Welcome to 2024’s final episode of The Invisible College. It is about William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury. My exposition is almost as aleatory as the novel itself, but I discuss Harold Bloom and Hugh Kenner’s dissent on the novel’s reputation, the general shape of Faulkner’s career, the novel’s high modernist narrative technique, the conflict between tragic and Christian visions in the text, and more. With the help of Jean-Paul Sartre, I consider the novel’s “metaphysic of time.” With the help of Ralph Ellison, I elaborate on its deconstruction of the racial ideology that masks humanity. With the help of André Bleikasten, I explore the novel as the frenzied stasis of a Grecian Urn frieze spinning around the vortex that is Faulkner’s view of the feminine. All this and more. Please enjoy! Thanks to my paid subscribers! If you are not a paid subscriber, please enjoy the free 24-minute preview, and please offer a paid subscription to hear the rest, to listen to the 2024 archive, and to join us for the next year of our “curriculum.” I will release the 2025 syllabus on January 1; the first episode of 2025 will drop on January 17. The slideshow corresponding to this episode can be downloaded behind the paywall:
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