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.