Faulkner's achievement is not lessened by seeing his book as the product of evolution rather than magic and it may be more interesting to re-read if one sees it as the product of a creative impulse overcoming frustration and as the book in which he learned to write in the way that made him great. Textual analysis supports his assertion, and so does the manuscript in its indications of several stages of evolution, in its revisions and marginal insertions, and in further changes made for the typescript. The most positive statement we have on that subject is a negative one: "Faulkner," said Jean-Paul Sartre, "did not first think in terms of an orderly narrative and then shuffle the parts like a pack of cards." Sartre was writing from his response to the printed text, which he was reluctant to reduce to its constituent parts because, as he said, that would produce a "different story." But what if Faulkner, as a matter of actual fact, did first think of it as a different story? He said he did. But little has been written about what the frustrated young writer did or must have done while composing it. Studies have been made of the manuscript and its revisions.
Critics have made numerous efforts to define its meaning and have found innumerable things to say about its structure. In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:ĬRITICISM THE COMPOSITION OF THE SOUND AND THE FURY I Leon Howard I WILLIAM FAULKNER'S The Sound and the Fury has been, during the last fifty years, one of the most widely discussed American novels.
0 kommentar(er)
