The Sound of My Fury

I hate William Faulkner. Though I never knew the man, I know OF him, and of course of his work. I know that he is hailed as one of the great American authors. His books frequent “best of” lists and are studied by students from high school honors classes to doctoral candidates. He is almost universally lauded, even by the great Hunter S. Thompson who was said to have based his brilliant “Gonzo Journalism” on Faulkners’ stance that “The best kind of fiction is truer than any kind of journalism.”

 

I hate him, and even more so, I hate the book “The Sound and the Fury.”

 

I think TS&TF is terrible gibberish that metaphorically forces a reader to bash their head into a wall of unassailable words to find any semblance of a story hidden deep within. Faulkner’s hackneyed attempt at “stream of consciousness” writing pales in comparison to Salinger’s “Catcher in the Rye” where the literary technique is used to build both the characters and the storyline into an almost tangible reality. Faulkner’s technique does neither these things. I feel this book is poor solely on its literary merits, of which it has very few.

 

Of course I have a personal, reason to hate this book and this author. The one the eats at me is that The Sound and The Fury was the last book I couldn’t finish. Often people will attempt to criticize me with blather about “how can you not like it if you haven’t even read the whole thing.” Of course, they miss the point, the book sucks BECAUSE I couldn’t finish it. It was so painfully and spectacularly bad I simply could not read any more.

How could a piece of literature that bad be considered good? It can’t be of course.