Selections from One-Star Amazon Reviews of William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury

[Editorial note: The following citations come from one-star Amazon reviews William Faulkner’s novel The Sound and the Fury. I’ve preserved the reviewers’ original punctuation and spelling. I reviewed the book (favorably) on this blog seven years ago.  More one-star Amazon reviews].

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unreadable

the biggest muddle

a bad ear for dialog

This is a strange book

so-called literary experts

I am an aficionado of classic literature

Faulkner was a Jamnes Joyce wannabe

a bunch of people 100 years ago thought it was good

Symbolism is one of the worst literary techniques of all time

doesn’t even began to tell a good story

It is the worst book I have ever read

Please, don’t insult my intelligence

Morals don’t decaying!

punchless dialogue

overdone prose

non-existent suspense

I have a degree in literature

no longer appropriate to the times

long-winded sentences that go nowhere

Only perverts think as these characters do

characters are poorly-educated, racist and revolting

Eitther he had too much gin or I did not have enpugh

I hate it when characters are given the same name, especially when one is male and the other is female

It has no place in our current American way of life or desire for good reading

Both Dashiell Hammett and Jack Kerouac could write rings around Faulkner

akin to abstract art, in that it is really not art at all

random run-on sentences spewed out on paper

if it weren’t for online Cliff’s Notes

I relish in classical literature

nothing but small talk

adolescent nastiness

signifying nothing

no commas

incest

Dreadful

no periods

people in ivory towers

suggested by a book club

I must be odd or poorly-educated (or both)

the book was a ‘lengthy companion to literary aids’

all of the white characters in this novel are disgusting

The style was so challenging, I found it hard to enjoy the reading process

I fear that William Faulkner and his works, especially this one, have got The South a bad name

Faulkner attempted an experiment with storytelling no one had never done before

a somewhat kinky description of looking up at the girl Caddy’s muddy panties

a novel of stereotypes and pitiful prose

I must need a translator from the South

I choose Hemingway

a despicable trollop

incorrect grammar

No capitalization

So inaccessible

Jackson Pollack

Virginia Wolfe

Cliff’s Notes

unedited

It has no plot

so unsatisfying

I enjoy good books

self-contradictions

borderline suicidal despair

page after page of sheer boredom

He was drunk, as well as over-rated

Like being on a three-week drunken spree

This is not entertainment, this is tediousnes

and what was up with all the words in italics?

nonsensical, grammatically-butchered ramblings

written by either a drug addict or someone with ADHD

it earned bleeding-heart points for having a simpleton for a character

still not completely sure whether or not the male Quentin had sex with his sister Caddy

I wish Faulkner had never “written” it and had instead pursued a career as a lumberjack, or stevedore, and served humanity in some noble fashion

I would like to build a time machine for the sole purpose of traveling back in time to kick Faulkner in the nuts

an endless stream of strangers sneaking up on him and kicking him in the nuts

427 pages of incomprehensible jibberish

NO PUNCTUATION WHATSOEVER

My entire book club scrapped this

undergraduate postmodernism

like an ungreatful girlfriend

I enjoy reading the masters

logical non-sequiturs

supposedly a classic

deliberately bad

Yuck