which I like very much/comma

[navi tasan]

1) Faulkner has a book called 'Sound and Fury', which I like very much.
2) Faulkner has a book called 'Sound and Fury' which I like very much.

Are both sentences acceptable? Is the comma necessary? Does it change the meaning?

Consider this context:

A) I don't dislike everything Faulkner has written. He has a book called 'Sound and Fury' which I like very much.

I think in this context the comma would be incorrect, or at best infelicitous. I think the comma changes the focus of the sentence. Would you agree with that?
I am not at all sure about what I am saying and I don't think I can even explain how I feel about that sentence properly.

 

[jutfrank]

You need the comma in order to represent the pause in speech, which separates the two clauses. The second part of the sentence which I like very much is a non-defining relative clause giving additional information.

 

[Annabel Lee]

Consider this context:

A) I don't dislike everything Faulkner has written. He has a book called 'Sound and Fury' which I like very much.

The revision below, in which the relative clause is restrictive and the title is nonrestrictive, would work well for Context (A):

3) Faulkner has one book which I like very much: The Sound and the Fury.​

 

[navi tasan]

Thank you all very much,

Annabel Lee, your solution is very elegant.

How about this::

A) I don't dislike everything Faulkner has written. He has a book, called 'Sound and Fury', which I like very much.

I know it is not as elegant as yours, but does it work. The phrase "called 'Sound and Fury'" is supposed to be parenthetical here.

 

[jutfrank]

I didn't understand your question properly when I responded with post #2 but now I do. You're trying to make a defining relative clause, not a non-defining one, and then trying to cleave it in two with a parenthetical thought.

I know it is not as elegant as yours, but does it work? The phrase "called 'Sound and Fury'" is supposed to be parenthetical here.

Does it work? What do you mean by that? You can put a parenthetical comment pretty much anywhere in a sentence if you do it carefully, with the right prosody. That's in unplanned speaking, though—in writing, things are obviously different, and it's hard to imagine a written text where one would have a reason to use this word order. What reason might one possibly have not to use the normal word order suggested in post #3?

For many of your questions, which are really attempts at pushing the language until it breaks, you're usually better off asking how well something works rather than whether it works. If you break something, it still may work in some capacity.

 

[Annabel Lee]

How about this::

A) I don't dislike everything Faulkner has written. He has a book, called 'Sound and Fury', which I like very much.

I know it is not as elegant as yours, but does it work. The phrase "called 'Sound and Fury'" is supposed to be parenthetical here.

Yes, that can work, especially if you are quoting live speech. As you say, the title then becomes parenthetical.

If you wanted to speak more directly, you could even use fronting of the direct object:

B) I don't dislike everything Faulkner has written. His book The Sound and the Fury, I like very much.​

 

[Tarheel]

It's an odd statement. Suppose you had read a bunch of my poems. You dislike most of them, but you like one or two. It would be very unnatural to say what you don't dislike. Instead it would be more natural to say you dislike most of them, but you like one or two.

 

[stanislaw.masny]

Annabel Lee wrote: B) I don't dislike everything Faulkner has written. His book The Sound and the Fury, I like very much.

I like The Sound of Silence, sung by Simon & Garfunkel.

 

[Tarheel]

I don't dislike everything Faulkner has written.

I still think that's quite unnatural. Perhaps:

I dislike most of the things Faulkner has written, but I do like a couple of things that he has written.