As I Lay Dying Books

There are many great books, but I have read only two perfect ones, "As I Lay Dying" by Faulkner and Shakespeare's "King Lear." Lear's "howl" after Cordelia's death is (I think) the high point of English literature and Vardeman's internal dialoge (and chapter heading "My Mother is a Fish") is the purest form of writing expression and the high-water mark of American Literature. If you like to read, there are so many subtle threads that run through "As I Lay Dying." You'll recognize Chaucer, T.S.Eliot, and I think Shakespeare's "Lear." Like Gorky, Faulkner uses common people to expound upon universal themes like betrayal and unrequited love, but he does it better, and looks at it harder, than anyone has before or since.

Faulkner has a savage and beautiful voice, if you can call it his voice: it's like some linguistic force comes from nowhere and overwhelms his stories and takes them to places that the novel-form never went before. His writing is wildly modern yet full of ancient, mythic resonances - the Bible, the Greeks - which creates a very large sense of time and history in his work. Events traumatize, ripple across history. At his best (As I Lay Dying, The Sound and the Fury, Absalom! Absalom!), Faulkner is difficult but fascinating, worth our patient reading efforts. He invents new ways of writing for a modernizing world that needs some way to keep contact with the past and the dead, and this is both taxing and exhilarating.

There is nothing quantitative in this volume that you can't get in other editions of Faulkner's work; however, the Library of America copy is to be strongly commended for the clarity of its typeface, its sturdy cloth-bound hardcover, and its designed ability to *lie flat* at each page. The only fault I could find with this volume is that it would be nice to have _The Sound and the Fury_ included in a Library of America edition as well (currently, the Modern Library edition is the best that can be done). I strongly recommend this edition to the serious reader who, familiar with Faulkner, is looking for a reference copy of these works that will not deteriorate over time (did I mention acid-free paper and a cloth bookmark?). Considering the price of each of these titles in paperback, this volume's value to the casual reader speaks for itself; you, too, are advised to invest in this worthy tome.

Faulkner is, without a doubt, one of the South's best writers, and re-reading this collection of novels after many years affirms that belief for me. He was a master of words and I wish we had more Faulkner novels to feast on. Almost no one can measure up to him!

I am currently reading Sound and the Fury and it is not an easy read. Fortunately, I started out with this volume and read Sanctuary. If you want to get into Faulkner this is an excellent place to start. It is a great story, shocking though it may be, and gives a good idea of what's to come if you want to delve deeper into WF. Next I read Light in August which may be one of his best. Faulkner is a genius at creating characters and then going into the details of their psyche. Every now and then he gets a little over-indulgent in his wordsmithing but always seems to bring it back home before going too far afield.

Faulkner is the green tea of literature. He's a great story teller but still a bit of an aquired taste. Once you get into his work, though, you'll definitely want more.

Faulkner's great accomplishment in this novel is to use the most modern fiction techniques to create a timeless allegory that we would probably not accept in a different style. His other great achievement is to leave so much space in the story for us to participate in adding meaning. You have to pay attention to even notice what is going on, and then you can provide a variety of interpretations. This novel will never be the same for any two readers. It is a stunning accomplishment, as a result.

The story begins as Addie Bundren lays dying, fanned by her daughter, while her son makes her coffin. With her husband and five children, we make her acquaintance by learning about their actions and characters. Only once does she have a role as a narrator, and then, quite late in the story.

Her husband, Anse, has promised her that he will bury her with her family. Because of tremendous rains, the river has risen, knocking out bridges and making passage difficult. Despite this, the family perserveres in taking her unembalmed body to the intended burial site. Along the way, there are many mishaps and the family is burdened in many ways by keeping this promise. As the burial comes closer, new elements of the story are exposed and develop that totally recast what you have thought was going on. On the very last page (don't read it first!) is such a plot reversal as only a short story writer would normally have dared.

The story is a difficult one to read. So read this book when you have time to pay close attention and study the text word by word. Let me explain the difficulties you will encounter. First, the voices in the book use a Southern patois that will be unfamiliar to most. This is the language of the rural poor in the 1930s, which few have heard. Second, the exposition is mostly through thoughts, often expressed in fragmentary form, rather than through action and a smooth narrative. Third, the narration is a partial mosaic of impressions of the characters, jumping back and forth in 2-4 page segments. Their perceptions are partial, and even more partially expressed. Objectivity is shunned by Faulkner. Fourth, Faulkner wants you to fill in the gaps, and the best way to do that is to expose the gaps slowly. Only after 3 or 4 narrations by characters will the gaps begin to emerge in a way you can grasp them. Then, you still have to interpret them.

Few readers will miss the references to Moses and his search for the promised land, and the Christian parable of the Pilgrim's Progress. What is unstated is the connection to reading. Many poor Southern people of that time were taught to read with The Pilgrim's Progress as a primer. That experience helped to shape a perception and a sensibility that would influence their actions, and thus, this tale. That connection creates a wonderful series of circles here that build on one another.

At bottom though, it is clear from this book that there are secrets of the heart that are never exposed in public. When we come close to dying (our own or someone else's), these secrets begin to rise closer to the surface where we (and sometimes others) can see them.

Faulkner has one quirk in the book that I urge you to look for. While he is often conveying the thoughts of uneducated people, he will drop in magnificent phrases that are worthy of Shakespeare. He wants you to know that he is a learned man, hiding behind his humble bards. That pride creates flaws in the book, but flaws that are a delight to the reader, nevertheless. In fact, he takes this one step further by employing many of Shakespeare's favorite techniques from foreshadowing through nature's fury through using fools.

After you have read this book, I encourage you to consider what secret desires, actions, fears, and thoughts you have which you keep buried even from yourself. Then consider the potential benefits of making these known, before you lay dying.

Also, whenever things seem confused, consider how others may be perceiving what is going on. Like Vardeman, they too may think their mother is a fish. Accept their view of reality, and communicate in terms of that perception if you want to make contact. Otherwise, you will be alone even in the middle of your family, as the Bundrens were in As I Lay Dying.

Enjoy this American masterpiece! I think you'll find it irresistible and moving.

Warwick Wadlington not only presents thoughtful insights into an early Faulkner masterpiece, but he provides a good overview of the work of his predecessor critics, with a special tip of the hat to Cleanth Brooks and Olga Vickery. Although Wadlington summarizes the plot in one or two paragraphs, he does so only to show how silly and misguided such an effort is. Unlike the Cliff Notes that students buy to avoid reading the actual books covered, Wadlington assumes the reader has actually read AS I LAY DYING and is eager to engage with the text more deeply. He looks at the collective story of the Bundrens from the perspective of family secrets, individual vs. corporate action, and most interestingly for me, from the perspective of "sacred economics." The novel was written just as the US was going into the Great Depression and Wadlington suggests that the book, among other things, reflects the nation's transition from the unchecked individualism of the roaring twenties to the collective action of the thirties. This is a very stimulating and compact reading of a great American classic. The book includes a chronolgy of Faulkner's life and a selective bibliography.

Reviews are by nature subjective. That said, their should be a common element, an underlying current that runs through all reviews which peg the book (in this instance) at a similar level. That established, here I find myself rather baffled as to how anyone can either dredge or salvage anything from this book that would elevate it beyond a three star rating at maximum; there must be an element of consensus, because this book (or indeed any) has a basic content and structure, characters and plot that are capable of evaluation and critique. Let us call a spade a spade and not a shovel, this is a shovel!

I teach literature at university level and I am astounded how this book finds its way onto numerous 'must read' lists that appear on the internet and periodically in print. I can only imagine that the editors of such list either fail to read the entire content of said list, or they are simply keen to perpetuate the tired myths that unfortunately ensure largely worthless texts like this still make college reading lists. Either that or they simply read the dust jacket and go by the advertising copy; which according to the 'Vintage Classic' version I bought, sells this book as being, 'a portrait of extraordinary power - as epic as the old testament, as American as Huckleberry Finn'. Categorically is not, and I defy, nay challenge the publishers or indeed anyone to substantiate such a claim.

How ever you spin it, what ultimately transpires is that for any of the above reasons or others equally illogical, perfectly good texts - especially modern ones, are constantly ignored as white elephants like this go through their umpteenth re-print.

To get down to brass tacks, this book fails for a number of reasons, but amongst those I would cite the following five as being the major points of contention:
i) It is simply VERY boring indeed. A dull tale if ever one was told.
ii) The characters are neither well-established or particularly well-drawn. Faulkner's literary skills presented herein are neither worth of his acclaim nor his many accolades and awards.
iii) Structurally it is a simple narrative (not necessarily a problem), however, his language (except the odd regional accent) is unchallenging and unprovocative.
iv) It essentially fails to offer the reader anything. No new ideas, no philosophical insights, no social observations and no historical documentary per se. I think I picked out and highlighted about four sentences in the whole book, that I felt were interesting.
v) Finally, it fails to establish a new genre, a new mode of expression. Likewise it also fails to re-establish a current mode or extend and develop a literary style. In plain terms that means it belongs nowhere, has no recognisable nor definable style and yet fails to take new steps in establish a new genre; it is amateurish and unaccomplished.

The only plus point that one can give is the use of parallel narration that is quite interesting and mildly revolutionary. That said, the characters are not well enough established, nor well enough drawn as to make full use of this technique and so it simply adds confusion to the overall structure.

I cannot see one logical or justifiable reason why anyone should waste their time or their money in reading this text. Unless it is prescribed reading, in which case I would question the teachers motivations for electing this a a core or supplementary text. I think if you are studying American Literature, literature of death and dying, family structures etc. there are MUCH better books out there than this.

Faulkner at his best & easiest to read. Ordered it for a book club review & gained new readers for Faulkner. (And customers for Amazon; not available locally)

As I Lay Dying is my 2nd Faulkner novel. I read The Sound and the Fury many years ago, and did not care for it, maybe because I was too impatient with it's stylistic complexities. Having read Joyce and Woolf since then, I returned to Faulkner with a greater appreciation of the internal monologue/stream of consciousness technique those other writers employed to perfection. Faulkner uses that method, but hones it to a razor sharp clarity of purpose in this novel.

As I Lay Dying tells the story of the Bundren family, as the mother Addie dies, and according to her wishes, has her husband Anse transport her body for burial to her family home in Jefferson, Miss., a journey by wagon of about 30 miles made under extreme hardship and duress. Each chapter in the novel has the title of a character, and is told for the most part through that character's thought processes. There are characters outside the Bundren family who narrate some of the action and give their own views on the proceedings, but mainly the story is told through the minds of Addie's children, her husband, and even herself.

The character with the most to say is the 2nd oldest son, Darl, the most intelligent and sensitive one of the clan with an uncanny intuitive (almost telepathic) ability to understand others, like his sister Dewey Dell, and his half brother, Jewel. There is also the youngest son, Vardaman, who intuitively, is like Darl, but not mature enough to understand things logically or express his thoughts coherently. If there is a villian in this novel it is surely the father Anse, whose selfishness, stubborness, indolence, ignorance, and cold heartedness, abound, not only through his own voice, but through the voices of his children, wife, and acquaintances.

The Bundren family all suffer from that brand of poverty unique to the rural South in that time period, but each character has a unique and striking personality that shines through, and Darl, the one who asks the most questions, not only about what is happening to his mother and siblings, but about himself, is the one tragic character in the book. This book is about identity, and how it changes under duress, and Darl, the character with the most empathy, most suffers because of it. His identity, and ultimately his sanity, is at risk, not only from outside forces, but from those closest to him.

As I Lay Dying has moments of humor and warmth, but ultimately, it is a harrowing journey, and a masterpiece of it's genre. I will certainly make it my business to re-read The Sound and the Fury, as well as more Faulkner in the future.

I cannot recommend this book. History and time often creates legends out of the mere ordinary. This book and all of Faulkners works are horrible and would not find a publisher if written in 2008. There is not an editor alive that would read past the first chapter of As I lay dying. It is a dud. There is no reason to read it. None. The story is not interesting. Faulkners "stream of consciousness" writing style is not interesting. Nothing about this book is worthwhile, except to say that you've read Faulkner. I can say that rereading this book again I did actually feel pain. I felt like crying, it was horrible. But like all the idiots here leaving 5 star reviews I couldn't put it down because then I wouldn't be able to say I have read Faulkner. A book shouldn't be painful and you should want to read it. Faulkner sucks and I have a problem with anyone that recommends him. I've heard that Limburger cheese is delish, but how do you get rid of that smell while you are eating it? And why would you? I'll tell you why. Just so you can say you've ate Limburger cheese. That is the only reason. Why read Faulkner? Just so you can say you have read Faulkner.

One of the most important writers of the twentieth century in any country, William Faulkner could tell a rousing tale. Check your collective memory. You're sitting around the campfire and the the storyteller begins.

When it is Faulkner, expect the unexpected. As I Lay Dying. As Dead I Am Carried to My Homeplace. The first sentence: "Jewel and I come up from the field, following the path in single file." When they get to the cottonhouse, Darl, the narrator takes the path around, Jewel goes straight--through one window and out the other. Cash, the oldest son, is making a wood coffin. (This is a very impoverished family in an impoverished South.) Their mother Addie is dying in bed and watching the building of the coffin through an open window. "It will give her confidence and comfort," Darl tells us through his first person thoughts.

If you want a study in dysfunctional families, go no further. Anse, the father, is a n'er-do-well, who is basically indifferent to the needs of those around him. Cash, the oldest, is a mighty fine carpenter, but a little slow on the uptake, while Darl, the only one who understands this family's pathos, is mentally ill. Dewey Dell, the only girl, is not conversant with the facts of life and makes this homegoing pilgrimage with hopes of doing away with the life she is carrying. Poor Vardaman, the youngest, will suffer the most in his total lack of understanding. His mother dies. She is in a coffin. He can hear her talk inside the coffin through the drill holes to give her air (she is decomposing in the hot Mississippi heat). And Jewel, the second youngest, is his name to Addie, the special son for a special reason.

When Faulkner wrote, he discarded all notions of what a writer is expected to do: tell a straightforward narrative. Sit where you are and go back in time to any episode. Plan a summer vacation in your mind. That's the premise Faulkner worked with. The mind is not a straightforward narrator. He depicts that backward and forward movement in his stories. He challenges the reader by never indicating where on the time line he is in telling the story.

In "As I Lay Dying," he goes a step further. He never tells who narrates the story until the reader figures out that the title of the chapter is also the narrator. The first chapter is entitled "Darl." He begins the story in his prescient, omniscient knowing.

Make no mistake. The story of the Bundrens taking Addie back to her homeplace for burial is a comic-tragic one. The person who most deserves punishment for his bad deeds is the one who is most rewarded. Faulkner was no optimist. But he was a chronicler of his times and of a defeated South and of resulting decaying values years after the fact.

If you are new to Faulkner, read this novel first, now that you know the secret to its puzzle in narration. Then imagine sitting around that collective campfire and hearing this story just as Faulkner wrote it. Puzzling on paper, clear in the telling. So Faulknerian!

A good value. Faulkner takes a while to adjust to, but a good opportunity to start in on classic American literature.

I had a hard time to finish reading this package but... finally finished reading them after reading other books in between. I am quite surprised Oprah chose these books. In my opinion, she could have chosen a better books. Unless you really like challenge, I doubt you will real find time to finish reading these.

The Oprah's Book Club is a great, inexpensive way to own these literary pearls. If you do not know what you are getting into I suggest you read first Light in August, then As I Lay Dying and finally, after bracing, The Sound and the Fury. I found the second a tad too dry and dark, but that's Faulkner. The last one is a book you will eventually reread. The first reading could be helped by the many high quality institutional web sites where this masterpiece is dissected and even rearranged for ease of approach. I am witholding a star simply because I have formed the opinion that Faulkner is, to put in mildly, racially biased or at least wrote for the racially biased. I would love to hear what Oprah thinks about this aspect of Faulkner's but I do not have the time. Enjoy.

These novels are not to be read for sheer pleasure, but rather for the challenge and the depth. They are not easy to read, though *Light in August* is the easiest of the three. The prose is so difficult at times that I needed to reread again and again. I had to stop and take numerous breaks because my brain got twisted around.

I strongly suggest getting research materials from a university librray if at all possible to help navigate the stories. In the end, the depth of these novels is profound and extremely rewarding. It was only after I finished them (and read a lot of extra research articles) that I truly appreciated them. These novels are definitely amazing and a great account of southern life in the early part of the 20th century (and after the civil war), and I admire Faulkner more than I ever thought I could.

If you thought James Joyce was complex, try Faulkner!

AS I LAY DYING by William Faulkner

I respect what he did, but I read about 15% of this one before I got bored. I don't agree with Oprah that he's difficult. I knew exactly where he was coming from and where he wanted to go. Many relevant themes and he was a damn fine wordsmith. But it's old news to this jaded old redneck. I don't know why. I realize I just dismissed an author who deserved his Pulitzers and his Nobel Prize, in a single short paragraph, but please hold back on the hate mail.

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THE SOUND AND THE FURY by William Faulkner

Ditto. You hate me, don't you?

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LIGHT IN AUTUMN by William Faulkner

Ditto. Hoo boy, now you want me dead.

Based on his own experience with a close brush with death due to complications from colon cancer, the author, a Catholic priest, reflects on church doctrine and philosophical issues surrounding the prospect of death, as well as describing his experience of almost dying.

The book is deeply-textured with layered thoughts, yet quite readable. As the author points out, we all will face this event, and it is beneficial to contemplate it beforehand, but when the time comes we will probably not care very much due to the physical misery and detachment that comes with trauma and extreme illness. The act of dying involves a "letting go" and loss of self that is expressed in Christ's admonition of "dying to self." Because the Christian is already crucified with Christ, he/she is already dead and already living eternal life. Yet the separation from the physical body is not without significance, and we may not feel complete joy in Heaven until the day of resurrection when we are reunited with our bodies.

During the darkest hours of his physical misery in the hospital, the author sees a bluish-purple curtain in his room and sits up with full alertness, even while knowing that his physical body lays on the bed. For only a few moments, he is aware of two "presences" represented by the curtain, which he senses to be angels. The message "everything is ready now" is communicated to his mind. He senses that he may decide to let go and go with the angels, or remain. He chooses to remain. It is a blessing to us that he did, and that he subsequently wrote this book.

I think this would be a good book for anyone who was facing terminal illness or trying to come to grips with grief or the thought of personal mortality.

When you are a Catholic of certain sympathies, you have a strange feeling opening a "little book" like this. I get the same feeling when I see an opinion piece by Peggy Noonan or George Weigel; I'm not sure if I can describe it. You like the writer - they're sort of on your side - but you inevitably come away wondering if you can really trust what they wrote. I don't know if trust is the right word. It's about the images they use and the memories they awaken; you wonder if they're exactly right. It's not a matter of intelligence or talent. You can't really blame them for not being poets, they've never claimed to be. But they like poets and they quote or otherwise evoke them. And you dread the evocation because you might not be able to believe in it; it will have been somehow trivialized or changed along the way. And you regret it because there are few enough people "on your side" and you want to feel good about those already there, especially those with the courage to speak. And these are good writers.

But this little book is different from what I expected. Fr. Neuhaus humbly anticipates those feelings - he almost shares them - and weaves them into the style of his meditations:

"These are snatches of philosophy, theology, biography, poetry, and heaven knows what else, all churning, as I discovered them churning, around the question of what was happening to the me I call 'I'" (137).

That is a good thing to say, for several reasons. It is, in part, an apology for the kind of book that it is - but an apology that would not, in the end, preclude its writing; it does, in fact, call for it. It is also a kind of apology for the lack of a "definitive authority" (and thereby, a lack of apparent "coherence") for he does not claim to know what is operative in the "churning," that is, he does not really know the kind or source of the strength that binds his disparate thoughts together. He only marks a certain consistency guiding his thoughts by which he is able to bring them together into a piece of writing.

This deference before the sharpened possibility of death explains his willingness to speak with different voices, using the words of poets, philosophers, and novelists together with his own and those of his friends and family, that is, it is a statement of style, alluding also to a "justification" for that style. It is never a celebration of his own erudition (which is, nevertheless, considerable). It has often been said that the novel is the only kind of writing where this "crossing of disciplines"is appropriate (if it is ever appropriate). But, in the end, it is not really the author's "fault" that he thought what he thought as he lay dying. As he says, "death is the death of explanation" (124). To write in this way is to give up explanation as the usual "motive" for writing. In a time that seemingly belongs to "experts" and "scientists" this book is an important reflection on why and how we write at all.

This short book is sub-titled "Meditations Upon Returning". It is written by former Lutheran minister now Catholic convert-priest Richard John Neuhaus. Neuhaus is the editor of the interfaith journal First Things, and a prolific author and commentator.

Neuhaus spends the first part of the book musing on life and death, and then writes about his own experience of illness, misdiagnosis, colon cancer, botched surgery, ICU, and almost dying in 1995. He offers some cogent reflections on the experience, based on his own faith and clinging to that faith.

On page 112, Neuhaus describes the strange experience/vision he had a few days after leaving ICU. Rather then describing it as a "near death" experience, he says "I am inclined to think of it as a 'near life' experience."

"...All of a sudden I was jerked into an utterly lucid state of awareness. ... By the drapery were two 'presences.' I saw them and yet did not see them, and I cannot explain that ... And then the presences - one or both of them, I do not know - spoke. This I heard clearly. Not in an ordinary voice, for I cannot remember anything about the voice. But the message was beyond mistaking: 'Everything is ready now.'

That was it. ..."

Neuhaus goes on to discuss this event in the context of his whole experience of sickness, near-death and rocovery. He draws no concrete conclusions, beyond affirming that it was a real occurrence and he drew some comfort from it.

The book is a quick read - less then 170 pages long, and is a good account of one man's confrontation with mortality and what he learned from it. Neuhaus weaves a great deal of Christian reflection, philosophy, poetry, and literature into his narrative. It is much more then just an analysis of the strange experience recounted above.

So, the interesting reflection of a Christian intellectual believer facing his own possible death around the age of 60.

Very interesting and objective report on the actuality of being face to face with death. I hope it will be of help to me when it comes my time to know that this is it - I'm dying - I am about to face my God right this minute, and give an account of my life. No second chance, no excuses. Better be prepared.

I hate to beat up on a guy who practically died, but having suffered through this tedious little book, he owes me.

"As I Lay Dying" is a well-meaning book by a very intelligent, well-placed and well-read Catholic priest who (sadly) has nothing much to say. The book is an endless, detached musing on the meaning of death, on the experience of dying, and on the thoughts of poets, saints and philosophers. But it adds up to very little in the end. Neuhaus offers very few definitive insights and few interesting stories. He knocks (rightly) the dopey bravado we assume when facing death as well as our inability to help our loved ones to face the end of their lives. But these insights are told in passing -- as though he is retelling tales learned from others. Neuhaus tells little of his own story -- you don't even know what was making him sick until a third of the way through the book. (Spoiler: a tumor caused his colon to rupture -- now you know!) His suppositions and musings circle and circle aimlessly on the winds of his own meandering reminiscences.

I picked up this book as an aid to a family member who lost her father. She never made it past the dust jacket. It was a wise decision: the book would not have helped her in her own grief.

Some may interpret my harshness as my confession to being shallow. So be it. But now I know what it is like to wait for death; it is like reading this book.

if your not going to take the time to read the book, then do the literary community a favor and remain ignorant of the story instead of using half assed cliffnotes written by some guy/corporation hell bent on swindling dollars out of stupid clueless people.
when books are assigned to you in class your main task is clear. read the damn book! if this is too hard for you then why are you thinking reading a set outline of vague notes would be any better?
to the people that have problems reading. just practice god damnit! it doesnt take magical skills to learn how to read, some people just take longer than others (even years) but if you keep practicing you should eventually be able to read on your own without the help of some stupid douche.

I read this book for OAC english. It is very hard to understand when Darl Narrates. Other than that it is a well written novel.
Knibb high football rules

I think that if you are into literature than you might like this book but I think that it wasnt as great as my professor said it was going to be

i love the way willian faulkner wrote this book,u get each characters own thoughts, and personal expierences of the adventure this family went through. In the begining of the book, i guess it was because theyre were so many diferent nerators, it was kind of confusing, and hard to get into. But as i progressed through the book i found myself not being able to put the book down in curiosity of what would lie before me in the folowing chapters. i dont read much but i enjoyed this book.

i love the way willian faulkner wrote this book,u get each characters own thoughts, and personal expierences of the adventure this family went through. In the begining of the book, i guess it was because theyre were so many diferent nerators, it was kind of confusing, and hard to get into. But as i progressed through the book i found myself not being able to put the book down in curiosity of what would lie before me in the folowing chapters. i dont read much but i enjoyed this book.

Well lets start with the things I liked about this book, I thought that Faulkner really caught the amount of emotional stress of someone dying, and he cleverly allows you to see all the aspects of how this death affects everyone in the family. On the other hand it was hard to follow, the dead character has a "speaking" part, and there are several occurrences of deus ex machina.

When the character Vardaman is introduced he has just caught a large fish and is instructed to clean it before entering the house. While he is busy doing this a major character dies and this image/act is stick in his head. Several times throughout the rest book Vardaman mentions the fish. The title and one sentence composing an entire chapter is him saying "My _____ is a fish."

The entire Book is comprised of chapter entitled only with a characters name. That chapter will follow that characters thoughts and conversations. This allows the reader to understand what each character is feeling and why they do what they do and it also makes the book a little easier to follow because you know who's mind you are in.

While this aspect makes it a little easier to understand the book some events are a little hard to follow especially the ending. At the beginning of the book Anse, who is the father of the family, gives up a set of false teeth he has been looking forward to getting, then at the end after he leaves for a short period, Anse returns with a new set of false teeth and an unexpected guest.

As I mentioned before a character dies early on but about half way through the book there is a chapter where you get into their mind and can see their thoughts. This reveals a scandalous secret, and a lot about their life.

One thing I several was disappointed with was the way the author would put the family in precarious situations then just allow then an easy way out. Much like the deus ex machina of the Greek story tellers. On such occurrence is an incident in which the family try to cross high flood water and even though the rapids are strong enough to carry away the mule's the family manages to catch the coffin and pull it to shore. This happens a couple more times in the text of the novel.

Over all I'm glad I tried a novel by Faulkner but in speaking now with the voice of experience I would rather eat mud than do it again.

Graham Swift's Booker prize winning novel is an unashamedly disguised version of Faulkner's brilliant novel. It has some of his finest passages in it including the famous one-line chapter of mothers being a fish

This story is both complex and well written through the use of perspective, but its complexities do not make it a good story. Personally, I feel it is a story that does not even need to be told. The characters are backward and hard to understand. Initially you feel as if all of the facts and details that are included will lead to an interesting end, but it is not an ending at all just a weird closure. Basically it is a story of a bunch of hicks that carry their dead mother around in a coffin and learn of their mental incapasity to deal with it.

Yoknawpatawpha County must have been a sorry place tolive. God's Country? I hope not. Faulkner has some good books, butthis isn't one of them. Somebody hit these people with the stupid stick. In the sequel, Dewey Dell's works in the local cathouse and wonders why she's got ten kids. Cash has more concrete in his head than on his leg. Vardaman is still dumb as dirt. Addie is still dead and stinking up the county. And teachers make you read this stuff?

This book is a very good comination of two of the greatest works by William Faulkner. The Sound and the Fury is carefully written using stream of consciousness refering to a sibling of the family. Even the very last sentence can easily take the reader back to the very first sentence. It is beautifully written, as well as As I Lay Dying. As I Lay Dying is written in many perspective's of each person in the family. The full story is obtained through reading through each person's mind and opinions and happenings. A suprise ending adds to the punch of this book. Both of these novels (combined into one book) are stories that critics and others seem to love, cherish, and remember for a long time.