The Sound and the Fury and Nobel Prize address by William Faulkner
I didn't know very much about Faulkner before I dug right in to The Sound and The Fury, and now I plan on climbing the mountain of his output. This story didn't flatten me, but the writing did. It's like a feast of camera angles. He writes convincingly from mouths as disparate as a long-suffering black servant named Dilsey and a handicapped man-child named Benjy. Faulkner surprised everyone when he agreed to give an acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize in 1949. It is remarkable... a compass of sorts.