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Reading Faulkner Series
Reading Faulkner: The Sound and the Fury: Glossary and Commentary
A handbook for interpreting Faulkner's great novel
This volume guides readers through one of William Faulkner’s most complex novels. By common consent The Sound and the Fury is a seminal document of twentieth-century literature. Almost from the beginning, it has been a litmus test for critical approaches—from New Criticism to biography and manuscript analysis.
In the past two decades, nearly all of the newest critical theories have come calling on Faulkner’s novel. Yet it resists or evades even the most ardent theorists’ efforts to contain it, and much of its total accomplishment remains unplumbed.
This volume, like others in the Reading Faulkner Series, provides line-by-line interpretation and concentration on individual words and sentences, visual dimensions, time shifts, intricacies of narration, and other obscurities. It explores Faulkner’s words as they appear on the page, deciphering and responding to them in their linear progression and in their cumulating resonances inside and outside the text. Important allusions and references are identified, as are dates and historical passages. For many passages alternative readings are offered. The pagination is keyed to the definitive text of the Vintage edition.
This volume guides readers through one of William Faulkner’s most complex novels. By common consent The Sound and the Fury is a seminal document of twentieth-century literature. Almost from the beginning, it has been a litmus test for critical approaches—from New Criticism to biography and manuscript analysis.
In the past two decades, nearly all of the newest critical theories have come calling on Faulkner’s novel. Yet it resists or evades even the most ardent theorists’ efforts to contain it, and much of its total accomplishment remains unplumbed.
This volume, like others in the Reading Faulkner Series, provides line-by-line interpretation and concentration on individual words and sentences, visual dimensions, time shifts, intricacies of narration, and other obscurities. It explores Faulkner’s words as they appear on the page, deciphering and responding to them in their linear progression and in their cumulating resonances inside and outside the text. Important allusions and references are identified, as are dates and historical passages. For many passages alternative readings are offered. The pagination is keyed to the definitive text of the Vintage edition.
208 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1996
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
June 1, 2023
Las guías de lectura que componen la serie Reading Faulkner cuentan con diferentes autores según la novela comentada y anotada. Cada autor imprime su enfoque particular; así mientras el autor de la guía de lectura de Absalom, Absalom! se ciñe a datos e informaciones que aumentan la comprensión del texto, sin introducir sus opiniones e interpretaciones, los de la guía de lectura de El ruido y la furia han adoptado el enfoque contrario.
En efecto, si bien Reading Faulkner: The Sound and the Fury aporta datos y aclaraciones, se centra sobre todo en "publicitar" las interpretaciones especulativas que hacen sus autores, Ross y Polk, de los diferentes pasajes del libro; interpretaciones que en su mayoría no cuentan con ningún apoyo fáctico ni argumentación objetiva. Se trata de interpretaciones o "lecturas" en clave casi siempre freudiana -sin que conste que ninguno de los autores sea psicólogo- en torno a las motivaciones sexuales de los hermanos Compson, especialmente Quentin.
El lector tiene que estar preparado, por ejemplo, para que los autores en sus notas le cuenten que si Quentin se fija en la chimenea de una fábrica mientras pasea es porque ve en ella un símbolo fálico que confirma su homosexualidad; y así todo. Hay además una fuerte carga ideológica en los comentarios, con frecuentes juicios de valor sobre lo que ellos califican de visiones heteropatriarcales o racistas de los personajes masculinos.
Me parece una intromisión excesiva y no bienvenida en la libertad que debe dejársele al lector de que saque sus propias conclusiones.
Le doy dos estrellas y no una porque, como he dicho, aporta de vez en cuando algunos datos importantes.
En efecto, si bien Reading Faulkner: The Sound and the Fury aporta datos y aclaraciones, se centra sobre todo en "publicitar" las interpretaciones especulativas que hacen sus autores, Ross y Polk, de los diferentes pasajes del libro; interpretaciones que en su mayoría no cuentan con ningún apoyo fáctico ni argumentación objetiva. Se trata de interpretaciones o "lecturas" en clave casi siempre freudiana -sin que conste que ninguno de los autores sea psicólogo- en torno a las motivaciones sexuales de los hermanos Compson, especialmente Quentin.
El lector tiene que estar preparado, por ejemplo, para que los autores en sus notas le cuenten que si Quentin se fija en la chimenea de una fábrica mientras pasea es porque ve en ella un símbolo fálico que confirma su homosexualidad; y así todo. Hay además una fuerte carga ideológica en los comentarios, con frecuentes juicios de valor sobre lo que ellos califican de visiones heteropatriarcales o racistas de los personajes masculinos.
Me parece una intromisión excesiva y no bienvenida en la libertad que debe dejársele al lector de que saque sus propias conclusiones.
Le doy dos estrellas y no una porque, como he dicho, aporta de vez en cuando algunos datos importantes.
June 28, 2025
Essential reading for understanding The Sound and the Fury.
dnf
December 18, 2020li por recomendação do vídeo do better than food sobre o livro pra entender melhor o primeiro quarto (parte do benjy, porque obviamente quando comecei não entendi nada), mas não sei se urge ler o resto. por enquanto vou deixar pra lá. mas é ótimo, iluminou muito.
August 18, 2025
Extremely helpful.
May 11, 2018
Interesting work about The Sound and the Fury, the great point here in my opinion is the narrative undulations that alter the perception of events by showing not only the relativity of the facts themselves, but by providing different levels of the tragedies of life that amplify and define in different ways their effects and consequences.
The fury may even be silent, but wickedness is a hard sound to hide.
The fury may even be silent, but wickedness is a hard sound to hide.
May 16, 2020
Very useful for interpreting a classic that is notoriously complex, but beautiful.
July 5, 2020
If you've tried and failed, as I have, to make it through the first section of 'The Sound and the Fury' get hold of this commentary and read it in tandem with the novel. Invaluable.
July 3, 2022
I’d read a comment elsewhere that stated “Stop analyzing Faulkner! Just read him!”
But I’m abiding by what Nabokov said, “you can’t read a novel; you can only reread it”.
But having read TSTF twice (and listening to the audiobook), once being the Norton Critical Edition whose footnotes certainly helped, and having read numerous critical essays, I was fortunate to be lent this book (as a hardback companion to the Folio Society printing of TSTF with the time transitions in Benjy’s section printed in different colored fonts [14 identified transitions]) which is a deeper dive than the Norton footnotes.
My favorite insight concerned Benjy during Caddy’s wedding. I’d figured out that Benjy’s descriptions of things rotating around was him describing being drunk; but T.P. only ever refers to them drinking “sassprilluh.”
I’d looked online for information on sarsaparilla with alcohol but found none. But the Glossary posits that they are drinking champagne - which makes perfect sense at a wedding and the only bubbly, fizzy drink T.P. has probably ever encountered would have been sassprilluh, so that’s what he called it.
But I’m abiding by what Nabokov said, “you can’t read a novel; you can only reread it”.
But having read TSTF twice (and listening to the audiobook), once being the Norton Critical Edition whose footnotes certainly helped, and having read numerous critical essays, I was fortunate to be lent this book (as a hardback companion to the Folio Society printing of TSTF with the time transitions in Benjy’s section printed in different colored fonts [14 identified transitions]) which is a deeper dive than the Norton footnotes.
My favorite insight concerned Benjy during Caddy’s wedding. I’d figured out that Benjy’s descriptions of things rotating around was him describing being drunk; but T.P. only ever refers to them drinking “sassprilluh.”
I’d looked online for information on sarsaparilla with alcohol but found none. But the Glossary posits that they are drinking champagne - which makes perfect sense at a wedding and the only bubbly, fizzy drink T.P. has probably ever encountered would have been sassprilluh, so that’s what he called it.
June 1, 2014
an interesting point: playing with narrator shift to see some perspectives from different stages of people
January 15, 2015
Maybe it was the time and place or stage of my life when I read this book, but I just couldn't get into it.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews