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OwenBanner

Owen Banner's Books

Just getting started here. To find out more about me you can check out my website or my goodreads page. You can also find me on twitter. My first novel, Hindsight, is available on Amazon for only $0.99 for the week.

As I Lay Dying Review

As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner

As I Lay Dying was, honestly, like wading through an ever changing current of words. Faulkner's ear for dialect is as keenly tuned as a master violinist's toward the reverberations of his instrument. That being said, however, Faulkner's writing style, when expressed in the stream of consciousness ramblings that fill this book, is...well to say "confusing" would be an understatement. The book is well worth the read if you enjoy reading for the sound of a character's voice. There are some unique voices here. If you're not one for meandering monologues on life's meanings and odd sentence composition, then I'd suggest you leave this one on the shelf. If you choose to read this book, opt for the audiobook as the various readers help to make better sense of the unbroken style of Faulkner's prose.

 

An example of when Faulkner gets confusing: 

 

“In a strange room you must empty yourself for sleep. And before you are emptied for sleep, what are you. And when you are emptied for sleep, you are not. And when you are filled with sleep, you never were. I don't know what I am. I don't know if I am or not. Jewel knows he is, because he does not know that he does not know whether he is or not. He cannot empty himself for sleep because he is not what he is and he is what he is not. Beyond the unlamped wall I can hear the rain shaping the wagon that is ours, the load that is no longer theirs that felled and sawed it nor yet theirs that bought it and which is not ours either, lie on our wagon though it does, since only the wind and the rain shape it only to Jewel and me, that are not asleep. And since sleep is is-not and rain and wind are was, it is not. Yet the wagon is, because when the wagon is was, Addie Bundren will not be. And Jewel is, so Addie Bundren must be. And then I must be, or I could not empty myself for sleep in a strange room. And so if I am not emptied yet, I am is.

How often have I lain beneath rain on a strange roof, thinking of home.”

 

An example of when Faulkner gets it right:

 

“He had a word, too. Love, he called it. But I had been used to words for a long time. I knew that that word was like those others: just a shape to fill a lack that when the right time came, you wouldn't need a word for that anymore than for pride or fear.”

and...

“I notice how it takes a lazy man, a man that hates moving, to get set on moving once he does get started off, the same as when he was set on staying still, like it aint the moving he hates so much as the starting and the stopping. And like he would be kind of proud of whatever come up to make the moving or the setting still look hard. He set there on the wagon hunched up, blinking, listening to us tell about how quick the bridge went and how high the water was, and I be durn if he didn't act like he was proud of it, like he had made the river rise himself.”