As I Lay Dying: William Faulkner (Vintage Classics)

To my shame, this is the first Faulkner I’ve read. He’s another author that has been on the edge of my radar for years, but I’ve never got round to reading him, save for a few extracts given as examples when I was studying English Literature. This is a classic that is really worthy of the name. It’s a deceptively simple tale - a woman dies and her family transport her body back to her home town to fulfil her dying wish. But Faulkner uses this journey to take his reader on a journey too, revealing bit by bit the relationships between Addie’s children and with their father - their rivalries, their jealousies, their fears, their hopes, their dreams. The story to me though is in a way secondary to the writing. It is so, so well-crafted that it is almost awe-inspiring. That might sound over the top, but I had to keep stopping and re-reading, and reading out bits to my poor family because the sheer skill of the writing was so amazing. That isn’t to say that the writing is complicated. It’s dense, yes, but dense with meaning. Faulkner offers a masterclass here in saying a lot with a few words and images. Every word has a point, has a place and is needed. Nothing is wasted. Faulkner is a writer whose works are often studied, rather than simply read. And that’s a bit of a shame. It was lovely to read this simply for the pleasure of reading - and it really is an absolute pleasure to read.

This is a classic of American Literature, a novel that I wouldn't have read had it not been chosen by our book club. I'm glad I read it, but it is a challenging read - written in the "stream of consciousness" technique so beloved of the Modernists, but featuring the archetypal American story of a (not so epic) journey and a dysfunctional impoverished family, set in the deep South. If you've read Cold Comfort Farm, you might find this novel hard to swallow without experiencing flashes of an (unintentional?) humour. Characters have monosyllabic names like Darl, Cash, Cora and Tull, and the plot centres around the death of the grim, long-suffering mother of the family and her deeply unnattractive husband, Anse. Did the author intend the book to have a blackly comic tinge to it? The self-effacing sufferings of Cash, as the family treat his twice-broken leg by coating it in concrete to help support it, is but one example. Legs that go green and rotting corpses - this book has interesting episodes! I didn't find Faulkner's prose style totally successful - a bit too pretentious for my liking. However, I think it is a book everyone should try and read for the insight it gives into the American psyche. All those strange stories and characters that appear in the songs of Dylan, The Band and the american western movie now make more sense...

I thought I had bought another stinker with this one such was the struggle with the first few chapters. But then I discovered "Spark notes" and separated out the characters and the voices putting flesh onto the bones of narratives. Lo and behold I was hooked and in I went - under the water of the flood, broken levee, drowned mules, escaped horses, broken legs, abused women and a corpse so stinky it had vultures following the trail. Always looking for the Great American Novel - Faulkner vies with Steinbeck and outdoes Fitzgerald and Hemingway.

Not my usual read, was recommended on Books Podcast as a Good Read. I found it difficult to get into, the story jumping to different character's point of view following the death of a family member and trying to 'take her home'. Slightly amusing in their attempts, heart warming they wanted to carry out her dying wishes at all costs. It's about family pulling together

I taught this novel as an A level set text and loved it - if that is the right word for such a tragic novel. It is not an 'easy read', but well worth the effort. Faulkner conveys the emotions and preoccupations of all the characters through a 'stream of consciousness' technique which captures their hard lives very precisely, from Vardaman's childish confusion to Anse's selfishness. Their journey to Jefferson with Addie is an Odyssey. Anse destroys his family for the sake of 'them teeth'. You have to read the book several times to understand it fully - it is well worth the effort. It must be one of the greatest books of the 20th century.

I just love the `mystique `of the old Deep South,It is something that I've always been drawn to - I can't really tell you why, but I've so enjoyed the likes of: Mockingbird, Huckleberry & Uncle Tom. This read so reminded me of Caldwell's `Tobacco Road' & God's Little Acre? It's not so sexually suggestive of course, though there's still clearly a bit of `hanky- panky' going on here with Addie, Dewey and Anse right at the end. The humour is totally `honest' and very similar in style, and so is the `hopelessness' of the participants! Those country folk sure do have a very simplistic way of looking at things? I smiled an awful lot through this read, and how many of us said to ourselves - "please don't go over that flooded river!" I do agree with those that say it's not the easiest, or certainly the most fluent of books to read? The dialect can hold you back at times and it's surprisingly easy to miss some of the salient points if you try and rush through it! Saying that, the book ( hardback) is only 230 pages, each page is not overly filled, so, you can read this in a couple of days quite easily. There are several paragraphs where it's frankly just babble - just accept it as part of the intellect of the players and writers imagination and move on? The story is pretty simple, but there are a few surprises along the way, I found the ending very ironic? Without a doubt a first class read, and like a lot of `Southern' reads - very unusual!

Published in 1930, As I Lay Dying is written in a language used in the southern States and is only slightly awkward for about five minutes because by then you are totally hooked. About a family's history and present state told by various members at the time of last illness, death and funeral of their mother. Almost 100 years old, and it could have been written yesterday, it is still fresh and poignant and very very well written. The human condition doesn't change much and Faulkner writes it brilliantly.

This book is supposed to be one of the American classics of the 20th century. We did this book for Book Club and it didn't go down too well. One guy liked it but the rest of us struggled. I actually only got a quarter of the way through. It's written in the colloquial. Quite a few characters are introduced in a hurry and I found it hard to work out what was going on. This might be OK to study - with someone clever helping you along but as an enjoyable or even interesting read, it didn't succeed for me.

William Faulkner give us a simple story rich in american images with authentic characters that show us the hardtime of the countryside one century ago!

According to the back of the book, As I Lay Dying tells the story of a family carting the coffin of Addie Bundren to Jefferson, Mississippi to bury her among her people. For the most part, the garbled chapters are told by her family members who apparently suffer from severe retardation and are unable to put together coherent thoughts. I had to read the Cliffs Notes to try to get a sense of what was going on, which is like having to learn an artist’s life story in order to appreciate one of his works. This is not a good thing. When broken down to understandable English, As I Lay Dying is at its heart a dumb story about a dumb family taking the rotting corpse of their dead mother on a dumb journey across the deep south. I highly recommend this book to people who like trying to make sense out of nonsense, people who like stories about rubes transporting a dead family member, and people who are pretentious assholes. And God bless you if English is not your native language.

I read it several years ago. At that time, I approached it after having already read "The Sound and the Fury", "Sanctuary" and "The Unvanquished". Therefore I knew what I was choosing ... definitely not an easy and relaxing book ... Jointly with "The Sound and the Fury", "Light in August" and "Absalom, Absalom!", "As I Lay Dying" is commonly regarded as one of the pillars of his literary output. To sum it up is, in my opinion, impossible. From my standpoint, it is a book which transcends time, as the author himself wanted his works to be remembered, since (to cite the Paris review) "The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life." This "motion" is the journey towards Jefferson to bury Addie (still living at the beginning), a journey through ups and downs of the Bundren family, through life and death, through faith and uncertainty, through trust and betrayal, through hope and despair, through love and loss. Definitely one of the best book I had the chance to read

book as described arrived fast

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