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Summary: The place to start in reading Faulkner
Review: This book should be the first Faulkner you read. Not only is it glorious, but it's the best entry point into his writing style and his body of work. The reader is given the most cues to narrator and plot (pay attention to the chapter headings), and gets a taste of Faulkner's wonderful way of putting words together and his way of commenting on family relationships, purity, sex, and the South. As is standard Faulkner fare, it's utterly depressing but a book you can't stop reading and can't help but be glad you read. The characters are memorable, and their narration is wonderful, and As I Lay Dying is home to the famous and utterly breathtaking 5-word chapter (a line delivered by Vardamann that inevitably comes to mind whenever you think of the book later).As I Lay Dying will put you in better stead to read Faulkner's other (and sometimes even better) works than anything else, and it's well worth the read in its own right. Afterwards, I would recommend reading The Sound and the Fury, which blew me away.
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Summary: Dark but poetic
Review: My book club just finished reading and discussing "As I Lay Dying." All of us used Cliff notes to one extent or another to make our way through it. Most of us found it rather dreary, some disturbingly so. A loud cry was, "I didn't like a single character!" But at the same time, we all appreciated certain passages and Faulkner's poetic imagery. One member pointed out that to fully appreciate it, this book should be read aloud. We agreed also that one would benefit by reading it more than once. The first read, for most people, will simply be getting a handle on the characters and storyline, as well as the shifting thereof. But once that is under your belt, the second read, aloud, would be a more liberating and rewarding experience. I plan to get a hold of it on tape and "read" it that way for my second time around. Bleak as the lives it portrays, it is equally masterful and moving in its poetic descriptions.
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Summary: This Hard Land
Review: Larry Levinger writes that "Faulkner's eye saw life as a river running in the dark, and he felt that the best he could do was shine a light on its veering surface." In "As I Lay Dying," arguably Faulkner's most accomplished work, the author shines his narrative voice into the swirling waters of the Bundren family. "As I Lay Dying" is an important novel, and anyone interested in complex and brilliant reading should give it a try. Famous critic Harold Bloom has deemed it and Cormac McCarthy's "Blood Meridian" as two of the most important American novels of the 20th century. Why is Faulkner's book so highly regarded? He tackles many of the big themes of modernism and post-modernism: Life in a nuclear era, the disintegration of the family, death, and the effects of time and spirituality. The story line of the novel goes like this: Addie, the mother of the Bundren family, is dying/has died and the rest of her family tries to fulfill her burial wishes by taking her coffin across the county to be buried. But beware! Those readers who enjoy a straightforward story will not get it here. As with all good fiction, it's not necessarily the story itself that matters as compared to how well the story is told. Faulkner employs his trademark stream-of-consciousness technique here, and the novel is also broken up into many different narrative units. Each member of the Bundren family (and a few other people) get to tell their story to the reader in the first-person. This is modernism at its best; the reader jumps into and out of the minds and lives of different people with the flip of a page. The reading is difficult at first, but Faulkner places clues for the reader to pick up on and the story trots along during the middle section of the novel. "As I Lay Dying" is a dark and darkly humorous portrait of a dissolving family and a dissolute society. Just as there is little redemption in the death of Addie Bundren for the rest of the Bundren family, the reader will feel little redemption at the close of the novel. As Anse, Addie's husband, says, "It's a hard country on a man." Faulkner gives us small portraits of a family that is varyingly poetic, violent, idiotic and beautiful. Each member struggles with the death of Addie in their own personal way. The novel contains the submerged symbolism of Christ and the redemption of man, but this redemption will be a long time coming for the Bundren family.
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Summary: '
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Summary: William Faulkner, A great American Writer
Review: No one can write a review like Donald Mitchell, so I won't even try. I'll only encourage lovers of Faulkner to sample a modern Southern writer digging in the same fertile soil. Try Edge of Heaven by Eva McCall.
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Summary: Style of Narration
Review: Over the summer, I read William Faulkner's, As I Lay Dying. In the very beginning of As I Lay Dying I had a little bit of trouble understanding what was going on around the main characters, who was dying, and really what the point of the whole novel was. But by the end, I understood that Addie was the person who was dying and that the whole story is based around her dying wish which is to be buried with her relatives in Jefferson. The story than follows her husband, Anse and there children, Cash, Darl, Dewey Dell and Vardaman, as they travel to Jefferson, and the hardships they encounter along the way to fulfilling there mother's, and wife's last wish. One part, which by the end I enjoyed, but in the beginning led to my confusion was the way William Faulkner, chose to narrate this book which was through many different characters. Each chapter, changed which character was telling it, which was confusing at first but once I understood that it was being done that way I thought I was a very good way to narrate a book. In many other novels that I have read, the author has one narrator and you really only get what they think, not what the people who they are interacting think. But in As I Lay. Faulkner wrote this in a way which I found was easier to connect with the characters, realize more of what they were experiencing and see better how they saw the changing environment as they drove there dead mother to Jefferson. Also, not only is there a main problem, getting to Jefferson, but each character in the chapters that they are narrating, has a smaller problem, and on occasion, may talk a little about a problem that another person is having. A good example of this is Dewey Dell. Dewey has an affair and becomes pregnant and she seeks, in Jefferson, abortion pills so she doesn't have to have the child. Her problems are with Mosely and MacGowan. Mosely is the real person who is allowed to give out such medicine but he refuses to sell the medicine to Dewey, MacGowan on the other hand tries to use Dewey's search for abortion medicine as a way to seduce her. Faulkner used great dialogues, superb visual description, and with different voices to create for the reader, a scene, which almost makes it, feel like the reader is there and experiencing what is going on within the book.
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Summary: Pilgrim's Progress to the Promised Land
Review: Faulkner's great accomplishment in this novel is to use the most modern fiction techniques to create a timeless allegory that we would probably not accept in a different style. His other great achievement is to leave so much space in the story for us to participate in adding meaning. You have to pay attention to even notice what is going on, and then you can provide a variety of interpretations. This novel will never be the same for any two readers. It is a stunning accomplishment, as a result. The story begins as Addie Bundren lays dying, fanned by her daughter, while her son makes her coffin. With her husband and five children, we make her acquaintance by learning about their actions and characters. Only once does she have a role as a narrator, and then, quite late in the story. Her husband, Anse, has promised her that he will bury her with her family. Because of tremendous rains, the river has risen, knocking out bridges and making passage difficult. Despite this, the family perserveres in taking her unembalmed body to the intended burial site. Along the way, there are many mishaps and the family is burdened in many ways by keeping this promise. As the burial comes closer, new elements of the story are exposed and develop that totally recast what you have thought was going on. On the very last page (don't read it first!) is such a plot reversal as only a short story writer would normally have dared. The story is a difficult one to read. So read this book when you have time to pay close attention and study the text word by word. Let me explain the difficulties you will encounter. First, the voices in the book use a Southern patois that will be unfamiliar to most. This is the language of the rural poor in the 1930s, which few have heard. Second, the exposition is mostly through thoughts, often expressed in fragmentary form, rather than through action and a smooth narrative. Third, the narration is a partial mosaic of impressions of the characters, jumping back and forth in 2-4 page segments. Their perceptions are partial, and even more partially expressed. Objectivity is shunned by Faulkner. Fourth, Faulkner wants you to fill in the gaps, and the best way to do that is to expose the gaps slowly. Only after 3 or 4 narrations by characters will the gaps begin to emerge in a way you can grasp them. Then, you still have to interpret them. Few readers will miss the references to Moses and his search for the promised land, and the Christian parable of the Pilgrim's Progress. What is unstated is the connection to reading. Many poor Southern people of that time were taught to read with The Pilgrim's Progress as a primer. That experience helped to shape a perception and a sensibility that would influence their actions, and thus, this tale. That connection creates a wonderful series of circles here that build on one another. At bottom though, it is clear from this book that there are secrets of the heart that are never exposed in public. When we come close to dying (our own or someone else's), these secrets begin to rise closer to the surface where we (and sometimes others) can see them. Faulkner has one quirk in the book that I urge you to look for. While he is often conveying the thoughts of uneducated people, he will drop in magnificent phrases that are worthy of Shakespeare. He wants you to know that he is a learned man, hiding behind his humble bards. That pride creates flaws in the book, but flaws that are a delight to the reader, nevertheless. In fact, he takes this one step further by employing many of Shakespeare's favorite techniques from foreshadowing through nature's fury through using fools. After you have read this book, I encourage you to consider what secret desires, actions, fears, and thoughts you have which you keep buried even from yourself. Then consider the potential benefits of making these known, before you lay dying. Also, whenever things seem confused, consider how others may be perceiving what is going on. Like Vardeman, they too may think their mother is a fish. Accept their view of reality, and communicate in terms of that perception if you want to make contact. Otherwise, you will be alone even in the middle of your family, as the Bundrens were in As I Lay Dying. Enjoy this American masterpiece! I think you'll find it irresistible and moving.
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Summary: lyric prose and a putrefied corpse
Review: Read this book carefully because if you miss a word or a phrase you will miss a key turn of events. When I read this novel I found myself repeatedly backing up rereading a page, a paragraph, or even a whole chapter again. This is not to say that I did not enjoy or understand the text--on the contrary I found it quite a literary thrill.
It continually amazes me how Faulkner's prose could be so difficult to read. After all if is written in the simple patois of country folk or the even simpler blather of idiots like Vardaman or Bennie ("The Sound and the Fury"). The difficulty with "As I Lay Dying" is there is, as Irving Howe points out, no narrator, no omnipresent voice to relate the tale and point out key observations. Rather we have only the dialogue of the novels characters to indicate what has transpired. It is as a play albeit without stage directions. I read this book carefully but I was once again stung when I missed key events. It took Irving Howe's critical study to steer me straight. (Don't waste your time with Cliff Notes. Read some real literary criticism.) I won't ruin the plot for you but let's say that I thought that Dewey Dell had been able to get from the pharmacy the medicine she sought. Another point that required repeated rereading was who caused the calamity at the Gillespie farm. Subtlety is Faulkner's forte. Rather than explicit explained what has happened he carefully paints a picture with words and phrases that are non too obvious. In the case of "As I Lay Dying" this method of writing is further demonstrated by the technique of letting each character narrate what he or she has seen and understood. It rests upon you the read to draw conclusions as to what has really happened.
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Summary: Dark humor Bible?
Review: Possily. Anyone who likes the existential writers, Celine, Woody Allen, David Lynch or the like will enjoy this work. Highly philosophical. Possibly my favority of Faulkner's.
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Summary: A stunning work of literature
Review: After reading As I Lay Dying, my only response is "Wow". The intensity of this novel is evident in the characterization of the Bundren family and their odyssey to the depths of the human soul. With its true-to-life dialouge, you get a gritty unpredictable picture of south that few understand better than Faulkner. He is indeed one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century, and delivers an original, tragic, sometimes humorous account of the nature of man, that has yet to be equaled.
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