The first book I read by Faulkner had a brutal impact on me.

It is a book that oozes angst with its realism and is not just about the story being told, but also about how it is told.

The story is about a family consisting of a father and sons who must undertake a long journey on foot to fulfill the last wish of the recently deceased mother, which is to be buried in her hometown. However, the mission will not be easy at all. They will have to transport the coffin in an old cart and make a long journey where there will be no shortage of problems that will hinder their task.

The narrative voice is not in the hands of just one person, but all the characters have a voice in the story, telling it from their point of view with a lot of use of internal monologue.

The novel is very anguishing at times, but highly recommended, although the reading can be quite dense in some passages.

I know giving Faulkner a low rating instantly makes me seem ignorant, but let me explain.

First of all, I'm not a Faulkner hater. His short stories are truly among the best in the English language. I'm also not opposed to challenging reads. In fact, Mrs. Dalloway, which some people compare this novel to, is one of my all-time favorite novels. I can devour Victor Hugo's 400-page rants on French history with great enthusiasm. I even memorize Shakespeare for fun. Despite the fact that this type of novel should be exactly what I like, I was unimpressed.

I could tell from the very first few chapters that this wasn't going to be an easy read. I had to pause, do some in-depth research, read literary commentaries, and even watch online lectures on the novel from Yale University. It didn't exactly calm my nerves when the Yale professor made frequent comments like "I have no idea what this passage means and I don't think we're supposed to know what it means."

Still, my research did help to some extent. I at least got a sense of what to look for and what the author's intentions might have been.

And yet, it was still a real slog. The novel seemed incoherent, pretentious, boring, and even intentionally obnoxious. The list of negatives goes on and on. I understand how it can be a great source of material for literary critics, but that doesn't necessarily make it a good novel. As a kind of literary word search, sure - you can see how many allusions to Homer you can find! Oh, and to make it "fun," we put all the plot and characters in a blender! Yay!

But really, ain't nobody got time for that kind of thing.

When it rains too much in the south, the consequences can be quite severe. Roads vanish, and bridges are carried away by the powerful currents.

It's rather ironic to read this novel right after my county experienced the most rainfall in a single day. The story's background is similar - the wife and mother passes away, and her family faces the arduous task of transporting her body to her family's resting place to fulfill her wishes. First, they must descend a mountain, cross a swollen and rapidly flowing river, and navigate through the "town." Comical and absurd situations then unfold.

The story is presented from multiple perspectives, which I've always found engaging. After grappling with two earlier Faulkner works, I found this one relatively easy to read, if not entirely enjoyable.

I suppose this is why this particular Faulkner novel is the one that most people have read, if they've read any of his works at all. Since I'm not from the south, he wasn't part of my curriculum.

Interestingly, a character from "Flags in the Dust" makes an appearance here - the doctor Peabody, who has to use a rope to scale the mountain to attend to the dying woman. I feel rejuvenated and eagerly anticipate what lies ahead in the story.

Unmistakably Faulkner. His writing style is truly one of a kind, a seamless blend of vivid imagery, complex sentence structures, and a profound exploration of the human condition. Paired with a sad and haunting story, it creates a literary experience that is both captivating and unforgettable.

When you read Faulkner, you may find yourself having mixed emotions. You might finish a piece and say, "I didn't like that." However, despite your initial reaction, the words and the story will linger in your mind, refusing to be forgotten.

As I reread this in September 2016, I was once again struck by the power of Faulkner's writing. His ability to bring to life the characters and the settings, to make us feel their joys and sorrows, is truly remarkable. It is a testament to his genius as a writer that his works continue to be relevant and engaging decades after they were first published.

I am imagining what would happen if the translator of this novel was someone other than Mr. Dariabandari? And I conclude that in no way can I embody Ghor to Ghor as I cannot do with the old man and the sea, and in this context, such as the elders or the remaining day.

The translation of Professor Dariabandari, like a well-tailored garment on the body of the story, makes Faulkner's writing look better and more beautiful. The subtleties of the novel, given the complexity of the narrative and the multiplicity of narrators (about 15 people), in my opinion, will not be grasped with a single reading. The beginning of the story is astonishing because not only do the narrators change places, but sometimes in their own narrative, they also deviate a little from the truth, and perhaps the monologues may not be completely in line with the truth. Therefore, the combination of these factors makes it more difficult for the reader to reach the truth!

But gradually the story gets out of the path of mental soliloquies and turns towards dialogue, and from then on, the clarity of the plot increases and its understanding becomes easier. In some places, the shape and images of the story become strange and grotesque, such as the scene of making the coffin and the lock on the coffin by Cash! Or the body falling into the water.

Overall, the concept of Ghor to Ghor can be better understood by reading this novel!

Deliciously, artfully strange...

When a book has the power to make you deeply ponder each and every page, it truly stands out. The meander in its narrative style is both captivating and unique. It's not just a simple stream of consciousness narration; there's a certain closeness that draws you in. The bend in style and language adds an extra layer of intrigue. The characters, too, are oddly berserk, yet there's a strange beauty to them. They are not your typical, run-of-the-mill characters. Their actions and behaviors are unexpected, which makes the reading experience all the more thrilling. You find yourself constantly engaged, trying to understand their motives and the twists and turns of the story. It's a book that challenges your perception and forces you to look at things from a different perspective.

In conclusion, this book is a masterpiece of sorts, with its deliciously strange and artful qualities that keep you hooked from start to finish.

In 1991, for the first time, I read 'As I Lay Dying'.

I carefully annotated it on the margin and - carefully - read it in the original language. The feeling that emerged from that reading has remained for years. Even though - despite all this diligence - the factual memory of 'As I Lay Dying' was limited to a mother-wife who died and her journey towards the burial, and a few other details. And it is for this reason that I reread it, and now I think I will never forget it again, the emotions were so strong.

The more the reading advanced, the more the feeling of earplugging increased - as when one climbs a mountain - and the pulsation of the blood, all this in the face of the evident constatation of human meanness that shows itself daily, not as a peculiarity of the most backward, most rural, darkest, recently liberated environments - even though it is in these environments that Faulkner places the narration - but as a transverse meanness characteristic of the human race when the gaze does not open breathing in the world.

Even when a person has good feelings - as seen in Cash - such goodness is useless because it is bent to follow only the intentions of those who are the least good. The only one who has a broader vision is Darl who tries to purify and resolve a grotesque situation with fire, but his strength is reduced because he is alone, and he is suffocated precisely by the hand of his sister, and therefore by the environment in which he lives. Fortunately, Faulkner's talent - among many others - is that of making an evident almost humorous connotation seep out from the facts, which allows the reader to distance himself and make two reflections on the matter...

1930

\\n  “I can remember how when I was young I believed death to be a phenomenon of the body; now I know it to be merely a function of the mind - and that of the minds of the ones who suffer the bereavement. The nihilists say it is the end; the fundamentalists, the beginning; when in reality it is no more than a single tenant or family moving out of a tenement or a town.”\\n

Presently, I find myself truly at a loss for words when it comes to expressing the profound awe I felt while reading this piece. However, I will make every effort to do so.

Although it may seem irrelevant, I recall watching an age-old interview of Quentin Tarantino, perhaps just after the release of Pulp Fiction. When asked about storytelling, he said:

\\n  “… However, a good majority of movies that come out alright, you pretty much know everything you’re going to see in the movie by the first ten or twenty minutes. Now that’s not a story. A story is something that constantly unfolds. I’m not talking about this like, quick left turn or a quick right turn or a big surprise. I’m talking about it unfolds, alright?”\\n

Probably not many people will agree with this if they believe that the chief element in a good novel (or in Tarantino’s case, a good movie) is the plot and sub-plots rather than the manner in which the story is told. But this is precisely the problem with many pieces of what could have been a masterpiece of literature. They attempt to immerse themselves in the raw and bloody meat of the plot rather than cleaning it up and adding some spices to hold the reader’s attention. And this is what is not wrong with Faulkner’s tales, although this is only the second one I have read. If you put on your detective’s glasses and peer closely to find something in the story, such as the plot or the subplots, you will be disappointed. The story, although sounding quite unique in its own way, is nothing new, and the subplots may seem rather cliché. And if you have to struggle to cope with the seemingly strange storytelling for half the number of pages, you will be truly disappointed in the end. Nobody will blame you if you simply throw this book down the drain at that very moment. At times, it does feel like the writing of an imbecile; I am not exaggerating. What more can you expect of Vardaman?

But this is precisely the most captivating part. If I’m being honest, if you read it for the first time, you may as well have explained all the different personalities of Shirley Ardell Mason (Sybil Dorsett)… well, you’re blessed. Here, there are only fifteen different characters, and you will never once feel that they are all written by the same author. And that too, with several biblical allusions that frequently raise the same theme from Shakespeare’s Hamlet:\\n   “To be or not to be, that is the question.”\\n It is indeed a tough job to raise such a question multiple times through the words of an illiterate family of, well, brutes.

You may also find resemblances with The Sound and The Fury. Although Darl is the protagonist for the majority of the tale, relating to us the conglomerate insanity of his family members, Vardaman is oddly empathize-able with Benji from the 1929 novel, quite absurdly ludicrous even in his moments of desperate sorrow. To sum it all up, it is a tale of a dysfunctional family with frequent, microscopic glances of their imaginativeness, stubborn practicality, derangement, and, at the same time, throughout the pages, a feeling of corporeal dexterity. And that too wrapped up in a timeless tale that, in its own way, shook me in a quite different and more efficient way than any other novel has done quite recently. I look forward to rereading it soon.

I practically could talk about it all day, I think. Even Faulkner’s use of stream of consciousness is extremely practical, not to mention masterful compared to the likes of Woolf and Joyce, or so I feel. For he used it to tell us the tale of the kind of characters we once involuntarily treated as trash. Even standing on the verge of self-contradiction, could anyone have delineated their pain as Dewey Dell did?

\\n   “It’s like everything in the world for me is inside a tub full of guts, so that you wonder how there can be any room in it for anything else very important. He is a big tub of guts and I am a little tub of guts and if there is not any room for anything else important in a big tub of guts, how can it be room in a little tub of guts.”\\n

Many of us endured this unofficial "My First Faulkner" in high school. Likely, all that any of us recall from it is Vardaman's line, "My mother is a fish," which our teachers used to teach us about foreshadowing. For many, this would also be "My Last Faulkner" as we mostly learned that Faulkner is a real pain in the ass. At least it's less confusing than "The Sound & The Fury," although that's sort of like saying a given animal is less dangerous than a bear strapped to a shark: okay, but there's a long way between that and safe.

Faulkner is a pain because he was a modernist - one of the Three Great Modernists, along with Woolf and Joyce. Modernism involves jumbling timelines and perspectives, and generally obfuscating everything, making it extremely difficult to figure out the plot. While all three of these authors are great in that they know what they're doing, are memorable, and tell great truths, they are also massive pains in the ass and basically shouldn't be read by most people.

However, you can more or less follow most of the plot in this book. Here's what it is: This shambling backwoods family of future Trump voters sets off to bury the matriarch on her family land, and they mess it all up. The plot has the grinding inevitability of great tragedy, but the events have an obstinately small scale; it's just these idiots trying to get a coffin across a river.

Here are the characters:

- Addie Bundren, the one who dies.

- Anse, her lazy good-for-nothing husband, who looks "like a figure carved clumsily from tough wood by a drunken caricaturist," a description that Cormac McCarthy would build basically his entire career on.

- Cash, the carpenter eldest son who never finishes a sentence even in his head.

- Darl, who for some reason doubles as an omniscient narrator, the most articulate of the group, considered queer for that very reason (remember that scene in Idiocracy where the dude gets diagnosed with "talking like a fag"?), and constantly babbling about "is" and "was" like a college kid getting stoned for the third time.

- Jewel, the horse-obsessed son whose eyes are constantly described as "like pieces of a broken plate," which no they aren't, that's simply not what eyes are like.

- Dewey Dell, the sole daughter, whose "wet dress shapes for the blind eyes of three blind men those mammalian ludicrosities which are the horizons and the valleys of the earth" in the single worst description of breasts ever put to paper.

- Vardaman of the fish, who is off in some vague way - Faulkner has never been particularly specific about his medical diagnoses. Benjy from "Sound & The Fury" is also non-diagnosably "off"; he might be autistic, who knows. Vardaman is either in his early teens and off (my position) or around 8 and less off. There's conflicting evidence.

Faulkner sort of recycles some of his characters from "Sound & the Fury," written just a year earlier in 1929: Benjy and Vardaman are both fucked in the head; Dewey Dell and Caddy are the underdressed daughters; Darl and Quentin are the time-obsessed poets. (They also share a setting, Faulkner's famous and made-up Yoknapatawpha County in Mississippi. Mississippi might be real, how would I know.) "Sound & the Fury" didn't sell well, and Faulkner aimed "deliberately to write a 'tour de force,'" a surefire winner, which more or less worked out. He claims to have written it in six weeks and one draft.

There are a few other characters, most notably the more functional neighbors Vernon and Cora Tull. Everybody takes turns narrating; each has a distinct voice, but all of them use words they couldn't possibly have any excuse to know. Here's young Vardaman's description of a horse:

It is as though the dark were resolving him out of his integrity, into an unrelated scattering of components - snuffings and stampings, smells of cooling flesh and ammoniac hair, an uncoordinated whole of splotched hide and strong bones within which, detached and secret and familiar, an "is" different from my "is."

Faulkner's not even trying to make anyone talk realistically. He's about something, I guess - lending epic weight to lifesize events - and I even kinda like it... but it's still basically ridiculous.

I'm making fun of Faulkner a lot, which is easy and fun to do because he's a jackass, but I like this book. The river crossing is genuinely exciting. Faulkner's kinda funny, in sort of a "check out this sentence I'm about to get away with, fuck all of you" way - not as funny as his fellow Southern Gothic Flannery O'Connor, but who is. The book overall walks a line between complicated and understandable, and for once Faulkner stays on the right side of it.

Over the course of the book, most of the family have their own stories to play out. It's surprising and neat; new dimensions keep unfolding. We learn that Jewel is illegitimate, by Rev. Whitfield - this is the most obfuscated plot development; Dewey Dell (what kind of fuckin' name is that?) has been knocked up and is trying to get a secret abortion, which ends in her being more or less raped; Darl burns a barn down, because this is after all a Gothic, and gets sold out by his family and sent to an asylum. Even dumb old Anse surprise-marries some duck-shaped lady. He also spends Dewey Dell's abortion money on new teeth and a graphophone, which is a kind of early record player similar to the gramophone but instead of records they played these wax cylinders, sort of like what you see in a player piano.

I'm not the world's biggest Faulkner fan. Of the modernists, Woolf is by far my favorite; of the writers in general, the modernists are among my least favorite, because for fuck's sake just write down what's happening, if I wanted a puzzle I'd do a crossword.

I generally wouldn't recommend that anyone read Faulkner unless they're just dying to for some reason, and in that case one should maybe ask oneself what that reason could possibly be, and is one really making good life choices here, and is one crazy, and is one possibly a pretentious dickwad, and wouldn't one honestly be better off just watching TV. Says the guy who was just dying to read Faulkner like a week ago, and now I've gone and done it and I kinda thought it was great. I don't know, man.

I aint so sho who's got ere a right to say when a man is crazy and when he aint. Sometimes I think it aint none of us pure crazy and aint none of us pure sane until the balance of us talks him that-a-way. It's like it aint so much what a fellow does, but it's the way the majority of folks is looking at him when he does it.

Don't look at me.

Olga From the Volga

You know, the story where he takes the Russian peasants from Dostoevsky and transplants them to Mississippi. It's truly a remarkable concept.

Imagine the cultural shock and the chaos that would ensue. The Russian peasants, with their own set of values, traditions, and ways of life, being suddenly thrust into the completely different environment of Mississippi.

It would be a recipe for disaster when it comes to family life. The differences in language, social norms, and even the way they view the world would create numerous conflicts and misunderstandings within the family.

Talk about dysfunctional family-life! It would be a fascinating yet tumultuous exploration of how two vastly different cultures collide and interact within the confines of a family unit.

One can only wonder how the characters would adapt and whether they would be able to find some sort of common ground or if the differences would tear them apart.

It's a story that has the potential to be both deeply moving and highly entertaining, as we witness the trials and tribulations of these transplanted Russian peasants in their new Mississippi home.

It's a rather strange admission to make, but at the age of 36, I truly don't know if I'm mature enough to read William Faulkner in the way he deserves to be read.

Firstly, I firmly believe that Faulkner demands a quiet and contemplative reading. His stories and books should be savored in a moment of your life when your mind is uncluttered by the muck and chaos of the world. Sadly, my own mind is often clouded by such muck, which leads me to question if I'm truly ready to engage with this particular work.

Surely, at 32, I was in a more receptive state to read his short stories. That was a different era in my life. I was residing in Fujisawa, and with the recent passing of my own mother, I was in a deeply thoughtful and introspective mood.

Now, when I attempt to artificially induce that same deep thoughtful state, I find myself easily distracted. Nevertheless, there are certain aspects of the book that simply cannot escape my notice.

Regarding his subject matter, Faulkner demonstrates his characteristic sense of sympathy, irony, and humor. This, I believe, is of utmost importance. It is all too easy to look down upon the poor or to idealize country folk. We can either place their modest country ideals on a pedestal or mock their strange and idiotic foibles. However, doing what Faulkner does is far more challenging. He places his characters in a raging river, causing them to tip over, flail about, and yet somehow emerge more human.

Speaking of foibles, this book review seems to have had a bit of a broken leg. So, I endeavored to create a cast, not out of cement as in the book, but rather with a mix of metaphors related to life and writing about the South. I had hoped that my book review would transform into a fish, but alas, it remains a book review... or perhaps not even a proper book review at that.

And then, there's Darl. I have a profound love for Darl. I am enamored with his voice in the book. And yet, I don't fully understand him. I suspect that Darl is William Faulkner's stand-in, a mouthpiece for the author. But who can truly know how much of Faulkner is actually within Darl? And likewise, who knows how much of me is within this book review?

One final thought - at least read a portion of this book outdoors. I firmly believe that it might just save your soul from damnation. I've decided to keep this book at work. When things slow down, I'll pick it up, turn to a chapter with "Darl" written there, and simply check in on him from time to time. It's what Ma would have wanted.

\\n  

I could just remember how my father used to say that the reason for living was to get ready to stay dead a long time.

\\n
Rereading this, I had a greater sense of the sheer power in Faulkner's prose. The quasi-biblical diction gives it an air of solemnity and importance. The spaces of what isn't said add an element of mystery and intrigue, making the reader fill in the blanks. The almost apocalyptic landscape creates a vivid and haunting backdrop. But there's no escaping the grotesque craziness of this miniature odyssey. A family sets off to carry a dead woman, not embalmed, in a home-made coffin on an open wagon in the July sun of a Mississippi summer. Add the bizarre scene where cement is poured over a broken leg to 'set' it and the need for a hammer to break it off, and we're in territory beyond Southern Gothic.

Despite my reservations, there's something addictive in the poetry of Faulkner's prose. It's acutely stylised, yet the writing is commanding enough to make me raise my original rating. I came to this after being wowed by my first Faulkner stories, 'Barn Burning' and 'A Rose for Miss Emily'. While the writing in this novel is still stupendous on the sentence level, overall it was less stellar. The form and structure, which would have been innovative in the 1930s, now seem tired and a bit tiresome. The revolving narratives, lack of exposition, and limited 1st PoVs have become overused in modern thrillers. It's not truly stream of consciousness as some claim, but a mix of sophisticated and fully-formed narratives. This format has been adopted by mystery/thriller writers for obfuscation. Maybe this wasn't the best place for me to start with Faulkner's longer fiction, but I'm eager to try his more difficult books as his writing is truly tremendous.
------------------------------------------
\\n  

\\"Jewel,\\" I say, \\"do you know that Addie Bundren is going to die? Addie Bundren is going to die?\\"

\\n
I can see that the form and structure of this novel would have been revolutionary when it was published. The brief revolving narratives from different characters, with their names at the head of the chapter, and the lack of exposition make it a challenging read. We have to piece together the relationships and the external story from the short and fragmented sections. The limited 1st PoVs add to the mystery and make the reader work to understand the characters' perspectives. However, this structure has been copied and overused in recent years, especially in popcorn thrillers. It now reads as a tired and cliched device, rather than the innovative and ground-breaking technique it was when Faulkner first used it. I've seen many descriptions of Faulkner's writing as stream of consciousness, but I don't think that's an accurate description. While there are elements of interior monologue and the characters' thoughts and feelings are explored, the sentences are mainly well-constructed and coherent. It's a mix of different narrative styles, rather than a pure stream of consciousness. I think this format has been adopted by mystery and thriller writers because it allows them to hide information and create suspense. By not clearly delineating who is who and what is happening, they can keep the reader guessing until the end. However, in my opinion, this technique has been overused and has become a bit of a gimmick. I don't mind piecing together a narrative from fragments, but it needs to be done well and with a purpose. In some cases, it can add depth and complexity to a story, but in others, it can just be confusing and frustrating. I think Faulkner's use of this format in this novel is a bit of both. While it does add to the overall atmosphere and mystery of the story, it can also make it a bit of a slog to get through. Maybe this wasn't the best introduction to Faulkner's longer fiction for me, but I'm still impressed by his writing and eager to explore more of his work. I'm particularly interested in reading some of his more challenging and experimental novels to see how he pushes the boundaries of form and language. I think Faulkner is a master of prose, and even though this novel wasn't my favorite, I can still appreciate the skill and artistry that went into it.