​The Sound and The Fury by William Faulkner is a novel that follows the Compson family in 1910 and 1928 as problems begin to wreck them from the inside out in the fictional Yoknapatawpha county. The novel opens with the youngest son, Benjy, who is mentally handicapped and is taken care of by one of the Black servants and kids, Luster. In the narrative, we’re inside Benjy’s head as he goes looking for quarters, follows his siblings and servants around. Though the narrative itself is disjointed, jumping from one moment to the next quickly, has partial thoughts in italics, and creates this atmosphere of a family in turmoil. The narrative then shifts back to 1910 and follows Quentin, a man and Benjy’s uncle, on one of his last days before he commits suicide. He goes to get a watch he purposely broke repaired, tries to help a girl who is lost out, but then gets detained for doing so, and has sex with his sister Caddy (who he killed himself over after she gets married to someone else). Afterward, the narrative shifts back to 1928 and follows Jason, the eldest brother and the head of the household (since their father had died). He runs a business betting on cotton stocks, while manning a supply store, though he is nefarious in his other dealings. Not only does he think the traders are conspiring against him, but he is also keeping his sister’s daughter, also named Quentin, from seeing her mom. And throughout this time, he forced Caddy, Quentin’s mother, to pay for Quentin’s life. Though Jason has been storing all that money in a drawer for himself. It’s hinted that he knows that Quentin, the daughter, is a product of Caddy and Quentin, the uncle, and uses that to keep Caddy away. And in fact, one day she tries to see her daughter and Jason cheats her by keeping her daughter in the car as they drive next to her. Finally, the last part of the novel pulls away and is told in 3rd person, mainly narrating Dilsey, the Black servant, as she takes care of the house, the mother, her son Luster, and Benjy. In the morning she gets water ready and then takes Benjy and Luster to church where they listen to a preacher from St. Louis. Later on, the narrative follows Jason as he realizes that Quentin hasn’t shown up to breakfast. So he barges into his locked room where he keeps his money, and realizes it’s all gone. Turns out Quentin stole the cash (most of it truly belonging to her) and ran away with a man from a traveling show. Jason becomes furious and tries to track them down, but ends up getting knocked over and gets a splitting headache, so ends his search. The novel ends with Luster trying to calm Benjy by taking him to the cemetery where Quentin is buried, but Jason finds them out. There’s an additional appendix to the novel which, in part, is a listing of the Compson family from 1699-1945, but really applies an additional narrative to the family. First, it tracks a librarian who sees Caddy’s photo in a magazine and takes it to Jason first, thinking he’d want to talk to her, but knows that he was the one who sent her away. And then to Dilsey who is too old to see the photo. It also provides a broader picture of how the robbery changed the family, or rather, how Jason’s blackmailing bit him back.
 
Faulkner’s The Sound and The Fury is astounding in its voice, narrative, and boldness. The first two sections on their own provide impressions of a family. One through the eyes of (what the narrative calls) an “invalid”, while the second follows the uncle who will commit suicide. It’s only when Jason’s narrative comes in where clarity begins to arrive. Though this clarity is sharply nihilistic. He thinks conspiracies are abound by the Jews out east trying to take advantage of his cotton stocks. He basically keeps his niece, Quentin, under lock and key and forces her mother, Caddy, to pay him if she wants to see her. He is deeply racist, though also terrified of Dilsey. All of it prepares the reader for the most narrative heavy section in the last part. In fact, it’s possible that the first 3 sections are there to really paint these characters in detail, while the last section then throws these characters into chaos. It is in how the POV shifts that creates an air of weight that hinges on us being inside the character’s heads first.
 
Though, regardless of being “of its time”, the narrative’s weak points exist in its racism—not of the characters themselves because if you’re inside a character’s heads, racism surely can exist. But it’s in the last section where it describes the preacher from St. Louis who had, “a wizened black face like a small, aged monkey.” It is in this narrative, the 3rd person POV, where the reader is pulled back from what they suppose as “subjective” to “objective”. But this description does indicate a bias of Faulker’s that shouldn’t go unstated. Of course, the other sections may be more overtly racist with their use of the N-word, but those are confined to 1st person, effectively subjective interpretations of reality. It “gives the game away” when what’s supposed to be objective describes a Black man with racial stereotypes. However, that being said, The Sound and The Fury is an intensely innovative novel and one that I thoroughly enjoyed.
 
Final Rating: 5/5

​The Wild Palms by William Faulkner is a novel comprised of two completely separate narratives, ‘The Wild Palms’ and ‘The Old Man’, which are spliced together after each chapter.
 
‘The Wild Palms’ follows a man who becomes wooed by a married woman, and they form a plot to leave the town and be together. The woman, Charlotte, directs and desires this move, first going to a hotel with the man, Harry. When they form the plan, they don’t have the money to execute a disappearance. Suddenly, Harry finds a wallet with the money, phones Charlotte, where they decide to get train tickets out of New Orleans to Chicago. On the ride, Charlotte’s husband joins them where he allows Harry to take Charlotte away from him, but that he'll keep an eye on her. After this, both Charlotte and Harry think the money will last them awhile, with Harry taking on a job at a hospital and Charlotte selling her puppets. But things turn sour, and their money runs out so they hop from place to place trying to survive. First to a cabin where a friend stocks them food, then to a worker’s camp in the winter, and finally to Florida. However, during the worker’s camp in Utah, they meet another couple and live with them, where eventually the woman asks Harry to perform an abortion on her. When he finally does, Charlotte forgets her cleaning items in the cold, and so learns that she too has become pregnant. It’s only when they hear back from the woman, does Charlotte ask for Harry to perform an abortion on her. Harry freaks out, and at first tries to do anything to stop the pregnancy, going so far as pleading a brothel for their abortion medicine. Eventually, after Charlotte’s pleading, he performs the abortion, but it goes awry. They get out of Utah, and travel to Florida where Charlotte is suffering at a hotel owned by another doctor. One night, when Charlotte becomes weak, Harry must call the doctor for help, only to be detained because he first performed an abortion, and then later being responsible for her death. In the end, Charlotte’s husband returns to Harry and hands him a pill of cyanide in jail.
 
‘The Old Man’ follows a convict who was arrested on an attempted train robbery gone awry. This was because what the convict read in books about robberies was totally different than real life, thus bungling it. While in prison, a massive flood rips through due to a levee breaking from a storm. The convict, along with the rest of the prison are taken to the levee where they are sent to row boats and rescue people stranded from the flood. When the convict and his partner get sent out to rescue a woman and a farmer, their boat flips and the convict regains control, and collects the woman who is pregnant. However, from other people’s vantage points, the convict looked like he drowned. For many days, the woman and the convict row around the flood encountering people who give them food, but are skeptical of them, a town that shoots at them while the convict tries to surrender, a paddle boat that takes them in but has other wishes for their labor, an alligator pelt farmer, a sugar cane plantation, and finally back to a police officer where the convict begs to be taken back to the prison. Along the way, the woman’s child is born on a mound of earth with snakes. But when the convict returns, instead of being reward for his efforts in taking care of the boat and the pregnant woman, he’s given 10 more years in prison.
 
There is a reason why Faulkner has become a mainstay in the literary canon. It’s because the language and flow of these two narratives are unparalleled. There’s situational humor with the convict in ‘The Old Man’ being washed down the river, and every time he tries to be detained to go back to the prison, he’s shooed away. While in ‘The Wild Palms’ the scene of Harry in the brothel desperate for abortion pills is quite an interesting scenario. Even on the sentence level, which Faulkner is known for, is so meticulous but grand. In fact, one of my favorite sentences of all time is from ‘The Wild Palms’, “And when he (the doctor), came home at noon she had the gumbo made, an enormous quantity of it, enough for a dozen people, made with that grim Samaritan husbandry of good women, as if she took a grim and vindictive and masochistic pleasure in the fact that the Samaritan deed would be performed at the price of its remainder which would sit invincible and inexhaustible on the stove while days accumulated and passed, to be warmed and rewarmed and then rewarmed until consumed by two people who did not even like it, who born and bred in sight of the sea had for taste a fish a predilection for the tuna, the salmon, the sardines bought in cans, immolated and embalmed three thousand miles away in the oil and machinery of commerce.” What a doozy of a sentence, which I found funny in that the doctor’s wife cooked a huge vat of gumbo in spite of her husband even though the both of them dislike it to canned fish. This is Faulkner’s magic: to create a winding, almost hypnotic syncopation of language. Though, both end grimly: men stuck in prison. One for doing something the love of his life begged for. The other, for doing the right thing and getting more time for it. There’s something to be said of the terrible reality of systems and how even as we do our best, they react in ways we do not expect. I can understand why these two stories are linked, how the narratives don’t necessarily follow each other, but instead they are in some conversation. One of blind love. One of blind faith. Both of survival. I am in awe of these stories in every way and it is no wonder Faulkner has stayed a common household name.
 
Final Rating: 5/5

​As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner is a novel about the Bundren family in Mississippi traveling to bury their dead mother. It follows the trials and tribulations of the sons, daughter, and father as they each deal with the death in a different way. The story opens with the mother close to death and her oldest son, Cash, preparing the casket in their yard as the daughter, Dewey Dell, stands by the mother’s bed. It’s described that the father, Anse, doesn’t really care for his dying wife, Addie, and only honors her wishes after she is dead. There are two more sons, Jewel who seems to only care for money, and Darl who is described as the only son who truly loved Addie. And finally, Vardaman, is the youngest son who doesn’t know how to interpret Addie’s death, so acts out by scaring off the doctor’s horses. Once dead, the family hitches Addie’s body up in a wagon and begins their journey to a wholly separate county. Along the way, a storm forces them to take a detour, a failed fording across a river causes Cash to break his leg, Darl starts a barn fire, and Dewey Dell searches for an aborticide for her pregnancy. The whole time, they have Addie’s body decomposing in the wagon, which lasts over a week, before they finally bury her. The novel ends with Anse finding another woman, as if to say Anse hadn’t really cared for Addie all along.
 
The novel has a huge cast of characters which Faulkner tackles by placing the reader in the mind of each one expertly. What’s brilliant about As I Lay Dying is that Faulkner is able to craft uniquely distinct voices for each character. For example, Vardaman sounds like a kid, Anse’s language is written in dialect, and the doctor’s thoughts are more formal. I loved how the family interacts with each other, when they use concrete as a cast for Cash’s leg, Dewey Dell’s mission for an aborticide, and Vardaman believing Addie had become a fish. It is no wonder Faulkner is seen to be one of the greatest writers of his time.
 
Final Rating: 4.5/5