The Sound and the Fury
by William Faulkner
The Sound and the Fury
By: William Faulkner
Type: Audiobook; Unabridged
Narrator: Grover Gardner
Publisher: Random House Audio, 2005
Length: 8 hours and 57 min.
The Sound and The Fury is an original and moving story that has quickly become one of the greatest American novels of the 20th century and has become a terrific audiobook for us all to enjoy. The entire novel was written at stunning speed, rising up from some deep reservoir of the imagination and bringing forth a wonderful audiobook.
"Faulkner had made a startling breakthrough. This was something new in American fiction, something strange, complex and disruptive, a work that attempts to articulate grief and loss while acknowledging, at every turn, the impossibility of recovery, the limits of articulation, as well as the pleasures afforded by repetition and incomplete reconstruction: the pleasures of the text itself."
-writes biographer Jay Parini
William Faulkner, and his unique and transitional writing style has amazed and also taught other writers new ways to write. Traditional aspects of the novel such as the plot and character development has become the background to new narrative forms. These forms helped illustrate the fluidity of time and memory, and also conveyed the reality of a character's state of mind. The result was the "modern" novel and resulted in some of our most cherished American stories being created.
The Sound and the Fury audiobook is touching, powerful, and intense telling the unfortunate story of a family whose wounds time could not heal.
The audiobook is divided into four chapters, each told from the point of view of a member of the Compson family. This family saga is told brilliantly in the four parts, which creates a magical atmosphere that is unparalleled in literature since. This story is about the main character Caddy Compson. Caddy's life is seen as both beautiful and tragic, whose story Faulkner told through separate monologues by her three brothers:
- the idiot Benjy
- the neurotic suicidal Quentin
- the monstrous Jason
Each of the four chapters were actually rewritten attempts by Faulkner as he was not happy how each previous writing turned out. After the four attempts of rewrites, he wanted to try again but worried he would fail. So this is how this book became known and is now considered a great masterpiece.
In conclusion, let us read what the author had to say about The Sound and the Fury masterpiece...
"It's the book I feel tenderest towards. I couldn't leave it alone, and I never could tell it right, though I tried hard and would like to try again, though I'd probably fail again."
—William Faulkner
Simply put, Faulkner dubbed The Sound and the Fury his most splendid "failure".
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