Rating: 
Summary: It made me remember things I wanted to forget
Review: Initially the Bundrens shook me up. I knew people like that, and some of them were related to me. All I wanted was some distance between me and the book. Someone in my reading group convinced me reread it withholding judgment of the characters. Faulkner bombards the reader with numerous perspectives, every primary character having at least one chapter and some having several, the cacaphony of voices moving the tale foward in linear fashion as flashbacks, observations, judgments and the odd precognition pepper the storyscape like mortar fire. Some see religious symbolism in the flood and fire and in the cycles of death and decay and a new birth. I didn't. What I saw in the second reading was a casual argument against patriarchal perogatives set against the simple dignity of a simple minded man exercising those perogatives because he didn't know what else to do. His wife and children obeyed him because it never occurred to them not to obey him (there are two major twists on this). Further I saw the economies necessitated by rural life many years ago as the characters mostly had agendas beyond taking the wife and mother to her final resting place. The father wanted new teeth, the daughter wanted an abortion, two of the sons wanted things, two of them didn't. For me Addie's chapter provided the backbone of the book. I've known many rural women, stoic women who are not exactly what they appear to be at first glance. This is how it was, people, and my guess is how it still is where the roads aren't paved and the bridges get washed away every few years. Even after reading the book twice I had to ask if the ending was what it looked like. It was. Not an earth shaker, but perhaps another stake in the heart of the patriarchal mode in Western cultures. I gave it four stars out of five because for me it was tough sledding. If you are literary, you'll have an easier time of it.
Rating:
Summary: An Insightful, Southern masterpiece
Review: As I Lay Dying, by the notorious William Faulkner, is a unique and insightful novel. It is written in Southern dialect, characteristic of turn-of-the-century Mississippi. Faulkner has an unbelievable talent for writing in numerous voices; As I Lay Dying is told by the four Bundren children, Anse Bundren, the deceased Addie herself, and countless neighbors and others they encounter along their journey. The family is traveling by wagon from their country farm to Jefferson, their late wife and mother's home town, to bury her. Along the way, the Bundrens experience a tumultous series of events, including fires, floods, and tensions between the family members. Their travels are long and tolling, and by the time they finally arrive in Jefferson, it seems as though everyone has more important things to worry about than burying their beloved Addie. The book is a joke; a joke with no punchline. The kind where the joke is that it just keeps going, with no end in sight. Some may find this book to be maddening, or boring, or a score of other things. But I enjoyed it. I liked the varety of the language that was used. I liked hearing the story told from many different perspectives. I liked how it kept me guessing what was going to happen next. Or why Vardaman, Addie's youngest, repeatedly reported that "My mother's a fish." As I read through the pages, I wondered where in the world Faulkner would get inspiration for such a manic, twisting tale of an odyssey. There were times when I felt like bailing out part-way through; times when I questioned why I kept readintg. But by the end, I felt satisfies. Almost relieved. Had it not been for Faulkner's enticing descriptions and immense detailings, I very may as well have lost interest. Robert Penn Warren put it best when we said, "For range of effect, philosophical weight, originality of style, variety of characterization, humor, and tragic intensity [Faulkner's works] are without equal in our time and country." I recommend As I Lay Dying to anyone who enjoys discovering unique styles of writing and good literature.
Rating: 
Summary: My favorite Faulkner novel
Review: Indentifying the greatest Faulkner novel is a task I will leave to others. "As I Lay Dying" is my favorite Faulkner work. Granted it took me two attempts in a span of ten+ years to finally appreciate Faulkner's dense prose, ever shifting verb tense and point of view, but once I agreed to place myself fully into his expert hands did his rich talent captivate me. It was well worth the wait. A great novel for me must meet at least one of not all of a few simple criteria: 1) does it tell a great story that is both entertaining and illuminative of the human condition? 2) does it allow me to connect its world with my own experience? 3) does it tell its story in such a way that it can't be translated into another medium without severe and drastic omitions and changes- thereby making it unique in terms of form. Obviously I have several other criteria, but "As I Lay Dying" meets and/or exceeds all three. Buried in the deceptively simple story of a rural Southern family funeral ritual, is a narrative that sheds light into the critical issue of death and dying. Faulkner demystifies Death while managing still to maintain shrouds of secrecy. My own encounters with the Grim one have been made far more survivable and less terrifying since reading this novel. By telling his story from a variety of points of view, Faulkner creates a story that is as valid as it is wise. Each character, despite their shifting intellects and ages adds their own unique slant to the proceedings thereby making a vibrant quilt. As the book stands, there is absolutely no way to adapt it into a film and that makes Faulkner's work all the more unique. He is daring his readers to experience the story not necessarily on his terms, but rather on the characters' themselves. This makes for a storytelling experience not possible in either the theatre or the cinema. Perhaps with this and his other novels, Faulkner was getting back at Hollywood for wasting his talent. It is almost as he is saying "Bugger off, I can make something far different than your product!" Faulkner has achieved revenge, his books are his, they can never be properties waiting to be developed by meddling hands. He, through his characters and settings, desires to speak directly to the reader without any interlopers- the mark of a great writer. "As I Lay Dying" is a unique reading experience that I encourage all to undertake (no pun intended- necessarily).
Rating:
Summary: Simply Amazing
Review: This book is incredible!! A must read for any one who prides themself on enjoying great literary works. I had to read this book for an english class and I am glad I did. Easily one of my all time favorites. I highly reccomend it. Enjoy.
Rating:
Summary: Death Qualified
Review: *As I Lay Dying* is the center of Faulkner's achievement, a slowburning pyre of savage eloquence, a funeral expedition in the black of mourning. "I am going to write a book by which, at a pinch, I can stand or fall if I never touch ink again." Working as a coal-shoveler at the local dynamo, Faulkner improvised a makeshift desk out of an upturned wheelbarrow, scribbling chapters in-between shifts. "As I lay dying the woman with the dog's eyes would not close my eyelids for me as I descended into Hades." So spake Agamemnon's shade in Book XI of *The Odyssey*. But Addie's pilgrimage to her gravesite is (entertainingly) besmirched by the black machinations of the Bundren clan, a tragic farce rolling in the squelch of the wagon-ruts - but without transcendance, without catharsis, almost without hope. Addie's miserly lump of a husband, searching for new teeth and a new wife, Darl's simmering schizophrenia, frittering away at the edge of disquiet, Cash's halfway-demented stoicism, Jewel's hellbent-for-leather mad-dog brutality. By the end of the novel, the Bundrens have spanned the (a)moral compass from qualified heroism to remarkable stupidity to outrageous cruelty and betrayal. But their experiences hardly ever avail them to Epiphany, except in flashes for Darl, whose incipient mental illness seems a sort of Demiurgic punishment for presuming to know as much as he does. Faulkner's language stutters, broods, crackles, plods, lashes, purls, trots, sashays, and burbles. His ekphrases are sopping wet, mud-splashed, paranoid, opaque, biting, feverish, and yes, even poetical at times. Take the murder ballads of Johnny Cash, darken them further with the withering mosquito-net confessions of Conrad's stoic refugees, then spinal-tap this walking corpse with the elliptical viscerality of Joyce's *Ulysses*, and you have something approaching the claw-hammer prose of Faulkner's slow funeral. The multiple 1st-person viewpoints make us sad that none of these tragicomic voices, each splintered from an inclusive 3rd-person GNOSIS, each trapped in their own cell of being, will ever be able to synthesize their travails into an intuitive, life-affirming perspective. Indeed, the reader, who has all the separate narratives at his disposal, is not necessarily in a better position. Faulkner, for all his elliptic poetry and stirring folkways, does not throw the buoy out to our drowning readerly hearts. Like the Compsens in *The Sound and the Fury*, the Bundrens (blind and battered) at journey's end don't find themselves standing at the threshold of change, of resurrection. This ain't no Flannery O'Connor parable of anagogical rebirth and communion with Our Lord through violence and misadventure. What is remarkable, finally, is that this depraved clan of agrarian ne'er-do-wells can be capable of such feats of negative triumph and of triumphal negation, or as Faulkner scholar Jan Bakker put it, "Heroism is to be found in the most unlikely places, endurance in the most unlikely people, and both may be generated by the most unlikely circumstances. [But] while exerting himself in the most unlikely manner for the most unlikely causes, it is impossible for the individual to know the whole truth." *As I Lay Dying* reads like the episodic fever-dream of a long sickness. But our convalescence only cycles us back to a renewed emptiness, to the same heap of gristle and clutch of bones, to the same brooding necroticism. The reader may benefit from Faulkner's moral enema but his characters, Darl, Vardaman, Dewey Dell, Cash, Jewel, Anse, and Addie, are doomed. In all, a masterpiece of literary pathogenesis and one of the ten most important novels of the preceding century.
Rating:
Summary: Modernism
Review: For better or worse, this book has "modernism" written all over it. It pretty much dismisses with standard narrative and only loosely follows chronological order in favor of brief passages that reflect the state of mind of the characters of the Bundren family and their acquaintances in their struggle to get their recently deceased mother Addie into the coffin, across the flood-swollen river and into the county seat for a decent burial. (The technique is called "stream-of-consciousness.") Sometimes these character-driven monologues sound natural and unforced, as with youngest son Vardaman; at other times they are florid and literary, as with second son Darl. Faulkner was criticized for putting big words into the mouth of a semi-literate man, but such criticism wasn't really fair; he was simply using words as the medium for reflecting Darl's state of mind and it was kosher to use words that Darl didn't know to do so. Switching from one character to another gives a cinematic feel to the book--but it also can make the book rough going as the different perspectives sometimes lead to clashes in interpretation or outright disagreements. Also, to stir the stew, there is occasional humor (both black and regular) and Mom "speaks" at an unusual time. Should this book be read? Definitely, and "The Sound and the Fury" is a great companion piece. Should it be held in the same reverence as it was by English departments throughout the USA between 1950 and 1980? Probably not, but if you pick it up with an open mind you won't be disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: An Excellent Read
Review: I believe that William Faulkner's novel As I Lay Dying is superb. The novel possesses strong character development and colorful descriptions that prove that Faulkner is, in fact, one of the greatest American authors. Tragic pathos and ironic predicaments keep the reader on the edge of his seat. The novel is narrated through the eyes of many different characters. I like this style, for it allows the reader to get many dimensions on a situation. With many twists and turns, the novel can be somewhat muddled at times, however, the plot does become clearer as you hear the story through the voices of other characters. The characters in this novel are timeless and leave a lasting impression. In may ways, we can relate each one of these characters to people that we interact with in our lives. This is why As I Lay Dying is a super book for everyone.
Rating: 
Summary: Sweet Jesus!
Review: I'm struggling my way through this darn thing, and I am really not certain if I have the mental strength to finish it. I am simply a person who likes to read for pleasure. Lately I have been feeling a little guilty for not trying some of the "classics" of literature, so I looked at a 100's Best Books list and this fantastic title, "As I Lay Dying", caught my attention. A few pages into it I was confused, but I struggled on. By page 51 (in the Random edition I'm reading) I had a vague idea what was going on, a vaguer idea of the relationship of the characters, and a solid feeling that I would not be able to tolerate much more of Faulkner's writing style. I was seriously considering the idea that he was either drunk or in some kind of a drug trance when he was writing this thing. For certain, I could not imagine having this as required reading in high school unless you really wanted to turn young people off to reading entirely. Here's a sample of "poetic" writing: "Jewel knows he is, because he does not know that he does not know whether he is or not. He cannot empty himself for sleep because he is not what he is and he is what he is not. ... And since sleep is is-not and rain and wind are was, it is not." For certain, this thing has me very leery about trying other classics.
Rating:
Summary: Faulkner is a genius.
Review: The Bundrens of Faulkner's fictitious Yoknopatawpha County, Mississippi, are some of the most singular characters in literature I've encountered. They are not merely ignorant, selfish, and strange, but their outright stupidity exposes their ignorance, selfishness, and strangeness to both comic and tragic effect in problems that require only a modicum of education and common sense to solve. As the novel begins, Addie Bundren is lying on her deathbed, her oldest son Cash is building her coffin meticulously within sight and earshot of her, and the family physician, Peabody, who considers the Bundrens a public nuisance, is attending to her. When she dies, her body must lie in the house a couple of days until her sons Darl and Jewel return with the wagon to transport the coffin to a cemetery in Jefferson, many miles away. Addie's husband Anse, her pregnant teenage daughter Dewey Dell, and her youngest son Vardaman are looking forward to the trip to Jefferson only as an opportunity for their ulterior motives: Anse would like to get a new set of false teeth; Dewey Dell, an abortion, or something from a drug store that she thinks will abort the pregnancy; and Vardaman, a toy train. Not one of them is in mourning. Their journey to Jefferson is fraught with hazards. A recent flood has washed out the bridges over a river they need to cross, so they must make a circuitous route and ford the river, in which Cash breaks his leg and the mules pulling the wagon drown. On an overnight stop, they store Addie's coffin in a barn, which catches fire during the night. All the while, the decaying body attracts buzzards and disgusts onlookers, while Vardaman confuses his mother with a fish he had caught the day she died. Darl, the most sane and conscientious one in the family, knows that the journey to Jefferson is a farce and attempts to sabotage it. He is placed in a mental institution for his action, which only relieves him from having to be around his family. The novel is divided into 59 sections, each narrated with a distinctive voice and perspective by one of the Bundrens or their acquaintances. As with the Compson family in "The Sound and the Fury," information about the Bundrens and their secrets is revealed little by little throughout each character's narration, and Faulkner makes some (but not as much) use of the stream-of-consciousness technique. Faulkner's characters are much bigger, deeper, and more complex than anything that can be said about them. I can think of no other writer that gets as far inside his characters' heads and makes them so real, as though the reader were sitting right next to them and talking to them.
Rating:
Summary: A book that shows that all people are greedy in some way
Review: I read this book for my American Literature class. I found it very interesting--but true. Addy dies, and all of her children are still in shock. They all want to ride to Jefferson to help bury her AND because there is something along the way that they want for THEMSELVES....Dewey Dell, Addy's daughter wants birth control pills, for she is pregnent...Her own husband just goes so he can have a new set of teeth...This story bring up many interesting twists...This family keeps secrets from one another, just like most. Addy has an AFFAIR with the REVERAND! She has a child with him, Jewel--whom doesn't like to talk about it!! Faulkner does a superb job of creating all of these different personalities! He writes very detailed--in fact some of the chapters on Dewey Dell are a little sick. He also has the characters talking the way some people do that live in that area and in that time period. I believe that the purpose of this book is that the author want to show us the different points of views of each character--and it also shows us that people always seem to want something for themselves--most put themselves in front of others!!
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