"My mother is a fish". - Vardaman
Several decades ago I read a number of Novels by William Faulkner ( Mississippi, USA born 1897, died 1962, won the Nobel Prize 1949), I missed As I Lay Dying. My post read research indicates that many Faulkner scholars consider this his best work. I was motivated to read it through receiving an E mail advising me it was on sale for one day only as a Kindle edition for $1.95. Reading it was a wonderful experience.
As I Lay Dying centers on a journey across Mississippi in the 1920s to take the coffin enclosed body of Addie Bundren, a wife and mother to where she is to be buried. The family are poor farmers from a then very backwards part of the United States, still trying to deal with race relations after the loss of The War Between the States. The story of the trip is told from numerous points of view, including that of the deceased. It is a classic of Modernism making use of several different streams of consciousness. There are violent incidents, comic events, heavy use of now prohibited racial terms for descendants of slaves, and a slow revelation of mysteries at the heart of the family. It is a commentary on the terrible poverty of the area and the appalling lack of education. In one heart breaking episode a pregnant 17 year old unmarried very pretty country girl goes into a drug store and offers the pharmacist $10.00, big money then, for something that will get rid of the baby. The pharmacist throws her out. She goes to another place and a clerk tells her he is a doctor. He takes her $10.00, abuses her verbally as a slut, gives her a bad smelling liquid then tells her for the medicine to work he will need to take her to the basement for a "taste of the dog that bit her".
Faulkner's concerns and themes go very deep into the human experience. His prose in As I Lay Dying has been called one of only three instances of the sublime in 20th century American literature by Harold Bloom. The other two instances are all of Miss Lonelyheart by Nathanael West and the "Byron the Bulb" section of Gravity's Rainbow. This book is not terribly hard read, in fact the amazing prose make make you wish it was longer. There is a river crossing scene that amazed me.
Faulkner is a southern Gothic writer who highly influnced, among many others, Flannery O'Connor, Eudora Welty (also from Mississippi) and Katherine Anne Porter. His concerns are universal. I guess an acquaintance with the history of Mississipi, especially race relations, might help to understand Faulkner and other Southern Gothic writers but I don't see it as essential.
My next Faulkner will be The Sound and the Fury. This will be my second read of this novel.
Please share your experience with Faulkner with us.
4 comments:
Still, decades after my first reading of Faulkner's works, I feel he's still undervalued as a stylist and a cultural commentator.
Mississippi shines clearly and unobstructed, needing no translation for the uninitiated.
As I Lay Dying is, I think, the only book I've bought copies of just to give away to people I hardly know. A couple of times I've called it "the greatest American novel" and meant it.
Faulkner's best book, I say, but then I realize I have not read it for so long - 15 years? 20?
The river crossing is by itself a masterpiece, as is the ending Mel describes, a whole series of events in the end. What a satisfying novel.
Whenever Faulkner threatens to collapse into a cloud of hot gas, which is all too common, I would think of the solid As I Lay Dying.
Rosario Williams. - thanks for comment. Mississipi also produced Eudora Welty
Scott Bailey. I hope to read The Sound and the Fury soon
Amateur Reader - I loved the river crossing scene. I recently saw the movie To Have and Have Not with a script by William Faulkner. Great dialogue
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