Written in stream-of-consciousness style with multiple narrators, the story follows a journey wherein the family of a dead woman try to transport her body to her birthplace in Mississippi in accordance with her wishes. When a ford across a river is flooded they are forced to take a roundabout route and it becomes a desperate race to complete their mission before the body begins to decompose.
As I Lay Dying took forever to read. It’s surprisingly dark which I wasn’t expecting. It gets better towards the end but this won’t be a book I’ll be revisiting. It was hard to piece the plot together. Each chapter is also told by the perspective of a different character and it can become very confusing. Although I didn’t love this book it was definitely a unique read.
I couldn’t enjoy this as tragedy or comedy. I just hated all the characters. I also had to consult the Cliff notes more than once to figure out something critical that I had missed. I don’t mind a confusing and contradictory story but this felt pointlessly so, not crafted in the way of Borges.
I started reading this book in preparation for Erin Edwards' posthumanist text on corpses, [b:The Modernist Corpse: Posthumanism and the Posthumous|36419761|The Modernist Corpse Posthumanism and the Posthumous|Erin E. Edwards|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1509572109s/36419761.jpg|58116912], but didn't expect to get too much enjoyment out of it. It turns out I really liked As I Lay Dying! A great half-funny/half-irritating dysfunctional family road trip (the Little Miss Sunshine of the 1930's?)
I have to admit I'm not the biggest Faulkner fan. Too artsy fartsy, feels like he's trying too hard, making things dense and abstruse just for the sake of it, so I just don't get him. I liked [b:The Sound and the Fury|10975|The Sound and the Fury|William Faulkner|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1433089995s/10975.jpg|1168289] abandoned [b:Light in August|10979|Light in August|William Faulkner|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1355360091s/10979.jpg|1595500] and haven't yet attempted [b:absolom, absolom!|25856576|absolom, absolom!|William Faulkner|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/book/50x75-a91bf249278a81aabab721ef782c4a74.png|1595511]. I would guess As I Lay Dying is the most easily assessable Faulkner novel. I could be wrong.
One thing for sure is I feel I must read this again because a lot of it sailed right over my head. And mayhap I will as it's short enough and a quick read because of short chapters, written in a stream of consciousness of a handful of characters. One thing I kind of hated was when Faulkner himself interjected his own thoughts …
upon a reread, 3 1/2 stars
I have to admit I'm not the biggest Faulkner fan. Too artsy fartsy, feels like he's trying too hard, making things dense and abstruse just for the sake of it, so I just don't get him. I liked [b:The Sound and the Fury|10975|The Sound and the Fury|William Faulkner|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1433089995s/10975.jpg|1168289] abandoned [b:Light in August|10979|Light in August|William Faulkner|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1355360091s/10979.jpg|1595500] and haven't yet attempted [b:absolom, absolom!|25856576|absolom, absolom!|William Faulkner|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/book/50x75-a91bf249278a81aabab721ef782c4a74.png|1595511]. I would guess As I Lay Dying is the most easily assessable Faulkner novel. I could be wrong.
One thing for sure is I feel I must read this again because a lot of it sailed right over my head. And mayhap I will as it's short enough and a quick read because of short chapters, written in a stream of consciousness of a handful of characters. One thing I kind of hated was when Faulkner himself interjected his own thoughts into the characters heads as it never failed to jolt me out of the moment. I don't know that it worked, unless he wanted to remove you from that characters thoughts. I must think about that. What was the point?
Mildly spoilerish
To me this book is about the basic pointlessness of life (if you really think about it, we all end up in the grave, alone) and the absurd lengths we go to to reach a self assigned goal. The way we force ourselves to do the right thing, even though it is the very most wrong thing (in retrospect). How we pull down others around us in our selfish pursuits, even as we try to tell ourselves how we are behaving as we should, hell, above and beyond as we should, and pat ourselves on the back in our dogged self-righteousness. The stubborn insistence that we are right about something even though the cosmos is throwing signs up left and right that we are dead wrong. The promises we keep to the dead even at the ruination of the living. The dead we probably tended to dismiss or ignore when they were still alive... Why?
I don't know. Like I said, I have to do a reread and think about this. As I Lay Dying is considered a great piece of literature so god knows it's probably me.
The only Faulkner novel I'd ever read was the Sound and the Fury, way back in high school or college, but I'd loved his ahead-of-its time storytelling style. While I appreciated the way this story is also told by multiple narrators in their own natural "voices," the plot is so heartbreaking that I found it difficult to get through. I'm not usual dismissive of books just because they are "downers," but the way certain family members treat each other, and the streak of bad luck they endure, is hard to take.
Although easier to follow than The Sound and The Fury this novel is no less tragic. The story so easily inhabits the interior lives of different narrators that I began taking it for granted towards the end. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in reading Faulkner. The narrative is engaging (however frustrating) and the characters, even the minor ones, are realized at an incredible level.
This is definitely my favorite book of all time. It traces the journey a southern family makes to bury their mother in another town. Each chapter is told from the point of view of a different character, so we move in and out of the heads and viewpoints of all the major characters and a few minor ones. All in all, a great book.
