“Ever since then I have believed that God is not only a gentleman and a sport; he is a Kentuckian too.”

—

The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner

(narrated by Quentin)

5:24 am  •  16 April 2011

The displacement of water is equal to the something of something.  Reducto absurdum of all human experience, and two six-pound flat-irons weigh more than one tailor’s goose.  What a sinful waste Dilsey would say.  Benjy knew it when Damuddy died.  He cried.  He smell hit.  He smell hit.

—The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner

(narrated by Quentin)

6:36 pm  •  15 April 2011  •  1 note

“I used to think that a Southerner had to be always conscious of niggers. I thought that Northerners would expect him to. When I first came East I kept thinking You’ve got to remember to think of them as colored people not niggers, and if it hadn’t happened that I wasn’t thrown with many of them, I’d have wasted a lot of time and trouble before I learned that the best way to take all people, black or white, is to take them for what they think they are, then leave them alone. That was when I realised that a nigger is not a person so much as a form of behavior; a sort of obverse reflection of the white people he lives among.”

—

The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner

(narrated by Quentin)

2:12 pm  •  15 April 2011  •  1 note

“There were about a dozen watches in the window, a dozen different hours and each with the same assertive and contradictory assurance that mine had, without any hands at all. Contradicting one another. I could hear mine, ticking away in side my pocket, even though nobody could see it, even though it could tell nothing if anyone could.”

—

The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner

(narrated by Quentin)

9:48 am  •  15 April 2011  •  5 notes

And I will look down and see my murmuring bones and the deep water like wind, like a roof of wind, and after a long time they cannot distinguish even bones upon the lonely and inviolate sand.  Until the Day when He says Rise only the flat-iron would come floating up.  It’s not when you realise that nothing can help you—religion, pride, anything—it’s when you realise that you don’t need any aid.  Dalton Ames.  Dalton Ames.  Dalton Ames.  If I could have been his mother lying with open body lifted laughing, holding his father with my hand refraining, seeing, watching him die before he lived.  One minute she was standing in the door

—The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner

5:24 am  •  15 April 2011

Like all the bells that ever rang still ringing in the long dying light-rays and Jesus and Saint Francis talking about his sister.  Because if it were just to hell; if that were all of it.  Finished.  If things just finished themselves.  Nobody else there but her and me.  If we could just have done something so dreadful that they would have fled hell except us.  I have committed incest I said Father it was I it was not Dalton Ames  And when he put Dalton Ames.  Dalton Ames.  Dalton Ames.  When he put the pistol in my hand I didn’t.  That’s why I didn’t.  He would be there and she would and I would.  Dalton Ames.  Dalton Ames.  Dalton Ames.

—The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner

(narrated by Quentin)

6:36 pm  •  14 April 2011

“Ah let him alone, Shreve said, if he’s got better sense than to chase after the little dirty sluts, whose business. In the South you are ashamed of being a virgin. Boys. Men. They lie about it. Because it means less to women, Father said. He said it was men invented virginity not women. Father said it’s like death: only a state in which the others are left and I said, But to believe it doesn’t matter and he said, That’s what’s so sad about anything: not only virginity, and I said, Why couldn’t it have been me and not her who is unvirgin and he said, That’s why that’s sad too; nothing is even worth the changing of it, and Shreve said if he’s got better sense than to chase after the little dirty sluts and I said Did you ever have a sister? Did you? Did you?”

—

The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner

(narrated by Quentin)

2:12 pm  •  14 April 2011  •  2 notes

The month of brides, the voice that breathed.  She ran right out of the mirror, out of the banked scent.  Roses.  Roses.  Mr. and Mrs. Jason Richmond Compson announce the marriage of. Roses.  Not virgins like dogwood, milkweed.  I said I have committed incest, Father, I said.  Roses.  Cunning and serene.

—The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner

(narrated by Quentin)

9:48 am  •  14 April 2011

“…he said I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire; it’s rather excruciating-ly apt that you will use it to gain the reducto absurdum of all human experience which can fit your individual needs no better than it fitted his or his father’s. I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you may forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all your breath trying to conquer it. Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.”

—

The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner

(narrated by Quentin)

5:24 am  •  14 April 2011  •  2 notes

This is the second chapter of The Sound and the Fury.  This chapter is narrated by Quentin Compton, the eldest of the family and a student at Harvard.  He recounts these memories on what we might presume is his last day on earth.  Quentin is deeply disturbed by his family’s decay, especially when it comes to Caddy.  

He recounts the same events that Benjy recalls in the previous chapter, but his perspective is highly moralized and intellectual.  His view of his sister is unusually intimate, suggesting a desire for an incestuous relationship.  Some might attribute this to an Oedipal complex, as Caddy fills the only “mother” role that he has ever known (due to their mother’s constant “illness”).

The writing style of this chapter is much more poetic and romanticized, but the story is just as incoherent as it was in the first chapter.  

Quotes to follow.

6:36 pm  •  13 April 2011