William Faulkner
Rank: A
No. Times Read: 1
Last Read: Winter, 2007-2008
Reviewed By: Dave
Date Review Added: 1 / 13 / 2008 - Review: Faulkner apparently described As I Lay Dying as a "tour de force". I'd like to describe it as a Faulknerian feast. Before you think for even a moment that I'm going to extend this metaphor ("The second course opens with a storm-like glaze, with a side of confusion. Upon first biting into the scene where the wagon is loaded with the coffin..."), let me explain what I mean. But I don't want to do it in this paragraph. To tell you the truth, I've had it up to here with this paragraph, and I'd just as soon
Faulkner is the kind of writer that was so good at...well, writing, that he has the ability to adopt many personas and writing styles. Usually, he sticks to one for a given story or novel. In As I Lay Dying, he does it all. You could try to figure out what Faulkner is all about by reading all of his novels and short stories minus As I Lay Dying, or you could do so simply by reading As I Lay Dying. So when I say "feast", this is what I mean. I'm not saying it's good or bad, but merely that it is.
The "I" of the title is Addie Bundren, wife of Anse Bundren, and mother of five children (in order from oldest to youngest): Cash, Darl, Jewel, Dewey Dell and Vardaman. (How 'bout them names, huh? They totally sound American!) In the beginning, we find her dying, and Cash, her eldest, making her coffin (right outside the window so she can see it and nod her approval). She dies while Darl and Jewel are away on an errand (to make three dollars), and her last wish is to be buried in Jefferson, along with her family. The Bundrens live out in the sticks, so to honor her wish, Anse et al. put her in her coffin, have a surface, and then all hop in the wagon to make the long, treacherous trip to Jefferson.
That's the set-up. Hereafter, it's just Faulkner out-Faulknering himself. The story is told in fifty-nine short chapters, each one narrated by a different narrator from the previous chapter (except for the first, for trivial reasons). In total, I think there are seventeen different narrators. Each one, of course, has a distinct voice (honestly, it's like he's showing off), and a unique point of view. The narrative is semi-chronological, though often one character will start a bit earlier than where the narrative left off previously. Throughout the journey from the Bundren home to Jefferson, we learn more about each character, and what secret each is hiding (this is Faulkner, after all), and about how the family works as a unit. If that weren't enough, Faulkner, master of the word that he is, takes one of his characters, Vardaman, the youngest, and lets him loose on the English language. The first-person narratives range from fairly standard prose (Darl), to very backwoods Southern (Cash/Anse), to insightful (Addie [yes, she gets her say, right near the middle]), to darn-near impenetrable (Vardaman). He even uses space (like that), lack of punctuation in key places, paragraph-ending sentence-fragments (like in my first paragraph up there), and a line-drawing of a coffin in lieu of the word "coffin" to kind of just blow you away. It's kind of like if Fred Astaire were to attend a kid's dance recital, and then, uninvited, got up on stage himself and lit the floor on fire with his feet, all the while saying how he handed planned on doing any dancing, and he was tired, and he'd just eaten, and he had a headache, etc.
So, what do we get from this? Of course, it's always a treat to read a great author when he's on—and and he's on in this thing, trust me—but the question one must ask is whether or not the narrative tricks serve the greater purpose of telling the story. In this case, I think they're almost necessary. Unlike in a novel like Absalom, Absalom!, the plot of As I Lay Dying is very simple and straightforward. Though each character has a deep, dark secret, once you find them out, that's the end of it, pretty much. The family history doesn't go much beyond the living (or recently living) Bundrends, so there are no history lessons, and no complex relationships that need to be untangled. Without the narrative conventions, this would be a very simple story—almost a little joke worthy of a punchline à la Portnoy's Complaint. In that way, the story really is the narrative strategy of Faulkner. Without it, the book wouldn't be as famous as it is.
Certainly, though, there's more to it than just making a simple story seem more complex. And there is. Aside from the plot, the real story is about those who didn't adjust to the 20th century. The problems that the Bundrens face are almost farcical. Addie wants to be buried in Jefferson, so Anse and his family have to put her on a wagon to be dragged by mules over twenty miles. A storm comes, and sweeps away the bridge, so they literally have to ford the river. They lose their mules, and Cash breaks his leg. They have to sell what little they have to buy some more mules (mind, Addie is decomposing as the days go by), they resort to setting Cash's leg by encasing it in cement, because they don't know any better, and Dewey Dell thinks she can, essentially, buy an abortion from a druggist in town (who plays her for a sap). One of the most shocking parts of the book to me was a sentence almost at the end, when they're in Jefferson, which reads, "A car comes over the hill." A car! The Bundrens, essentially, are relics from the past. And in their dealings with "townfolk", and their poor understanding of how the world works, you get the sense that these people have been passed over, and have little to no chance of ever adjusting to modern life.
My copy of this book was a slim 250 pages, and it reads like a breeze, so if this description hasn't interested you, trust me, there's a lot I'm leaving out, and it's well worth your while to pick it up. It's a perfect introduction to Faulkner, and can be read profitably in isolation (the same can't be said of some of his other novels). For those who gobble down books at a faster clip than I do (if you thought that lousy metaphor from the first paragraph was gone for good, you thought wrong—dead wrong), it'll be an afternoon well spent.
[Note: Curious as to why this one gets categorized as pop? Apparently, Oprah saw fit to make it a part of her book club. You know what that means.]
- Categories: Art, Classic, Experimental, Pop, Worthwhile
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William Faulkner
Rank: C+
No. Times Read: 1
Last Read: Fall, 1998
Reviewed By: Dave
Date Review Added: 9 / 15 / 2006 - Review: I wasn't ready to read this book when I did, and I imagine that I'm going to have to give it another shot. Despite that, I can safely say this one isn't Faulkner's best.
The story behind my deciding to read Sanctuary is that I had just (and when I say "just", I mean, like, several months beforehand) read "A Rose for Emily", one of Faulkner's more celebrated short stories, and really dug it. I decided I wanted to break me off a small piece of some of that funky stuff, so I went to the old B&N, and took a look at what Faulkner had to offer. Turns out, he's written quite a few novels. In deciding which one to get, I glanced at the synopses on the backs of each book, and noted that Sanctuary took place (at least in part) in New Orleans. Being interested in New Orleans at the time, I bought Sanctuary, and passed on all the other classics. Live and learn, I suppose.
So this one's a strange little book. It kind of focuses on this character Popeye, who's just a bad dude. There are some risqué scenes that probably went over my head because of Faulkner's verbiage (I was in high school at the time), involving Popeye and this girl who he either kidnaps or becomes interested in. Anyway, there's this bad stuff that happens, and an investigation, and every chapter ends with an exclamation point, and I think the thing that really weakens the whole novel is the ending. There isn't much of one, but what there is is an explanation for "why Popeye's no good". What it amounts to is something that would sound "normal" to a psychologist from the 40's or the movies. There's this description about how Popeye mutilates these animals as a small child, and his father didn't love him, and he was a pariah, or something, and it's pretty lame. I'd like to go out on a limb and say that when a good writer has to rely on psychology (or, perhaps, decides to write a novel based on some sort of psychosis or psychological profile), the result ain't pretty (e.g. Tender Is the Night). This is one such novel, and I wouldn't recommend it. Plenty of other great Faulkner novels to read. Plenty.
- Categories: Trash
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