulkner - The Sound and the Fury


I'm really into "Three Lives" and I hope you are, really, too excited about reading Gertrude Stein and her "Three Lives," the titular book being ever awful absurd and also actually being really entirely right heartbreaking in one fell stroke, really.  I am with my continual thinking wondering how it is that she does that, making it so ever real absurd and ever so rightly heartbreaking all at once.  We'll completely be having our discussing it at each other now at 7 PM on Sunday, ever for real, with our Gertrude Stein and her mighty present volume of "Three Lives," so won't you come along, now, won't you.

As for next month, we'll be taking a pass because of the holidaze and resuming in January.  For then, Vincent's pick, "The Sound and the Fury" will be the star of the show.  I've never read Faulkner, so I'm in pretty dire straits as a result; not sure how I've even made it this far in life without him, honestly.  January 13th at 7 PM.


“I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire. . . . I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all of your breath trying to conquer it. Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.” —from The Sound and the Fury

The Sound and the Fury is the tragedy of the Compson family, featuring some of the most memorable characters in literature: beautiful, rebellious Caddy; the manchild Benjy; haunted, neurotic Quentin; Jason, the brutal cynic; and Dilsey, their black servant. Their lives fragmented and harrowed by history and legacy, the character’s voices and actions mesh to create what is arguably Faulkner’s masterpiece and  one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century.