Citation Needed - The Sound and the Fury

Episode Date: September 29, 2021

The Sound and the Fury is a novel by the American author William Faulkner. It employs several narrative styles, including stream of consciousness. Published in 1929, The Sound and the Fury was Faulkner's fourth novel, and was not immediately successful. In 1931, however, when Faulkner's sixth novel, Sanctuary, was published—a sensationalist story, which Faulkner later said was written only for money—The Sound and the Fury also became commercially successful, and Faulkner began to receive critical attention. Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you’d like to support the show on a per episode basis, you can find our Patreon page here.  Be sure to check our website for more details.  

Okay, but the implication is that Tachala was just like, hey man, you shouldn't kill half the universe, and Thanos was like, oh yeah, no, I hadn't thought about it that way. It's just a what if, man. Right, but that's the what if. Right, it should have been called what if someone had a four sentence long conversation with Thanos?

Exactly, thank you, Cecil. Surprise, I'm birthday or whatever. Holy shit. It's me. What did... Arkansas, a gubernatorial candidate and former press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders. That's right. What the hell are you looking at Sanders? It's your birthday, right?

It's... This is birthday. Is it not? No. No. No. No. No.

No. No. Sarah, for the last time, this is not for a birthday. I mean, it's somebody's birthday. Eliulai, why did you bring her here? She stinks, man. It's for this week's essay. Heath is doing the Trump book, Fire and Fury. So who better to chime in than someone who was there, right? I mean, even if she's not the greatest person. Okay, first of all, I didn't mean figure to that. I literally mean she smells bad.

That's what I meant. Yeah, she does. She smells like a cat threw up on an old dentist chair. She smells exactly like that. Yeah. That's accurate and very specific.. Yeah, yeah. That's accurate and very specific. That's on me. That's on me. Now that I'm down in the AK, I can't find a power washer really, you know, get in there.

You know what I'm saying? So that's why that's what that's the smell. I deeply do not know what you're saying. I don't know. No. And two, this week's assay Eli is about the sound and the fury, not fire and fury. The William Foster novel?

Yeah, dude, not the same. Oh, oh shit, sorry Sarah. I guess we don't need you for the episode after all. Okay, but I still get paid though, right? Yeah, yeah, I guess so, go ahead. Well, what did you offer her? I told her we'd listen to the story of the time her brother said a dog on fire.

Oh, seriously? Come on. Yeah, that trash. Okay. So there I am, having the time of my life at Bible camp. And I was at, oh, God, I hate this. Don't interrupt. I'll start over. So my brother Hello and welcome to CitationNate in the podcast where we choose a subject, read a article about it on Wikipedia and pretend we're experts because this is the internet and that's how it works now I'm Noah and I'll be You know what I'll be hosting post there's something to be said for just saying what you fuck the mean but if ever there was a topic I couldn't make it I get it hosting right we We nailed it here. So I've got company first up two men who should have known better heat and season

Noah there's no knowns unknown knowns and unknown We're gonna have yeah, and have all of those and also joining us tonight are two men whose audio tracks suffer from excess sound and Access theory respectively Eli and No, we have five podcasts if I don't eat on Mike. I will literally start Even bring that up honestly All right, so before we get going tonight I want to remind everybody that Eli gave up his favorite field to get this show started.

So if you'd like to help make up for that, be sure to stick around to the end of the show and learn how you can give us money. And with that out of the way, tell us Heath, what person placed in concept phenomenon or event? We'll be talking about today. The Sound and the Fury. Okay, so what is the Sound and the Fury? The Sound and the Fury is a 1929 novel by William Fockner

that's on a whole bunch of lists as one of the greatest English language novels of the 20th century. It is not. It's extremely unpleasant to read. It's not good. So you've heard. For, so I, the conceit is that I haven't,

I have more knowledge than I'm going to let him about this. It's not good. It's not good. And it's for a variety of different reasons. She say you write as much of this as he read of Proust or less. What do you say? So much more. So much more.

Eli, I'm thinking about Proust. We'll go back and go. Madeline's. Yeah, that's the one. I think I can do two. Anyway, this is bad. It's a bad book. Variety of reasons that it's bad. Most of which are the criteria by which you might judge a book,

like narrative structure and compelling characters and the plot of the story in the book. It's bad at those things. It's a bad book. I don't like this book. I don't like it at all. It's bad. It's a bad book of writing. but a bunch of literary hipsters.

I got together on calling it amazing. And now it's one of those books you're, you know, supposed to read. It's the citizen cane of books that I fucking hate. So we're going to talk about it. I tried to actually read it once while back. It's very unpleasant. It's like eating sand through your eyes. I don't really like almost immediately.

But I did more recently read about it on Wikipedia and Sparkloads. Oh, there you go. I skimmed through some passages. I actually listened to some of the, I listened to the audiobook. Now I'm an expert. Now I'm an expert we're gonna talk about

because this is talking about art at any time in history. And that's how it works. Yeah. So before we get started with the story, let's get a little background from you guys. Did any of you actually read this or listen to it? And did anybody like it? So Tom and I, we read this right out of college, like we were both looking for something to do. We thought, hey, we'd read books together and we decided to just randomly select from a list of greatest books of all time, one title. This was got ran away was the one and

we quit directly after this. Yeah. And it started podcasting. Yeah. It ruined books. Yeah. I read a book says that's how good this book is to be fair. So if we kept up with the reading books off a list idea instead of like going into podcasting, I never would have married a pole dancer and vacation in Australia. So I love this book. Like 10. There you go. 10 out of 10. All right. So I got some next level shit for you. I've never read the book and I've never read about the book, but because I've been through this script, I've read about reading about it. And that's how it works now.

You are an expert. So here's how the book works, which is not a good start, by the way. I can't just tell the story. No, it's a bad book. I have to tell you how the fucking book works. It doesn't diagram it like a ridiculous not work. That is correct. But to try to understand it, you have't diagram it like a ridiculous not work, that is correct. But to try to understand it,

you have to diagram it like a ridiculous run-on sentence with badly nested clauses all over the place, like reading Eli. Those are kind of like the sentences you might find in this book. It's just like that. Keith, if reading was supposed to be for the masses, everyone would have their own printing press, okay?

Okay, Eli, that's literally the internet. You and I both have blogs. That's the internet. You do that for a lot of us quit. One of us quit that. All right, so, I love your blog. Your blog works. It's not just like left to right, top to bottom.

Here's how it works. It's the story of the Compton family. These are white people living in Jefferson, Mississippi, and they've been aristocracy since before the Civil War. But the current generation of parents are terrible people who can't even succeed with that giant head start they had. So their wealth and status is crumbling away by the early 1900s when the story actually happens.

And Faulkner gives us the narrative in four chapters with four different voices and out of chronological order. It's like a deconstructed word salad. And most of the vegetables are biggest, so it's like that's less than the average deconstructed word salad. Where's that episode of Veggie Tales? That is an episode of Veggie Tales.

I think the character was the first one in the Capitol on the six. It's true. It's true. Well, the first one that didn't get shot. Yeah, it's just like a shaman. It's super weird. Very weird. It's shot in the head, pusskinets, it's kind of all over the.

We really need an artistic listener to really to dig into that one. So, and to log out. Draw the caricatio shot at the Capitol. Oh, we're going to get such good ones. After the caricatio gets arrested, it'll only hang out with organic carrots and organic other things. Okay, so back to this book. Given how far I got reading this myself, I'm going to start with the title. That's my wheelhouse of expertise, I'd say.

And the title is directly related to the voice of chapter one, which is Benji, the youngest son of the Compton family. Benji is described as intellectually disabled, but with the language of a writer in the 1920s. So that meant the use of offensive terms like idiot for this person. And this is part of some really terrible wordplay that Faulkner thought was genius. The sound in the fury is a reference to a passage from Macbeth in Act 5, Scene 5, right after Macbeth finds out his wife killed herself. yourself. Spoilers. Sorry, everybody. It's got real forest. Spoilers. But at five, seen five, here's the saliliqui. Actually, Eli, you got this Euro Shakespeare guy. You've

ever played back. I couldn't possibly have been practicing. Do you have this just eat up to tomorrow and tomorrow and creeps in this petty place. Petty fuck. God damn it. Don't you dare keep that. I'm keeping it. I'm keeping it. If you keep that mistake, I will cut my own throw. I will keep every second. Fucking shit. Am I keeping you in the fucking and keeping it? You absolutely are keeping a tape and they will put a warning This to NYU It's getting kind just continue right in the top

Just continue To make sure you do what I want you to stare off into the middle distance like you have it memorized Then immediately after the tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow go right back to the page. Look back to my right here. Thank you Tom. Oh my body cam went out. And here. Okay.

He like clean, clean, clean, cutie like go. Clean cut. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. To the last syllable of recorded time and all our yesterday's have lighted fools the way to dusty death. Out, out brief candle, life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets

his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury signifying nothing. There it is. Title drop. So what starts the story as literally in his words, a tale told by an idiot. Because he's an asshole. Even if you give him, you're giving my past on the terminology of his time, he's still an asshole because the entire novel is going to be centered around the idea from that saluliqui that life is meaningless because you can never achieve the greatness of the past so you might as well just die go ahead and enjoy my book that's coming right up. That life is meaningless because you can never achieve the greatness of the past is also every single boomer mean.

That's where that's fair. He, this may shock you to your very core, but I think you might have missed the finer points of both Shakespeare's soliloquy and Mr. Faulkner's reference to it, or, or maybe it's just called the R Slur book and Shakespeare's a 13 year old journaling in the back of my class. We'll let the audience decide, okay. Okay.

What are the finer points that I missed from that soliloquy? What was that about? That's a comedy gold one, don't you dig in on that? How do you guys like citation needed this week? It was weird when Eli talked about McBeth's speech from McFuddes. That's 16 minutes.

Especially because he's not noticing him. He's not noticing him. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, day before Easter, April 7th, 1928. It's Benji's 33rd birthday, and a black teenager named Luster is looking after Benji. Luster is the grandson of the Compsons Cook, Dilsie. Benji and Dilsie are the only two characters in the book, pretty much, who are not terrible people. So, Faulkner mostly focused on all the other characters. So, Luster and Benji, they're walking around the property and random stuff makes

Benji remember these mundane little stories from the past. Now, okay, according to the nerds who like this book, this is genius because Faulkner is using a mental disability as a narrative device, and that's a good thing. And these little stories are also establishing the pattern of moral decay in the Compton family, which is supposed to mirror the decay of other stuff, society, metaphor. I don't get it. Whatever. Is this deep? Am I just dumb at books?

I don't like this. Now, man, you're just a literary outside of her. Oh, great. Oh, great. The swap. I hate man, you're just a literary outside. Oh, man. Oh, great. The swap. I hate that it might actually be a really interesting literary device. If it were written in a way, it was not intentionally joyfully incomprehensible. And if anyone tries to tell me that the incomprehensibility is the point of chat, they should have

to tell it to my fucking face is what they should ask. No, I'm with you. My periods are overrated. Yes, they are. They're the one in the book chapter. Yeah, saved of its ecological. So just a reminder, this is a book of fiction, a novel, if you will. You can write whatever you want.

You're not the right person. Anything you want. But this boring memory thing keeps going for a while. Yes, it does. And then we're back in the present with Luster and Benji, and they walk along a stream that runs through the property. And this is where Benji tells a story revealing that all his brothers very clearly have a terrifying sexual desire

for their sister, Kenny, starting as little kids playing in the muddy creek on the property. And this time would have been great for the story to end abruptly like those other little mundane stories did, but it does not. This goes on for a while. Quite sure you're not just reciting from your browser history at this point. He's a good point. I'm not indistinguishable. Step does a lot of work in that. Sound in the fury tabs a fun way. So after playing in the creek, the kids go back to the house where a bunch of people are crying because they're all

in a really bad book. That includes Benji's brother Jason. So Cady makes fun of Jason for crying. And Jason's crying because grandma Demudi is sick and about to die, which means Jason can't sleep in grandma's bed anymore. The crying should take place after the grandson and the grandmother sleep together. That's the kind of thing. Right. It doesn't even make sense. Where he puts the crying. Thank you, Marshall. It's done. Also, quick note on this narrative made of creepy stories. It's even worse than it sounds.

And that's because Benji doesn't experience time along the normal time dimension. So everything is in the present tense and hard to understand. Now, according to those literary hipsters, this was Faulkner doing a brilliant philosophical exploration of how time is actually a flat circle or some other deep bullshit about that. Now, this could have been an interesting look at the world through the eyes of people with different mental states or an exploration of conflicting narration as a literary device, but it's not good. It's that bad. That stuff could be good, but this is bad doing that. It's bad. But I'm apparently wrong about that too, according to those hipsters. Again, according to them, Benji's lack of commentary gives us a beautifully objective picture

of the Compton family backstory. And that's fucking genius. Yeah, fucking hipsters at the Harvard Literary Review with their pour over coffee in there, decades of study of the written book. Right? Yeah, I will say this is a book for the average reader, the same way, like two high school bio classes

qualifies you to peruse the may edition of the Journal of Molecular Biology. Like, and anecdotally, you also need better qualifications than a bachelor's in lit and the name Tom, because I also couldn't make heads or tails out of the goddamn brain. Hands up, not qualified. Thank you.

Back to the story, I guess, Hands up, not qualified. Thank you. Back to the story, I guess, you get a few more memory vignettes that won't really make sense yet. So that's fun. Pain in everything that's happened. And then we go back to the day of grandma's funeral. And Cady decides that all the adults

were lying about having the wake for grandma. I don't know why she decided that, but she decided that. So she climbs a tree to spy on them in the parlor, and all her brothers stand under that tree and stare at her underwear, which are still dirty from playing in the muddy creek. Apparently this was amazing symbolism by Faulkner. I'm focusing heavily on this little girl's muddy underwear. He was building a great symbol that was also

foreshadowing the sexual promiscuity of Hattie and eventually Kattie's future daughter named Miss Quentin and this promiscuity curses the entire family. And this is how to set it up. I guess. But if muddy underwear are sexy Eli is Brad Pitt Hey Cecil Brad Pitt's 57 dude. I know it's hard to update your exemplars, but like every other decade you've got to do it If these seven is perfectly sexy, it's a perfectly sexy age

What is wrong with you? If I could look like 57 Brad Pitt at any age in my life, take it. All right, yeah. All right, from there, we get some stories from Benji about his interactions with women. It starts with Cady, who begins wearing perfume as she gets older, and that's extremely upsetting to Benji. The perfume is another amazing symbol of women destroying their families by having sexuality. Now, in fairness, it seems like Faulkner might be aware of that being bad

and sexist, but he's not aware in a way that makes the book enjoyable. So, I don't know how much credit or fairness we should give. This is also where we hear about Benji trying to talk with some girls who walk by the house, but they all scream at him. And then one of their dads attacks Benji. And later that night, Mr. Thompson, Benji's dad and Jason, his brother, decide they might need to cast straight Benji. Spoiler that fucking hat in the book. Admittedly, writing a stream of consciousness first person castration is something no one

ever tried before or since. So it's unique, I guess. I don't. Okay. So Mike Pence's book doesn't come out until next year. So for now, it's an end. So now we finally wrap up chapter one back in the present on the way back to the house. Luster and Benji passed by cadty's daughter, Miss Quentin, hanging out on the swing set with some random guy wearing a red bow tie. The name of that character is man with red bow tie. And I'm sure that tie, it's a beautiful symbol

for time and blood and the fucking human condition. So Miss Quentin and random bow tie guy get mad at Benji for violating their swing set privacy. And then they all end up back in the house to have birthday cake for Benji. It's just thirty-third. You remember people resolved fights weird back then. Can I just say that's a weird they did. They did. And don't yell at the brother who has a disability. It's fine. It's not fine. It's not. It's terrible. It's a bad book. And so they go back to birthday cake. That's when Benji burns his hand on a candle and gets yelled at by his mom for making too much noise. That was fun. And it closes with Miss Quentin sneaking out the window and running away, presumably to a loat with her symbolic, nameless boyfriend with a tie.

Okay. See, he, uh, he, that don't want to ruin the angle on your symbolic, nameless boyfriend with a tie. Okay, see, he, that don't want to ruin the angle on your essay, but I'm pretty sure the character has a name, the narrator just doesn't know it, but it's not like the character. No, Eli, the character's never named. There's other chapters with other people's point of view. Yeah, Eli, not to wreck your angle,

but the character isn't real outside the pages of the book. The character isn't named. Yes, the character doesn't have a name. Exactly the same way. The character isn't named. The character doesn't have a name. Exactly the same way Dumbledore isn't gay. Like if you did write it down, it didn't happen. The characters aren't like off the page doing stuff and having like rich full lives that just didn't get jotted by someone.

Okay, well, you obviously haven't drifted on ticked off the top. Okay, well, you obviously haven't drifted on TikTok. Okay, I'll let you know. You should have. I'll let you know. Had a lot of things to do with your information. All right, all right. Well, that brings us to chapter two.

This part is told by Benji's brother, Quentin, in June of 1910. Quentin wakes up in his dorm room at Harvard, where he definitely deserves to be a student on the merits alone. Absolutely. The narrator has a linear time dimension now, so that's a little easier to read.

But that just makes it also easier to hear about all the obnoxious, righty stuff that Quentin is saying, or really Faulkner is saying, you can hear Faulkner trying so hard to be smart and edgy. I fucking hate it. I hate everything that sounds like that including this. For example, the very first thing that Quentin does is look at his pocket watch and he contemplates the inevitability of his awareness of time. He actually says to himself, quote,

I believe it was Saint Francis who referred to death as his little sister. So symbol, literature, something, I don't know. I hate it. The guy looks over, Will Hunting standing outside the room with the sister's number, press the gas to go out. That's right. Sorry. So at this point, Keith, your problem is that the novel is trying too hard.

You can show it to us. Absolutely. Yeah, we can bump Falkner for a lot of stuff, I guess, but shitting on his understanding of literary symbolism seems a bit rich. Yeah, I think he understands it. He's just bad at it. He gets what's happening.

All right, he just doesn't know how to do it. It's low quality, everything. So Clinton is staring out his window, watching everyone head to class at Harvard. And then he says to himself, just, oh, nothing, I'm a virgin. But, you know, Fox, my sister, Katty, she got married two months ago. Jesus, probably just railing that guy right now,

just railing him. They had a nice wedding in there. That actually goes through his head. We listen to that. We read him saying that to himself. And then he says to himself, I propose thinking about my sisters vagina just now. I'm afraid I'm a catty guy. Pregnant with that guy who isn't her husband, and I told my dad that I committed incest with her, so they cover it up.

Ah, good times. And I'm gonna make up a story about fucking my sister. Remember when my dad told me that all my tragic emotions are meaningless, that nobody's coming to help me All right, you know what I'm done asking myself questions end of seeing Okay, I gotta admit I'm warming up the heat sarcastically summarizes great literature like he's talking to a stepdad He doesn't want to hang out with on the ride back from a police nation That actually what you just said should have been a scene in the book. It would not a question. That's not a question. That's not a question. That's not a question. That's not a question.

That's not a question. That's not a question. That's not a question. That's not a question. That's not a question. That's not a question. That's not a question. That's not a question.

That's not a question. That's not a question. That's not a question. That's not a question. That's not a question. That's not a question. That's not a question. That's not a question.

That's not a question. That's not a question. That's not a question. That's not a question. That's not a question. That's not a question. That's not a question. on her wedding day, which did not work. But then after she got pregnant, he does convince her to run away with him, but their dad shuts it all down and Quentin goes back to Harvard. So that's where he is. This is when Quentin pops back out of his doodly-do and he slightly kidnaps a small girl at a bakery

in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Now, the book says this was all a misunderstanding, but I don't believe the book here. I don't think that's what happened. Okay, who do you believe he did that? I knew it, my God. I'm a gut. It says this was not a misunderstanding.

It's creepy character. Either way, the girl's family sees this random college guy walking around with their little girl, and they start beating the shit out of Quentin. Then the cops show up and take Quentin down to the station, but he pays a fine and he gets released. Okay, yeah, well, you don't want to ruin his whole life over one small indiscretion.

He, I mean, that's Stan for swim team isn't going to captain itself. Yeah. Yeah. So, get back to the insist. Get back to the insist. Get back to the insist. Yeah. So, he's a cat. Yeah, so, he went to the inses, get back to the fun inses. He yikes.

Right, so, so Quentin gets a ride back to campus with his friends and one of the guys Gerald talks about his sexual history during the ride. Gerald's talking about who he's been fucking. So naturally Quentin asks, do you have a sister when Gerald says, no, Quentin punches him in the face for no reason. So Gerald then proceeds to beat the shit out of Quentin. His second really large beating of the day. So I kind of and the driver of the car has then throw his arm around the passenger headrests and yell like, if you don't cut it out, I'm turning this car around. We will go back to prison. Yeah.

Okay. Well, now I'm thinking back. Maybe I didn't enjoy Quentin getting beaten up. So because here's what happens. So Quentin's back at his dorm room and he's having another bleak internal monologue about his sister and her sex life and the tree stests of the time dimension or whatever deep bullshit. We're supposed to understand that Quentin is grappling with the clash of culture between the old South

and the modern world. It sounds so hard for the old South. And I guess we're supposed to have sympathy. We do not. I do not. I don't know if you have sympathy out there listening. I don't have any sympathy. And then this part, I guess I do.

Quentin hills himself in the Charles River end of chapter. It's a real page truth. Okay, so I know you're trying super hard not to, but you're making this book sound fucking awesome. So while you rethink your strategy, we're gonna pause for a little, for a Poe of Nothing. Hi, I'm Tom Curry. And I'm Noah Luzon's.

And this episode sure is great. I wish you could go on forever. Well, now I can with the Heath Ed Edwight shits on a book club. Here Heath take on the classics, like Moby Dick. Boo! Whales this book's boring, get a machine gun. Or modern hits like Where the Craw Dad's Saying. Probably saying somewhere boring and stupid, that's where they sing.

Stupid, it's bad book. But that's not all. Our gold level members are invited to exclusive talkbacks with the author. When I first set out to write to this book, Fuck you! The Heath and Wright shits on a book club. Now that you think about it, that actually seems pretty fun. It does.

Yeah, I don't know. Those bones aren't so lovely. Not even lovely. Bad bones. Those are bad bones. Stupid. Lovely not even lovely bad bones. Those are bad bones stupid And we're back when we last left off he was Harumpely turning in a homework assignment. He gave to himself What is God's most important?

The more persistent allegory of either. See, that's a good book. So chapter three is where we are now. Chapter three happens on Good Friday of 1928, the day before Benjy's narration in chapter one. And the voice for chapter three is Jason Compson IV, the brother of Benjji and Quentin. And Jason is arguing with his mom about

who's the least compelling character. That's very different. The first line is, once a bitch, always a bitch, that's what I say. And this is where we learn Cattie's backstory in more detail. She got married to a guy named Herbert Head. Why can't they write names in these books?

Come on, Herbert Head. All right, whatever, Herbert Head. But then she got pregnant after getting married to Herbert. She got pregnant. She got pregnant from... She had to stuck with just the head. She got pregnant. She got pregnant.

That's excellent. She got pregnant from an affair, not with Herbert, and they got divorced. So she got kicked out of the house, but the family agrees to take in Caddy's daughter, Miss Quentin. We also learned that Herbert had owns a bank and offered Jason the fourth, a job,

but then rescinded the offer after that divorce. So now Jason is in his mid-30s. He works at a local farm supply store, and he's super bitter about the whole situation. Also the old south is crumbling. It's really bad for him. And he's also been embezzling the money that Cady sends to pay for Miss Quentin, her daughter's upbringing.

He's stolen about 50 grand so far and he uses it to gamble in the cotton market and also pay for a prostitute. So he's a ratteter. Well, this is back when Bitcoin meant you were checking to see if it was fake. So it's all very different scenario. Also, Jason is physically abusive with Miss Quentin, who is now 17 years old.

And we're finally getting his side of the story because that's important. In particular, Jason hates Benji and wants to send Benji to a mental hospital to get him out of the house. We also talked about the castration thing he wants to do that happened. We see Jason at work here,

where he's actually doing this. He's yelling ethnic slurs at a black coworker, but he gets distracted when Miss Quentin walks by outside with red tie guy. So Jason runs after them, but he gets stopped by a kid with a telegram, which I don't know just like a adorable little moment for a second This kid with a telegram. You get stopped by the kid with a telegram. The kid tells Jason that his cotton market speculation account is way down So you know real hard day for Jason. I have a lot of empathy or whatever you're supposed to have in books for characters. Just pacing back and forth stupid.

Should have put it all on GameStop. Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid. Yeah, this book was published in 1929. So might be worth getting used to some disappointment in the markets. That's an excellent point. So never caught up with Miss Quentin to yell at her. His embezzled cotton trading account is down. And he never got to use all the new slur words with his black toe worker that he'd come up with.

So Jason starts driving home in a SNIT because, you know, old South versus modernity, again, really hard for him. And while he's driving, he almost gets hit by another car. And the driver, he notices, was wearing a red tie. Oh, what? What? So he chases the car and eventually finds it parked by the side of the road. He gets out hoping to find Miss Quentin and guy with red tie.

And then he hears him drive away from behind him. And it turns out they slashed his tires too, so we can't really quickly wrap her. Still less confusing than tenant for the record. It is less. Okay, all right, I'll give it a shot. You see the man with the red tie symbolizes the blood and violence of the modern world, and the fact that they were unseen yet capable of the violence of slashing his tires represents the potential for that violence to literally stop the old south in its tracks, and that the car drove away without Jason being able to confront it really demonstrates

the inevitable forward surge of the modern world's violence upon the old south. Oh. Oh, also they will give a lit degree to literally anyone who's checks don't bounce. That's all they do. That was a really good explanation, actually. You should explain how stupid a well-respected economic theory is for your next essay. It'd be fun, dummy. Well, there's plenty of well-respected economic theories that are super dumb that you can do.

I'm doing capitalism for my next one. There you go. See how you feel about it, me. So, now we're back at the Compson House for family dinner with Jason, Mrs. Compson, and Miss Quentin. And Jason spends the whole time making passive-aggressive vague mentions about the car Jay-C ad, which is kind of funny. And we also get Luster, a kid who's taking care of Benji, asking Jason for 25 cents to

buy tickets for a show in town that he wants to see. So Jason just happens to have two tickets to that. So he takes them out. That's nice. He doesn't want the tickets, he takes them out. And then he burns them in the fireplace for fucking spite while making Wester watch that whole thing happen. End of chapter.

Wow. And that was important from a literary standpoint because something with time and order and chaos and the lens of some guy we all fucking hate. I don't know. Something. What I love about this is because he thread the spark notes, he knows the themes, but he doesn't care. So he just yells the metas at the end of each pair. But you just heard he got to nine ten years. That's a little one, Chris. Yeah, that's accurate.

And that brings us the final chapter narrated by Faulkner himself. It's Easter Sunday of 1928, two days after Jason's chapter and one day after Benji's chapter. And of course, Easter is all about resurrection. So symbolism, books, yeah. Stupid little sister.

Stupid little sister. Thank you, no. So chapter starts with Jason finding out that Miss Quentin snuck out her window to run away with red tie guy. And she stole all the cash from Jason's lock box before she left. So it's actually her money from her mom, but that's what she did. So Jason jumps in his car and heads to the nearby town where a traveling minstrel show is going to perform.

Jason is pretty sure Red Tie Guy works for the show. So he shows up and he starts yelling at an old man demanding to know where red tie guy went. And this eventually escalates to Jason physically assaulting an old man. And then we get literally the only fun moment in the book when the old man gets, gets physically assaulted by Jason. Then he finds an axe and comes after Jason with an axe. So super fun. What a last old man never gets to axe murder Jason. Yeah, but the genius of Faulkner here is that he turns the entire narrative on a Ted.

Jason is normally the one to murder people with an axe and he's going to get murdered. Great. Right. Cecil and that's fitting because this is also part for the final chapter. Right. Exactly. That's excellent. I looked it up to make sure that would work.

Yeah, I did. Take a second to appreciate what Tom just did there. I love that. Okay. Now it's time for the big day new mall. Get excited. I'm sorry, Dan or up. I just feel like you have to choose between shitting on Faulkner and knowing what day

new mall means, but that's just me. That's just me. No, you don't. Absolutely. Faust, Faust, I got him. No, you don't. You don't have to do that. So Jason comes back home. He's all angry about not being able to murder a red tie guy and abuse his niece, Ms. Quentin anymore. And he sees Luster riding Benji around town in a carriage. But Luster took a slightly different path than normal and Benji's upset. So Jason punches Luster here and also Benji.

And that's the end of the book. It's the end of the book of a failing white aristocrat in Mississippi. He's abusive. He physically assaults a black child and a mentally disabled person, the end. It's the end of the book. Okay, okay, but what you're missing is it's in that final assault though, that the true impotence of Jason, the old South is really revealed. Even though Jason is able to commit the assault, his targets are largely helpless and not

actually the true subject of his own frustration. In choosing those targets, it is apparent that he is ultimately unable to affect the change he desires. All of his fury is in the end, nothing more than the posturing of the past, a feudal bellowing into the void even as the juggernaut of time leaves him behind, which is, I guess, a fine sentiment, but no one wants to work this hard to get there, William. That's not a really good explanation. Well, so yeah, here's the fuck,

I think the symbolism is actually so good that even through the filter of Heath's spite description, I'm floored by how perfect that ending is. It was. They put perfect, all right, top of my head, better ending. Yes, yeah, not a gerurier right. And top of our strives back. They put all right top my head better ending Right back here we go. Dilsie gets a chapter Dilsie and lustre get a chapter and it's just like fuck all your faces fuck faces The world the K of the white South get out of here deal with it

And I do with it is so much better than whatever And you're right. You're happy to deal with it is so much better than whatever. You're so better. All right. So just for the record, that book we just talked about played a big part in getting William Faulkner, the Nobel Prize in Literature. I don't understand this.

No, he's supposed to summarize what you learned at the end at the very end. Someone will ask you. All right. I think that's what we'll get there. But before we wrap it up in the interest of fairness, I do want to present a few more elements of praise from the literary community that we haven't mentioned yet and see what you guys think. I'll start with the use of shadows.

Bokner talks about shadows a lot in the book and their effect on Benji and Quentin. And apparently, that's a brilliant way to invoke the concept of the inevitable passage of time. So, that helpful? Better now? So I'm sorry, are you asking us to weigh in on shadows like as a metaphor of How does exactly what about the amazing metaphor to Jesus and Satan? There's a Jesus and Satan metaphor here. Falkner fans are pretty sure that Falkner wanted us to see Benji as a Christ figure and Jason as a Satan figure. So it's the book good now.

I don't think it's realistic enough that a real satanic character would have to be an atheist professor at a university. Right? Right? And a real Jesus character would have spitting somebody's eye and murdered a pastoral pharaoh. Right. Exactly.

Benji's not dead. He's surely a lamb. All right. So, okay. Here's another one. What about the stream of consciousness technique? Bokner often gets credit for making a big, important development in stream of consciousness writing,

especially during the Benji chapter. And the fact that it's a pain in the asterede, it's actually a good thing. It's kind of, it's interesting stream of consciousness. To my face. We're supposed to enjoy unlocking the puzzle of the jumbled time by somehow sensing when Luster is there, the Luster characters are tip off and when we sense him, that's how we know we're in the present. So this oppressed minority character is basically the

top from inception as a literary advisor in this book. So now do you like the book? Is stream of consciousness a good thing in general, I guess is my other question. I mean, I have to admit, I'm rather fond of my own. I do like you do sitting down to read this chapter is like going a nice restaurant and having the waiter deliver all the ingredients to the table wanted a time. It's crazy. So you do want to go to a linear sea. So you're saying you do. You will. No No, confusing. But like out of order and like, yeah, this is a lime in your eye instead of the key. I'm like, oh, that's first, because I would have gotten that,

it's fine, just do it out of order. Great, yeah, stream of consciousness food, that's fun. What about the caddy character? I've got a question about her. So we get a chapter for each brother, but caddy can go fuck herself. Well, anyone else, accordingly, James. Yeah, right. Right.

And this seems like an aggressive way to definitely fail the Beck Bell test. I know it didn't exist yet, but just a brutal failure of that test. And the book, it was going to fail that either way, but according to the nerds, the emission of Cady as a narrator was actually some kind of genius, counterintuitive feminism something something books. Was it? Was that what you got from that?

Yes. Maybe. Really? No, wrong, three points for each, the example. Okay, you know what, fair. And just one last thing, James Franco, like this book, And I'm assured that he is definitely a smart person who knows how to read books. Franco directed a film adaptation in 2014 and the cast included Seth Rogan, Danny McBride and James Franco himself as really Benji. it was unwatchable. So that helped James Franco likes it. I'm

standing to feel like a hostage negotiator and the only good answer is to stall with more pizza. Yeah. That is the vibe. That is the vibe. All right. So I'll get us out of this one. If you had to summarize what you've learned in one sentence, Heath, what would it be? The book nerds are all liars. Nobody likes to spoke to your liars. I just don't understand your smart by saying you like this book. Smart people are supposed to like it. James. James. Brilliant. James Franco, like, that, are you ready for the quiz?

I'm ready for the quiz. All right, Heath, your last two essays have been long-winded negative rants about books you didn't read. Okay. I read, libertarian walks in a bear I read. I actually did read almost all the I listened to almost all this really. Why? Hey, because nobody on the internet is doing that. B, if we fire you, you technically didn't quit the show.

C, because of the awesome experience you've had disagreeing with our audience about the things they like. Yeah, or D. I see it strong, because I'm not your real dad. See, it was really strong, but it's definitely D. It's true, I am not your real dad. No, you are not his real dad. That's right. All right, Heath, the sound of the fury was admittedly far beyond my scope to understand

and appreciate what came. Hey, because William Fuckner was a bad Nobel prize winning author. We'll answer. We are eggs. It's strong because everything in literature should be immediately and effortlessly accessible to anyone unlike literally all other complex things we're studying. Brutal. Brutal.

Brutal. Brutal. Brutal. Whatever answer means it's not my fault. Okay. Well, it's a, a is definitely correct. I don't know about b or c in terms of their truth value. I don't want to evaluate truth value.

But a is true. It's clearly c. I'm't know about B or C in terms of their truth value. I don't want to evaluate truth value of those. But A is true. It's clearly C. I'm sorry. It's not my fault. I'm not sure I'm supposed to get this one right. We've decided apparently that doesn't matter. I don't really know. It's normally furious on this pattern.

It goes out of order. Yeah, I find it. But you know, we can buck that pattern any time. It doesn't matter at all. But all right. All right. So I just, I want to be clear on this question because I feel like we're going to get some tweets if we don't address it in advance.

Compared to William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, the best thing that you heath have ever personally written was, a better or be worse. So much better. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, most iconic scene? A, Heath beats up a Harvard kid twice in the same scene. B, Heath disproves the ontological proof of God on a mirror with a sharpie and his terrifying serial kill apartment with no furniture. He has to break up with his girlfriend because he never calls her or D. Okay. the breakup with his girlfriend because he never calls her or D. Okay. Keith leaves on morning without a trace.

His car packed with brother sister incest porn. I don't like how I all my stuff all the stuff that I get a shitty. Apparently I'm tall STDs sister incest porn and I am a shitty boyfriend. I didn't know about the STD thing. Thanks for that. Oh, I think that's a positive. You're not a bad person to get in this. I and I am a shitty boyfriend. I didn't know about the STD thing. Thanks for that. I think that's a positive. You beat up a person to drink.

I think that's a positive. I like to try to make it. I beat the shit out of two Harvard kids or one. Was it just one? No, just one Harvard twice. It's one, but twice. You beat them up twice. I do it twice.

OK, yeah, I like that one. I'm going down. OK. Sorry, it is B. You live in a terrifying serial killer apartment with no Correct All right, well clearly with that terrifying insight into heath's life Cecil is our okay Well, Noah you get to write an essay next week All right well for Tom Cecil Eli and heath., well, no way you get to write an essay next week. All right, well, for Tom Cecil Eli and Heath,

I'm Noah, thank you for handing it out with us today. We'll be back next week and by then, I'll be an expert on something else between now and then you can hear more from us by listening to this episode backwards. And by checking out Codden of Disney's The Skating of the Scott Alpha Moves and The Skeptocrat and D&D Minus.

And if you'd like to help keep this show going, you can make a per episode donation at patreon.com so that's citation potter or leave us a five star review everywhere you can. And if you want to get in touch with us, check out past episodes, you can make a pre-episode donation at patreon.com so that's citation pod or leave us a five-star review everywhere you can. And if you want to get in touch with us, check out past episodes, connect with us on social media or check the show notes,

be sure to check out citation pod.com. Fuck you, fuck you. To the Heath and Rice. This is dumb, this is dumb. To the books are dumb, books are dumb, this is dumb. You know what? Never mind. Everybody give me $11.