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Title: As I Lay Dying: The Corrected Text by William Faulkner ISBN: 0-679-73225-X Publisher: Vintage Books USA Pub. Date: 01 October, 1990 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.92 (134 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Faulkner with training wheels: helmet still advised ;-)
Comment: 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.
Rating: 4
Summary: Faulkner's As I Lay Dying
Comment: Nobody writes language as well as William Faulkner. That is, without a doubt, the strength of As I Lay Dying. If you've ever tried to write prose and have it have rhythm and meter, you probably have an idea of how quickly it can turn pretentious or just plain ridiculous. Most of us just want a story (plot *or* character driven) and anybody who focuses on making their writing "poetic" usually gets panned pretty quickly.
Faulkner's language in As I Lay Dying is so brilliant as to be dizzying, and it's easy to get lost in the interior monologues of some of the characters.
The story -- as most anyone reading this review probably knows -- is told from about a dozen different perspectives each pretty tight at 1-3 pages, and most offering several different chapters to the principle characters. It is different than The Sound and the Fury in that the different perspectives shifts every few pages. It keeps revolving as the story goes along, and the story of a poor-white-trash family carrying their dead matriarch to Jefferson to be buried moves forward through the progression of the novel.
Faulkner's tone is both grim and comical but everything takes back seat to the language in what a young Faulkner called his "tour de force." It might be worth noting that if a writer today refered to his own work as a "tour de force" he would be way-laid by reviewers and readers.... Yet, Faulkner is now considered one of the most important writers in American history and As I Lay Dying one of his best novels.
I ain't no Faulkner specialist but I'd have to say if you *wanted* to start with a Faulkner novel, As I Lay Dying is just about as good a place as any to begin. At roughly 260 pages, it's a pretty quick read. I'd like to offer one suggestion though if you are gonna read this: every now and again, ...read parts of it out loud. It might give you a better idea of the kind of cadence, meter, and rhythm with which Faulkner seems focused in this novel.
Stacey
Rating: 2
Summary: Dismal
Comment: I've been attempting to read at least a couple of books by each of the world's great writers. It is a fantastic process discovering new and varied genius. This book was my first Faulkner and it will be my last. It is one of the few "great books" which completely escapes me.
Perhaps I'm old fashioned, but I think good writing should have clarity. I just do not enjoy reading a passage and wondering what is being said or what just happened. This book is so abstract and filled with so much hillbilly jargon that I only have the vaguest notion as to what is going on. I can't visualize the action with any exactingness. Some might say it is with artistic intention that this vagueness is created, for "montage" or impressionistic effect. I'm surprised many people find that sufficiently satisfying. To me it is frustratingly confusing.
The subject matter of the story is, of course, very dismal. This adds to the depressing experience. "Grapes of Wrath" likewise dealt with an impoverished and arduous journey, but the strength and merit of the characters was revealed through clarity of writing and dimension in the story line. Here, character development is minimal. By the end of the book I don't know these people, and furthermore I don't find myself liking them all that much.
I do appreciate the different character first-person perspectives of each chapter, that is the only aspect of the book which I find myself admiring. But it is not redeeming. I do give it an extra star, for that reason only.
Normally when I finish a paperback book the pages are filled with my markings which highlight the passages or phrases or ideas which I want to return to some day. I finished this book without a single mark.
Hopefully I'll have better luck with Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse 5, the next book at the top of my stack.
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Title: The Sound and the Fury: The Corrected Text by William Faulkner ISBN: 0679732241 Publisher: Vintage Books USA Pub. Date: 01 October, 1990 List Price(USD): $10.95 |
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Title: Absalom, Absalom!: The Corrected Text by William Faulkner ISBN: 0679732187 Publisher: Vintage Books USA Pub. Date: 01 November, 1990 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: As I Lay Dying (Cliffs Notes) by James L. Roberts ISBN: 0822002108 Publisher: Cliffs Notes Pub. Date: 13 March, 1964 List Price(USD): $5.99 |
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Title: Light in August: The Corrected Text (Vintage International) by William Faulkner ISBN: 0679732268 Publisher: Vintage Books USA Pub. Date: 01 January, 1991 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Matthew J. Bruccoli ISBN: 0684801523 Publisher: Scribner Book Company Pub. Date: 01 June, 1995 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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