As I Lay Dying | William Faulkner | Difficult At First, But The Journey Is Worth It

As I Lay Dying | William Faulkner | The dialog is like "music" and you hear it. A stream of Consciousness, first class approach to telling a story

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As I Lay Dying

	As I Lay Dying William Faulkner Vintage, 1991 - 288 pages average customer review:based on 192 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Difficult At First, But The Journey Is Worth It

The story of a rural Mississippi family who are on a mission to take their matriarch back to the town of her birth to bury her. The story is told through the voices of her family, friends, and various people encountered along the journey.

Sometimes humorous, sometimes sad, this novel has a very real feel to it. Even though these characters at times seem almost like stereotypes, they really do appear to be simple, country people living during a time when the rest of the world is leaving them behind.

At first, I found the novel a little difficult to get into, as relationships are not easily defined and each chapter is from the viewpoint of another character. However, this difficulty did not last long at all. Before I knew it I was swept up in the story and in each character's turmoil. I do think this novel required a little bit of patience - more so than the average reader gives with dime store "books of the week" - but the journey was worth it, in my opinion.

This was the first book I'd read by William Faulkner. I had always been a little intimidated by him, I think, but this certainly will not be the last!

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The dialog is like "music" and you hear it. A stream of Consciousness, first class approach to telling a story

The story is set in Yoknapatawpha County. As you begin to read you seem to step into a different time and place. It is the dialog, the tone, and voice presented that makes this book such a positive experience.
This is the story of Addie Bundren, the mother, and of her family and how they wait and then deal with her death. It also is the struggle to bury her and how that struggle is met with by each of the characters. It starts out with her lying on her bed waiting to dye. Close by her son Cash is sawing and hammering together her coffin. Another son Darl talks another brother Jewel into going to get a load of lumber for the coffin.
The events are told over 59 chapters from the point of view of 15 different narrators. Each chapter is the point of view of one character-narrator. By the time you get through the trip and events you have heard the points of view of all of them and even the thinking of Addie from inside her coffin as she lay then dead.
It is the approach and style of telling the story that is most interesting. The words bring the characters to life. Each seems to compliment each other is rhyme and tempo but each looks at the events different.
The writing style is called "stream of consciousness:" and it is a method where you feel the inner thinking and reactions of the narrator who points out much more than the simple events in the words they express. You seem to hear their inner thoughts.
This book is considered Faulkner's best novel. It is not easy to read. It may take several readings and it is better read slowly trying to listen to the words.

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a Faulkner for the masses

I enjoyed this one a lot more than The Sound and the Fury - it didn't make me want to pound my head on the wall in the least.

The short chapters kept the pace going, and once I got a feel for the characters the different viewpoints in each chapter worked very well.

The foreshadowing of events through hints from different perspectives kept the interest up until the action in question was fully revealed.

Not a "dumbed-down" novel, but much more accessible and enjoyable to read.

Faulkner was no fish

This breakthrough novel written in 1929 and published in 1930 tells its story through multiple- narrators each of whom has his or her own distinctive character , perspective and style. The technique used here is also used in a more perfect way and with more distinct voices in Faulkner's greater masterpiece , "The Sound and the Fury". Here Addie Bundren the mother of the family lies dying.(The title is taken from Agamemmon 's words in the Odyssey, "As I lay dying, the woman with the dog's eyes would not close my eyes as I descended into Hades".)
She insists as act of revenge upon her selfish, lazy husband Anse to have her burial in Jefferson. The story the book will tell will be the journey towards that burial. Addie's children Darl, the most sane at first and Cash the skilled carpenter who dries to build her coffin in a way easy for her to rest in, Jewel the illegitimate one and her favorite the son of the preacher she has had an affair with, Dewey Dell the only girl who herself is in a compromised position, pregnant by her boyfriend Larl, and Vardamon the youngest who sees all of reality unclearly in mixed- up pictures, each tell the story as stream- of - consciousness narrative. Each of the fifty- nine chapters has a character doing the telling in its own way. Through this technique we get to see more intimately each character and their relations with each other. The story not an easy one contains violence greed lust and disruption, but also in certain relations and moments signs of more caring relations, as in Darl who eventually goes mad feeling for his mother, or Dewey Dell's caring for all the children.
This is one of Faulkner's most famous novels and if not in the very first rank is still a remarkable, powerful, innovative and passionately alive one.
Faulkner was no fish.

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Short read, but good

I usually don't like Faulkner, but this book was quick and easy to follow. The differing narratives gave a lot of life to the story and the dialects and personalities within didn't really take away from the plot going on. Overall the plot of taking the mother to be buried seemed like a vehicle to use the device of multiple narratives.

I can see why it's a classic, but personally it isn't my cup of tea.

reviews: 1, 2, 3, page 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13

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