As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner

As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner

My wife and I regularly read a book together, typically a classic from American literature, and discuss it as we go through the pages. Some past selections are The Great Gatsby, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, and The Catcher in the Rye. Recently, we finished William Faulkner’s As I Lay  Dying.

We approached the novel with some trepidation. I had previously tried reading it when I was in my late teens but I found its labyrinthine first-person, stream-of-consciousness multiple narratives almost entirely incomprehensible. This time, reading it with another person proved to be much more fruitful.

Faulkner wrote As I Lay Dying over the course of only 6 weeks while he was employed at a power plant. It was published in 1930. The title is taken from Homer’s The Odyssey: "As I lay dying, the woman with the dog's eyes would not close my eyes as I descended into Hades." Chapter lengths vary, each one presented in the first person by a new narrator.

The plot centers on the Bundren family in rural Mississippi at what seems to be the turn of the 20^th century. The mother of the family, Addie, is dying. She is presented at first in a somewhat pious fashion, we learn about her demons later. Her husband, Anse, is self-pitying opportunist whose first comment after his wife passes is something like, “Well, maybe now I can get them teeth.” (He claims to have been edentulous for 15 years.) Her children are Cash (a carpenter), Darl and Dewey Dell (twins), Jewell (foul-mouthed and ill-tempered), and Vardaman (who is still at least an adolescent).

The basic plot seems to be inspired by ancient epics although in a more absurdist vein than a heroic one. Addie’s dying wish was to be buried miles away among “her people” in Jefferson, Mississippi. Recent rains have left the rivers flooded and as the family loads her into the coffin and onto their wagon it becomes quite apparent that the journey will be fraught with misadventure.

I will not recount the entire plot here. Instead I will give some general impressions that both my wife and I took from the novel. First and foremost, Anse Bundren is a despicable, annoying, and pathetic human being. Second, Faulkner’s contrast of the simple vernacular of these people with rich, complex inner monologues serves to demonstrate that just because they might seem simple-minded doesn’t mean that they actually are.

Darl is particularly articulate and there are hints that he has a “second sight” that is off-putting to most of his neighbors and even family members. He stands in stark contrast to his younger brother Jewell, who was the “apple” of his mother’s eye. Darl is thoughtful, Jewell is pragmatic. Darl is analytical, Jewell plays his cards close to his chest.

In the end, however, each of these strong characters portrayed in the children gives some part of their very being to see that their mother receives a proper burial. Only Anse gets away clean, looking dirtier than ever.

Read this novel.

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

Recently, I stumbled upon an article on the Web (http://www.listmuse.com/how-well-read-short-novels.php) that purports to help one to be “well-read” through a list of 40 books. I find such lists very appealing; however, I have my own general idea about the kinds of “classics” that make one well-read. I browsed through the volumes composing the list and discovered I had read approximately 1/3 of them already. It seemed a reasonable conjecture, based on this correlation, that this list might prove very useful. This idea is not unique. A close friend of mine had the collection The Harvard Classics or the essential bookshelf or something like that. I read a couple of volumes from his collection, most notably The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, which made a considerable impression upon me.

The first volume on the list that I had not read before was To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf. Going into the reading, the only familiarity I had with Ms. Woolf was through the 1966 film, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? That film struck me as an intense study of the breakdown of a relationship, particularly a marriage of two intellectuals. It had even been quite a long time since I had seen the film—on AMC when AMC actually showed more quality, classic films instead of original programming like Mad Men or Breaking Bad. Let me be clear, I have no problem with either of these shows and the latter is one of my favorite series of all time. I mean simply that AMC and Bravo channels used to function as a sort of distance study film school but original and reality programming has changed that forever.

I didn’t do much investigating about the character of the author Ms. Woolf prior to tackling the novel. That might have been a mistake. Ms. Woolf writes in what is generally referred to as a “stream of consciousness” style. Thus, To the Lighthouse is filled with page after page of interior monologue—the “self talk” that goes on and on. I mean that literally, the voluminous verbosity of each of the significant characters in the book makes you wish these people would take up Buddhist meditation, to try and quiet the mind a bit.

To the Lighthouse runs around 320 pages and was first printed in 1927. More than anything, the novel is a character study of what appears to be an intellectual, upper middle-class family during the period between World War I and World War II. The central characters of the novel are Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay. Mr. Ramsay is highly intellectual and keeps his focus on the few achievements in his life. He wonders whether anything he’s done will have lasting value for the human race. At one point he says that even a stone will outlive the works of Shakespeare. Mrs. Ramsay, on the other hand, seems to “suffer in silence” at the behest of her husbands tremendous yet fragile ego. She takes comfort in caring for her children, supporting her husband, and making sure their house guests (many of whom are frequent, long-term occupants) are properly fed and cared for.

The novel is pretty short on plot. There is some focus on the youngest son James’s desire to visit the lighthouse near to their vacation home. However, the novel’s main focus is on the dynamics of relationships: The relationship of the individual to him or herself as well as the interrelationship of each of the characters.

Ms. Woolf’s writing style might be compared to that of James Joyce in novels such as Ulysses—a book I have tried to get around to reading for years. I think the politics of relationships would lend Ms. Woolf’s work to an easy critique from either the Marxist, feminist, or deconstructionist traditions of literary criticism. Luckily, that is beyond the scope of my little blog post here. I tend to prefer non-fiction in general but I do recognize the value inherent in a careful examination of classic fiction. As of now, I plan to continue to read (in order) those titles that I have not yet read on the 40-volume list.

Do you have any suggestions for books, documentaries, or free courses I might checkout? If so, I welcome these responses by e-mail or in the comments section of the blog forum. As always, happy learning!