ABSTRACT
Harvard man's life. He commits suicide under the spell of reaction to sexual crime; and then the story is in some measure rounded off and completed by a third part. But long before the end is reached the reader has made the fullest contact with the characters. Benjy's confused and distorted images of fog have gained in outline and substance, but they have gained immeasurably in creative significanceby being first passed through the corridors of an imbecile mind. It will be interesting to know how the English public receives this strange and disturbing novel. I imagine that the popular public-and its fuglemen, the popular critics-will be indifferent or contemptuous or openly hostile; yet it is my conviction that The Sound and the Fury will exert a powerful influence on those handful ofreaders who can seedeeper than the mirror of fashionable and commercial art forms permits. For myself, I hold that The Sound and the Fury will outlive most of the works that at present loom so large, for its influence will be educative and thus create a wider circle of appreciators for its own authentic creative viewpoint.
