I just couldn’t feel there was anything of value gained by reading this book. On just about every level. But it’s what made Faulkner’s name, so apparently not everyone is as repulsed as I was.
One of my first objections was the characters’ tendencies to not complete their thoughts. The book required a LOT of reading between the lines. As far as I can tell, this was the only novel aspect of his literary style, but I didn’t care for it.
One of the protagonists in the story, the “fast girl” Temple, spends the first half of the book running in panic from one bedroom to another, and the second half of the book getting alternately raped and then drunk.
The other protagonist, the ineffectual lawyer Horace, misjudges everyone and everything in the murder case he gets sucked into.
By the end of the novel both Horace and Temple go away, and neither of them seems to care about what they went through.
Faulkner himself once dismissed the novel as a “potboiler.” Is it anything but? What am I missing?
by cja1968