Rating: 
Summary: Confusing, Yet Satisfying
Review: I recently had to read As I Lay Dying for my college english class, and i must say that this book keeps you reading. This was my first taste of Faulkner, and it just left me wanting more. His writing style isn't very straightforward, and he uses a wide variety of narrators, but the story itself is great. I highly recommend giving As I Lay Dying a shot.
Rating:
Summary: Read this in 2 sittings
Review: I really enjoyed this book and recommend this book to anyone interested in reading Faulkner. The different points of view put an interesting perspective on the whole situation, like the fact how the mom died- this novel is so unlike novels today because her death is treated as another event, and we get to watch how it affects all the characters. I thought the ending was great and realistic. It's not uncommon for a man to go out and find another wife right away. I especially liked the section where Addie speaks, how she needs to get away from her school kids so she can have private time to hate them. This gave a sense of her being a real character and not just the typical sad mom. All the characters were interesting & the different voices kept me turning those pages. Faulkner is truely a terrific novelist.
Rating:
Summary: Words, Damnation and Salvation
Review: Much has been said about America's great writer, William Faulkner, and about this novel in particular. He is a great craftsman of fiction. Of all American writers, he perfected the use of that stream of consciousness narration we all heard about in English Literature 101. His fascination with the "grotesque" and with the legacy of the Civil War in the South has been covered time and time again. But I think AS I LAY DYING has one other element going for it that doesn't appear as prominently in the others, and that is the power or lack of power of language.The "I" in William Faulkner's AS I LAY DYING, is Addie Bundren. And while the book is about her death and her family's obligation to bury her miles away in her hometown, Addie's voice is only given one chapter, and that chapter is in the dead center of the book. Flares and sirens should be going off. All the chapters surrounding this central one are remarkable examples of inarticulation, including the famous one-sentence chapter from the youngest Bundren, Vardaman: "My mother is a fish." Addie, however, in her brief chapter, has much to say about everyone, including herself. Her last statement, however, while her devout neighbor tries to force her to repent, points out the impotence of language; that salvation and damnation are just words. Compare this to Dickens' belief in the moralizing power of novels. Dickens believed that his art would have a beneficial effect on his society; think of all the times he addresses his readers and implores them to listen to him and learn. Less than a century later, Faulkner admits that in the end, salvation or damnation is "just a word." But after having said all that, I don't want you to think that this novel is a mere screen for Faulkner's philosphy. This is a novel, after all, and a great one at that. Quick moving (once you get the hang of the swift shifting from one narrator to the other) and darkly humorous, AS I LAY DYING is loaded with great characters and character studies. It's not without its pathos but given the subject matter, it's to be expected. This is a great place to start, if you've never read Faulkner. Or anything from the 20th century south.
Rating:
Summary: He is not easy, but this is a good place to start
Review: I started reading Faulkner because I never did in school, and as a writer myself, it just felt like I ought to be able to say, "I've read Faulkner."
Well, he's not easy. They don't call him the Master of Repetition for nothin'!
But, of the 3-4 of his books I've read, this one is imminently readable, funny as only Faulkner can be funny, tragic and pathetic as only Faulker can be tragic and patheticand as always, it's a helluva good story.
If you've never read Faulkner before, start with this one.
Rating: 
Summary: As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
Review: The book I read was "As I Lay Dying." This book was not my favorite book to read. It had a good plot summary but it seemed to drag on. I was upset to find out while reading this book that the victim in the story was the mother, Addie Bundren. I thought it was sad that she was the one to become ill. Back in those days women were important to tend after children. One of my favorite characters in this novel was Cash Bundren, one of Addie's sons. He was the most stable characters out of all of the Bundren children. He was very generous to his mother by building her own coffin from scratch. Also another character I enjoyed reading about was Dewey Dell Bundren, the only daughter of Addie Bundren. I enjoyed reading about her because her situations reminding me that other people in the story had problems as well as Addie's death. With Dewey's sneaky behavior and her unwanted pregnancy it sort of off set the fact that Addie had passed away. I also liked the adventures the Bundren family had while taking Addie's corpse to Jefferson where she wanted to be buried. My favorite adventure was when the casket had slid of the wagon. I liked how everyone pulled together to retrieve the casket. However, I didn't enjoy the ending. I didn't like the fact that the father had found another wife in such a short amount of time. I thought it was wrong of him to find a wife while he was burying his first one. That part of the book ruined the whole story for me. If the ending was better I probably would have enjoyed it more.
Rating:
Summary: Engrossing narrative
Review: William Faulkner's work has long been considered some of the finest American literature ever produced, and reading this book, it is no surprise why. His unique method of driving the plot, his pure distillation of the Southern speech into writing, and his unforgettable characters make this short book an utterly compelling read. As I understand, high school kids often read this book as part of their curriculum, and many of them hate it. I hope they give it a chance, because they'll find a great book worthy of a close read.
Rating:
Summary: The Great American Novel
Review: I love The Great Gatsby; I love The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. However, As I Lay Dying is the ultimate Great American Novel. Faulkner has taken one family in the south and turned them into a symbol that still stands true today of the American people. It's not a pretty picture, but if we're honest with ourselves--we're often not pretty people. As I Lay Dying shows us the greed of capitalism, the unconquerable "never say die" American spirit, and the collision of several separate interests fighting for what they want out of life. And that Faulkner does it all in such a short and easy read is just amazing, and prophetic. This is the ultimate short attention span read, with most chapters only 2-5 pages long and constantly shifting narrators. If you only read one thing by Faulkner in your entire life, this is the book to read.
Rating:
Summary: As I Lay Pondering
Review: AS I LAY DYING is only the second William Faulkner novel that I've read and, all things considered, I much preferred ABSALOM, ABSALOM. Of course, that was a brilliant and intricately constructed tale, so AS I LAY DYING had its work cut out for it if it was going to impress me in the same way. While I did appreciate a lot of what was going on here, I simply couldn't get into the story the way I had for the other book. The storyline is very simple, and only requires a short summary. Addie Bundren is an old southern woman, and at the very beginning of the novel, she dies. So her family goes on a long journey to bury her in her hometown, a place she insisted on, rather than being laid to rest in the local cemetery. Their travels are, of course, fraught with peril. Bridges have been washed away, food is scarce, and multiple other problems appear to impede their progress. The obstacles are just a way of getting the characters to do or say things, and the characters are where I was most impressed and most disappointed by this book. There are many people here, both within and outside the Bundren family. The inhabitants of Faulkner's fictitious southern county enter to make wry and confused observations while the Bundrens move from place to place. The Bundrens all have different reactions to the death of the mother, and this is pretty much where the meat of the story is based. But not all of the narratives worked for me. Many of them are played for laughs, but not all of them are funny. Faulkner has a very dark sense of humor on display here, which worked well in several portions, but felt a bit stale in others. The main problem I felt was that there didn't seem to be room for all of the Bundrens in the story. Consequently, not all of them appeared as distinct voices and I had difficulty telling them apart. They were interesting, but just not quite strong enough to carry the whole novel by themselves. A few of the characters are just hanging around for great lengths of it, saying and doing little. There's a character that, at the end, suddenly gets this heartbreaking subplot of her own. But it was so unexpected and distasteful, that I just couldn't really appreciate it, as moving and well written as it was. Ultimately, while I found this to be a relatively easy Faulkner work to read (comparatively), I cannot say that I found it to be particularly rewarding. Taken by itself, there's little that I found actually wrong with the book. It does a good job of balancing the humor and the drama. The multiple-narrative structure allows some interesting things to be done with point-of-view. But at the end of the day, I was simply disappointed not to be reading something as great as ABSALOM, ABSALOM.
Rating:
Summary: A Harrowing and Amazing Odyssey
Review: The audacity of "As I Lay Dying" may be somewhat diluted today, but can you imagine what readers must have felt when this first hit bookstands? I don't know that before this novel there was ever another narrative so fragmented by different points of view. Sure, other books existed that switched perspectives from one character to another--even Faulkner's own "The Sound and the Fury" did that--but in "As I Lay Dying," Faulkner takes the conceit and stretches it almost to its extreme limit. The sheer number of characters and the frequency with which the novel shifts from one perspective to another pretty much eliminates any chance the reader has of forming an objective point of view on the events in the narrative. And that's the point. Much of "As I Lay Dying"'s purpose is to illustrate that there is no one accurate account of an event, since accounts are always going to be filtered through the psyches of those relating them. Just as in this novel each member of the Bundren family has his or her own motives for the trip to Jefferson (besides the primary stated motive of burying their dead wife and mother), so does each family member have their own accounts of what happens, who does what, who's at fault, etc. This refusal on Faulkner's part to offer his readers a tidy plot with all loose ends tied up can be disorienting and frustrating to some. I know Faulkner has a notorious reputation for being difficult. However, this novel was my first introduction to Faulkner, and I didn't struggle that much with it. I think a key to understanding Faulkner is to know that he wants to communicate with his readers, he just doesn't want to do it in the convential way. If you keep an open mind and are willing to stay with him without giving up, I think you'll find reading him an immensely rewarding experience, as his stories are emotional, gripping and powerful. In my opinion, this book is a must read for everyone interested in American literature.
Rating: 
Summary: Hurts the brain a little, but it's worth it!
Review: This book was packed to the brim with dark, ironic humor. It's definitely a thinking person's read, as it jumps back and forth between points of view frequently. Sometimes it can be hard to tell what's going on, but if you read closely enough, it'll come to you. Also, you can tell everyone when you're done "I've read Faulkner." (If you're not really literature savvy, that's a good thing. It means you are saying you're smarter than them without saying it directly.)
|
