Faulkner's distinctive narrative structures--the uses of multiple points of view and the inner psychological voices of the characters--in one of its most successful incarnations here in As I Lay Dying. In the story, the members of the Bundren family must take the body of Addie, matriarch of the family, to the town where Addie wanted to be buried. Along the way, we listen to each of the members on the macabre pilgrimage, while Faulkner heaps upon them various flavors of disaster. Contains the famous chapter completing the equation about mothers and fish--you'll see.

At the heart of this 1930 novel is the Bundren family's bizarre journey to Jefferson to bury Addie, their wife and mother. Faulkner lets each family member--including Addie--and others along the way tell their private responses to Addie's life.

Yesterday with a post Super Bowl aching head I finished off the last thirty-five pages of William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying. I hadn't read a Faulkner book since Light In August back in '94. I was hesitant because he is sooo thick and heavy at times. What I rediscivered in As I Lay Dying is how much humor he injects in his writing while still being heavy, nihilistic, and existential. What I did find to be difficult still is that Faulkner doesn't exactly hit the reader over the head with a new developement. He slips it in from the side or back door with a well placed phrase that the reader must catch.

As I Lay Dying is the story of a family trying to bury their dead mother. They ride around nine days with her in the back of the wagon in summer...in Mississppi...and its raining a lot of the time. Faulkner tells the story from the point of view of a series of different charcters: there's pretty Dewey Dell, queer Darl, angry Jewel, lazy Anse, stoic Cash, observant Peabody, etc etc. At first the story moves at a snails pace but then one gets the groove of Faulkner's rhytm and the narrative takes form. Issues covered in the novel are adultery, abortion, class, and...and stupid kids or something. Vardaman keeps thinking his mother is a fish...I never figured that one out. The book is full of classic Faulkner sentences, my favorite being, "Squatting, Dewey Dell's wet dress shapes for the dead eyes of three blind men those mammalian ludicrosities which are the horizons and the valleys of the earth."

As I Lay Dying is Faulkner's fifth novel. It was written in six weeks and published in 1930 while he was working at a power plant. I remember the quip he made to his supervisor when he worked at the post office and he ignored his customers because he was deeply involved in wiriting on the job. When confronted about his poor customer service he said, "I'm not at the beck and call of every two bit sonofabitch who wants to buy a postage stamp!"

I had to force myself to get through about the first third of the book, but then I was hooked about halfway through. Seriously, seriously warped family and depressing book.... but somehow strangely compelling. After a while you just HAVE to know what could possibly happen next. And every time, every event surprised me. Now that's what I call an amazing book!

Wow! This novel is quite morbid, and grim. Probably most analogous with some of Cormac McCarthy's more dark epics. You read on to see how low this family can sink into a depraved, stingy, and heartless abyss. Faulkner was certainly a genius.

In *As I Lay Dying* the Bundren family is on a death-watch as Addie--wife and mother--dies. Within view of her deathbed, through the window, she can see one of her sons, Cash, building her coffin. With that macabre beginning, Faulkner tells a story as compact and grotesque as it is powerful and unforgettable.

It's giving away nothing to say that Addie soon heaves her last because the real story begins after she dies. Anse, the toothless, luckless family patriarch, has promised his wife he'd bury her among her own people in the cemetery across the river. Unfortunately, it's been raining real hard lately and the bridges are washed out. But a promise is a promise and Anse is going to see it through come hell and high water. So the Bundren's set out on funeral procession through said hell and high water, passing from one mishap to the next, eventually followed by a flock of buzzards as mom's corpse begins to immodestly decompose.

The novel is narrated in short chapters, each told through a different character's point of view, mostly the Bundren family, and all in a sort of heavy backwoods patois that will surely pose a challenge to some readers--and delight the rest with its flexibility, originality, and hypnotic power.

Faulkner is the acknowledged grandmaster of the southern gothic and *As I Lay Dying* doesn't disappoint. It's part tragic allegory, part black comedy, and, for high literature, surprisingly hard to put down once you get into it. Don't try to understand everything immediately. Let the story come to you; let the language infiltrate your way of thinking, and soon all the pieces of this ghoulish hillbilly road-show will fall into place like a bloody chainsaw puzzle.

A lot of novels by Nobel Prize winners are a real obligation to read. This one's a dark and bittersweet treat.

Reviews are by nature subjective. That said, their should be a common element, an underlying current that runs through all reviews which peg the book (in this instance) at a similar level. That established, here I find myself rather baffled as to how anyone can either dredge or salvage anything from this book that would elevate it beyond a three star rating at maximum; there must be an element of consensus, because this book (or indeed any) has a basic content and structure, characters and plot that are capable of evaluation and critique. Let us call a spade a spade and not a shovel, this is a shovel!

I teach literature at university level and I am astounded how this book finds its way onto numerous 'must read' lists that appear on the internet and periodically in print. I can only imagine that the editors of such list either fail to read the entire content of said list, or they are simply keen to perpetuate the tired myths that unfortunately ensure largely worthless texts like this still make college reading lists. Either that or they simply read the dust jacket and go by the advertising copy; which according to the 'Vintage Classic' version I bought, sells this book as being, 'a portrait of extraordinary power - as epic as the old testament, as American as Huckleberry Finn'. Categorically is not, and I defy, nay challenge the publishers or indeed anyone to substantiate such a claim.

How ever you spin it, what ultimately transpires is that for any of the above reasons or others equally illogical, perfectly good texts - especially modern ones, are constantly ignored as white elephants like this go through their umpteenth re-print.

To get down to brass tacks, this book fails for a number of reasons, but amongst those I would cite the following five as being the major points of contention:
i) It is simply VERY boring indeed. A dull tale if ever one was told.
ii) The characters are neither well-established or particularly well-drawn. Faulkner's literary skills presented herein are neither worth of his acclaim nor his many accolades and awards.
iii) Structurally it is a simple narrative (not necessarily a problem), however, his language (except the odd regional accent) is unchallenging and unprovocative.
iv) It essentially fails to offer the reader anything. No new ideas, no philosophical insights, no social observations and no historical documentary per se. I think I picked out and highlighted about four sentences in the whole book, that I felt were interesting.
v) Finally, it fails to establish a new genre, a new mode of expression. Likewise it also fails to re-establish a current mode or extend and develop a literary style. In plain terms that means it belongs nowhere, has no recognisable nor definable style and yet fails to take new steps in establish a new genre; it is amateurish and unaccomplished.

The only plus point that one can give is the use of parallel narration that is quite interesting and mildly revolutionary. That said, the characters are not well enough established, nor well enough drawn as to make full use of this technique and so it simply adds confusion to the overall structure.

I cannot see one logical or justifiable reason why anyone should waste their time or their money in reading this text. Unless it is prescribed reading, in which case I would question the teachers motivations for electing this a a core or supplementary text. I think if you are studying American Literature, literature of death and dying, family structures etc. there are MUCH better books out there than this.