The Sound and the Fury
by William Faulkner · first published 1929
22% recommend63% neutral16% critical
Why HN recommends it
Dense modernist novel with a fragmented, multi-voiced narrative that rewards close reading. Its beautifully structured design suits those who enjoy challenging literary fiction.
Common criticism: Many find it hard going and some found it a chore to finish
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
In many ways this was an experimental novel, using several differing narrative styles. Divided into four parts, the author relates the same episodes from four different viewpoints, using a different style for each. The story concerns various members of a Southern family, once wealthy landowners but now struggling to maintain their reputation.
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…Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov 4) Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison 5) 9 Stories by J.D. Salinger 6) 60 Stories by Donald Barthelme 7) 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez 8) The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
on “Ask HN: What are some must read books?” ↗Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's Flow: the Psychology of Optimal Experience William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying & The Sound and the Fury Julian Jaynes' The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind Peter Medawar's The Art of the Soluable Designed by Peter Saville Nietzsche's Twilight of the Idols Bloom County…
on “Ask YC: favorite books” ↗I'd also add Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury - it's excellent, despite being a bit tough to understand
on “Ask HN: What are some good books?” ↗Faulkner: The Sound and the Fury
on “Ask HN: Which book would you pick to re-read for the rest of your life?” ↗these changed almost everything i think about: misc. Forrest Mims notebooks, the Python Tutorial, Practical C Programming first chapter of Sound and the Fury, snippets of Naked Lunch, wide swaths of Ulysses The Universe in a Nutshell, French's Special Relativity The Gamma Function, a graph theory text whose name i don't remember, baby Rudin Brain Structure…
on “Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?” ↗…enjoyed so many books from a single author. I also think Blood Meridian is one the greatest books of all time. According to [1] "his list of great novels stops at four: Ulysses, The Brothers Karamazov, The Sound and the Fury and his favorite, Moby-Dick". They all are a good addition to this thread. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20140629023902/http://74.220.215...
on “Ask HN: Any interesting books you have read lately?” ↗The Sound and the Fury is an incredible piece of art with a beautifully structured narrative, in my reading of it. Why do you say he's a terrible writer in your opinion? Who would you rank higher?
on “How to live an intellectually rich life” ↗…it. That's the conclusion I reached, anyway, after reading V and Gravity's Rainbow, anyway. And one other -- Vineland, that was it. I love Dubliners by Joyce, but the later stuff? I'd sooner read The Sound and the Fury again, but only if published with the different color inks Faulkner wanted.
on “Who the Hell Is This Joyce (1928)” ↗…true. But that's my gripe: this story has little to do with any of that. Ultimately, the only role surveillance played in this story was something for a new couple to bond over. Sure, better that than The Sound And The Fury, which I swear to Christ a teenaged girlfriend made me read, but so what? What's special about OpenSSL here that wouldn't be special about Club Penguin or Overwatch or some other lower-status technological…
on “Love in the Time of Cryptography” ↗…been used extensively in informal writing and stream of consciousness literature. Of particular note is the southern American author William Faulkner (see Absalom, Absalom! and the Quentin section of The Sound and the Fury) as well as poet E. E. Cummings. In most writing, overuse of parentheses is usually a sign of a badly structured text. A milder effect may be obtained by using a pair of commas as the delimiter. If the…
on “Three Grammar Rules You Can (And Should) Break” ↗In Faulkner's Sound and The Fury, the first 100 pages are the disjointed mental images. For example, yelling at a golfcourse will trigger paragraphs of memories about his sister Caddy. In contrast to Ulysses we are only given aleatory…
on “James Joyce's "Ulysses": Why you should read this book” ↗…quickly is the opening chapter is much harder than later chapters (that not to say that later chapters are easy, just nowhere near as dense ad the beginning). In that way is kind of like Faulkner's "The Sound and the Fury" in which part one is by far the hardest to read, since it is written, stream of consciousness, in the mind of a mentally disabled person. Later parts are easier to follow.
on “Finnegans Wake: the book the web was invented for” ↗…about adding something like "involves discussion of sexual assault" next to "students will read and discuss works of fiction about life in the Southern states during Reconstruction", if you're reading The Sound and The Fury. (It's been a while since I read that book, please don't take this as a claim that the book needs a trigger warning.) If there are multiple choices of classes to fulfill a literature requirement, students…
on “Student “safety” has become a real threat to free speech on campus” ↗…Howl and almost certainly the number in it is wrong" "America, when will you become worthy of your two million Trotskyites?") Moby Disk is a fine novel, but how many have read it through; no doubt The Sound and the Fury is also, but it defeated me at an age when I read a lot of Faulkner, and I haven't been back.
on “Books That Shaped America” ↗…interesting to some greater or lesser degree. There are also libraries and bookstores full of literature that is all interesting for some definition of "interesting"...I've recently been meaning to reread The Sound and the Fury maybe when I've got the time I will, but maybe not. If I were to offer random advice from the internet, pick "side projects" [my resolution this year is to consider them hobbies] that are accessible.…
on “Ask HN: I think I need serious help for self development. Any advice?” ↗