As I Lay Dying - A Review

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!"
Yesterday I went to the used bookstore to pick up The Sound And The Fury to continue my Faulkner phase but wound up with Lady Chatterley's Lover.