[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].
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
“Macadam” by Lucia Berlin
from A Manual for Cleaning Women
When fresh it looks like caviar, sounds like broken glass, like someone chewing ice.
I’d chew ice when the lemonade was finished, swaying with my grandmother on the porch swing. We gazed down upon the chain gang paving Upson Street. A foreman poured the macadam; the convicts stomped it down with a heavy rhythmic beat. The chains rang; the macadam made the sound of applause.
The three of us said the word often. My mother because she hated where we lived, in squalor, and at least now we would have a macadam street. My grandmother just so wanted things clean — it would hold down the dust. Red Texan dust that blew in with gray tailings from the smelter, sifting into dunes on the polished hall floor, onto her mahogany table.
I used to say macadam out loud, to myself, because it sounded like the name for a friend.
I Will Send Rain by Rae Meadows is new in hardback from Henry Holt & Co. Their blurb:
Annie Bell can’t escape the dust. It’s in her hair, covering the windowsills, coating the animals in the barn, in the corners of her children’s dry, cracked lips. It’s 1934 and the Bell farm in Mulehead, Oklahoma is struggling as the earliest storms of The Dust Bowl descend. All around them the wheat harvests are drying out and people are packing up their belongings as storms lay waste to the Great Plains. As the Bells wait for the rains to come, Annie and each member of her family are pulled in different directions. Annie’s fragile young son, Fred, suffers from dust pneumonia; her headstrong daughter, Birdie, flush with first love, is choosing a dangerous path out of Mulehead; and Samuel, her husband, is plagued by disturbing dreams of rain.
As Annie, desperate for an escape of her own, flirts with the affections of an unlikely admirer, she must choose who she is going to become. With her warm storytelling and beautiful prose, Rae Meadows brings to life an unforgettable family that faces hardship with rare grit and determination. Rich in detail and epic in scope, I Will Send Rain is a powerful novel of upheaval and resilience, filled with hope, morality, and love.
Biblioklept 