Ep 697 - The Sound and the Fury, by William Faulkner

Summary

Overdue Podcast Episode 697 Summary: The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

Release Date: April 7, 2025
Host: Headgum - Andrew (The Fury) & Craig (The Sound)

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1. Introduction to The Sound and the Fury

The hosts, Andrew and Craig, dive into William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, exploring its intricate narrative and challenging structure. They set the stage by discussing Faulkner's significance in modernist literature and the novel's entry into the public domain, which likely influenced their decision to feature it.

Notable Quote:

Craig (02:50): "We'll talk about it."

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2. William Faulkner and His Literary Impact

Andrew provides a brief overview of Faulkner's career, highlighting his Nobel Prize win in 1949 and his Pulitzer Prizes for A Fable and The Reivers. They discuss Faulkner's experimental writing style and his reluctance towards the fame he garnered.

Notable Quotes:

Andrew (07:02): "William Faulkner was born in 1897. He died in 1962. He's an American writer of novels, short stories, screenplays, poems, essays, and more."

Craig (08:41): "He can't get rid of [his fame]."

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3. Narrative Structure and Stream of Consciousness

The conversation delves into the novel's unconventional narrative structure, which employs multiple perspectives and a stream of consciousness technique. Craig emphasizes the challenge of following Benjy's fragmented thoughts, while Andrew compares it to complex narrative devices seen in other modernist works.

Notable Quotes:

Craig (27:43): "There are four chapters also, so it's not. They are four big parts and you gotta, you know, really fight your way into them to, to know what's going on."

Andrew (09:40): "The title is a reference to the iconic line from the soliloquy... 'It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.'"

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4. Character Analysis

Benjy Compson:
Benjy, the intellectually disabled brother, serves as the novel's first narrator. His perception of time and events is nonlinear, reflecting his cognitive challenges. The hosts discuss the difficulty of empathizing with Benjy and the innovative methods used by Faulkner to portray his inner world.

Quentin Compson:
Quentin's chapter shifts back to 1910, revealing his obsession with his sister Caddy's purity. His tragic trajectory towards suicide illustrates the destructive nature of rigid Southern values.

Jason Compson:
Jason is portrayed as resentful, racist, and morally corrupt. His manipulative behavior towards his sister and others highlights the family's internal decay.

Dilsey:
As the loyal servant, Dilsey provides a contrast to the Compson family's dysfunction. Her resilience and moral strength offer a glimmer of hope amidst the family's decline.

Notable Quotes:

Craig (30:07): "True, it's not a political novel explicitly in that way, but it is like, yeah, these people are messed up..."

Andrew (46:07): "Grammatical sense."

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5. The Appendix and Additional Insights

Andrew and Craig explore the significance of the appendix added to later editions of the novel. They discuss how it provides clarity on the characters' backgrounds and Faulkner's intentions, yet some feel it detracts from the novel's enigmatic nature.

Notable Quotes:

Andrew (55:30): "What if this family was falling apart at the seams?... the final image is just like, here's a guy kind of placidly riding."

Craig (64:15): "But he does have to live for... Look at my poor servants."

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6. Adaptations of The Sound and the Fury

The hosts critique James Franco's 2014 film adaptation, citing its low Rotten Tomatoes score and Franco's handling of Faulkner's complex narrative. They compare it unfavorably to the 1959 adaptation, emphasizing the challenges of translating Faulkner's style to film.

Notable Quotes:

Andrew (19:40): "Apparently Seth Rogen and Danny McBride both like pop up in this..."

Craig (20:15): "This Adaptation has a 22% Rotten Tomatoes score and reviewers generally bag on Franco quite bit."

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7. Personal Impressions and Ratings

Craig expresses his frustration with the novel's difficulty, particularly in following the characters and timeline. Despite the challenges, he acknowledges the book's profound insights into family dysfunction and Southern tragedy. Andrew appreciates the novel's literary merit but recognizes its demanding nature.

Notable Quotes:

Craig (69:44): "Could I give it a couple of stars? Like a couple of them?"

Andrew (70:30): "While the color coded version... there is an active reading required to like engage with that text that I haven't done in a while."

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8. Conclusion

Andrew and Craig conclude their discussion by affirming the novel's significance and its enduring impact on literature. They encourage listeners to engage deeply with Faulkner's work, despite its complexities.

Notable Quotes:

Andrew (72:37): "Yeah, that's the book. That's the sound. That's the fury."

Craig (73:52): "If it helps you read it if you want to, more power to you."

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Looking Ahead

The hosts tease upcoming episodes, including discussions on The Ministry of Time by Kayleigh and Bradley, Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang, and a live-stream reimagining of Twilight by Stephanie Meyer.

Upcoming Titles:

• The Ministry of Time by Kayleigh and Bradley
• Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang
• Life and Death: Twilight Reimagined by Stephanie Meyer (Live Stream on April 25th)

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For more information and to support the show, visit OverduePodcast.com and Patreon.com/overduepod.

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This summary captures the essence of Episode 697 of the Overdue podcast, providing insights into Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury while highlighting the hosts' perspectives and notable moments from their discussion.

Transcript

[Andrew]

This is a headgum podcast, Craig. If my day has been full of sound and also fury, you know, one of the things that can make me feel better is dropping a gummy. Which is why I like Lumi Gummies. Because they quiet me down and they calm my fury. They're consistent, mellow, and super delicious. Lumi Gummies are specifically designed to make you feel good, not stuck. Whether you're looking for an end of day de stressor, a midday mood boost, or help getting the best sleep ever, Lumi Gummies has a strain that's right for you. One of my favorite times to take a watermelon sorbet. Gummy, Craig. Because these gummies have inherited some of the funny names from the weed business.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

Well, is when I'm reading a book for the show. It helps put me in a relaxed headspace, but I can still focus enough to say the stupid and smart things that are the hallmark of our show. I can take good notes.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

And I can be calm and quiet.

[Craig]

Those are.

[Andrew]

Yeah, those are two good.

[Craig]

Those are two good things.

[Andrew]

Lumi Gummies are available nationwide. Go to lumigummies.com, that's L U M I gummies.com and use code overdue for 30% off your order. Again, that's L U M I Gummies.com, code overdue, lumigummies.com, code overdue to save 30% off your order.

[Craig]

Hey, everybody. Welcome to Overdue. It's a podcast about the books you've been meaning to read. My name is Craig, AKA the Sound.

[Andrew]

My name is Andrew, and I'm the Fury. I was gonna ask which of us was the Sound and which was the Fury, but before we got on mic, I asked Susanna which one that she thought was which. And without hesitating, she was like, well, Craig's the Sound and you'd're the Fury. And I guess she's right. I mean, I do. Even if we got equally mad about all the same stuff, I think I have a harder time not communicating that to everybody in my life. When I'm upset or agitated about.

[Craig]

Yeah. Which is fine.

[Andrew]

Which is fine.

[Craig]

People gotta get mad. Sometimes I do feel like. Sometimes I am, like, overly water on a duck's back Sometimes I don't think it's always a useful disposition to have.

[Andrew]

Yeah, you gotta go a little more furious. Will be a little less loud.

[Craig]

Sometimes I gotta be, well, no, I could be. There's nothing here that says that the sound is loud. It just says that there is sound and there is fury.

[Andrew]

Okay. I Guess the proximity of those words leads me to believe that the sound would be kind of loud and audible and angry.

[Craig]

We'll talk about it.

[Andrew]

And if we're just, like, talking about, like, in terms of, like, genes, your son makes a lot more noise than my son.

[Craig]

So much sound and so much fury. I've been trapped in the house with him for several days, and I love him to pieces, and he's loving me to pieces. Year instituted.

[Andrew]

You got Covid.

[Craig]

I do not.

[Andrew]

When are they going to update that thing, do you think?

[Craig]

Not. Not to timestamp the episode too badly, but it's 2025 and I have my first official bout of COVID so. First.

[Andrew]

First ever.

[Craig]

I don't.

[Andrew]

Forgetting. You've never had it before.

[Craig]

Again, I'm not saying that as a badge of honor. I'm fairly certain I must have had it. Just maybe not a severe case or something and it just never popped on a test. But we just own.

[Andrew]

Just own that you've been dodging it like Neo in the Matrix up until now, but then they finally got that.

[Craig]

Would be cool if it hadn't got me. So now it's got me and it feels less cool. But no. Perfect week to read this modernist text that is incredibly disorienting and fluid in terms of time and about kind of the whole bleh of it all, you know.

[Andrew]

Did we formally say what it. What the. What the book was that you read on this, our podcast, where every week one of us reads a book and tells the other person about it.

[Craig]

The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner. A book I've never read before. Never read it. Read it before.

[Andrew]

But you read it. But you read it now.

[Craig]

That's an old.

[Andrew]

You read it before now, but you hadn't read it before. You read it for this.

[Craig]

Yeah, it's a 1929 novel modernist classic that Andrew tells a little bit more about Faulkner. When did we cover Faulkner before Andrew? You read As I Lay Dying.

[Andrew]

Yes, we read As I Lay dying for episode 522 back in May of 2022.

[Craig]

Yep. Yep.

[Andrew]

This was six months before my so far knock on wood, one and only tussle with COVID 19.

[Craig]

Oh, wow.

[Andrew]

Yeah, we both made it a pretty good time. I mean, you obviously beat me, but, you know, I beat a lot of people. It was. It is a contest. Yeah, William will.

[Craig]

Well, I'll just. I'll just say Faulkner is. I might have said on that episode is. I had read that novel prior to that recording. I think I read. I might have Read Absalom, Absalom in college. Did I read part of it? Probably. I think I read part of.

[Andrew]

I read part of Absalom. Absalom, like, as a teen or something, because I was trying to prove what, like a good, smart reader teen I was. This is the same period of my life where I think I tried to read Lord Jim.

[Craig]

Oh, boy.

[Andrew]

But the amount of it that I understood and that stuck with me was so slight that I might as well never would have read it. And if we were doing it for the show, I would not count it. And I, as a thing that broke the format of the show. But, yeah, as. As I Lay Dying would have been more appropriate for you to read maybe this time. So I'm sorry that I took that.

[Craig]

That's okay. This is a book I've wanted to read. I read As I Lay Dying when I was being a cool reader teen in my cool reader teen English class with a high school, you know, an English teacher who was like, here's this class. We're going to do Springsteen lyrics and also Faulkner short stories. And I was like, yes.

[Andrew]

And I'm sure. I'm sure you all had an amazing time standing on your desks at the end of each of each class a little bit.

[Craig]

So I've always been a little predisposed to or inclined toward, like, what's the deal over there with Faulkner? With the Faulkner I haven't read. Like, there's something going on there that is worth knowing about, even if I enjoy it or not. And that's. That's the energy I brought to this read and largely the energy I'm going to bring to this recording.

[Andrew]

That's. That's a fun way to approach the works of William Faulkner. And I like a lot of the. A lot of the literary canon, honestly, is like, you know, you don't have to enjoy it for it to be important or good. Not all books are fun.

[Craig]

Not all books are fun. That's okay.

[Andrew]

William Faulkner was born in 1897. He died in 1962. He's an American writer of novels, short stories, screenplays, poems, essays, and more. His first published work started in. He was 21 when he published his first work. It was a poem. It was 1919.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

He did it. Since we already did that Faulkner episode before, I'm not going to do, like, full bio stuff, but I got a little bit of stuff that's relevant to Sound in the Fury. But yeah, his other major works include the Sound As I Lay Dying, which we read Absalom. Absalom which we might have read and just don't remember any of Sanctuary in 1931, which was the work that sort of catapulted him to fame and success and retroactively made Sound in the Fury popular. Like, it was not a book that was, like, well reviewed or super widely read when it came out. But then Sanctuary came out and everybody was like, oh, this William Faulkner guy. I got to go back and I got to go back and buy all the books.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

A fable in 1954. That's the name of the book. It's not a description of what the book is. So it might also be that. I don't know. And his final novel, the Review. Wait, let me make sure I transcribe this correctly. I have the. The Reivers, the Rivers, published posthumously in 1962. He won a Pulitzer Prize for both those last two. For A Fable and for.

[Craig]

Okay, the Rivers. The Rivers.

[Andrew]

He was also. He was also awarded a Nobel Prize in literature in 1949 for, quote, his powerful and artistically unique contribution to the modern American novel. He did not like all the fame and attention that this brought to him, but he did. He did get it.

[Craig]

Yeah, sure.

[Andrew]

And you can't. He can't. He couldn't get rid of it. This is his fourth published novel in 1929, after Soldiers Pay in 1926, Mosquitoes in 1927, and Sartoris in 1929. Sartoris is a version of that story that was heavily cut down by his editor in 1973. The original manuscript was published posthumously as Flags in the Dust, and Sartoris was taken out of print. So if you can't print, find Sartoris to buy it. That's why.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

And then as a book from. As a book from 1929. This entered the public domain back in January.

[Craig]

Yay.

[Andrew]

This might. That might be part of why we're doing.

[Craig]

Yes, probably. Yes, probably. I should. I should have remembered that. But, you know.

[Andrew]

Yes, well, I remembered it for you, obviously. The title is a reference to the. What is which iconic line from the soliloquy. Do you. Do you reference it as. Is it the tomorrow and tomorrow tomorrow soliloquy from Macbeth? Is it like. Which little phrase do you use to refer to.

[Craig]

If you're just picking one, probably go Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. Or. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. The stuff in the middle, like, out, out, brief candle, Life's but a walking. I really don't like saying these words out loud. Why not because of the whole backers thing. I don't. The curse and everything. Like, I really struggle.

[Andrew]

Say, like, if the. If the curse extends to being able to perform the play, I feel like we've let the curse dictate.

[Craig]

No, if you're performing the play, that's.

[Andrew]

Okay, but you're just not allowed to talk about it.

[Craig]

I'm not working on the play right now. I'm not.

[Andrew]

Well, then you can just say Macbeth like it's not. There is no curse. There's no podcast curse. It's not compatible with these bits and bytes. You can't get the curse on your ipod.

[Craig]

Craig, what if you did know? But no, I mean.

[Andrew]

I mean, we probably have done more.

[Craig]

Than one, but no, it's the beginning or the end. It's the tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. Or the tale told by an idiot section.

[Andrew]

Anyways, based on that, the obvious reference is the tale told by an idiot thing because of.

[Craig]

We'll talk about Benji.

[Andrew]

Benji, the big character in this book. Yep, yep, yep. Yeah, that's. That's the main stuff about Faulkner. I did also read about a 2012 edition released by the Folio Society. A bunch of nerds. They use different colors of ink for different thought threads. Like, specifically for Benji, because he apparently is doing a lot of like, timey wimey, sort of. Oh yeah, stream of. Stream of consciousness, confusing Y stuff. Susan Benny, writing for the New Antiquarian, says that this was based on notes between Faulkner and his editor. This is from Faulkner. I wish publishing was advanced enough to use colored ink. As I argued with you and Hal in the speakeasy that day. I'll just have to save the idea until publishing grows up to it. But yeah, basically saying. Basically acknowledging. Yeah, this Benji section is a little. It's a little challenging. If I could introduce a through line by making the different like times or like themes, like color coded, instead of just having it be one big unbroken block of text. Wouldn't that be neat? And the Folio people, in concert with some Faulkner scholars, did it just for the Benji section, tried to do it for other sections and were like, actually, we can't do this in like a consistent enough way that it totally makes sense. So it's like. It's like a neat idea. I think they only published like a.

[Craig]

1400 copies or something like that.

[Andrew]

Yeah, like 15. Like not. Not that many. The piece in the New York Times from Randy Boyagoda.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

Introduces some interesting thoughts, though, that I. That I thought were kind of summed up what I thought like, so I think basically that this is. This is a cool idea. But Rain, our boy Randy says the visual statement is finally too arresting, the navigation too helpful. Benji's interiority is disoriented, disorienting and exhilar to experience in standard black ink, precisely because this neutral printing perfectly conveys the unbroken surface confusion of an idiot, which is outwardly a dynamic and logical coherence. Faulkner's own description of his ambitions for Benjy's section, whereas in relieving the crucial tension between confusion and coherence, the colored inks make safe the novel's most provocative claim that we might recognize our own struggles to understand the pieces and people of our lives and be understood by them in the voice and efforts of a 33 year old, mute, idiot man child who in his words, is always trying to set and basically going on to say, like, who are we? Who are we honoring when we try to make this, like, authorial intent real? Yeah, like, are we. You know, Faulkner's been dead forever. This conversation he had with his editors was something that came up, like, briefly and then was kind of dismissed, like basically saying latter day restorations are in fact less authentic restorations than painstaking, sincere contrivances that ultimately belong more to their latter day contrivers than to their original authors. Yeah, I'm just saying basically, all the. All, like so much of this great work is not just because the author's genius was transmitted, like, unbroken to the reader. It's like this back and forth between a writer and their editors where, you know, nobody is always absolutely correct about whatever they're saying.

[Craig]

Some interesting thoughts on that. Yes, I agree with all of that in a way. It's almost a version of them doing that as a version of doing translation. By the way, we, we, you and I talk about it with Emily Wilson, right? Where it's like it's no longer the original.

[Andrew]

Close personal friend, Emily Wilson. Yes.

[Craig]

Apparently he, you know, he. The previous novel was it Flags of Our, Flags of the Dust, Flags of the Duster Brothers. What was it called?

[Andrew]

Sartoris was what it would have been called.

[Craig]

Flags in the Dust. Flags.

[Andrew]

Flags in the Dust.

[Craig]

It was initially rejected and he was upset about it. And he said, quote, one day I seem to shut the door between me and all publishers addresses and book lists. I said to myself, now I can write. And that's when he embarked on this book. You know, nobody was going to tell him what to do. He insisted that they not do any editing or add any punctuation for clarity. Okay, then And I did.

[Andrew]

I did run into a couple of, like, little letters between him and his editor where he would be like, listen, I'm really sorry about that last letter I sent you. I do think I was right. But, like, I should have been so nasty.

[Craig]

In 1957, he gave a lecture or something where he said he thought the book was a series of failures. I tried first to tell it with one brother and that wasn't enough. I tried with another brother and that wasn't enough. I tried the third brother and that failed. And I tried myself the fourth section to tell what happened, and I still failed, which is interesting to me because apparently in 1946, he published an appendix that he instructed to be added to all printings or most printings. The first copy, like, first E book copy I had did not have this. So I was like, wait, what? And then I went and found another copy and then, like, read that it is, to be glib, a Wikipedia Animal House conclusion to this novel. It is him, like, coming now. There is still. There is still artistry in the writing. There is still some like, of the.

[Andrew]

Appendix or sound in the field of the appendix.

[Craig]

But it does, like, he does peek his head around the curtain and, like, give you a summary of some things and, like, completely transparently lay out some events that if you had just read the novel sans appendix, you'd had to do a little bit of work to put together. And there's this kind of admission from him by creating it and, you know, attaching it to the novel that he's like, ah, what I did was cool, but I did want other things to. I wanted to make sure everybody got it, you know, which is kind of interesting. It's his own little, like, after. It's like, when they do that, I never watch the. After the stuff on HBO anymore. I know.

[Andrew]

You ever watched it? I never.

[Craig]

I.

[Andrew]

There is no sequence of words that's more wasted on me than, like, stay tuned after the episode for a special peek behind the scenes. Like, I never. I never want to.

[Craig]

I can't remember when I stopped. I feel like sometimes I would watch it for Game of Thrones and sometimes I might have even watched a few of them for Succession because I think.

[Andrew]

Like, a director's commentary or something after the fact. Like, I've ever listened to, like, the commentary on it on a DVD or Blu Ray.

[Craig]

Sure.

[Andrew]

For. For. Especially for a work that I have watched a bunch of times, though, if I really. If I really, really like the work, I do sometimes get to a point where it's like, man, I wish they would stop talking so I could just watch this thing that I read.

[Craig]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Andrew]

But no, there's nothing. And I think this. I don't know that it started with like, the talking Dead, like, full, like, post show.

[Craig]

But that's conversation format. Yep.

[Andrew]

A little more than a decade ago. Like, this thing that they introduced to like, add another layer to prestige TV as it was happening. But, like, nothing about an officially curated, like, post event reaction has ever been anything other than actors. Like, being in front of a clip and being like, man, I thought. I just thought that what the writer wanted to convey was really complicated and beautiful. And it's just like that sort of an empty.

[Craig]

Yep.

[Andrew]

Like nothing. And so that's why I don't really interact with them.

[Craig]

I. I prefer like, movie commentaries when it's like an anniversary edition. Like, not when it's made. Like, right when they've wrapped filming or whatever.

[Andrew]

Like, and there's been enough time that's elapsed that people have some like, critical perspective and, you know, something a little bit more interesting to say about. I feel like when you're saying it right after the work, like, you just did this, like, whatever you had to say about it is present.

[Craig]

It's marketing work. Probably it's marketing or it's part of kind of the aura of the work where you're like, oh, I. I want people to be talking about how we did it. As much as.

[Andrew]

It'S a TV version of, like, you buy a toaster and then the Internet ads you get are like, maybe you seem really interested in toasters. Can I show you some more stuff about toasters? Like, you're showing me an ad for something that I have already consumed. This is not. This is for nobody.

[Craig]

I will talk like you are.

[Andrew]

You already got me. You don't need to keep selling me on it.

[Craig]

I will talk about the two most interesting parts of the appendix after we cover some of the plot of the book. But it did strike me as kind of like, what are we do. Okay. Okay, Faulkner.

[Andrew]

Okay, last real quick thing.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

Hit me on the. On the topic of creative weirdos.

[Craig]

Oh, okay.

[Andrew]

This. This was the top sound. The Fury was the subject of two adaptations.

[Craig]

Oh, sure.

[Andrew]

There was a much changed 1959 film adaptation featuring Yul Brenner and others. And then there was a 2014 adaptation starring and directed by noted weirdo James Franco. Oh, this Adaptation has a 22% Rotten Tomatoes score and reviewers generally bag on Franco quite bit. This is apparently like, Franco went through a Faulkner Phase where he also tried.

[Craig]

To adapt to college or whatever.

[Andrew]

Yeah, well, this is in 2014, so. No.

[Craig]

Well, but he was also one of those guys who was like, I'm in movies and I'm taking like poetry classes at NYU or something. So kiddos, maybe.

[Andrew]

He was like a 33 year old man when he was doing this though. So in 2013 he also did As I Lay Dying.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

Variety's Andrew Barker did say that the Sound and the Fury adaptation was better than that. Oh, sure, the guardians. Paul McGu says William Faulkner's profound, intricate masterpiece has been rendered both trite and insipid in this adaptation by actor director James Franco. Sound and the Fury is not a cynical film, though, just ham fisted. So bogged down by form, Franco fails to get his head up enough to think about context. And then Barker says Franco's second adaptation of a seemingly unfilmable William Faulkner novel within the last year and a half, the Sound and the Fury, is certainly a folly. Failing to capture the weird, entrancing, often maddening ambience of the great writer's elliptical masterpiece and its surfeit of half baked film, student flourishes and needless cameos occasionally given an amateur hour feel, Franco nonetheless shows improvement over 2013's As I Lay Dying and well, it's hard to fault him for trying. I disagree. You can absolutely fault him for trying. Yeah. Apparently Seth rogen and Danny McBride both like pop up in this, which sounds like it would be the most immersion, like if you were immersed in it at all. It would be the most immersion breaking thing at all to have like God, have Seth Rogen, like knocked up era Seth Rogen, like pop in and be like, hey dudes, I'm not Donkey Kong yet, but wouldn't it be cool if I voice Donkey Kong someday?

[Craig]

This guy in Sound, the Fury is giving me big Donkey Kong vibes. I hope they cast him as Donkey Kong soon.

[Andrew]

I hope he's cast as Donkey Kong. Anyway, that's all I got.

[Craig]

All right.

[Andrew]

James Franco made it into a movie. It wasn't very good.

[Craig]

That's all the sound we have. We'll take a quick break and be back with the Fury. Andrew, this show is sponsored by BetterHelp. Let's talk about smart investments, ways to use your money.

[Andrew]

Okay, okay.

[Craig]

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[Andrew]

You know a place Craig with with plenty of sound and fury is the Internet. And if you want to contribute to that wonderful, beautiful dinner, I've got good news for you. This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace is the website famously that helps you make websites. If you got something to say, something to be mad about or happy about or any of the other emotions, Squarespace has got a website that will help you express that just great. Here's some things that we like about Squarespace beyond their drag and drop designs and their 247 customer support and all the other stuff that we talk about when we talk about Squarespace. Craig Cutting Edge Design Squarespace's collection of cutting edge design tools Ouch. I cut myself. Anyone can build a bespoke online presence that perfectly fits their brand or business. Squarespace offers a complete library of professionally designed and award winning website templates with options for every use and category. No matter where you start, your website is flexible to what you need. With intuitive drag and drop editing, beautiful styling options, unrivaled visual design effects and more ways to list what you offer. No experience required. Donations Money Please fundraise directly on your website and grow your impact with built in donation tools. Create a professional on brand website that makes it easy to accept one time or recurring contributions and engage supporters. With built in email campaigns and marketing tools, you can connect with your community and inspire more people to support your cause. Finally Craig www.bignews.com Squarespace gives you Domains Every dream needs a domain. Squarespace Domains make it easy to find the best name for your Business at one fair, all inclusive price, no hidden fees or add ons required. Every Squarespace domain comes with advanced privacy and security tools included to ensure your domain remains online and protected. Don't wait to claim your name. Invest in your dream domain today, Craig. If this sounds good, go to squarespace.com for a free trial. And when you're ready to Launch, go to squarespace.com overdue to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. That's squarespace.com overdue to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or a domain.

[Craig]

The Fury, Andrew.

[Andrew]

Yeah, the Baseball Furies.

[Craig]

Remember them?

[Andrew]

Yeah, I remember them from the. From the movie the Warriors.

[Craig]

Good flick.

[Andrew]

Which we only know about because it came out. There was like a fighting game on the PlayStation 2 in like 2000. I guess that was based on the movie the War.

[Craig]

We were also friends with someone who owned every DVD ever. So like.

[Andrew]

Yeah, that's true.

[Craig]

It's possible. We made. Netflix countered it before then, but yes. So let's talk about this book, the Sound and the Fury, published 1929. William Faulkner. Where do you like me to start, Andrew?

[Andrew]

Well, I mean, you want to do Sound first or the Fury first?

[Craig]

It's not cleanly delineated. I wish I could.

[Andrew]

Well, that's not helpful. We talked. Okay. We talked about the character Benji and his color coded thing. So do you want to do? I mean, it's not color coded, but the thing that Faulkner once talked about, color coding. And so some people at the Folio Society decided to do a version of it that was laid out like that.

[Craig]

Yeah, sure.

[Andrew]

Is it easier to start with Benji or with the non Benji parts of the book or what's what? And then also, also this is a. This is appropriate. This is a stream of consciousness work. It's a. It's a seminal work.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

In stream of consciousness fiction.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

What was that like?

[Craig]

Yeah. So the. I think in our discord patreon.com/overdue pod to join us. Jace. A couple of people will said the Fury was real at times. The section where you're in Benji, stream of consciousness is challenging. I guess it's all part of the experience to be confused given that he experiences the world as intellectually disabled. And then Jason later said, I'm reading it now, just finished chapter two. Had to resort to a character list to understand who was who. There's two characters with the same name and two different time periods and different genders. It was challenging. There's no hand holding here and I Said yes. It's a bucking bronco of a read. Like the first two chapters, which are most of the book are really kind of dare you to pay attention to them. Really?

[Andrew]

Yeah, I feel like there's. When we did Infinite Jest like a million years ago, we talked about like one part of the book that most frequently, like if you were going to do, you know, that little YouTube like Infograph that shows you like the most played sections of the video, like if you're going to do like the, the most dipped section of Infinite Jess, there's one in the beginning with like a lot of weird dialect that does it. I think maybe the Sound and the Fury, like at the first couple chapters are kind of gatekeeper chapters.

[Craig]

Well, and there's.

[Andrew]

To keep the, the weak minded and the people who aren't doing it for content out of the rest of the book.

[Craig]

There are four chapters also, so it's not. They are four big parts and you gotta, you know, really fight your way into them to, to know what's going on. They also are all structured differently. So that's a good way to, to start, I suppose. And this is like part of the hallmark of this as a, a work of modernism is the experimentation with form and perspective and how the style of writing reflects the perspective. So yes. Benji, who is one of the, I believe, three sons of this generation of the Compson family, a fallen on hard times, Southern plantation family in the early 20th century. They are descended, as I learned from the appendix, from both a like, you know, leader in the Chickasaw as well as a governor of the state of Mississippi. Cool. But they don't, they're not with it anymore. You know, they lost a lot after the Civil War.

[Andrew]

Right. Things like that. I mean, so, so many people lost so much. We don't talk about the economic damage of the Civil War.

[Craig]

Yes, truly horrible what is reflected here and I think what Faulkner is interested in is just that like they don't have a, they don't have a way forward. And that is as much a reflection of who they are as anything else. It's not a, like, not a political novel explicitly in that way, but it is like, yeah, these people are messed up and they do not have the like, wherewithal or the moral fortitude to like deal with the world in front of them. And they're just going to tear each other apart until there's none of them left.

[Andrew]

Right. And It'll be like 70 years before any of them can learn to code. So what are they supposed to do.

[Craig]

You're right. It's true. That's the part of the Macbeth speech that they left out where they all learned to code, tells you to learn to code. But, like, you take a look at that poem, and it's like it's all, you know, a tale signifying nothing. Right. Where. What is this. This family's journey and what is happening to them as we read it at the end of the day, what does it amount to? Not much at all. It's three chapters from each from one of the son's perspectives. The daughter, Candace Caddy, as she's called, is only depicted in their memories. She's never in, like, the present tense of any of these chapters. She never gets her own chapter because.

[Andrew]

She died or just. No, the book's not as interested in her.

[Craig]

No, it's. It's kind of explicit that it. The book only works if she is a bit of a trollop, but also just kind of someone who's been taken advantage of also and has become a fallen woman and also then just accept. Just escaped from this world. And, you know, in the appendix, we find that she made her way to Germany. Paris or Germany. I don't know, the 40s and a.

[Andrew]

Wonderful time to be in Germany.

[Craig]

Yeah, exactly. No, exactly. Yeah. And it's kind. It's important that she is absent from all of their lives. That that's why she doesn't get her own time. So the first chapter is Benji. The second chapter is the son, Quentin. The third chapter is Jason. And the fourth chapter, which Faulkner says is from quote unquote, it's not his perspective. It's an omniscient narrator. Starts with the lead servant, Black servant in the kitchen, Dilsey. And then kind of is like, oh, no, actually, we get to, like, move around a little bit. Like, it's kind of interesting and feels oddly free. The latter two chapters have the most, like, straightforward prosecutor, where characters use quotation marks and, like, there's narration and there isn't just random. Italicized. Not random. There isn't italicized text interspersed to either.

[Andrew]

Sporadic.

[Craig]

Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Yes. Disorienting amounts of italicized text to either signify a change in time or a stray thought from a character within a paragraph or something like that. And so you get Faulkner trying on a bunch of different types of prose, and he's married them each to one of the. One of the characters. So, like, it's not just that he's like, what if I told the story a bunch of different ways? It's These three characters perceive the world differently. I will have the text reflect that, and then the reader has to, like, get on board with that or they're not going to learn what it is to be this person and how they move and experience the world. It all takes place except for chapter two, over Easter weekend in 1928. Ben Benji's chapter is, I think, April 7th, and then we go back to 1910 with Quentin, and then we go back to Jason's chapter, but it's April 6th for some reason. Then Dilsey's chapter and others is. Is April 8th. I was trying to figure out why exactly it's like that. Largely, I think it's because Benji's chapter kind of contains almost all of the lore of the family within it, except for, like, the close of this novel.

[Andrew]

Is that because it's the one chapter that can kind of exist further back in time so you get a little bit more of that stuff?

[Craig]

Well, well, it's because of his perception of time. Basically. All of it, all the time, at once. Like, he. He is moving between moments in his life, literally just based on who he's interacting with and, like, things he's thinking about. Sure.

[Andrew]

It's kind of like. Kind of like the aliens in the wormhole in Star Trek Deep Space Nine.

[Craig]

Honestly. Honestly, it's not dissimilar. The specific.

[Andrew]

Interesting.

[Craig]

The book, you know, written at the time that it does and what with what it's interested in, there's does not have a specific disability that Benji is like, given. You know, people in the book use all sorts of derogatory terms for him. He does not speak with words. He's not communicate with words. He mostly communicates with gesture or other sounds. He is kind of unable to express himself to people around him in a way that is satisfying to him. And he just kind of struggles to make sense of the world around him. Like, that's what you can say, right? I think it's. It's meant to be some form of intellectual disability, and that's all you have to. To go on. It's not worth reading deeper into that other than, like, hey, his perception of reality is just different from everybody else in the book. And it is a lot to figure out. Like, he has. There are three main times in his life that you're reading about. Like, one is when he's really little. One is when he's kind of a teenager and you don't necessarily. I certainly didn't like, understand this as I was reading it, but one is like the present day. He's in his early 30s and they keep him, you know, they mostly let him spend time outside during the day and he likes to watch the guys play golf at the golf course that they sold part of their land to to have so they could have a little bit of money to send Quentin to Harvard and pay for I think caddy's dowry. That then that marriage fell apart. It's, you know, it's a whole big mess. And so he's like watching those guys and then like he catches his shirt on a nail on a fence and it reminds him of something else. And then he hears one of the golfers call for his caddy and it thinks, makes him think of his long lost sister. And so you do not know what's going on. Got to, got to stress this. You do not know what is happening. The things that confuse it. That he's deliberately using Faulkner is to confuse you. Later in the book you will learn that there is a young girl named Miss Quentin who is named after Quentin, who is Benji's brother.

[Andrew]

Okay.

[Craig]

She is their niece, which you learn a little bit about where she came from. Later in chapters three and four. Benji was named after his uncle Maury, who's a bit of a clown, I must say. We meet, we don't really spend time with him.

[Andrew]

Uncles be like that, I guess, you know, if you're gonna come up with a member of a family who's like innately like the goofy one or like the, the outcast black sheep, I feel like uncle is uncle and cousin both.

[Craig]

Yep.

[Andrew]

Are kind of top, top of that list for me.

[Craig]

Uh huh. Later in the book we'd spend a little bit of time with Uncle Mari in this first chapter. But then later in the book we get a telegram, telegram from him and he's like, hey, so I found this great financial opportunity. I don't have the means for it. So I have drawn some funds from mother, from your mother's bank account. And here's a letter saying I will pay her back with interest. See you later, Uncle Maury.

[Andrew]

Seems like it's on the up and up.

[Craig]

Seems like it's on the up and up, sure.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

So Benji was named after Uncle Mori until his mother realized that he had the disability that he has and she was very ashamed and renamed him so that he would no longer have a family name and he's Benji. And so like there's an extra level of confusion in how some of those passages are written when you're trying to figure out like who is who, what is what it's tough that sometimes the italics is, like, almost kind of teasing a scene change, where you're gonna, like, move into a new time. And then sometimes.

[Andrew]

Does it. Does it mean. Oh, yeah, go ahead, and then I'll ask.

[Craig]

Well, sometimes it means, okay, here's the beginning of the next, like, memory we're gonna move to. And sometimes it's like, here is a thing he overheard people saying relative to something three pages ago or five pages from now.

[Andrew]

Yeah, because I was gonna say, like, if the italics are meant to, like, represent sort of his train of thought, his, like, thought process.

[Craig]

Yep. Yep.

[Andrew]

Then, yeah, I guess I could see how that would. That would then trigger a scene change. But it sounds like it doesn't always do that.

[Craig]

It doesn't always trigger a full scene change, but it's like he will hear someone's name and then move to something else, and then he will be reminded of something, and then. And then think of what people were saying about him somewhat. Some other time.

[Andrew]

Yeah. And. And to. To add some clarity, you know, Faulkner is like, man, I wish we could print in color. Even though obviously you can print different, like, typefaces and, you know, different. Different, like, styles. But the Folio society people did. I believe he was 14 colors in the Benji section. So you don't, you know, you can't cover that with, like, regular, bold, italic. You need to go out into, like, a whole different family of typefaces, I think, to make it work.

[Craig]

Yep. The. The key events that you get in the Benji chapter. And I kind of. I had to do some, like, digging and research to make sure that I had groked all of these. You learn that they did sell a portion of their property to send Quentin to Harvard and then, like, gave it to this golf course, which is, you know, reflective of their diminishing means and their, you know, dwindling dreams and all that kind of stuff. You go all the way back to 1898, when he's, like, 3 or 4 and his grandmother has died. And all the kids are, like, sneaking around outside because there's a funeral in the front of the house, and they want to watch it through a window. All the boys see Caddy up in the tree. And, like, I don't think it's lewd, but they all see her up in the tree.

[Andrew]

What's she doing up there?

[Craig]

I don't know. They fell down. She fell down some in some mud, and they can all tell now that she's above them.

[Andrew]

Okay.

[Craig]

Like, it's kind of okay. You also get the Sense that Caddy is one of the few people who cares for Benji and, like, overtly so, actually will, like, try to console him and take care of him later in the book. He is seen, like, holding a really distressed, withered slipper of hers that he's just kept for decades. You also get him visiting his father's grave so you know that the dad is gonna die at some point. He sees Caddy, I think, as a younger girl, like a boy making advances on her. And then he also sees the same thing with Ms. Quentin later. And you're, like, trying to figure out who's who, like that it's all, like, purposefully doubling kind of stuff. Okay. That's happening there. And then, of course, also you learn that he did. The family doesn't know what they want to do with him. Large mother does not want to get rid of him. Ms. Caroline does not want to get, like, send him away. There are people in the family who think that that would be a good decision to send. Send him to Jackson. They. They say Jackson, Mississippi, where he would assuredly be treated poorly and, you know, not locked up somewhere.

[Andrew]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Craig]

Not that this. Not that everybody here is treating him well either, but it's depicted as a bad. A bad road for him.

[Andrew]

Yeah. Not. Not a. Not a place you want to go.

[Craig]

He does. I can't remember how old he's supposed to be when this happens. There is some, like, italics from his dad and one of his brothers about, like, we should. You know, we should make sure that he can't do anything, that he, like, can't procreate. Like, we should make sure that that's a thing.

[Andrew]

Okay.

[Craig]

And then. And then later, after he, like, scares some neighborhood girls who got too close to him at the fence, this does happen, and it's horrific and it's terrible. And, like, the way that. That unfolds across multiple, like, kind of cascading bits of scenes leading to him just, like, looking at his own body and, like, not knowing what's happened to him. And it's really sad and tragic. And the thing about this chapter overall is that it gives you. If you can decipher, it gives you a rough timeline of all of their dreams and failures. Okay. Boiling down to also how they have treated and mistreated this poor guy like that. Like, you can connect all of their individual people who have. Who have failed this family to how they have treated Benji as well. Sure.

[Andrew]

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Which is, like, the. Probably the reason to have Benji's perspective. So, like, to start the book yes. So foregrounded, I guess, is the word that I've been struggling. But, yeah, why you. Why you structure it the way that it's been structured?

[Craig]

And it gives. It also gives you the. It gives you some kind of level of dramatic irony for the rest of the book where, like, you know that Quinton is going to take his own life. You know that Caddy's marriage is going to fall apart, you know that the father's going to die of alcoholism. You are aware that this other Quenton is going to show up and cause problems and. And have problems caused for her. And so then you're. You are like, okay, not only do I have to decipher what happened to Benji, but I now have an inkling of, like, what is going to happen to all these other characters. So it does give you, in a way, even. It is one of the most disorienting things I've ever read. Does give you, like, a map for what to do with the rest of the book.

[Andrew]

Okay.

[Craig]

My note at the end of the first chapter just said, that was a lot.

[Andrew]

Yeah, I can't. I can't imagine having a different response to it, honestly.

[Craig]

And, like, I. I've. I was thinking about, could I pull a good passage? And I don't think so, because they're all like, it's. It. Each individual passage is long enough that it wouldn't make for good, like, reading. You kind of have to see how confusing it is. Unlike Quentin's stuff in Part two, which is way more, I guess, conventionally stream of consciousness in the sense that the. The individual words on the page are often laid out in a way that makes far less grammarical sense. Grammatical sense.

[Andrew]

Grammatical sense.

[Craig]

Thank you. And so you go into Quentin in 1910, and he's, like, looking at a bridge. She's looking at water under a bridge. And you're like, oh, okay, this guy's got a plan. Interesting. Fun. Fun to read. And you know that he's not gonna make it, so that's interesting. Yeah. And he also has some of this, like, the italics are him in other places or other times, but it's a little. It's a little less like. And then scenes move. So, like, here is. Here's the deal with Quentin, and people in the Discord were like, okay, I don't like how obsessed he is with his sister's sex life. And I'm like, I agree. They. He. Okay, what do we know about Caddy? Her marriage fell apart after she got knocked up by somebody else out of wedlock. She was pregnant before she got married, and Quentin went to his dad and is like, I did an incest. I did. I did an incest. It's mine. And his dad's, like, funny. No, you loser, it's not. Stop it. And there's also passages in the second chapter where Quentin is, like, remembering his dad being, like. The whole deal with, like, caring about virginity is made up by men. Like, care, like, controlling women. And it doesn't make. What are you talking about? Stop it. It is this. Like, Quentin has this. As I've read a little bit about the book, like, you can view Quentin's obsession with her purity and protecting her purity as this very personal version of an outdated, like, Southern genteel value system.

[Andrew]

Yeah, sure. Which is, like, all these people would feel like they had to. Left to hold on to at some point.

[Craig]

Yes. And. And it drives Quentin to his own death. And so, like, that's what the novel is saying about that. And I could move on. But I did find the chapter interesting. Like, I could sum it up like that. And that's what it is. But he is, like, let me think. I think I have a passage here where he's, like, thinking about the guy who he's pretty sure, you know is responsible for Caddy's child. And he's saying, it's not when you realize that nothing can help you. Religion, pride, anything. It's when you realize that you don't need any aid. Dalton Ames. Dalton Ames. Dalton Ames. If I could have been his mother lying with open body lifted, laughing, holding his father with my hand, refraining, seeing, watching him die before he lived, Italics. One minute, she was standing in the door. Next paragraph, I went to the dresser and took up the watch with the face. Still. You're like, what, Quentin? Okay, you wanted to kill the guy. Okay? And then you. I guess you had a memory of Caddy coming into the room. Okay. And now you're walking around in your bedroom at Harvard as you're making your plan to take your life. There's lots of, like, little. What is another one here? The ones I had bought from home. These are. These are books. The ones I had bought from home. And the ones italicized. Father said it used to be a gentleman was known by his books. Nowadays, he is known by the ones he has not returned, unitalicized and locked the trunk and addressed it. The quarter hour sounded. There's lots of little, like, boop. Here's my thought. Here's my, you know, pop up, pop up video.

[Andrew]

This is what this thing brings to mind for me. Yes, you're going to. You're going to. You're going to get it.

[Craig]

And many of them are not. Many of them are not complete sentences. Many of them are just individual, like, turns of phrase. So you really have to, like, try to stay on what he's actually doing. And you get this. He basically wants to be punished for her crimes of, you know, indecency and ruining this family as well. Like, he thinks that he should also be punished. They have their connection and whatever. There's this long scene with him and the guy that she married first named Herbert, who is just a jerk. Just a real jerk named Herbert.

[Andrew]

I bet people stop naming their kids Herbert after Hoover was president, you know, I think so. I bet there are a lot of. I bet that was the most popular baby name of, like, 1902. And then it fell off real big after that.

[Craig]

And the whole scene as it's writt written in the book. I believe it's a memory. I don't think it's at Harvard. I think it's a memory is like, it's written without any punctuation whatsoever. And it. And it's not written with any narration either. So they are just, like, talking. You could. You could print it out and you would. You could perform it as a script, but you would have to, like, go back and make sure you knew who was saying what, because it's not. It doesn't delineate.

[Andrew]

But if you have to color code.

[Craig]

It, you have to color code it.

[Andrew]

That would be one possible solution.

[Craig]

Maybe be a member of the Folio Society.

[Andrew]

I apologize to the members of the Folio Society if they are getting a lot of heat from us.

[Craig]

And it was like, one. It was one of the sections of the book where I was like, oh, this is, like, kind of fun and interesting as a. As a diff. Other people have done this, and I'm sure there were people who didn't do it until they'd read Faulkner and learned that you could do it. And I'm sure there were people who were doing it already. But it actually helps. Some of the italics work for me. But then you'll get things where he's like, okay, it's Herbert and Quentin yelling at each other. And Herbert trying to, like, buy off Quentin and talking about how he's gonna get their brother Jason this, like, great job at a bank, and just shut up, Quentin, like, I'm marrying your sister. I'm gonna make everything fine. And then, like, Caddy just walks into the room, and you don't know that until somebody else is talking. But you have to figure out that somebody else is talking.

[Andrew]

Okay.

[Craig]

That kind of thing. And he. When he says goodbye to Quentin after he is, like, demanded, he just shut up and take money. He says, I want interest. Then don't let Quentin do anything he can't finish. Oh, by the way, did I tell Quentin the story about the man's parrot and what happened to it? A sad story. Reminded me of that. Think of it yourself. To see you. See you in the funny paper. And if I. If I mangle that a little bit, it is because there's no punctuation.

[Andrew]

Right.

[Craig]

I. Somebody in the Discord also mentioned, like, what if this was an audiobook? And I do think if you read an audiobook and they were doing a good job, you might. You might make sense of a little bit more of it in spots, but it might actually still wash over you in a way. I don't know if it would be easier.

[Andrew]

Yeah, I mean, I. I think you could do it. You could do a version of. Of the color coding. Right. Where you have either like, the same reader doing different voice. Different. Yeah. For the. For the different perspectives, or even if you were making a big, like, a production out of it. You could even have different people reading each. Yeah, Each, you know, of the. Of the different color coded perspectives. But, yeah, it would be. It would be in an audio format. If you're talking about 14 things. It's hard to keep that.

[Craig]

It's hard to keep that.

[Andrew]

It's a lot of, like, it wouldn't necessarily be as helpful.

[Craig]

You learn in this whole chapter that Herbert winds up abandoning Caddy. The child is not his. It's definitely not Quentin's either. Even though, like, the fact that everybody thinks that might be on the table is part of the problem. Okay. And because he abandons Caddy, Jason doesn't get his job, which ruins Jason's whole deal, which we'll read about in the next chapter. Caddy disappears. And then the Quentin chapter, you know, he's going to wind up taking his own life, but it doesn't depict that at all. It instead gives you a. He went walking around town and wound up in the immigrant neighborhood, and a small Italian girl was getting yelled at by a shopkeeper. And then he decided to help her find her home. And then he got arrested and accused of kidnapping. Oops. And. Okay. And then it's. And then that just is over. And, like, there's. His friends have to kind of bail him out. But there is this, like, beat towards the end of it, where he's, like, being arrested and just starts laughing because he's reached rock bottom. Like, he knows this is it. He was basically, like, supposed to deliver a lot of letters to his friends before he, you know, jumped off a bridge and winds up doing this instead for, like, three hours.

[Andrew]

Sure.

[Craig]

It's. It's a really compelling, like, short story. Like, you can. I think Faulkner said he. He embarked on this project with a couple of short story drafts before turning it into a proper novel. And you can see it in scenes like this where it's like, yeah, that's. You've got a guy. You've got a very compelling, like, decision he thinks he's made, and instead something else happens to him for a few hours, and he still, you know, goes through with it. Unfortunately for him.

[Andrew]

Yeah, I think he'd said that in the research I was doing. He'd said that this took, like, around six months to write, which is. Yeah, enough. Enough time to go through a bunch of different versions of ideas.

[Craig]

So the Jason chapter. I hate Jason. He's my least favorite character. He. I'm supposed to hate him. He's a big jerko Jason. He's really racist. He's an anti Semite. He. All he cares about is, like, earning money at his crappy job that he resents and going to his job and just daring his boss to fire him every day.

[Andrew]

You. I mean, you say that this guy is your least favorite guy, and I. And I'm like, you know, make this. Make this guy the attorney general or something. Like, I feel. I just feel like he's leadership material.

[Craig]

Jeez. He is also now the man of the house by default because the father has died.

[Andrew]

He is. He is a man, and he is in the house.

[Craig]

Yep. And Quentin has died, and he does not have. He has a mistress in Memphis, and that's all he has in terms of a family as a going concern.

[Andrew]

That's my favorite country song.

[Craig]

He is also extorting Caddy. This chapter takes place in 1928, but we get the whole backstory of him extorting her for child support for her daughter. Quentin, that lives with him and his mom and doesn't really have a proper adult in her life at all, is kind of a wild child and basically just, you know, for all intents and purposes, caddy 2.0 to these folks. Okay. Which I think, you know, is them failing her. I'm not here to. To judge her specifically. She's not doing. Committing murder or anything. Yeah. And at one point, we get a scene where Caddy is like trying to pay him to see her baby, like, come into town because the mom has like, cut Caddy out. Like Quentin. Ms. Quentin is not supposed to even know her mom's name sort of thing. And he, she comes to him secretly and is like, hey, if I give you $50, can I see my daughter? And he's like, fine, go wait by the train. You got to leave town though. I will bring her to you. And you can see her. He drives by in his horse and carriage, holds up the baby, and then speeds away and then counts the money.

[Andrew]

Sounds like a cool dude.

[Craig]

He's awful. He then embarks on a like multi decade scheme to collect and secret away the support payments, tricking his mom into burning what Chief thinks are the checks, but they're actually different checks, okay? Because she hates her daughter so much, she's just going to light the money on fire. And he is putting it all into his closet or into the stock market, which he's bad at, or into his mistress in Memphis. And the whole like end of the book in chapter four is Ms. Quentin is going to steal that money and it's going to ruin him. Him. But his chapter is largely concerned with him introducing us to him and him like trying to be some sort of adult to her and kind of hating that he has to and not liking that she doesn't want him to and him chasing her. Similar to the Quentin thing. Like, there's an episode where he follows her and this guy, like a carnival worker from the carnival that's in town, like into the woods and he tries to track them down, canoodling or something, and they get away and he has a bad headache. He has like a David lynch style headache. Like some of David lynch characters have really bad headaches and then like their world changes and that's sort of what happened.

[Andrew]

Is it a cause or an effect? Both. Okay.

[Craig]

But here, here's his sense of humor. Jason, whatever I do, it's your fault. Ms. Quentin says, if I'm bad, it's because I had to be. You made me. I wish I was dead. I wish we were dead. Then she ran. We heard her run up the stairs, then a door slammed. That's the first sensible thing she ever said. I says, thanks, Jason.

[Andrew]

Thanks, Jason.

[Craig]

His chapter.

[Andrew]

Enjoy your your work. In a like a CEO position in corporate America somewhere.

[Craig]

All he wants is financial independence and to send Benji to Jackson and just kind of like, you know, he kind of dreams of domesticity with his mistress. Like, that's you know, if he could go his mistress in Memphis, buy groceries with his mistress in Memphis, like that, that would be great for him. And then part four. It's Easter Sunday. The servants have been given leeway to go to church and celebrate the resurrection. They take Benji with them. And there's this pastor did not like when. When William Faulkner described the black pastor as having a wizened black face like a small aged monkey. Didn't like it.

[Andrew]

That's. That's not great.

[Craig]

Didn't like it.

[Andrew]

I don't think.

[Craig]

Just. No, William, we don't.

[Andrew]

We can't do.

[Craig]

William.

[Andrew]

William.

[Craig]

William.

[Andrew]

We can't do.

[Craig]

Not good. That whole chapter is in there. I think that section is in there as like, a. The guy gives this, like, rousing Revelations slash resurrection speech. Like, I don't think he's supposed to be quoting Revelations, but the Jesus is really given Revelations energy as he's.

[Andrew]

That guy. Love that guy loves Revelations. Let me tell you a thing or two about my boy jc. It's like, that's. That's what he's all about. That's what gets him out of. Out of the tomb in the morning, if you know what I'm saying.

[Craig]

And Dilsey, the main servant who has. She has brought Benji with her. Luster, her son, is also one of the other servants who takes a lot of care of Benji. She hears the sermon and basically hears it as a. Like, oh, this family is dying. Like, this is this pastor speaking directly to my situation where this niece has run off with several thousands of dollars from her uncle who hates her anyway. The mom's not in control. Everything's falling apart. And the book, you know, there's some stuff with Jason and a sheriff who won't help him and whatever. And it ends with this scene of Luster taking Benji out in the horse and buggy, which is not a thing that Luster normally does. He takes him in a slightly different direction. It gets Benji upset. Jason appears out of nowhere, having failed his quest to, you know, track down Ms. Quentin. He upsets Benji, like, breaks this flower that he's holding, sends Luster back, driving the carriage home. And the final image is of this, like, completely, you know, I don't know. Benji devoid of anything. Like, his eyes were empty and blue and serene again as cornice and facade flowed smoothly once more from left to right, post and tree, window and doorway and signboard, each in its ordered place very deliberately, like, hey, what if this family was falling apart at the seams? And the final image is just like, here's A guy kind of placidly riding.

[Andrew]

Here's Benji, just kind of checking. Checking out.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

Of this whole situation. Yeah.

[Craig]

Yeah. And. And I. The. The really traumatic stuff I mentioned earlier with Benji and them, you know, forcibly castrating him, like, is, I think, also part of it. Like, this family has no future thing, like, both literally and metaphorically.

[Andrew]

Yeah. Making it. Making it official.

[Craig]

Yeah. It's really terrible. And that's the. The family is sad and they're bad at being a family and they obsess over each other in ways that are harmful to each other, and they don't have any useful connection to their community and they treat all of their servants terribly. The thing that's in the appendix, that's interesting.

[Andrew]

I like that. You can, in this day and age in the south, even, you can be like, I've got nothing. My family's my family. My family is destitute. Look, look how it. Look, I don't. I don't respect my. Sir. The servants that I still have for some reason. Yes, I've got nothing.

[Craig]

But.

[Andrew]

But I do have to live for. Oh, look at my. Look at my poor servants.

[Craig]

I do have people. I pay terrible wages to live on my property and care for me.

[Andrew]

Yeah, yeah.

[Craig]

Barely wages. Yeah, you do get a little bit in the appendix. You get a lot of, like. I would not be able to give you any of the clarity I've given you, even if it's been. Whether or not it's been clear at all on this podcast. If I had not read some of the appendix to confirm the things I thought happened in this book, I mean, that's.

[Andrew]

I guess it's okay. Tell me about, like, so you. You. The first edition you read did not have the appendix, and then you went and saw it out. In addition, with the appendix, is it, like, is it better for you to have understood it at all? Even if it comes through this, like, Animal House ending that you think kind of actually wraps things up a little too neatly? Or is it, like, should you be left to wonder? Like, should you have to read through it and chew on it again before you really get it? Like, how do you feel like, your relationship to the work was changed by having this appendix to read?

[Craig]

I would probably value the appendix a little less if I weren't trying to do it for the pod. I think it is one of those things like, oh, that's neat. To help confirm the things and give a little bit of order to what I thought was going on to remind me. There were definitely things that I had Missed that. The appendix helped me, like, clarify some of it is just like, oh, what when exactly in the book was I supposed to know that that's what happened to Benji? The appendix doesn't necessarily answer that, but it does confirm that it. It isn't just a story I was told.

[Andrew]

You're thinking in the right direction.

[Craig]

Yes, yes, yes, yes. It does give you new information about Caddy in that, like, later on in her life, as I said, she wound. She winds up in Europe within her, like, little encyclopedia entry because it is supposed to be like a list of the family members, like, dating back to the 17th century. And then it focuses on the ones in this book. And in Caddy's section, there's like a girl who went to high school with her or something that still lives in town and knows Jason sees a photo in a German magazine of her with some German officer in the 40s and, like, brings it to the house and, like, Dilsey can't even bear to look at it. Dilsey, the lead servant, she can't even bear to look at it. And because, I don't know, maybe she cares about Caddy too much, you know, she does seem to care about this family in the way that she devoted her life to them, you know. Yeah, sure. And Jason is like. When he first sees it, I think he's like, yes, that is her. Because he kind of likes that she's in this precarious looking situation. And then when the woman is like, so we should go, like, save her or like, track her down, he's like, no, I don't think that's my sister. So that, that's like an interesting character bit that emerges from this appendix that's not in the book. Okay. And then the other thing is he does put the black characters in the appendix, even though they are not like, you know, blood relatives of the family. But they do not get, like, long entries like anybody else. They do not get additional biography information. I'm just pulling it up real quick to make sure I have it because it's like, really quick and kind of odd how fast it is. And that was all. These others were not Compson's. They were black TP who wore on Memphis's Beale street the fine, bright, cheap and transient clothes manufactured specifically for him by owners of Chicago and New York sweatshops. Fronie, who married a Pullman porter and went to St. Louis to live and later moved back to Memphis to make a home for her mother. Since Dilsey refused to go further than that, Luster A man aged 14, who was not only capable of the complete care and security of an idiot twice his age and three times his size, but could keep him entertained. Dilsey, they endured. That's it. It's like this. Like, it is powerful and poetic in the non writing of it. What am I saying? It's jazz, baby. Like, that's terrible. But it's like he is making a point.

[Andrew]

It was the jazz age, famously, you.

[Craig]

Know, and it's Faulkner. There are these run on sentences, there are paragraphs that last like two pages. And he came back to this book and is like, I gotta give you my CliffsNotes on these characters. And then he comes to the black folks working on this property and he's like, here's a sentence, here's a sentence, here's a sentence. The most important of these characters, Dilsey, they endured. That's it. That's all I wanted to say. And it's like it's. I don't know, it's. I found it like a thing we're thinking about. I'm not sure that I have a take on what it means. I could come up with all sorts of takes. I thought it was interesting that he decided to do that, but when it did start, I was like, this is some weird Animal House stuff. What are we doing? What are we doing, Billy?

[Andrew]

So do you like it? Did you like the book? Was it good? Thumbs up or thumbs down? Now that we're at the end, did you rate it out? How many stars rated out of 10 points would give it.

[Craig]

Could I give it a couple of stars? Like a couple of them? Could I just like kind of tumble them out on the ground?

[Andrew]

You could just kind of dig in your pockets and just kind of give it whatever stars you've got.

[Craig]

A few. Yeah. Like tomorrow I might have a few more stars than I do today, you know.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

I am glad to have read it. I think it is the. I do think you're right, what you said many, many moons ago, that while the like and agreeing with that New York Times writer that while the color coded version of the Benji chapter would be interesting, I do think that there is, there is an active reading required to like engage with that text that I haven't done in a while. Like.

[Andrew]

Yeah, then Falkner knew, you know, he knew it was not going to go out in color. And so he.

[Craig]

He could have changed it, you know.

[Andrew]

Could have shaped like he. He adjusted it to. To be what he wanted it to be within the constraints of the format.

[Craig]

So. Yeah, and it's Just an interesting type of, like, text to read, you know, in the same way that reading poetry can be challenging but rewarding.

[Andrew]

So I've heard.

[Craig]

Yeah. You know, I. I felt bad for Quentin. I felt bad for Benji. I hated Jason. I like Dilsey and felt bad for her. Nobody in this book comes out looking amazing. Sure. That's not the point of the book. The point of the book is that this, like, people from this era are not meant to continue or are not able to or are cutting themselves off from being able to do so. You know?

[Andrew]

Yeah. There's an element of, like, choosing not to continue to. That, like, I. You know, my. The way of life that I was comfortable in is not accessible to me. And so, I don't know. I just give up on it.

[Craig]

Yeah. And, like, Quentin seems to be striving for some big, dramatic version of. Of carrying it forward. Caddy finds herself in situations that then she's just trying to hold on to Jason. Jason is the one who's like, I don't know about this. Tear it down. Sell it off. I'm gonna move into an apartment and get out of here. I kind of hate that I have to take care of this. And I think he does. I think, like, that's what's in his ending, is that he just, like, goes somewhere else. The. The younger brother who did not get land sold so he could go to college is super resentful of everything. Is. It is a type that Jason is.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

But, yeah, that's the. That's the book. That's the sound. That's the fury. I think people who've listened to me know whether or not they want to go read it. I don't think I have cheapened the experience at all. And if it helps you read it if you want to, more power to you.

[Andrew]

Yeah. Well, thank you for reading it.

[Craig]

Thank you for listening to me. Try to make sense of it if your Covid.

[Andrew]

Addled brain.

[Craig]

Perfect book for it to be. Perfect. If you have any thoughts on anything I missed, send us an email. Overdue [e-mail]. hit us up on social media at Overdue Pod. Thanks to Nick Lauren, just who composed our theme music, Andrew. Folks want to know more about the show. Where do they go?

[Andrew]

Overdue Podcast.com is our Internet website. If you go there, you can see the schedule for the month ahead. It is April. I'll let Craig read the April schedule here in just a sec. Another link that's up on that website. The link to our patreon. Patreon.com overdue pod. Craig mentioned it before, but if you go there, you give us a little bit of money, you support the show in the most active way that is possible to support us. You buy us equipment and books and all the other stuff that we need to keep things going. And also you get access to our Discord community and to some early bonus episodes, to some bonus episode streams that we're kind of playing around with, to some experimental episodes where we talk about non book things. Yeah, we should have something up on that front pretty soon, I hope.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

And yeah. Patreon.com Everydupod helps us out a lot. Thank you to everybody who supports us and everybody who's considering supporting us. Craig, what are we doing in this month, this amazing month of April?

[Craig]

Well, we just talked about the Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner. Next week, the Ministry of Time by Kayleigh and Bradley, followed by the Stories of youf Life and Others by Ted Chiang. And we're closing out the month with a live stream recording of Life and death. Twilight Reimagined. We've Got to Go Back by Stephanie Meyer. You can join us Friday, April 25th at 8:30pm Eastern on YouTube. Bit.ly overdue700. Just show up. We're going to talk about Twilight again.

[Andrew]

Yeah, we're going to do it. I can't wait.

[Craig]

We're going to reimagine some of our.

[Andrew]

Old Twilight episodes and I can't wait to hear what what's been changed about the world of Forks for this bold reimagining of the original work.

[Craig]

Some things are going to be swapped, is my understanding.

[Andrew]

I mean, you and me are just going to swap some laughs, though. We're just going to. I'm going to give you some laughs. You're going to get me some.

[Craig]

Swap the genders of these laughs.

[Andrew]

All right, everybody, thank you so much for listening to us for another week until we hit you next Monday. Everybody, please try to be happy. That was a Headgum podcast.