The Sound and the Fury [at 75]

The Sound and the Fury. 75 years ago, William Faulkner finished his fourth novel. It was published later in the fall (October 7, 1929), and for the first fifteen years sales totaled just over 3,300 copies (an appendix was added in 1946, when most of Faulkner’s books were out of print. Of course, a few years after that he was awarded the Nobel Prize). It was Faulkner’s own favorite novel, primarily, he said, because he considered it his “most splendid failure”.

—The Sound and the Fury [at 75] (Metafilter)

When I finished reading this book as an undergraduate, I immediately re-read the chapters in chronological order. I’ve got an XML version of the “Benjy” chapter, and had a graduate student mark up the dialogue and the multiple timeframes, and I created a few simple utilities to sort and sift through the text on those criteria. Maybe someday I’ll do something with it, but thanks to the unholy alliance between Disney and Sonny Bono the text is still protected by copyright.