#7 Greatest Book of All Time

The Sound and the Fury is #7 on the History of Literature list of 25 Greatest Books of All Time. In Episode 749, Jacke explores the strengths of Faulkner's narrative style in this novel, in which a single day of a family, told from four different perspectives, chronicles more than a history of one family.

As the novel's first line establishes, the world is riddled with beauty and violence.

Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting. 

The Sound and the Fury is exceptional, as are Faulkner's other works. For the body of his works, Faulkner received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1949. In his speech at the Noble Banquet in Stockholm, December 10, 1950, Faulkner described his work in this way:

I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet’s, the writer’s, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.