As I Lay Dying

I always try to find reasons to read William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, the painfully sad story of a family hauling their mother’s body to her hometown in order to bury her. Addie Bundren’s life has been sad and dreary, but the path to her resting place is even more so, replete with flood and fire, as well as a post-death monologue that contains one of the most psychologically complete rationalizations in literary history. Every time I read this book, I understand each of the Bundren family members more deeply, and have greater sympathy for the yoke their… show more.

A classic, and perhaps too much so. Many scholars of Faulkner believe there are other, greater titles in his career that should stand as his seminal work. However, this is the first of his novels that I read, and so perhaps had the advantage when it came to leaving an impression. Again, the multi-faceted storytelling is most impressive, as are the not-so-subtle themes of death and religion. Bonus points for the shortest chapter in literary history: My mother is a fish.

Addie Bundren, the matriarch of the family, is the ghost that haunts this narrative. While she is largely absent save her marked presence in the title, her death and the transportation of her body form the arc of the book, and she arrives in the narrative in the later sections to tell her story. She asserts that her father had told her "the reason for living was to get ready to stay dead a long time," and it's true that her life does not seem remarkably different from her death. Her bitterness remains, and her narrative voice does not differ… show more.