The Sound and The Fury - With - As I Lay Dying

William Faulkner once described The Sound and the Fury, his fourth novel, as “a real son-of-a-bitch” and “the greatest I’ll ever write.” Set in Jefferson, Mississippi, the novel — a classic example of Southern gothic literature — traces the decaying values of the Southern society through the downfall of the aristocratic Compson family. The Sound and the Fury is structured into four distinct sections and perspectives: Benjamin "Benjy" Compson, a mentally disabled 33-year-old man, narrates Part 1: April 7, 1928; Benjy’s older brother, Quentin, narrates Part 2: June 2, 1910; Jason, the youngest Compson brother, narrates April 6, 1928; and Part 4: April 8, 1928 (the day after Part 1) is narrated by a newly introduced third person omniscient point of view.

Like James Joyce and other Modernist writers, Faulkner experimented with various narrative techniques, including narrator shifts, frequent times shifts, unconventional punctuation and sentence structure, and — perhaps most predominantly — stream-of-consciousness. Revealing the inner thoughts of the characters to the reader, the narration of The Sound and the Fury is attentive to the events surrounding each character in the present, but also frequently returns to their memories of the past. In doing so, the four parts of the novel relate many of the same episodes, each from different points of view.

While initial sales of The Sound and the Fury well less than impressive, the novel became commercially successful with the 1931 publication of Faulkner’s sixth novel, Sanctuary. Still, not one of Faulkner’s novels that followed ever generated as much critical response as The Sound and the Fury. The author was praised for this ability to effectively capture the intimate processes of the human mind in the novel and it played a role in William Faulkner's receiving the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature. In 1998, the Modern Library ranked The Sound and the Fury sixth on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.

Jonathan Cape and Harrison Smith first published Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury in New York in 1929. While the dust jackets state the original price of $3.00 on the rear panel, first editions of this novel can sell for upwards of $30,000.

In 1945, Faulkner an appendix to the novel, titled “Compson 1699-1945” (to resemble an obituary), to be included in The Portable Faulkner then being assembled for Viking Press by Malcolm Cowley. The 30-page history offers additional glimpses into Compson family, from both before and after the time span of the novel.

In collaboration with two Faulkner scholars, Stephen Ross and Noel Polk, the Folio Society published the first ever colored-ink edition of The Sound and the Fury in July of 2012 to mark the 50th anniversary of the author's death. Printing The Sound and the Fury with different colors marking its chronological shifts is literally something of which Faulkner had only dreamt. Due to the limited technology available at the time of publication, Faulkner had to settle for italics to originally convey the shifts. (The Folio Society colored-ink edition maintains italics of the original.)