The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner [123]
With a backhanded blow he hurled Luster aside and caught the reins and sawed Queenie about and doubled the reins back and slashed her across the hips. He cut her again and again, into a plunging gallop, while Ben’s hoarse agony roared about them, and swung her about to the right of the monument. Then he struck Luster over the head with his fist.
“Dont you know any better than to take him to the left?” he said. He reached back and struck Ben, breaking the flower stalk again. “Shut up!” he said. “Shut up!” He jerked Queenie back and jumped down. “Get to hell on home with him. If you ever cross that gate with him again, I’ll kill you!”
“Yes, suh!” Luster said. He took the reins and hit Queenie with the end of them. “Git up! Git up, dar! Benjy, fer God’s sake!”
Ben’s voice roared, and roared. Queenie moved again, her feet began to clop-clop steadily again, and at once Ben hushed. Luster looked quickly back over his shoulder, then he drove on. The broken flower drooped over Ben’s fist and his eyes were empty and blue and serene again as cornice and façade flowed smoothly once more from left to right, post and tree, window and doorway and signboard each in its ordered place.
New York, N.Y.
October 1928
Editor’s Note
This new edition of The Sound and the Fury is based upon a comparison of Faulkner’s holograph manuscript, the carbon typescript (both documents in the Faulkner Collection of the Alderman Library at the University of Virginia), and the 1929 Cape & Smith first edition. Every effort has been made to produce a text which conforms to Faulkner’s “final intentions” for the novel; unfortunately, the relationships among the extant manuscript and the printed materials, and the little we know about the circumstances of editing, proofreading, and publication make it impossible to reconstruct in all cases exactly what those “final intentions” were. That is, there are numerous differences between the carbon typescript and the first edition; but since neither the setting copy (the typescript actually sent to the editor and compositor) nor any set of galleys has been preserved, there is no way to determine with certainty whether any single variant is the result of Faulkner’s changes on typescript or galleys, of an editor’s intervention at any point in the publishing process, or of a compositor’s errors in setting type. In general, this edition reproduces the text of the carbon typescript unless there was compelling reason to accept any reading from the 1929 edition. Faulkner’s holograph manuscript has been consulted regularly to help solve textual problems.
There is not enough space here to provide a complete textual apparatus for this novel. The tables appended are intended merely to record, for the interested reader, a highly selective sampling of some of the more significant variations among the present text, the carbon typescript, and the first edition. Table A records differences between the present text and the 1929 first edition; Table B, differences between this text and the carbon typescript. Both tables are keyed to page and line numbers of the present text. The reading to the left of the bracket is the reading of the new edition; in Table A, the reading to the right of the bracket is that of the 1929 text; in Table B, of the carbon typescript.
TABLE A
Differences between the present text and the 1929 Cape & Smith first edition:
1. Are you. Are you.] Are you.
2. Open] “Open
3. Versh.] Versh.”
4. Spread] “Spread
5. floor.] floor.”
6. Now] “Now
7. feet.] feet.”
8. stooped] stopped
9. You] “You
10. Quentin.] Quentin.