Colorized.

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Met a friend of a friend today and he said when he's bored he has an account where he pretends to be from Mumbai on Instagram. He has about 50 followers and says they're all people doing the same thing. All the accounts seemed to have stock pictures or something as posts but they seemed like real accounts at a first glance if you didn't know any better. I've seen people troll like this on Twitter but these seemed more realistic and dedicated

Are any other people actually doing this or did I just meet a weirdo

To impress Korean tourists, Shanghai rich kids now gather to show off their luxury sports cars, in order to 'make Koreans feel bad about themselves'.
Indeed a very unique way to welcome foreign tourists. pic.twitter.com/4BMc746ywH

— The Great Translation Movement 大翻译运动 (@TGTM_Official) January 13, 2025

A lot of you have probably heard of it. Most of you probably didn't read it or just skimmed/read Sparksnotes for a literature class. James Franco tried and failed to make a movie out of it. It's regarded as such a classic that a many people automatically that it's hard to understand or relate to. Well, the hard to understand part might sort of be true, but it's more due to a genuinely experimental perspective than big words or needing specific historical context.

The Sound and the Fury takes place in the American South, around a declining white family that used to have wealth and plantations but now has only their former glory and an estate to their name. The family is headed by Jason and Caroline, whose children are Quentin, Benjamin, Candace, and Jason Jr. The novel is split into 4 sections: the Benjy section, the Quentin section, the Jason section, and finally what sometimes is referred to as the Dilsey section which is in 3rd person. Jason Sr is the patriach of the family, although he's very much a nihilist that's checked out. Caroline, the mother, is a neurotic recluse who basically dotes on her worst child in Jason Jr. Quentin is the sensitive soft-boi who still believes in the Southern code of honor that men and women must hold on to, despite himself being a fairly unmasculine incel. Caddy (Candace) is arguably the most important person in the novel, despite not having her own section. The only daughter, she's a tomboy who keeps the family together by taking charge of her brothers while having dreams that are bigger than what the town offers her. Unfortunately for her, she acts out through promiscuity which is a big source of tension in the novel, especially for Quentin who seethes about Caddy's slutting around that results in her out-of-wedlock pregnancy. Jason Jr is an butthole, and Benjy is... well he's r-slurred.

I'm only going to talk about the 1st section of the novel at length cause it stands out the most and also cause it doesn't give too much of the rest of the book away. The section starts with the r-slurred mentally handicapped oldest son of the Compsons, Benjamin aka Benjy. It's the strongest section of the novel and is what makes this book the most impressive American novel in my personal opinion. Somehow, in the 1920s, William Faulkner managed to create one of the most incredible portrayals of a nonverbal mentally handicapped man (alright I'm just gonna call him r-slurred now since the words mean the same thing and r-slurred is easier to type) ever, using first-person.

Benjamin Compson's POV gives the reader a kind of bystander's view of the happenings of the Compson family through his eyes, with certain things like sounds and smells in the present triggering memories that he re-experiences as if they were presently happening. While the link between smell and memory wasn't a new idea when Faulker was around, it's still incredible that an author from the 1920s would manage to create such a compelling portrayal of a profoundly r-slurred man that couldn't even speak by depicting his inner emotional sensitivity and capacity for love through a nonlinear stream-of-consciousness narrative. Benjy doesn't get much in terms of heroic moments, very few people understand him apart from Candace and his black caretakers.

The other sections are great too, although to me they get progressively less compelling. Maybe Faulkner was trying to mirror the disintegration of the Compson family over time within the structure of the book itself, I'm not sure. And while I've mostly praised Faulkner's writing techniques here, his characters are also absolutely incredible and their individual perspectives read very differently. It really feels like Faulkner was one of those standout writers like Flaubert and Dostoevsky who had an excellent grasp on human psychology decades before the psychology we know of today even became accepted in the mainstream. I see a lot of more modern writers try to incorporate psychology but they do so in a way that's overly reductive, usually boiling down entire motivations and personalities to a single event in their characters' pasts. But Faulker writes characters whose motivations are complex to the point where they themselves aren't even aware of what is driving them. In fact a recurring theme of the book is how there's usually no single one point in the past they could have changed to solve their problems. Their actions and inner selves are complex without coming off as wildly out of character, which is very difficult for even good writers to pull off.

In short, you should read it, and then read it again a few more times because it's such an impressive example of a writer having mastery over his craft. The way Faulkner used stream-of-consciousness to depict emotions and memories in a non-linear way that's closer to how we actually experience them broke new ground and IMO is still unmatched even to this day. It's not a long book, nor does it use many difficult words or super archaic dialogues. But the style can be challenging, especially in the first section. My advice would be to just read it all the way through once, and then go back to piece together the stuff in between the lines. In my experience the style is a bit weird but feels much more natural than the standard he said she said style most authors write in.

Anyways, feel free to ask questions and make suggestions. I'm not sure if I should do more of these. I was considering adding pictures like the popular reviewers on GoodReads but I despite those cretins with a passion. Maybe some relevant pictures and captions wouldn't be so bad but I'm not sure.

Choice Quote: "It was Grandfather's watch and when Father gave it to me he said I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire; it's rather excruciating-ly apt that you will use it to gain the reducto absurdum of all human experience which can fit your individual needs no better than it fitted his or his father's. I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all your breath trying to conquer it. Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools"

!grillers new pod