Critic’s Notebook: Novel Approach

by Hilton Als

Unlike many novelists before and after him, William Faulkner didn’t particularly yearn to work in the theatre. Perhaps his experiences as a screenwriter satisfied whatever theatrical bug he might have picked up when he ventured beyond the confines of his Oxford, Mississippi, farm. Still, the dramatic form held some interest for him. Part of his 1951 novel, “Requiem for a Nun,” is written as a play; Albert Camus was so impressed by its possibilities that he adapted it for the stage in 1956. Now the collaborative group Elevator Repair Service- which has made quite a splash with its adaptation of Fitzgerald’s masterwork “The Great Gatsby”- has taken on the first chapter of Faulkner’s heartbreaking 1929 novel, “The Sound and the Fury.” Told from the point of view of Benjy, a mentally challenged man, that section of the book is redolent of the love that Benjy has for his older sister, Caddy- and her utterly compassionate love for him. Several actors take on both roles, the better to express, perhaps, Faulkner’s experimentalism, and the myriad dramas contained within the self.

View the original article on The New Yorker’s website here .