Sometimes I can make it quite a way into a novel before I can work out what it is actually about. Very occasionally, I get the whole way through. This is one of those times.
For the first chapter, I wouldn’t even work out who the characters work. I thought they might be anthropomorphised animals. It eventually turned out they were children. That is about all I got until I read through the Wikipedia article.
It reminds me a lot of Ulysses and indeed does use the stream of consciousness narrative employed by Joyce. However, unlike Joyce, who paints a beautiful and linguistically-inspiring picture which his rambles, William Faulkner failed to capture my imagination, leaving only the barely-intelligible plot.
From a literary perspective, it is certainly interesting. However, it ranks 6th on Modern Library’s list of 100 best novels. Is that justified on a list that puts The Grapes of Wrath at 10th and Nineteen Eighty-Four at 14th? No.
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Tags: america, fiction, novel, stream of consciousness, william faulkner
This entry was posted on Sunday, July 5th, 2015 at 10:50 am and is filed under Books. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.