Faulkner's distinctive narrative structures--the uses of multiple points of view and the inner psychological voices of the characters--in one of its most successful incarnations here in As I Lay Dying. In the story, the members of the Bundren family must take the body of Addie, matriarch of the family, to the town where Addie wanted to be buried. Along the way, we listen to each of the members on the macabre pilgrimage, while Faulkner heaps upon them various flavors of disaster. Contains the famous chapter completing the equation about mothers and fish--you'll see.
Author: William Faulkner
Genre: Novel
Publisher: Modern Library (November 28, 2000)
Media type: Hardcover, Paperback, Kindle, Audio Book
Pages: 288 pages
ISBN-13: 978-0375504525
Original publication date: 1930
Reader Review
Faulkner with training wheels: helmet still advised ;-)
To quote the briefest chapter, the one that would surely catch your eye if you picked it off a shelf and skimmed through it: "My mother is a fish."
As with his stunning _The_Sound_and_the_Fury_ and _Absalom_Absalom_, this book makes use of the author's masterful use of stream-of-conscious writing to render an entire reality with internal monologues. The story unfolds as you construct it from the observations and responses of the characters. Though briefer and less challenging than these other two books, it's as absorbing a read as they have been for decades. When you reach the end, you can imagine that you'll pick up the book again someday, sure there's more to explore.
The structure is simple once you get the hang of it. Each chapter is the name of a particular character in the story of the family of Addie Bundren, dead in the first few pages, and being transported by her clan to the land of her birth for burial-by wagon, in the heat and dust, over rivers, for weeks, before the vacuum seal... There is no "Once upon a time." Instead, whatever that character is thinking at the instant the chapter begins is what you're reading. Soon, you know who everyone is and what she thinks of everyone else. The effect of this structure is that you can inhabit the narrative as each of the players, can see how events are interpreted differently. It's also like a mystery-someone will have troubled thoughts about something you can't quite distinguish; then, twenty pages later, you figure out what they've been talking about and you flip backward in a frenzy to see how the early references to the issue flesh out the story. This is a terribly rewarding way of reading.
This is a great first Faulkner for everyone. You develop the ability to read his complex novels by virtue of the simplicity of the story and the mostly brief chapters, each from a fresh point of view. You learn to read on if you don't get something. (Important skill: Faulkner is one of my absolute favorite authors since high school, and one of my favorite things is that you have to trust the story to tell you what you need to know in time. Not only do you get the reward of context for the occasional non sequitur, but you have the thrill of anticipation when something weird happens. This book is a great example of how, unlike Hemingway, where you have to read a basically boring story over and over to understand all the juicy stuff, Faulkner gives you nibbles of fantastic plot to hold you through the ultimate analysis.
- by notaprofessional
Rubbernecking on the Literary Highway
I was re-reading this book last week, pen and highlighter in hand, when my husband walked into the living room and said, "What are you reading?" I lifted the cover. "Is it any good?" To which I replied, "No," and he responded, "Why are you reading it?" And, slightly irritated, I said, "For the same reason you are watching the American Idol Audition show. It's DEFINITELY not good, but you can't look away."
And so it is with most of Faulkner's work. As a reader, you should not go into his work expecting anything "good." You won't find an easy or clear plotline, clear language, or (and this is USUALLY a major gripe of mine) likeable characters. But even though you don't really like what you are reading, you just have to know how it ends. You have to know what makes these reprehensible people tick. And, surprisingly enough, you are usually unsatisfied in the end, but not so much that you don't want to double back and have one more look at the car-wreck that is the work of Faulkner.
And so it is with *As I Lay Dying*. It's a fascinating piece of work, masterfully crafted, ultimately depressing, and darkly funny all at once. Having been to Rowan Oak a few times, I can see Faulkner sitting in his front garden chuckling over the idea of Vardaman's infamous "My Mother is a fish," chapter and how it captivated the world with it's "brilliance."
I also have no doubt, having grown up in Mississippi, that he was writing about real people, warts and all. I'm probably related to some of them. Maybe for that reason, Faulkner reads a little differently to locals. While I certainly appreciate his literary genius, the truth and realism of what he wrote also shines through. Reading Faulkner is a little like attending a funeral in Mississippi, something that closely resembles a family reunion set anywhere else - everybody's talking at once (in the most genteel manner, except for that blacksheep son - we all know he's not his Daddy's child, bless his heart - who keeps using bad language) about stuff that would absolutely curl the toenails of anyone is polite "society." The stream-of-consciousness style reminds me very much of what I picked up on as a child overhearing these conversations in the viewing room of the funeral parlor.
So . . . read with an open mind. And if the humor throws you at first, find a copy of the short story of *A Rose for Emily*. It will help you to better understand what Faulkner considered funny. Though off on other literary journeys, I'm sure that eventually my morbid curiousity will draw me back to this trainwreck again before too long . . . just can't stop looking . . .
- by Alesha N. Gates "Christian, Mother, Daughter, Teacher, Friend"
My mother is a fish
As I Lay Dying came right on the heels of The Sound And The Fury, and carried that novel's main stylistic technique - the distortion of time and truth by means of the varying, highly subjective viewpoints of completely different narrators - to its logical conclusion. While its predecessor contained a whole section told from the third person, in an attempt to clarify the wild images and impressions roiling in the other sections, As I Lay Dying is told in its entirety in the first person, by fifteen different people, each of whom talks for about four pages at a time. These are people in some way connected to the Bundren family, who got together to take the dead body of their matriarch Addie Bundren to her hometown of Jefferson for burial, in accordance with a longtime wish of hers. Inevitably, chaos ensues, as not one of the family members particularly cares for any of the others, many of them have their own hidden problems eating them from the inside, and there are plenty of things to hamper their progress along the way.
Despite all that has been said about Faulkner's "difficulty," this is not a difficult novel to read. It's certainly much easier than Benjy's or Quentin's chapters in The Sound And The Fury, and those were still comprehensible (after a bit of effort). You are told at the beginning of each monologue who will be talking, and although the prose gets rather oblique rather often, Faulkner does not resort to that cheap modernist trick of convoluted, excessively complex or just completely invented verbiage. The words are simple; it's what they mean that's complicated. The extreme subjectivity, however, sometimes has an unintended negative effect: the scene where the Bundrens try to get across a swollen river should have been gripping, but comes across as muddled.
In order for this novel to have been a complete success, it was necessary to give each narrator a truly unique and distinctive voice. And here is where Faulkner was put to a real test. It's not easy, after all, to write from fifteen wholly unique perspectives. What's surprising is the extent to which he succeeded: you can recognize Anse's hypocrisy, Cash's levelheadedness and sympathy, Cora's superciliousness and Darl's alienation when you see them without having to check the title of the chapter. Dewey Dell's monologues are always more scattered, more impressionistic and more colourful than any others; perhaps Faulkner was making the point that women think in a fundamentally different, more turbulent and more beautiful, way than men. However, he stumbled when creating Vardaman's perspective, which is neither as believable nor as distinct as the others. And many of the less important narrators all sound like watered-down Jason Compsons. In addition, Faulkner occasionally falls into the trap of self-indulgence, most frequently during Darl's existential soliloquies concerning the nature of "is" and "was." These are neither credible nor insightful. Nor is Darl's end particularly convincing; though the events of the book understandably agitate him, what he supposedly does goes against the state of his mind as shown in his chapters.
There are some rather fine parts in As I Lay Dying. Darl's last monologue is just plain disturbing. Peabody's rage at Anse perfectly reflects the sentiments of the reader. Dewey Dell's inner dilemma is affecting. The dialogue is very well written. However, it isn't a _great_ novel. It lacks the tempestuous passions flying in The Sound And The Fury. It isn't as consistently compelling as that novel. It also lacks that novel's doomy atmosphere, its proud epic feel, its moments of reflection and its occasional stabbing poignancy. Basically, the stylistic achievement makes it a worthy step forward, but it is not as illuminating, as powerful or as original as its predecessor, and it isn't an unqualified success.
- by Angry Mofo "angrymofo"
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