As I Lay Dying

William Faulkner
1930
Rating: 2.5

Surprised by how much I hated this book. I finished it, but only because I forced myself to, not because I wanted to. I had never read a book by Faulkner, and I badly wanted to check that box. That’s the only reason I stuck with it, and I emphatically do not recommend it to anyone.

I knew that The Sound and the Fury was supposed to be tough going, I avoided it for that reason. I went into As I Lay Dying blind, not really knowing what to expect, but thinking and hoping that it would be a good read, even if it contained some modernist trickery.

It was in fact quite challenging to read, particularly the first half of the book. It eased up a bit in the second half. There are no concessions early on to explaining to the reader who the characters are or how they relate to one another. But that is only part of what makes this book such a painful chore to wade through. Even the parts of it where I was able to more or less fathom what was happening still felt like I was reading them through a wet sheet.

In addition to the novel being “difficult,” I just really did not like the writing. Some of the writing was good, for sure, but much of it wasn’t, and it seemed to be “bad writing” or “bad modernist writing” rather than “profound writing that only seems to be bad writing because it is modernist writing.”

For example, there are no typos in this transcription of the passage of the book, this is exactly how it was written:

“The mules dived up again diving their legs stiff their stiff legs rolling slow and then Darl again and I hollering catch her darl catch her head her into the bank darl and Vernon wouldn’t help and then Darl dodged past the mules where he could he had her under the water coming in to the bank coming in slow because in the water she fought to stay under the water but Darl is strong and he was coming in slow and so I knew he had her because he came slow and I ran down into the water to help and I couldn’t stop hollering because Darl was strong and steady holding her under the water even if she did fight he would not let her go he was seeing me and he would hold her and it was all right now it was all right now it was all right”

The novel did remind me in some ways of the opening pages of Beloved, by Toni Morrison, but Morrison’s dense writing in that book felt a bit different than the mush in As I Lay Dying. There was also, based on what I read about Beloved, a better rationale for the disorientation she creates for her readers in that book.

I hated As I Lay Dying not just because it was difficult, but because parts of it were intelligible but were just really fucking tedious regardless. Five pages about the character Clay’s intense relationship with his saw.

Part of Faulkner’s modernist technique is the use of repetition, and I don’t know what the effect he was going for with the repetition, but he did not achieve that effect, or, he did achieve it, but it was a shitty effect to begin with.

Anyway, I’m glad I can now say that I read one of Faulkner’s novels, but I’m bummed out that I hated it as much as I did — “As I Lay Hating,” lol. I would like to read at least one more book of his; I have started Light In August twice, and both times lost my book owing to drinking alcohol in bars. I remember liking it both times, and I think I got a third of the way through it.

Now that I have this bad taste in my mouth though, I don’t know when or if I would dip back into his work. Also, I had read sporadically about Faulkner’s attitudes about race, and my understanding was that there were maybe some problems there, but that he was not just an outright racist guy. I remembered reading that he handled race with a certain insight and sensitivity in his books. I wanted to give some of his work a chance in spite of whatever racial issues his life and work brought up.

After I read the novel, however, I read up a bit on his views on race, mainly in a New Yorker article, and Faulkner was in fact a horrible racist who said he would fight for Mississippi in a hypothetical do-over of the Civil War. He said other horrible shit as well. What was interesting was that the New Yorker article, a review of a new book about Faulkner, also said that his books were much better about race than he was in real life. That he understood the moral stain of slavery, and savaged the South for its inability to move forward.

Anyway, I don’t think I’ll be reading much more Faulkner in the near future.