Book 28: As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner

I have to admit, I'm not really looking forward to this one.  I'm mostly reading American Literature to see what I missed in high school and some of it I have found to be very enjoyable.  Ernest Hemingway is still one of my favorite authors.  But, based on the last Faulkner novel that I read, I'm expecting this one to be a downer.  The title doesn't give me much hope of a happy ending either.  I am going to stick with it anyway, though.

Only 261 pages in this one so it should take long to get a verdict.  That's less than 40 pages per day, if anyone is counting.

REVIEW:  Well, Faulkner is still not my favorite American author but it wasn't too bad.  The novel revolves around the death of Addie Bundren, the matriarch of a poor, southern family.  The event and it's aftermath is seen from the point of view of several people who are associated with the events and jumps from person to person with each chapter.

The chief complaint that I have about American literature, principally early 20th century American literature, is it's tendency to devolve into a kind of suffocating tragedy of desperate poverty.  This one is not much different as the surviving family continue to make bad decision after bad decision as terrible luck strikes at every turn.

The writing is interesting, however.  Faulkner tends to write in a stream-of-consciousness style and uses a colloquial voice for his characters.  He is able to give each of his characters a unique style and you can really tell who is narrating by the way they speak.  The story is also interesting and it moves at a nice pace, though it's horribly depressing and a bit frustrating due the choices of the characters.

Overall, this has not done much to improve my impression of American Literature in general.  It had a good story and great writing style but unlikeable characters and a heavy mood.  I appreciate that it's an important piece of literature but it wasn't something I enjoyed very much.  6 out of 10.

Book 19: The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

I never really cared for American Literature until I discovered Hemingway.  Now that I've read most of his works I'm expanding to Faulkner.  This book was probably assigned in high school English class so it's been something I always felt I should read.  

348 pages in this one, a leisurely 50 pages per day.

REVIEW:  This book took a little while to get into.  Not only is it a stream-of-consciousness style novel, but it jumps around in time and space and has a confusing cast of characters.  Along with the confusing cast and the jumps in time and space you also have sections with no punctuation and others where Faulkner gives dialogue from Southern black characters which he spells out phonetically, “Dont you dare come in dis do widout a armful of wood.  Here I done had to tote yo wood en build yo fire bofe.  Didn’t I tole you not to leave dis place last night befo dat woodbox wus full to de top?”

Once I got into the correct stride, however, the book became much more readable and I began to be able relax and enjoy it.  It’s a rather sad story about the downfall of a traditional Southern family.  Each of the characters feels the loss of status and property in different ways but it’s all pretty melancholy. 

What I found most interesting about the whole story was the relationships between the blacks and whites in the novel.  It’s a complicated interplay.  The blacks have been free for some time now, but they are still segregated into their own communities.  The town’s white population have a complicated view of their black neighbors and seem to spend a lot of time agonizing over it while the black population has the view of “You tend to yo business en let de whitefolks tend to deir’n.”

Probably my favorite passage in the book comes from this narrative and takes place when Quentin, the eldest son, reflects on the relationship between blacks and whites:

“When I first came East I kept thinking You’ve got to remember to think of them as colored people not niggers, and if it hadn’t happened that I wasn’t thrown with many of them, I’d have wasted a lot of time and trouble before I learned that the best way to take all people, black or white, is to take them for what they think they are, then leave them alone.  That was when I realized that a nigger is not a person so much as a form of behavior…”

Well said.  All in all, I really liked the book, though it was rather sad.  I’d give it about an 8 out of 10.