Attempting to understand As I Lay Dying

[oleanderwood]

Hey guys!

I'm reading As I Lay Dying for a modern American lit course and its my first time actually reading Faulkner. I'm only about 40 pages in so far and my initial reaction is that I love the descriptions in this book. I am a sucker for imagery and I'm really happy with what I see. I am, however, failing to really grasp what is going on in this book plot-wise. I am using Spark Notes as a guide to help me understand the order of events and for example, I just read the Dewey Dell chapter that supposedly reveals she is pregnant. I'm reading the original text before I go to the "cheat-sheet" and my first time reading that chapter I did not understand that she was pregnant.

My concern here is that I am not understanding basic plot points in this novel. Usually I don't struggle with this at all. Is this just an unusually difficult piece of literature? This isn't the first time I read the abbreviated notes and went "wow, so that's what just happened?" And when I read the text, I don't feel -completely- lost but its still very foggy.

I'm in university and I love this class and literature in general so it's also very important to me to understand the text for the sake of understanding it. Is there any other tips I could seek as a resource to understand it ( or should I just step my game up, lol )? I feel silly for not being more comfortable with this story.

[bIGwIRE]

My personal opinion with reading Faulkner for the first time is not to over analyse. Sparknotes and Wikipedia can help, but, for me, there came a point in each Faulkner novel where it all just clicked.

If you really do want to get into understanding and analysing it all right away, here is a good lecture series that will help.

http://oyc.yale.edu/american-studies/amst-246/lecture-13
http://oyc.yale.edu/american-studies/amst-246/lecture-14
http://oyc.yale.edu/american-studies/amst-246/lecture-15

They are also on YouTube if you'd rather watch them on your PS3 or something...
Good luck in your studies :)

[maxphisher]

I agree with bIGwIRE. If you stick with As I Lay Dying, it will begin to deliver about halfway through. Just keep in mind that the Bundren family is "mourning" the death of their mother/wife, Addie, and the this inspires the plot of the novel which is to deliver Addie's body to Jefferson for burial. Because of the rotating narrative, you have to accept that you won't get sections of the plot until later in the novel, and sometimes, they will be skewed because they are told from the viewpoint of a different character than the one that originally began that section of the story.

[chrisvia]

As I Lay Dying is a fun novel with an overly simple ostensible plot. It is rich with black humor, and you get to savor the nuances that key different characters' perspectives--something Pynchon does to an even more obscure extent (at least Faulkner heads each chapter with the main actor's name!).

[cafolini]

Faulkner together with Twain are probably some of the best representatives of American literature. To me they are both easy reads. They complement each other very well. Twain was more direct, although he didn't lack humor and subtlety.

[chrisvia]

I'm reading the original text before I go to the "cheat-sheet" and my first time reading that chapter I did not understand that she was pregnant.

Don't be discouraged by this! I experience this all the time, especially with Faulkner, Proust, Joyce, et al. It doesn't reflect your aptitude as a reader; it just refelcts the fact that a good reader is a re-reader (from Nabokov's lecture on good readers and good writers (http://www.scribd.com/doc/40469690/Vladimir-Nabokov-Good-Readers-and-Good-Writers), which I seem to reference all the time). When you think of all the things going on during the process of reading--the physical and mental processes firing simultaneously--it is no wonder we don't catch everything the first time. So many times I've re-read a book and it has been like a whole new experience--I pick up on all kinds of things I completely overlooked before. As you read through a text the first time, you're constantly forming predictions and assumptive conclusions, which can cause blindspots. This is where you will constantly hear people tell you to be an open receptor while reading a text, let Faulkner tell you the story.

Anyway, just wanted to throw that out there because I used to beat myself up for not catching things that I, as an aspiring littérateur, should have caught. But I realized the importance of re-reading, and it changed everything.