My first post about a book...

"The Sound and the Fury" is not the best airplane book. It requires a great deal of concentration, and I am easily distracted. That being said, on our two hour flight to Montgomery (which ended up being a three hour flight due to weather), I made it through the first two parts of the book. The book is split into four parts, each of which appears to be narrated by a different member of the Compson family.

The first part is narrated by the developmentally disabled child/adult Benjy. Faulkner writes in a "stream of consciousness" style, so the first part follows Benjy's train of thought back and forth through a series of stories spanning a thirty year time period. When something in the story triggers Benjy's memory, another story is begun without any transition. I would say it flips in and out of 6-8 different stories during the part. It makes it incredibly hard to follow. In addition, Faulkner purposely doesn't fill in information you need until later in the novel, so right now, I have many questions.

The second part is narrated by Quentin, who I think is Benjy's older brother, but I am not entirely sure of the relationship. For that matter, Benjy used to be named Maury, but his name changes at some point. Not really sure when that is either. Also, there are two characters named Quentin, and one is a girl. At this point, I am thinking that the younger Quentin is the older Quentin's daughter. I will probably be wrong. In the second part you can definitely tell the narrator has been switched. Most of the time it is written much more clearly, but it still follows the Quentin's thoughts and bounces in and out of the past and present. It also appears that Quentin is a bit neurotic, so at times his narration is repetitive and lacks clarity. Blogging about books is hard.