As I Lay Dying
This is my first Faulkner. Maybe, it will take time before I read my second.
"As I Lay Dying" by William Faulkner is a tapestry of intimate, sometimes intersecting, points of view of different characters – the dying mother, her husband, their children, and neighbors – that gather to help ease her pain and who later join the journey to bury the her. These multiple narratives make every page alive with bitterness, or outrage, or dark humor, or even silence.
The book is hard to follow. In the end, I realized the story seemed simple; however, the strength of the novel, they say, is in the style – stream of consciousness technique combined with symbolism – which, definitely, is not easy. Indeed, I had an almost complete grasp of what the story was about; however, there were some details in the narratives which I found unclear. Had I not missed some points I could have appreciated this book more.
So, the other Faulkners on my shelf – Light in August, The Sound and the Fury, and The Unvanquished – will have to wait until I’m used to the stream of consciousness style of literary writing.
{May 10, 2009}
"As I Lay Dying" by William Faulkner is a tapestry of intimate, sometimes intersecting, points of view of different characters – the dying mother, her husband, their children, and neighbors – that gather to help ease her pain and who later join the journey to bury the her. These multiple narratives make every page alive with bitterness, or outrage, or dark humor, or even silence.
The book is hard to follow. In the end, I realized the story seemed simple; however, the strength of the novel, they say, is in the style – stream of consciousness technique combined with symbolism – which, definitely, is not easy. Indeed, I had an almost complete grasp of what the story was about; however, there were some details in the narratives which I found unclear. Had I not missed some points I could have appreciated this book more.
So, the other Faulkners on my shelf – Light in August, The Sound and the Fury, and The Unvanquished – will have to wait until I’m used to the stream of consciousness style of literary writing.
{May 10, 2009}
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