Sunday Snippet

I am returning to 'The Sound and the Fury' by William Faulkner.

I have finished reading the book and have had to immediately begin it again. Here is the snippet from a section 'June 2nd 1910'.

'This was where I saw the river for the last time, this morning, about here. I could feel water beyond the twilight, smell. When it bloomed in the spring and it rained the smell was everywhere you didn't notice it so much at other times but when it rained the smell began to come into the house at twilight either it would rain more at twilight or there was something in th light itself but it always smelled strongest then until I would lie in bed thinking when will it stop when will it stop. The draught in the door smelled of water, a damp steady breath. Sometimes I could put myself to sleep saying over and over until after the honeysuckle got all mixed up in the whole thing came to symbolize night and unrest I seemed to be lying neither asleep nor awake looking down a long corridor of grey half-light where all stable things had become shadowy paradoxical all I had done shadows all I had felt suffered taking visible form antic and perverse mocking without relevance inherent themselves with the denial of the significance they should have affirmed thinking I was I was not who was not was not who.

I could smell the curves of the river beyond the dusk and I saw the last light supine and tranquil upon tide-flats like pieces of a broken mirror .....'

I chose this piece for two reasons. The first is that it shows the continuous thought pattern that runs through the book but, also, because my main thought when reading was that it is as if a mirror holding a reflection had fallen and shattered and that it was my place, as the reader, to pick up and piece together the scattered shards.