As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner

Who is the best MC of all time?  2Pac?  Eminem?  Nas? Rakim? Biggy? Jay-Z?  A few Old E' forties and blunts have surely been an integral piece of this tired debate over the years.  Talent is talent - either way.  They all have it, (or had it).  I don't imagine fiction writers in the early 20th century had reason to beef over books like modern MCs sometimes do over words.  (Who knows, maybe they had secret word battles in the underground speakeasies of the day).  After finishing As I Lay Dying, one of William Faulkner's most famous novels, in a surreal-drifting haze I pondered what kind of rap "assault" this man would be capable of in today's game.  The man used words.  Goddamn.  His cadence and flow, at times, is a rhythmic labyrinth - almost a mind bender.  I can only applaud. 
 
And the natural followup of course:  What happened to writing?  When did the real skill depart from our top sellers?  In the words of Wayne and Garth, "I'm not worthy!"  I really want to be a great writer - it's a goal and a dream.  Then I read Virginia Woolf and William Faulkner.  Then I conclude I deserve a job at 7-11 where I should get fat and stupider on cheeseburger hot dogs and blue flavored Slurpees, (blue rasberry?! FML).  If it's any consolation, I think the whole of modern writing is a lesser beast to contend with.  They just don't make em' like they used to Bobbi!  Whatevs fam.  I still got my 2Pac and the forties are staying cold at the 7-11 down the street.  There's options.
 
Faulkner's story revolves around a rotating cast of characters, their personal perspectives divided by chapters.  True to its title, As I Lay Dying is primarily concerned with the withering health, and then death of Addie Bundren, the mother and wife to some of the characters in the story.  Daryl, the second eldest of Addie's children sees the most chapters.  Through Daryl, Faulkner's mastery of phrasing shines.  Early in the book we find Daryl watching his older brother Cash, a carpenter, labor to build their mother's coffin, "The lantern sits on a stump.  Rusted, grease-fouled, its cracked chimney smeared on one side with soaring smudge of soot, it sheds a feeble and sultry glare upon the trestles and the boards and the adjacent earth.  Upon the dark ground the chips look like random smears of soft pale paint on a black canvas.  The boards look like long smooth tatters torn from the flat darkness and turned backside out.  

"Cash labors about the trestles, moving back and forth, lifting and placing the planks with long clattering reverberations in the dead air as though he were lifting and dropping them at the bottom of an invisible well, the sounds ceasing without departing, as if any movement might dislodge them from the immediate air in reverberant repetition.  He saws again, his elbow flashing slowly, a thin thread of fire running along the edge of the saw, lost and recovered at the top and bottom of each stroke in unbroken elongation, so that the saw appears to be six feet long, into and out of pa's shabby and aimless silhouette.  'Give me that plank,' Cash says.  'No, the other one.'  He puts the saw down and comes and picks up the plank he wants, sweeping pa away with the long swinging gleam of the balanced board.  

"The air smells like sulphur.  Upon the impalpable plane of it their shadows form as upon a wall, as though like sound they had not gone very far away in falling but had merely congealed for a moment, immediate and musing..."

Contrasting Daryl's eloquent observations is Vardaman, maybe 7 - 10 years old, and the youngest of the Bundren children.  Faulkner channels his inner child through the basic and repetitive observations of Vardaman, "Cash tried but she fell off and Daryl jumped going under he went under and Cash hollering to catch her and I hollering running and hollering and Dewey Dell hollering at me Vardaman you vardaman you vardaman and Vernon passed me because he was seeing her come up and she jumped into the water again and Daryl hadn't caught her yet"
 
In all Faulkner moves between 18 distinct characters alternating between their thoughts, observations, and conversations with the others.  It's an ambitious exercise in literary experimentation, challenging the readers and their interpretations of the story, and even more so, Faulkner and his imagination with fictional perspectives.  As I Lay Dying is considered a landmark American novel, one that resonates with students of the art with it's attention to craft and innovative, (if partially trendy) narrative structure.       


 
Summary:  Simple and restrained, William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying is a seminal work of fiction revered for its intricate phrases and innovative narration.  
 
Rating:  4.0

-E.B.
 2019-04-25