Parisian Literary Salon

Fall 2008 Parisian Literary Salons in London:
The Sound & the Fury by William Faulkner
1. Intro to The Sound & the Fury Salon study
2. Details & Registration
3. Schedule choices
4. Recommended Edition
5. Reading Schedule
6. Further Notes on The Sound & the Fury

1. Intro to The Sound & the Fury Salon study
There is a story of a celebrated Russian dancer who was asked by someone what
she meant by a certain dance. She answered with some exasperation, ‘If I could say it in
so many words, do you think I should take the very great trouble of dancing it?’
It is an important story, because it is a valid explanation of obscurity in art. A
method involving apparent obscurity is surely justified when it is the clearest, the
simplest, the only method possible of saying in full what the writer has to say.
This is the case with The Sound & the Fury. I shall not attempt to give either a
summary or an explanation of it: for if I could say in three pages what takes Faulkner
three hundred there would obviously be no need for the book. All I propose to do is offer
a few introductory, and desultory, comments, my chief purpose being to encourage the
reader. For the general reader is quite rightly shy of apparently difficult writing. Too
often it is used, not because of its intrinsic necessity, but to drape the poverty of the
writer: too often the reader, after drilling an arduous passage through the strata of the
mountain, finds only the mouse, and has little profit but his exercise.
As a result of several such fiascos I myself share this initial prejudice. Yet I have
read The Sound & the Fury three times now and that not in the least for exercise, but for
pure pleasure.
- Richard Hughes, Introduction to
The Sound & the Fury, Picador Classics Edition

I use this quote because I have found it difficult to explain why it is useful to attempt to read a text that seems aloof or unreachable at first. Those who have studied
Beloved or To the Lighthouse in previous courses or Salons may know what I mean when I say that the work comes easier when we consider it as a dynamic and motivated group each person’s question or insight adds to our understanding. I also think that the Salon allows us to make the very private act of reading a part of the public world, and in so doing helps each of us understand our own thoughts about the work more precisely.

2. DETAILS AND REGISTRATION:
Sound & The Fury Salon to start 18 September 7:30 PM near Kentish Town Tube
As of 04 September, there are FOUR remaining places for this Salon.

Address and further details will be sent once your participation is reserved with a cheque- see below. A wonderful neighbor has offered her home for one of the meetings-and as I live quite close to the Kentish Town tube, we will start in my home. If you know of others who might be interested in the Parisian Literary Salon, please forward the information along to them or send me their email address. I look forward to hearing from you: all feedback is helpful!

Cost is 65£ for the four week study- this includes photocopies. If you are a member of the Hampstead School Parent community, your cost is reduced. Please let me know your preferences in terms of schedule- if all of the following works for you, please let me know that as well. Your participation is reserved with a cheque for 20£ sent to T. Brothers, 9 Falkland Road NW5 2PS. I will not cash the cheque until the first week of
Salon meetings to ensure the time and location that generates the most participants works
for you. I limit the Salons to ten members.

3. Salon SCHEDULE
Time: Thursdays evenings 7:30-9:00 PM
Start date Sept. 16 (meetings will continue every Thursday for four weeks)
Location : Highgate/Kentish Town

4. Recommended Edition
Yes, I know it is big and the print is small, but the Norton Critical Edition
Sound & The Fury (edited by David Minter, ISBN 0-393-96481-7) has a
vast resource of textual notes, annotations and an appendix of Faulkner’s
notes and critical essays by all sorts- Sartre, Ralph Ellison- you will be
keeping good company with this edition. Since much of our work in the
Salon is focused on considering particular passages, having everyone on the
same page is quite useful- however, if you are using a different edition, I
will make copies of the key essays from the Norton.

5. Reading Schedule
• Session One- discuss section one: April Seventh 1928 Benjy’s narrative pgs. 3-48
Thoughts to bring for discussion: what makes this hard reading? What do you discover
without needing to be told? How do you work to make meaning from the garbled narrative? What
questions still nag you?
• Session Two- Discussion section two- June Second 1910 pg. 48-113 Quentin’s narrative
• Session Three- Discussion section three- April Sixth 1928 pgs. 113- 165 Jason’s narrative
• Session Four- Discussion section four- April Eighth 1928- pgs. 165-199 Dilsey’s narrative
• Optional Final meeting to share writings and further thoughts
We will start very slowly and work to get everyone out of the darkness, so to speak.
For those who sign up, I will email an appendix that some texts might have and might be useful
for your reading. Faulkner wrote this appendix in 1945 and as the intro caution says, not
everything in the appendix is consistent with the text. Ah well, if we are looking for consistency,
we shall have to look elsewhere. PLEASE note that reading through the appendix (which is a
series of character sketches that evolve into short stories) will give away some of the dramatic
moments of the book- but could help clarify the murky nature of the first chapter. Your choice….

6. Further Notes on The Sound & the Fury
In William Faulkner’s first truly modernist work, he pushes to break through the
confines of time and sequence to get at the essence of human nature- as Malcolm Bradbury explains, “Faulkner’s preoccupation with time has to do with the endless interlocking of personal and public histories and with the relation of the past to the lost, chaotic present.” The Sound and the Fury uses the interior world of its narrators to expose a crumbling world, through inference and allusion rather than through direct social critique. In the Modernist method, Faulkner employs stream of consciousness, symbolism as a connecting fiber and several interior realities (that show how one can see the world as absolutely in one’s way, and directly in contrast to others) that must compete
for authority. This Salon will draw upon individual’s questions and ideas to shed light on this complex text. The reading load should allow for re-reading as we study the work,
enabling the first time reader access to Faulkner’s complex vision. Upon a first reading, the narratives appear jumbled and opaque but as the pieces start to fit together, one can see the complex and careful planning that Faulkner has used- and to what end? This is what we must grapple with for the Salon. The (optional but strongly encouraged) writing assignment for this Salon will include the use of subjective first person narrative and a close examination of the limits of perspective.
I am including some introductory comments from Richard Hughes that I think
will help orient the reader in the opening chapter of the text:
Mr. Faulkner’s method in this book is successful, but it is none the less curious.
The first seventy pages are told by a congenital imbecile, a man of thirty-three whose
development has not advanced beyond babyhood. Benjy has no sense of time: his only
thought process is associative: the event of the day, then, and what it reminds him of in
the past are all one to him: the whole of his thirty-three years are present to him in one
interrupted and streamless flood. This enables the author to begin by giving a general
and confused picture of his whole subject. He offers a certain amount of help to the
understanding, it is true, in that he changes from roman to italic type whenever there is a
change in time: but even then I defy a reader to disentangle the people and events
concerned at a first reading. But the beauty of it is this: there is no need to disentangle
anything. If one ceased to make the effort, one soon finds that this strange rigmarole
holds one’s attention on its own merits. Vague forms of people and events, apparently
unrelated, loom out of the fog and disappear again. One is seeing the world through the
eyes of an idiot: but so clever is Mr. Faulkner that, for the time being at least, one is
content to do so.

I am looking forward to our adventure and work together- I hope to see you in September ….
Questions?
Toby