As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner

Many people are put off of William Faulkner by starting in the wrong place. Arguably his greatest novel – The Sound and the Fury – is also his most difficult. The stream of consciousness (especially in the section told from the mind of someone who is mentally retarded) is extremely difficult. It’s all further complicated by the way Faulkner’s fictional histories intertwine; full understanding of all that’s going on requires the reader to follow complexities of the family histories in his fictional county in Mississippi. The Sound in the Fury is indeed a great novel, but it really is best read after one has read more of Faulkner, who has encountered Faulkner’s style in simpler, more straightforward (for Faulkner) pieces. Thus, the ideal place to start reading Faulkner is either The Portable Faulkner (an astounding collection of short fiction) or As I Lay Dying, the most straightforward and accessible of his most important novels.

Like much of Faulkner, As I Lay Dying tells the story of people trapped by their past and by their social obligations. Addie Bundren, at the novel’s start, is on her death bed. But her husband, the lazy, often infuriating Anse, has promised her that he will bury her with her kin, a goodly trip away by mule cart. Anse and his family (his four sons and one daughter) try to meet this obligation, and it destroys the family (well, accept for Anse, who, oblivious to the damage he is causing, while feeling himself unlucky and put upon, does well for himself).

As I Lay Dying alternates moments of great drama and adventure – the family’s attempt to haul the coffin across the swollen river is thrilling (and, incidentally, was re-told by Greg Benford as SF in his ”Space-Time and the River”), while other scenes are some of the best black comedy I’ve encountered. Anse and his bumbling family take well over a week to haul Addie’s coffin across country, as buzzards circle overhead and everyone they pass by comments on the smell. The novel even has its moments of pathos as Darl, the most intelligent and likeable of the sons, descends into a kind of madness (though while madness in society’s view, it’s more sane than what his family is doing).

The novel is told as stream of consciousness (in the Faulkner sense, which is a different type of steam of consciousness than that of Joyce or Wolfe) from the points of view of the main characters and even a few of the minor characters they encounter. Faulkner does a marvelous job of distinguishing the thought stream of each character, ranging from Darl’s intelligent insight to Vardaman’s child’s eye view of the universe. He labels each chapter with the name of the character whose thoughts we are to follow, but in most cases this really isn’t necessary, as the thought patterns are so distinct.

As I Lay Dying remains, with The Sound and the Fury, Absalom, Absalom, and Light in August, as one of Faulkner’s great novels. It’s also the Faulkner novel I’ve reread most over the years (in part, I admit, since it is so easy to plunge back into its world). Highly Recommended.