jakewelch • read

06/23/2024 – 07/03/2024 – I have so much to say about this book. I’ve never read anything like it. Starting the book with Benjy’s perspective was fascinating. As an intellectually disabled man, his narrative style was jumpy, terse, and repetitive. “I cried. Mother told me to hush. I hushed. I cried again. Mother told me to hush. But I didn’t hush.” His narrative also jumping between timelines without warning, often in the middle of the sentence, really put me into his mind. It was discombobulating and confusing, but I really loved that about it. It wasn’t until the following chapter when we followed Quintin’s narrative that I really grasped how phenomenal of a write Faulker is. Some of the most beautiful passages I’ve ever read were here – I especially loved Quintin’s memories of what his father said about time. Blending these with his own tortured thoughts surrounding his broken pocket watch, his sister’s various tomultuous relationships, it was so rich. Faulkner also employed a fascinating technique of using italics to insert traumatic memories into the middle of the narrative, and would often change timelines mid-sentence, rushing on with no punctuation for pages at a time – it would make you feel as if you were in his confused and broken racing thoughts. I’ve never read anything from the point of view of a suicidal person that was so vivid, and yet never once did he acknowledge planning on killing himself, it was all contextual by his erratic actions and hints at writing and leaving letters for his roommates and family. When the story shifted into Jason’s story, the same run-on passages were instead employed to put us into his unhinged and angry and racing thoughts. His chapter was my least favorite, but mostly because it was so frustrating. Jason is a terrible, bitter, arrogant man and his self-important rants felt all too familiar to people I’ve known in my own life. The final chapter ending in the third person, starting with following Dilsey, the family’s black servant matriarch, was some of my favorite writing in the book. It was beautiful and romantic and yet it was describing someone treated, up to that point in the book, as someone unimportant, watching the Compson family from the outside. It really drove home the Compson’s ineptness and pathetic legacy lost, and the beautiful humility of the Gibson’s who stand aside and work hard, trying to do what they can for the Compson’s left behind. 

All in on, this book shattered my conceptions of narrative and gave me a whole new perspective on what it means to tell a story and put you in the mind of its characters. The prose was phenomenal, sometimes poetic and lush, sometimes simple, and even going as far to phonetically change the spelling of words to imitate an accent. The characters were interesting and memorable, the story was fascinating. I love when a book trusts its reader to understand things through context. This was one of the best books I’ve ever read.

I give this book a 5/5 stars.