On this day in 1929, William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury was published. It was his fourth novel, the second and most famous in his series of fifteen "Yoknapatawpha County" books. Early reviewers compared it to Dostoevsky and Euripides, but a first printing of 1,789 copies lasted for a year and a half. Even this was more than Faulkner expected: having had so little interest from publishers in his previous books, Faulkner forgot all about them when he began The Sound and the Fury:
One day I seemed to shut the door between me and all publishers' addresses and book lists. I said to myself, Now I can write. Now I can make myself a vase like that which the old Roman kept at his bedside and wore the rim slowly away with kissing it. So I, who never had a sister and was fated to lose my daughter in infancy, set out to make myself a beautiful and tragic little girl.
William Faulkner - Faulkner's 'Splendid Failure'
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