The Sound and the Fury (Paperback)

THERE IS A story told of a celebrated Russian dancer, who was asked by someone what she meant by a certain dance. She answered with some exasperation, 'If I could say it in so many words, do you think I should take the very great trouble of dancing it?'
It is an important story, because it is the valid explanation of obscurity in art. A method involving apparent obscurity is surely justified when it is the clearest, the simplest, the only method possible of saying in full what the writer has to say.
This is the case with The Sound and the Fury. I shall not attempt to give either a summary or an explanation of it: for if I could say in three pages what takes Mr Faulkner nearly three hundred there would obviously be no need for the book. All I propose to do is to offer a few introductory, and desultory, comments.