In sixth grade, I did not read My Side of the Mountain, though it was assigned for class. In eighth grade, I did not read Little Women and in ninth grade I did not read Great Expectations and The Good Earth. As I passed through high school, I worked my way through much of the western canon, not reading The Scarlet Letter, Bartleby the Scrivener, The Return of the Native, and dozens more. In eleventh grade, we were assigned two books by Steinbeck, two by Hemingway, two by Sinclair Lewis and two by William Faulkner. I did not read the Steinbeck, Hemingway or Lewis but for some long-forgotten reason I violated years of established tradition by tackling the Faulkner — specifically As I Lay Dying and The Sound and the Fury.
As I Lay Dying went down pretty easily, but I remember many nights struggling my way through The Sound and the Fury, Cliff notes at my side. It felt like scaling Everest, and the vistas at the top were worth the climb.
A couple of weeks ago, as part of my ongoing project to read great novels, I decided to revisit The Sound and the Fury, and I’m more than glad I did; I finally have an answer to give the next time I’m asked what one novel I’d bring to a desert island. But what I’m flabbergasted by is this: How did this book ever get assigned to high school students in the first place? I ask for at least two reasons:
- The story is saturated with sex and racism (societal racism, that is, not Faulkner’s). It’s all “whore” this and “nigger” that, to the point where I’d have thought the PC police — you know, the guys who banned Huckleberry Finn — would have intervened long ago. (Come to think of it, high school was long ago. Maybe they have intervened.)
- What high school student has the patience to figure out what’s happening in a book like this? The first quarter is narrated by an idiot with no sense of time, so that he jumps back and forth between periods of his life mid-page, mid-paragraph, and sometimes mid-sentence, as he starts describing one event and finishes describing another similar event that took place twenty years earlier. Nobody (except maybe the Cliff Notes) ever warns you about the ever-shifting time frame. (I have no idea how the Cliff Notes people figured it out.) The narrator of the second quarter is no idiot, but seriously disturbed, and obsesses on events that are never described, but which we have to infer from the obscure references in his internal monologue. There are multiple characters with the same name, and single characters with multiple names — and not a shred of of warning about all this.
As I said, my high-school-self relied on Cliff Notes for guidance. I am not ashamed to tell you that my adult self required Cliff Notes, Barron’s Notes, Spark Notes, and the full power of the Internet. My strategy was to read a few pages, then seek help to find out what just happened, then reread. When I got to the halfway mark, I went back to the beginning and read the book straight through (the second half is mostly downhill). I am eager to return to the beginning and read it straight through one more time.
Make no mistake; this is perhaps the best novel I’ve ever read. The rewards are surely commensurate with the effort, but I can’t help believing that few high school students would invest enough effort to earn the rewards.
And yet—something magical did happen to me back in high school (belated thanks, Mrs. Schreiber!), something that left me with a decades-long intention to reread this book someday, and now I have, and I’m about to read it again. Maybe I should have also dipped into the Hemingway.
“The Sound and the Fury” is a great book. I read it for the first time around ten years ago. My now 21 year-old son read it at 17, but not as a school assignment. He had heard me and friends (one of my best friends is a college English professor) rave about it, and he tackled it. Interestingly, he didn’t have any problem with it – certainly much less challenged than I was reading it at 40. Perhaps my son’s ADHD gave him an advantage, I don’t know.
Perhaps I should get him to try “Ulysses”.
I was not assigned it but read it (both those Faulkners and more) in high school anyway. I loved Faulkner at the time. Perhaps it is time to re-read (ie REALLY read) it again. I have been meaning to for 30+ years …
FWIW my favourite novel is The Red and the Black by Stendahl. A book not so well known anymore is The Good Soldier by Ford — it’s one of the best novels ever.
I’m probably about your age and am currently in the midst of a similar long-postponed effort — reading Ulysses. About halfway through right now and it’s way too soon to judge if it’ll be worth the climb or not. But I’ll keep slogging on in the hopes that it matches your Faulkner experience. It requires the same types of external assistance you employed just to find one’s way. I do admit, though, to asking myself frequently why anyone would put themselves through this. We’ll see.
BTW, I loved “As I Lay Dying” as a high school student.
Ulysses is not worth the effort. It’s a book you read — and praise — to prove you are *the right sort*. So I mustn’t forget to praise it here! It has some very funny bits. (So does PG Wodehouse.)
I’d guess your second point is the answer to the first. None of the usual suspects complains about The Sound and The Fury’s sex and racism because none of them have actually read (and understood) the thing. Huckleberry Finn has the misfortune of being comprehensible.
I was supposed to read The Sound and the Fury as a member of the Academic Decathlon team (it was never assigned for an actual class, though we did have to read Faulkner’s The Bear). After reading about 10 pages, I promptly went out and bought the Cliff’s Notes — the only time I ever did so. Never finished the book, and don’t plan to.
@Ken B, per your suggestions, I have purchased “The Woman in White” by Collins, and “Our Mutual Friend” by Dickens. I haven’t reach them yet – currently reading the collected stories of Gogol. And I guess I’m going to have to reread “The Sound and the Fury”.
@Al V: I hope (and expect) you’ll like them both. They are in a similar vein to Bleak House. I’ve only read a couple stories by Gogol; let me know if they are good. (Chekov’s are of course, as are Maupassant’s — one of my 3 or 4 favourite writers.)
Steve,
I’d be interested to read your thoughts on the situation in Europe right now.
Matt
just bought More sex is safer sex…..
Chapter 3…. I agree that Scrooge removes money from the economy and therefore benefits everyone else…. However, when people put money into IRA’s they are not just removing money – they often purchase stock….. It is not quite equivalent…. Not sure that the ramifications aren’t quite different either….
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Rod C: I’m glad to welcome you to the blog, though of course your comment is off-topic in this thread, so I’d prefer we not turn this into a long discussion here. (Soon enough, there will be posts where it’s relevant.) In brief, though, the key issue is whether Scrooge scoops up any economic resources for his own use. A stock certificate is no more an economic resource than a dollar bill is—you can’t wear it, eat it or live in it. So the key ramifications are the same.
I’ve gone through this ‘rediscovery’ too. I never read a book in high school (except “The Mill on the Floss” unfortunately). I’ve been reading them now, and it’s far more rewarding.
The same goes double for the poets I studied in high school. I didn’t have nearly enough patience back then to understand or enjoy it. I think that’s why a lot of people give up on it at an early age.
I was exactly the opposite of Super-Fly and Steve. I consumed novels, plays, epic poetry in industrial quantities in high school and through grad school. Now I usually read non-fiction, including stuff that would put most to sleep. A happy medium, moderation in all things, is better — but I could never quite achieve that.
Don’t feel bad. I was assigned Gargantua and Pantagruel in college and have yet to read it. Ove the course of time, I have read Tale of Two Cities, Les Miserables, The Gilded Age (never read Tom Sawyer), Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
I’ve read more Dashiell Hammett than Steinbeck, although I did read The Grapes of Wrath. I started reading Dr. Zhivago in high school and was bored by the poetry; later, I read it and found it a fascinating glimpse at wartime Russia.
Don’t feel bad about not reading in high school those ponderous texts that reflect the teacher’s state of mind more than the students desires. Age brings with it appreciation of literature.
I took AP English in HS and did very well without doing most of the homework. In class I would speed read through the prior night’s or weekend’s assignment to try to stay about a few pages ahead of the discussion. I did not raise my hand until I knew most of the names of the characters. What the teacher wanted to hear was English-major BS and I could make up a theory of what the “broader” issue was better than my classmates. Whether I was right or wrong, the teacher loved my creative outlook (that I had just dreamt up”. The rest of the class, Teach would refer back to my “point”.
My guilt over the years for getting thate fraudulent A has been to read all of those HS assignments and more. Now I have been guilted to read Faulkner. I must have BSed quite a bit about the Sound and the Fury back in HS. I look forward to doing my penance.
KenB, here’s a tip: when something whizzes by over your head, declare that those who do get it are just pretending to do so for snob appeal.
Oh, wait, I see you heard that one already.
@Gene Callahan: I think you prove my point. For what is your post but “Oh, I truly deeply GET Ulysses, that proves I’m BETTER.”
Sure, Ken, and Umberto Eco, Anthony Burgess, Samuel Beckett,Jorge Luis Borges, Flann O’Brien, Salman Rushdie, Robert Anton Wilson, John Updike, Joseph Campbell, etc. all had to pretend they liked Ulysses because they were so insecure and had accomplished nothing on their own.
Ken, you could have just said, “I never really got much out of Ulysses.” Instead, you decided it was appropriate to insult everyone who has by implying that we are all just faking it. I suppose you think the theory of relativity is just a fancy pants way for nerds to show off as well, right?
@Gene Callahan: Would that Joseph Campbell had achieved less. However I have quite a few people who have read Ulysses and are poseurs, it is one of the favorite books for posturing. Are all its readers faking? No, but lots, in my experience: most. I happen to like Bartok’s quartets, but I still think it’s funny when Woody Allen left out a recording just to impress Annie Hall. It’s good poseur music.
I do like the etc though.
I read it and liked it in high school.
With no outside aids. It was fun, I recall, trying to make sense of it, and seeing thing put in order from a different perspective.
What I regret is wasting part of my teen years reading such stuff rather than living life. Moby Dick? A great waste of me most vital years.
Why do we do this to the young?
Faulker’s popularity among the literary crowd is troubling. It feels like an Emperor’s New Clothes situation to me, but I see the appeal in treating it like a puzzle, but it seems to devalue clear and lucid communication. The fact that it is not comprehensible to many people without extensive aids- which may be putting in things which were not there, but have become part of the common interpretation, speaks to the challenge of having this puzzle book stand on its own as worthwhile thing to read. The sad thing is that it is not particularly challenging to write in Faulkner’s style, much like it is easy to recreate a lot of modern art. It is just that he and Joyce did it and got recognized first.
There is so much better fiction out there, there is no need to foist too much of this nonsensical garbage on anyone, not the least high school students, but it is good to be exposed to the limits of communication. I’d prefer to give them some Irvine Welsh.
@MattMc: Shhhh, don’t let Gene Callahan hear you say that!
All I can add is I liked Faulkner a lot more than I liked Joyce.