/lit/ - Literature

>>22715207
The tone is just so wrong.

To be fair, TSatF is a hard book to cover. That mad "man wrestling shadow demon" at least tried, but it's not very good.

>>22187859
This is pretty awful. I've never seen a really good TSatF. (To be fair, I'm not sure what such a thing would look like.)

>>21671364

'You come on here,' Dilsey said. 'Hush, Benjy. Hush, now.' But he wouldn't hush. They crossed the yard quickly and went to the cabin and entered. 'Run git dat shoe,' Dilsey said. 'Don't you sturb Miss Cahline, now. Ef she say anything, tell her I got him. Go on, now; you kin sho do dat right, I reckon.' Luster went out. Dilsey led Benjy to the bed and drew him down beside her, wiping his drooling mouth upon the hem of her skirt. 'Hush, now,' she said, stroking his head. 'Hush. Dilsey got you.' But he bellowed slowly, abjectly, without tears; the grave hopeless sound of all voiceless misery under the sun. Luster returned, carrying a white satin slipper. It was yellow now, and cracked and soiled, and when they placed it into Ben's hands he hushed for a while. But he still whimpered, and soon he lifted his voice again.

>>21565000
Checked. I have this edition of TSatF. The cover isn't offensively bad like some but it's bizarrely inappropriate. "Bucolic tranquility plus horse". Anyone who bought the book expecting it to be like this picture was in for a shock.

I have this Sound & Fury. So bad. I've never seen a good one though. (The famous one with the grotesque figure with the shadow on its back isn't any good, whatever people say.)

>>20838677
First of all, you need a decent edition. If you're reading it pirated as a pdf or something, the formating / italicization might be messed up, and that will make it impossible. My pages numbers etc refer to the Vintage Classics edition (see picture).

Faulkner originally wanted different coloured ink for different time periods. That would have made things a lot clearer, and shows he really wasn't trying to confuse people. But it would have been too expensive. He therefore compromised with italics. But it's not just "normal font = current time period; italics = flashback", for several reasons:

— Some flashbacks are really long, and having pages and pages in italics would be annoying as hell. (He does this in 'Absalom, Absalom!' and it's annoying as hell.)
— Some flashbacks have other flashbacks inside them.
— Sometimes (especially towards the end of Chapter 2) he wants confusion/ambiguity.

Italics signify a time jump, but work in two different ways, as far as I can see:

A) If the new time-period goes on for more than about a dozen lines, Faulkner puts just the first bit in italics then goes back into normal font *but stays in the new time period*. First example: page 2 ["Caddy uncaught me ... You don't want your hands froze on Christmas, do you."]. Here, the return to normal font ["'It's too cold out there..."] doesn't mean we're back into the present. We're still in the past. (There might be a small jump, like minutes, but it's the same basic memory.)

Notice it's something in the present that triggers a memory of a similar thing happening in the past. Benjy (in 1928) tries to crawl through the fence and catches himself on the nail, and has a flashback to crawling through the fence with Caddy 25-30 years earlier and catching himself on the nail in exactly the same way. Similarly, when he has dinner he remembers eating dinner in the past; when he goes to bed he remembers going to bed in the past, etc. This is how almost all the flashbacks work in the book.

B) If the jump is just a short digression, it *does* end when the italics end. First example: page 4 ["What are you moaning about ... into the lot"]. Pages 3-6 are all one big flashback, so normal font = the past. The italics are a little interjection from the present when Luster says something; when they end, Benjy slips back into his memories & carries on where he left off.

Sometimes the jump from present-to-past (or past-to-present) happens mid-action & hence mid-sentence. e.g. Page 15: I hushed and got in the water [normal font, 1928] and Roskus came and said to come to supper... [italics, 1900 or so].