UNICORN PORN FOR ALL

I'm gonna paste a comment I made to a friend here, because it's as good a review as any. Here are a few spoiler-free things I wish someone had told me about this book:

- As you'll figure out soon enough, that first passage is narrated by an autistic dude. He has no concept of time; he doesn't understand that some things happened before and other things happen now. It all happens now for him. Faulkner sometimes switches to italics to show a time switch, but not always (because he's a dick).
- Luster appears only in the present, 1928, when Benjy is 33.
- If you find yourself wondering how Quentin switched genders...there are two Quentins. One is Benjy's brother (past sections); the other is Caddy's daughter (present sections). OMG this confused the living shit out of me for most of this section.
- There are also two Jasons: Benjy's dad and his older brother.
- Benjy's name used to be Maury. Their uncle is still named Maury.

Again, while there are valid literary reasons for these overlapping names, the main reason is that Faulkner is a dick.

Each of the four sections has a different narrator. The next section (Quentin) will be slightly easier to follow (slightly), and the last two (Jason and, uh, God) are more or less straightforward; I think it's worth fumbling through the beginning. But I also totally understand people who say it's not at all worth it and the central message of Faulkner's oeuvre is "I'm a dick."