It begins with Quentin Compson going to Miss Rosa's house because she wishes to tell him her story, which revolves around a man she hates, Thomas Sutpen. He came and built a big house and married Miss Rosa's sister Ellen and had two children, Judith and Henry. When Henry is at school he meets Charles Bon and Ellen wants Judith to marry Charles Bon; however, there are two things about Charles Bon that would not be good for marrying Judith, and it is one of them that drives Henry to do something desperate about it.

Every now and then there was an interesting quote.

The writing style was extremely tiresome and hard to follow. Sentences went on for half a page and paragraphs for three pages. Clauses were piled upon clauses; reading it felt like a chore most of the time.

I just flipped through the pages and thought wow I pushed myself through 378 pages of pretty much utter bore.

I felt triumphant just because I had finished it; that was all. I also felt that either the book was just way too boring or I am too young to really understand a lot of it. I just don't see how anyone could understand it, or even write it. I also don't understand how books like that can become such great classics. How could people actually enjoy reading them?

William Faulker was born in Mississippi in 1897. He was considered a great novelist, one of the greatest of the 20th century.

Maybe it can help you build up the power to read boring things. Besides, there WERE a few interesting quotes, as I said.

It is very hard to read, and half the time you have no idea what the guy's talking about. He rambles and goes off on tangents constantly.

Here are some of the coolest quotes in the book:



"...like you must with the horse which you take across country, over timber, which you control only through your ability to keep the animal from realizing that actually you cannot, that actually it is the stronger."



"...the four peaceful swimmers turning suddenly to face one another, not yet with alarm or distress but just alert, feeling the dark set, none of them yet at that point where man looks about his companions in disaster and thinks When will I stop trying to save them and save only myself? and not even aware that that point was appraching."



"...a fatality...had chosen that family...exactly as a small boy chooses one ant-hill to pour boiling water into...not even himself knowing why."



"-Have you noticed how so often when we try to reconstruct the causes which lead up to the actions of men and women, how with a sort of astonishment we find ourselves now and then reduced to the belief, the only possible belief, that they stemmed from some of the old virtues? the thief who steals not for greed but for love, the murderer who kills not out of lust but pity?"



"...that deep existence which we lead, to which the movement of limbs it but a clumsy and belated accompaniment like so many unnecessary instruments played crudely and amateurishly out of time to the tune itself..."



"...necessity has a way of obliterating from our conduct various delicate scruples regarding honor and pride."



"...some interval of sanity such as the mad know, just as the sane have intervals of madness to keep them aware that they are sane."



"...a man always falls back upon what he knows best in a crisis-the murderer upon murder, the theif thieving, the liar lying."



"...as if nature held a balance and kept a book and offered a recompense for the torn limbs and outraged hearts even if man did not..."



"...wars were sometimes created for the sole aim of settling youth's private difficulties and discontents."



"...people both before and since have tried to evoke God or devil to justify them in what their glands insisted upon..."



So as you see there ARE interesting quotes, even if I could not grasp the novel as a whole.

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Created Dec 24, 2002 at 2:13pm • Submit your own review...