As usual this post begins in a bookstore, where I came upon Sally Mann’s beautiful and instantly classic book, Immediate Family. This book and I have crossed paths a number of times before, but up until now while looking at it I’d never thought of Caddy from Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury. Now I can’t seem to separate them. If you know that Faulkner once wrote, to paraphrase, that the entire story of The Sound and the Fury arose from imagining the sight of a girl in dirty underwear climbing a tree, then the parallel may make sense to you too. That Mann and Faulkner’s works are both so intrinsically tied to the South and the gothicism of the South is also an obvious similarity.

Anyway, if you’ve not taken up either of these books, I suggest to.

photo: from Immediate Family (1990), © Sally Mann.

photo: from Immediate Family (1990), © Sally Mann.

On a separate note, it’s well known too that the title of The Sound and the Fury came from the Old Bards, Macbeth. I’ve always adored the passage, which is a soliloquy of Macbeth’s (and also a friendly reminder to read more Shakespeare):

text: Macbeth, Act V, Scene V. By William Shakespeare.