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As I Lay Dying (1930)

by William Faulkner

Other authors: See the other authors section.

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingConversations / Mentions
14,692215378 (3.88)1 / 630
Classic Literature. Fiction. Literature. HTML:Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time
From the Modern Libraryâ??s new set of beautifully repackaged hardcover classics by William Faulknerâ??also available are Snopes, The Sound and the Fury, Light in August, Absalom, Absalom!, and Selected Short Stories

One of William Faulknerâ??s finest novels, As I Lay Dying, originally published in 1930, remains a captivating and stylistically innovative work. The story revolves around a grim yet darkly humorous pilgrimage, as Addie Bundrenâ??s family sets out to fulfill her last wish: to be buried in her native Jefferson, Mississippi, far from the miserable backwater surroundings of her married life. Told through multiple voices, As I Lay Dying vividly brings to life Faulknerâ??s imaginary South, one of literatureâ??s great invented landscapes, and is replete with the poignant, impoverished, violent, and hypnotically fascinating characters that were his trademark. Along with a new Foreword by E. L. Doctorow, this edition reproduces the corrected text of As I Lay Dying as established in 1985 by Faulkner
… (more)
  1. 60
    Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor (jordantaylor)
  2. 72
    The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway (2below)
    2below: Both involve complicated characters (some might say messed up), crazy mishaps, and fascinating unstable and unreliable narratives. Also excellent examples of Modernist fiction.
  3. 30
    The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy (SanctiSpiritus)
  4. 30
    Getting Mother's Body by Suzan-Lori Parks (aethercowboy)
    aethercowboy: Getting Mother's Body is a reimagining of As I Lay Dying through a different culture's point of view.
  5. 20
    A Death in the Family by James Agee (goodwinter)
  6. 21
    Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward (LottaBerling)
  7. 00
    PĂ©lagie: The Return to Acadie by Antonine Maillet (Serviette, Serviette)
  8. 00
    Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders (CGlanovsky)
  9. 01
    Death Is Hard Work by Khālid Khalīfah (Othemts)
1930s (92)
Reiny (6)
scav (13)
AP Lit (283)
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» See also 630 mentions

English (201)  Spanish (6)  Catalan (2)  French (2)  Dutch (1)  Portuguese (1)  Italian (1)  All languages (214)
Showing 1-5 of 201 (next | show all)
"Literature Loving Southern Man, 36, Has Never Read Faulkner". If that's never been a story in The Onion, it should be. Actually I'm deficient in my entire Southern regionalist reading history, aside from Flannery. I've always been attracted to reading stories by foreign authors and that are set in places far away. Not that I dislike the South or anything, I feel of it and I can be as sensitive about defending it as any of y'all, but yeah, foreign places are gosh durn interesting.

But now I've read Faulkner. Some writers brush style on the page lightly, and some slather it on in heavy strokes, so thick and lumpy you might have difficulty making out the picture. Faulkner obviously being one of these latter ones. At points I was left scratching my head, as here:
In a strange room you must empty yourself for sleep. And before you are emptied for sleep, what are you. And when you are emptied for sleep, you are not. And when you are filled with sleep, you never were. I dont know what I am. I dont know if I am or not. Jewel knows he is, because he does not know that he does not know whether he is or not. He cannot empty himself for sleep because he is not what he is and he is what he is not. Beyond the unlamped wall I can hear the rain shaping the wagon that is ours, the load that is no longer theirs that felled and sawed it nor yet theirs that bought it and which is not ours either, lie on our wagon though it does, since only the wind and the rain shape it only to Jewel and me, that are not asleep. And since sleep is is-not and rain and wind are was, it is not. Yet the wagon is, because when the wagon is was, Addie Bundren will not be. And Jewel is, so Addie Bundren must be. And then I must be, or I could not empty myself for sleep in a strange room. And so if I am not emptied yet, I am is.

Well, that manner of stylistic whirlymagig isn't particularly my sort of tea. Yet most of the writing doesn't reach those heights of opulance, and after you've settled into it, we have here a compelling novel that I did enjoy. A dysfunctional family on a dysfunctional week long funeral march through rural 1930-ish Mississippi; you got your pathos, your black humor, your surprising revelations, your sympathetic characters and your crazy ones, making for a rollicking ol' ride. ( )
  lelandleslie | Feb 24, 2024 |
I think Faulkner's writing is really beautiful, but also really hard to follow. I read this in college and when it came time to write papers, I seriously feared that I'd maybe misunderstood the entire book. Years later I tried reading some of his other novels and realized that As I Lay Dying might be his most accessible work. ( )
  LibrarianDest | Jan 3, 2024 |
As I Lay Dying is an astounding book and a deceivingly challenging one at that. It's probably the most popular of Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County stories. It's a short, dark, and compelling novel set in what he called “my apocryphal county”, a fictional rendering of Lafayette County in his native Mississippi.

As I Lay Dying, Faulkner's novel of 1930 about a Southern family of poor whites narrated by its members and their neighbors, its events refracted through multiple points of view, is accessible yet somehow dense; poetic yet plain. It seems simple on the surface, As I Lay Dying tells the story of the Bundren family as they attempt to move a coffin to Jefferson, Mississippi. What makes As I Lay Dying challenging and so innovative is its narrative voice. The book is narrated by 15 different characters over 59 chapters. It is the story of the death of Addie Bundren and her poor, rural family's quest to bury her - but it becomes so much more than this simple journey. It becomes a novel about the inner lives of each character. As they talk they reveal what Addie calls their own "secret and selfish though" -their private responses to Addie's life and their own separate reasons for undertaking the perilous journey to bury her. What first appears to be a simple task– transporting a coffin to a burial ground– quickly transforms into a journey that will change the family forever.

This jigsaw puzzle of perspectives forces the reader to piece together the story bit by bit. Each chapter is labeled with the narrator’s name, though Faulkner writes his characters so distinctly that the reader would likely be able to identify the narrator even without the helpful note at the top of the page. Over the course of the novel, we learn the many secrets this family has been hiding, including knowledge that only certain family members know. Many shocking revelations are revealed throughout. And the ending - is a doozy!

Truly, the brilliance of this sometimes difficult novel lies in Faulkner’s compulsive, bleak unfolding of Addie’s history and her relationship with her beloved son, Jewel, the result of her affair with Rev Whitfield, the local minister. In counterpoint to this, we also meet her family, an extraordinary cast of weird southerners – Cash, Darl, Dewey Dell and Vardaman Bundren. Dewey Dell, the teenage daughter, who is trying to get an abortion, is probably the most sympathetic character throughout the novel. It is interesting that Faulkner chooses to contrast the death of the matriarch with her teenage's daughter pregancy. I'm not sure exactly why this is, but I'm willing to meditate on this for a bit.

This was my second time reading this classic novel. I read it once in my early twenties. Now that I'm in my thirties, I am seeing this novel differently. Families are often built on secrets, on difficult personalities, members often selfish and compulsive. If anything, this novel reminds me that I must love my family well and choose not to be selfish if I can.

I'll be curious to see how I relate to this novel next time I read this novel. ( )
  ryantlaferney87 | Dec 8, 2023 |
Just read it again from an author's perspective. An amazing, mind-boggling work, and the iconic Point of View and first person lesson for all authors. Faulkner exhibits myriad different characters all with their unique voices and POVs on a shared experience. ( )
  Domenick.Venezia | Aug 20, 2023 |
Overrated rubbish. ( )
  LynnMPK | Jul 3, 2023 |
Showing 1-5 of 201 (next | show all)
The influence of William Faulkner’s immersive tale of raw Mississippi rural life can be felt to this day.
added by vibesandall | editThe Guardian, Robert McCrum (Oct 6, 2014)
 
No man ever put more of his heart and soul into the written word than did William Faulkner. If you want to know all you can about that heart and soul, the fiction where he put it is still right there.
added by vibesandall | editEudora Welty
 
He is the greatest artist the South has produced.... Indeed, through his many novels and short stories, Faulkner fights out the moral problem which was repressed after the nineteenth century [yet] for all his concern with the South, Faulkner was actually seeking out the nature of man. Thus we must turn to him for that continuity of moral purpose which made for greatness of our classics.
added by vibesandall | editRalph Ellison
 
Brilliant and compelling...one is constrained to follow to the end

added by vibesandall | editSPECTATOR
 
In a single brief decade, Faulkner had produced more lasting works of fiction than many great writers do in a lifetime

added by vibesandall | editGUARDIAN
 

» Add other authors (90 possible)

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
William Faulknerprimary authorall editionscalculated
Hess, Albertsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Prins, ApieTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Raver, LornaNarratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
SchĂĽnemann, PeterTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Vandenbergh, JohnTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Verhoef, RienTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed

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Jewel and I come up from the field, following the path in single file.
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"She's a-going," he says. "Her mind is set on it."
Sometimes I aint so sho who's got ere a right to say when a man is crazy and when he aint. Sometimes I think it aint none of us pure crazy and aint none of us pure sane until the balance of us talks him that-a-way. It's like it aint so much what a fellow does, but it's the way the majority of folks is looking at him when he does it.
My mother is a fish.
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Classic Literature. Fiction. Literature. HTML:Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time
From the Modern Libraryâ??s new set of beautifully repackaged hardcover classics by William Faulknerâ??also available are Snopes, The Sound and the Fury, Light in August, Absalom, Absalom!, and Selected Short Stories

One of William Faulknerâ??s finest novels, As I Lay Dying, originally published in 1930, remains a captivating and stylistically innovative work. The story revolves around a grim yet darkly humorous pilgrimage, as Addie Bundrenâ??s family sets out to fulfill her last wish: to be buried in her native Jefferson, Mississippi, far from the miserable backwater surroundings of her married life. Told through multiple voices, As I Lay Dying vividly brings to life Faulknerâ??s imaginary South, one of literatureâ??s great invented landscapes, and is replete with the poignant, impoverished, violent, and hypnotically fascinating characters that were his trademark. Along with a new Foreword by E. L. Doctorow, this edition reproduces the corrected text of As I Lay Dying as established in 1985 by Faulkner

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