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Summary: Faulkner- anything else is merely reading.
Review: Reading this book once is like mining for diamonds with a toothpick or- to the other extreme- a jackhammer. The layers of this novel need to brushed and cajoled away with gentle determination and loving patience. The first part of the story is narrated by Benjy Compson, an idiot who relates incidents as they come to his mind, in his order, not chrnological, or any logical order. This is indeed frustrating at first, it is supposed to be- just like the life Benjy suffered. But don't stop, peel away the next layers of the story offered by Quinten Compson and Jason Compson. And then when you re-visit Benjy's narrative it unfolds into a fascinating exploration of his world. A pain-filled world where golfer's playing on the pasture that was once the family's and yelling for the "caddie" bring him bellowing like a wounded cow. Read and feel the pain of Quinten's love for Caddy as he strools the streets of Cambridge looking for a place in the Cambridge river to catch his shadow that is always either ahead of him or behind him but never part of him until. . .. And finally there is the rage that is Jason Compson. A rage driven by the living ghost of Caddy and the family's impotence to change their life of arrested development in Yoknapatawpha County. Don't read this because you have to. Read this because you love literature and find reward in the perserveance of peeling away layers until you find the core that Faulkner left for us.
Rating: 
Summary: The absolute worst...
Review: book I have ever read. This is not entertainment, this is tediousness. Maybe if I read novels for a living I would appreciate the challenge, but this book is like an ungreatful girlfriend. You do your best to understand her and get nothing back in return.
Rating:
Summary: Faulkner- Everything Else Is Just Reading
Review: Allow yourself three readings of the book to fully appreciate this masterpiece. The first time through will test your resolve to finish a book that asks you to see the world through the eyes of truly desperate people. The second time through piques your interest to somehow understand the world as seen through the eyes of desperate people. The time swallow you inside the world of desperate people. Don't settle for short cuts (Cliff Notes)the reward is in the intellectual forebarence. To finish The Sound and The Fury is not to have just read a book- rather it is to have struggled and wrestled and wished at times you could choke Mr Faulkner for being so damned obtuse as to write a story told partly from the viewpoint of an idiot with no chronological reference, only to be left feeling cheated because you can never thank him.
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Summary: Microcosm of the decline of "old south"
Review: This novel has earned a rather bad reputation due to the sheer difficulty one has with the structure. In this grand experiment Faulkner attempted, and succeded in my book, to tell a story through the thoughts,sensations, perceptions, and memories of three brothers. One is an idiot whose interior monologue proceeds with new revelation as if he were indeed a child. The second brother is a Harvard student whose ruminations on his sister and her lost virginity give way to a meditation on suicide. The third brother is a money grubbing miser that has grown into a scoundrel. All of these stories are, as Faulkner stated, "an attempt to tell the story of a little girls muddy drawers". He succeeds but in a way not easily understood. This is an expiriment, a grand excursion into the thought processes of the mind and the importance of how memory shapes our life. This, I feel, is his greatest work. The novel projects the decline of the old south onto this once great family that has become reduced to the incoherent wails of an idiot as is the case with Absalom! Absalom! Faulkner... the misunderstood Joyce of America. The souths greatest author. A true crafstmen who may not have been succesful in his day but should be cherished for his revelations. When reading proceed with caution. It takes concentration and a willingness to understand this beautiful tale.
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Summary: A great book, a great experience
Review: Yes, thank goodness for Cliff's Notes or I might not have read this great, great novel, which is now one of my two or three favorite books, the other two being Ulysses and Under the Volcano. When I first opened The Sound and the Fury, I thought what in the hell is going on here? What's all this about a "caddie?" Cliff's Notes opened the book for me, helped me to clue in to the shifting time frames. Some complain Faulkner just jumbled up everything to be "different." Wrong, amigos! He knew exactly what he was doing, expressing the chaos of life and the beauty hidden within it, the "sound and fury" of the title. I'm not suprised that readers who disliked the novel identified with Jason, the "logical, common-sense" character, as some reviewers characterize him. They totally missed the point and the beauty of the book: that the characters living in torment, confusion and pain are the noble ones because of their struggle. Jason, on the other hand, is a true creep, like some of these yuppie and post-yuppie types nowadays who bad-mouth novels that don't have a slam-bang plot and who would kick their own granmothers down the stairs to further their own gains. Shallow, empty, creepy. The Sound and the Fury, especially after re-reading, is the most beautiful book ever written in America and maybe in the entire world. The supreme achievement in fiction.
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Summary: A Must Read For Anyone With a Brain
Review: The Sound and the Fury is one of my favorite novels, and William Faulkner is one of my literary idols. What that man could do with words! This book is the most arduous Faulkner book I've read. I admit the first chapter is difficult to get through, but it has to be when you consider that it's from the point of view of a mentally handicapped person. By using this point of view and the unchronological rapid time breaks, Faulkner gives insight into the other characters and conveys what life is like for Benjy, a deaf, dumb and mute idiot. And after the first chapter, the reading gets much easier to follow. So just plow through those first 70 pages or so- it's worth the effort, I promise! This book is powerful and insightful. I also recommend Light in August (a much easier read that makes a vivid and striking point about racism and identity).
Rating: 
Summary: Another Dissenter
Review: Any book you have to consult Clif Notes for is poorly written and inaccessible. Or maybe the reader is somewhat on the slow side. Still, the guy who invented Clif Notes should be publicly flogged and those caught using should have to retype this book on an old Underwood No.11 with a bad ribbon. Then let's see what you think of it.
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Summary: I guess I must be an idiot
Review: This book is truly horrible, Faulkner is full of hot air. Marc Andrew was right when he said this is a good book to put you to sleep. This book is dry and doesn't even began to tell a good story. Do not waste your money on this book, in fact don't even borrow this from a public library.
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Summary: even teenagers can respect this classic
Review: i am 17 year old, and i do have a greater appriciation for symbolic novels than most of my peers, but any high-school student should have the wit to comprehend this book, with the help of cliff notes. i admit i couldn't have survived the first chapter if i didn't have the notes, but with the combination of the two, as i stuck with the book and watched the story unravel, i was awed. the strength of dilsey, the sympathy felt for caddy and her innocence, the whole book's bold symbolism makes it a classic. ADVISE: try to stick with it, the reading only gets easier, use the cliff notes, and for what it's worth i had more trouble with the second chapter than the first. Good Luck!
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Summary: I love literature, but I will never read Faulkner again
Review: Simply put, I do not understand how this book can be called one of the greatest novels of the 20th century. Just because it's different does not mean it's good. Anyone can write a stream of consciousness but to make it into a story is something else. Apparently that was not Faulkner's intention.
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