As I Lay Dying - Wow

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Note: This is not a book review. I'd like to discuss the book.

I just finished As I Lay Dying, and I was blown away. I've read a few Faulkner books, and this is the first one that I've really loved.

I'm just wondering what others thought of the book and what you got out of it. I used the Sparknotes as I read to just make sure I was clear on what was happening--the chapter summaries, not the analysis. I read the analysis afterwards and found it interesting. As I read it, I just enjoyed the language and the different points of views rather than trying to find all the symbolism and what-not.

[dfloyd]

It was Faulkner's satire on country folk. He wrote it on a night job he had as a boiler attendent, which means he wrote it in longhand, although most did in those days. To see the real brilliance of Faulkner, read, if you haven't already, Absolom, Absolom or Tthe Sound and the Fury.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

I'm planning on reading The Hamlet and the rest of the Snopes trilogy. I've tried The Sound and the Fury, but the first point of view really tripped me up. I need to give it another try. I've read Light in August, which didn't impress me at all.

[The Comedian]

I really enjoyed As I Lay Dying too. I read it in grad school, so the conversation around it was great. It lead me to read several other Faulkner works -- The Sound the the Fury, Light in August, and Sanctuary. The latter novel, Sanctuary, I think is highly under-rated. It's another Faulkner work that's well worth anyone's time.

[Blasarius '33]

Absolutely love this book--it's a top tenner. The Bundrens are one of the funnest families in all American literature. How could they not be, with a leader like Anse?
I remember reading it for the first time, being dragged helplessly along from narrator to narrator felt a little like what was happening to the Bundrens.

Little side note, a while back I saw a guy wearing a t-shirt that just said, "My mother is a fish." I couldn't quite place it till I got home and googled it. Cracked me up.

[qimissung]

http://www.zazzle.com/my_mother_is_a_fish_tshirt-235017686356341108

Here you go, guys. Enjoy. :D I haven't read "As I lay Dying". The only Faulkner novel I've read is "The Sound and The Fury" which is really, really good. I read it in college and met with my professor to discuss it, which is probably the only way I could have gotten through it.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

I've heard a lot of people say AILD is supposed to be funny. Aside from a few lines here and there, and the absurd ending, I gotta say I found it more depressing than funny. I get that it's supposed to be very dark humor, and I'm not adverse to that (heck, I was recently laughing my head off at the Coens brother's A Serious Man), but I just couldn't find the humor.

Also, I didn't really get the "my mother's a fish" / "my mother's a horse" similes. What was the symbolism/allusion/message supposed to be there?

Also, some of you may find this funny. There's a heavy metal band named As I Lay Dying, who did name themselves after the novel. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAsHC6m_IUU

[Blasarius '33]

Also, I didn't really get the "my mother's a fish"
In an earlier Vardaman chapter he talks/thinks about chopped up pieces of fish and how the pieces are not a fish anymore. His simple mind equates the dead fish with his dead mother.

I think the Bundrens are great fun, but I wouldn't use the word 'funny' to describe As I Lay Dying. Well, Anse and the teeth are a little funny I guess. I like the word you used, absurd, much better. It's too powerful a book to just be called 'funny.'

[fb0252]

if you are able to find an intelligent passage in that book with a search warrant, post it. i am unable to get the fascination with this drunk Faulkner, but, that's just me. sure, there's a few memorable images in there. the story is sort of cute. otherwise, blah.

[First thoughts]

Definitely a powerful book, really ought to get round to reading more of Faulkner's work.

Anyone else see parallel's to L'Étranger in this book? I may be misremembering it, but Darl didn't fit in because he was the one person in his world who was subjective and logical, in the same way that Meursault was an "outsider" because he was the only person in his world who told the truth.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Darl begins as a sensible character (really the only one in the novel at first, Cash later taking his place) but slowly degenerates into schizophrenic madness.

[First thoughts]

Maybe you're right, but I never really saw it as that. When did he ever show himself to be mad? He burned the barn, which was immoral, but nevertheless had a logical purpose. He stops Jewel getting in a fight. He recommends taking Cash to the doctors before burying his mother.

He was thought mad by everyone else because they didn't understand him. The only real sign of madness was his laughter at the end, but wasn't that just him recognising the ridiculousness of it all?

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Read his last chapter again. It's completely incoherent, as he switches from referring to himself in the first and third person. But, you could be right. Insanity is in the eye of the holder, lol.

[stlukesguild]

if you are able to find an intelligent passage in that book with a search warrant, post it. i am unable to get the fascination with this drunk Faulkner, but, that's just me. sure, there's a few memorable images in there. the story is sort of cute. otherwise, blah.

Once again we return to the immortal words of Oscar Wilde...

The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography...
It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.

...and Lex Luthor:

Some people can read War and Peace and come away thinking it's a simple adventure story. Others can read the ingredients on a chewing gum wrapper and unlock the secrets of the universe.

In other words... criticism reveals as much or more about the critic than it does about the author in question.

[stlukesguild]

Personally, I love As I Lay Dying. It remains my favorite Faulkner book. I find the book to be quite comic... darkly comic... in the manner of Flannery O'Connor and Kafka... the absurdity of the narrative... the accumulation of one layer after another of the most pathetic occurrences eventually struck me as ridiculous to such an extent that I was soon bursting out with laughter... but then again I may have a darkly warped sense of humor.

[sixsmith]

Personally, I love As I Lay Dying. It remains my favorite Faulkner book. I find the book to be quite comic... darkly comic... in the manner of Flannery O'Connor and Kafka... the absurdity of the narrative... the accumulation of one layer after another of the most pathetic occurrences eventually struck me as ridiculous to such an extent that I was soon bursting out with laughter... but then again I may have a darkly warped sense of humor.

It is my favourite Faulkner novel too, but that is saying little given the relatively low esteem in which I hold some of his other work. The multiple narratives are expertly handled and prove an excellent device through which to view the accumulated tragedies, which, cf St Lukes, left me in a rather sombre state to say the least.

[fb0252]

St. Lukes you quoted O. Wild and Lex Luther. How about something memorable from As I Lay Dying? Gauntlet. You are correct completely. I fail to get it. Although, I thought Kafka terrific in comparison.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

You could pretty much just quote all of As I Lay Dying. . . .

As for the humor, it's always been harder for me to decipher humor in books than in the visual format. It's something I am getting better at, but still working on. I think I'll "get it" more on the second read.

[sixsmith]

St. Lukes you quoted O. Wild and Lex Luther. How about something memorable from As I Lay Dying? Gauntlet. You are correct completely. I fail to get it. Although, I thought Kafka terrific in comparison.


'But I ain't so sho that ere a man has the right to say what is crazy and what ain't. It's like there was a fellow in every man that's done a-past the sanity or the insanity, that watches the sane and insane doings of that man with the same horror and the same astonishment.'

'Life was created in the valleys. It blew up into the hills on the old terrors, the old lusts, the old despairs. That's why you must walk up the hills so you can ride down.'

'It is as though the space between us were time: an irrevocable quality. It is as though time, no longer running straight before us in a diminishing line, now runs parallel between us like a looping string, the distance being the doubling accretion of the thread and not the interval between.'

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

I'll throw this one in, also.

"Sometimes I think it aint none of us pure crazy and aint none of us pure sane until the balance of us talks him that-a-way. It’s like it aint so much what a fellow does, but it’s the way the majority of folks is looking at him when he does it."

[fb0252]

excellent! you all have needle in the haystack ability! gems indeed :) seriously. txs. very much. I feel sure I circled a couple of things when I read 10 yrs. ago.
my view of faulkner is subjective. lots that I respect praise As I Lay Dying. i just finished a second reading of Middlemarch which elevates geometrically the second time. amazing writing! and scenes. different style. yet, imho all of Faulkner--quotable and memorable--would fit in Mary Anne Evans left thumb, but then, so would most.

[Kafka's Crow]

I read As I Lay Dying 10 years ago. Can't remember anything apart from a bunch of idiots dragging their mother's coffin around. I failed to get it. I remember the buzzard doing something to the corpse. There is nothing in there that I can remember in terms of dialogue or even characterisation. Maybe too good for my low standards, I just can't understand what all the fuss is about. Dark humour? Give me Joyce, give me Beckett, give me Kafka any day but I can't understand what is so funny about As I Lay dying.

[Rores28]

I haven't read any other Faulkner but I felt I'd just drop in and validate your opinion by saying I also thought this was an excellent book :). Also I wouldn't beat yourself up about the humor thing, I think "getting it" in this instance is influenced far more by disposition than intellect.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

excellent! you all have needle in the haystack ability! gems indeed :) seriously. txs. very much. I feel sure I circled a couple of things when I read 10 yrs. ago.
my view of faulkner is subjective. lots that I respect praise As I Lay Dying. i just finished a second reading of Middlemarch which elevates geometrically the second time. amazing writing! and scenes. different style. yet, imho all of Faulkner--quotable and memorable--would fit in Mary Anne Evans left thumb, but then, so would most.

Okay, but you've offered no real criticism of AILD or Faulkner's works....

[Syd A]

if you are able to find an intelligent passage in that book with a search warrant, post it. i am unable to get the fascination with this drunk Faulkner, but, that's just me. sure, there's a few memorable images in there. the story is sort of cute. otherwise, blah.

No, it's not just you. AILD is one of the worst books I've ever read. I kept wishing for that whole damn family to die on the road.

Nonetheless, if this book is viewed purely a parody of rednecks, their way of life, and their speech, then I suppose it could have been worse. Dewey Dell is somewhat memorable as the quintessential stupid white trash girl who doesn't know where babies come from.

[hanzklein]

I really have mixed feelings on the book. On one hand, it was genuinely (unusually) hilarious, touching at times, and I just liked the setting. On the other hand, it was basically incomprehensible at times, and there felt like there was a "lack" to the book in some sections which I can't explain. It doesn't help that it took him a few weeks to write and he did minor editing. Faulkner himself had mixed feelings about the book and thought it was his "tour-de-force" and at another point I believe he dismissed it.

Basically, I think there are no real deeper, over arching messages to the book. Faulkner was just writing by some sort of instinct. He also said that Anse wasn't necessarily an evil character, that changed my view of the book a bit.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

it was basically incomprehensible at times,

It was? And, aren't you the guy who was proclaiming Ulysses as the greatest novel ever written?

[laymonite]

Awesome book! I couldn't put it down. When I read it, I hadn't experienced anything like it. Since then I've settled on The Sound and the Fury and Absalom! Absalom! as my favorites of Faulkner's.

With the Benjy-perspective opening of TSATF, I knew ahead of time that that part was based on the same lines of "Macbeth" that the title was taken from: Life's but a walking shadow...full of sound and fury...a tale told by an idiot" (paraphrase from memory; don't hold me to it!). Knowing this allowed me to just marvel at what Faulkner did with Shakespeare's words in mind--not to eschew all the other merits of the book; it's just to say I enjoyed it on a technical level.

In fact, come to think of it, I think I enjoy Faulkner's work as a writer appreciating the technique and craft of a master more than anything else.

[Jassy Melson]

I think that basically Faulkner wanted to write a pathetic novel, and he succeeded with As I Lay Dying. The part I remember the most in the book is the old man's decision to buy a set of teeth for himself rather than take care of his daughter's ailment, which I think was pregnancy although I'm not sure about that.

I think the idea of the central character in the novel being a corpse in a coffin is intrisically funny, and Faulkner milks this for all it's worth.

One of the fascinating things about Faulkner was his ability to be totally original with the most ordinary things.

[stlukesguild]

I think the idea of the central character in the novel being a corpse in a coffin is intrisically funny, and Faulkner milks this for all it's worth.

Yes, the dead mother is indeed the driving force behind the novel... she continues to dominate and ultimately ruin every last member of the family. Dad just uses her last wish (if she ever suggested as much) that she be buried in town next to her kin as a means of motivating all the others in the family to come along on this absurd trek... the real goal of which is his new set of teeth and a new wife... at the cost of the lives of all the children... each in his or her own way.

[fb0252]

ahh yes. Dewey Dell. Now I remember. It was a little short of putting a gun to my head to finish AILD, but it was punishment of some sort. I persevered due to the high ratings and good reviews trying to figure out what the fuss was about.

As to Faulkner will grant he has some story telling ability, and certain AILD contains some images that are memorable. One concerning a mule in the river is one I recall 10 yrs. out. Hoofs sticking out. The writing itself for the most part reminds me more of Steinbeck than any production of actual brains or ability. After AILD To test my perception of it, I picked a random on-line section of Sound and Fury to see if there was anything in about 10 pages remotely interesting or worthwhile. Just more babble. Possibly--question--to benefit or enjoy this sort of author do you have to be the type that is into story lines and script as opposed to intelligent writing. I think I'd prefer to endure Aristotle or (and this is low) Edmund Burke to Faulkner.

[stlukesguild]

As to Faulkner will grant he has some story telling ability, and certain AILD contains some images that are memorable. One concerning a mule in the river is one I recall 10 yrs. out. Hoofs sticking out. The writing itself for the most part reminds me more of Steinbeck than any production of actual brains or ability. After AILD To test my perception of it, I picked a random on-line section of Sound and Fury to see if there was anything in about 10 pages remotely interesting or worthwhile. Just more babble. Possibly--question--to benefit or enjoy this sort of author do you have to be the type that is into story lines and script as opposed to intelligent writing. I think I'd prefer to endure Aristotle or (and this is low) Edmund Burke to Faulkner.

Reading Faulkner is "torture"? His writing reminds you of Steinbeck rather than of a production of any brains or ability? You'd almost rather suffer Edmund Burke or Aristotle than read Faulkner again? So why are you even posting on a literature site when you come across as one who was forced to read the classics as part of a college requirement and not out of any love of reading?

At the risk of repeating myself again I'll offer up the same few quotes:

The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography...
It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.

Oscar Wilde- Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray

Some people can read War and Peace and come away thinking it's a simple adventure story. Others can read the ingredients on a chewing gum wrapper and unlock the secrets of the universe.

Lex Luthor from Superman

In other words... criticism often reveals as much or more about the critic than it does about the author in question. What does your criticism say about you?

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

ahh yes. Dewey Dell. Now I remember. It was a little short of putting a gun to my head to finish AILD, but it was punishment of some sort. I persevered due to the high ratings and good reviews trying to figure out what the fuss was about.

As to Faulkner will grant he has some story telling ability, and certain AILD contains some images that are memorable. One concerning a mule in the river is one I recall 10 yrs. out. Hoofs sticking out. The writing itself for the most part reminds me more of Steinbeck than any production of actual brains or ability. After AILD To test my perception of it, I picked a random on-line section of Sound and Fury to see if there was anything in about 10 pages remotely interesting or worthwhile. Just more babble. Possibly--question--to benefit or enjoy this sort of author do you have to be the type that is into story lines and script as opposed to intelligent writing. I think I'd prefer to endure Aristotle or (and this is low) Edmund Burke to Faulkner.

Okay, but you've still offered no real criticism than ad-hominems. You haven't explained why you disliked the novel at all.

[Blasarius '33]

you have to laugh to keep from crying. The answer to whether or not this is supposed to be funny probably lies in Faulkner's style: do his books usually have dark humor? For me, I'd say his sense of humor sometimes shows through his stories, but that it's never really a feature as it is in As I Lay Dying... in its way. Its bizarre, bewildering way. I think you said it well when you said, "You have to laugh to keep from crying."

I haven't read the Snopes trilogy yet, though--seems like that has potential for Faulkner's dark humor.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

I also really liked Jewel.

[IceM]

I read As I Lay Dying last summer while trying to read 10 books for my Senior Year in High School started. While I wasn't too fond of the novel itself, I cannot discredit it's genius.

I found the use of multiple perspectives to be highly successful and a testament to Faulkner's ability. Almost everybody except the father (Anse?) comprehends the significance of the mother's death; and while I too struggled to capture the "My mother is a fish" statement, I ultimately interpreted it as Darl's and Vardaman's inability to understand the death, which seemingly is reflected throughout the father, who, I agree with the others, uses this opportunity to better himself. I wasn't aware that this novel was satiric, as I believe Dfloyd pointed out, but I wouldn't consider the novel satiric. The imperanence of identity and the desperate poverty almost calls attention to the harshness of rural life. Is it a novel for social attention: no. However, the bleakness of the Bundren's scenario and their absurd quest do underscore plights of the poor and effects a culminated circumstance have on Man's ability to function.

While my opinions may not be spot-on, I don't doubt the brilliance of the novel. I prefer novels with themes more relevant to my life, so for that reason, and perhaps that reason only, I find this novel in disfavor, as there are others that are more pertinent. Yet I cannot find a justifiable reason to question the greatness of this novel. And arguing with the subjective doesn't weaken a novel, it only outlines the speaker's taste (or lack thereof).

[fb0252]

last night I started reading Harold Bloom's "Genius: A Mosaic of 100 Exemplary Creative Minds" l--was mortified to see Faulker on the list.

[brainstrain]

I just read this for my American Lit class. Happy to see a fresh discussion going on :)

Personally I thought As I Lay Dying was very difficult, but ultimately quite brilliant. I think the whole novel revolves around Addie and her struggle with - well, I can't quite put a name to it. She feels that language provides no adequate way to express herself, and is filled with this virulent hatred at everyone else because they don't realize how useless all their communication is.

In a big way, I think Jewel inherited her hatred. He's not angry just because his mother died, or just because his father SOLD his horse (he didn't give it away, although ultimately he accepts what his father has done), or because his father is an idiot. He's just angry, all the time, at everyone. He's not my least favorite character - that prize goes to Dewey Dell - but he definitely unsettles me the most. That kind of hatred fuels itself. It's terrible, to me, to think of someone living a whole life like Jewel.

[conartist]

I'm confused about the family's reason for having Darl committed. I assumed they were angry that he tried to set the barn on fire, but I read on SavetheGrade.com that Jewel was angry that he approaced him about his father and Dewey Dell was angry at him for discovering her pregnancy. I think she did actually say something about hating Darl for it. However, I felt that if those were the reasons, Faulkner would have made it a little more clear; during that part of the book, he put particular emphasis on the burning of the barn and it's clear that Jewel is upset over it, but that doesn't explain Dewey Dell's reaction.

As for the rest, Cash goes with the flow, and Anse just wants to get rid of Darl because he's troublesome.

What do you think?

I think you've pretty much got why Darl was put away. Whether Faulkner makes it adequately clear is a matter of opinion. I love the book for Darl more than anyone or anything else. He's almost a strangeling, almost both too sane and too crazy for his weirdo family.

[EricW]

Addie's chapter explains Vardamin's chapter "My mother is a fish."
During the crossing of the river, Addie briefly floats down the river, out of the coffin, and escapes the hindrance of her family for the first time since marrying Anse.
Also, brainstrain (hope thats the right name), got it right. A lot of the novel lies within the idea that language is unreliable; ie. the small coffin icon in the middle of a sentence, or in Addie's chapter ". . . is in the shape of a ."

How can anyone dislike Faulkner's prose? I think it's very southern and very beautiful.