Nearly the Death of Me

I just finished reading my first-ever William Faulkner novel, As I Lay Dying (1930). Faulkner apparently wrote it in six weeks while working at a power plant. Must be nice, eh? Slow is not necessarily better—sometimes "fast" works, as lit people consistently rank this, his fifth novel, among the best of the twentieth century.

Faulkner took the title from Homer's Odyssey, where Agamemnon says to Odysseus: "As I lay dying, the woman with the dog's eyes would not close my eyes as I descended into Hades." And to be honest, while reading it, I felt like I’d descended into Gehenna.

Granted, the man can write. He mastered the stream-of-consciousness technique. And I imagine he may have inspired people like Barbara Kingsolver to try to the multiple-narrator approach. He wrote each chapter in the first-person point of view, using multiple characters—with each given his or her own “chapter.” (I put that word within quotes, because the book’s shortest chapter had five words in it.) The technique works.

So why do I feel like I’m brushing off underworld dust? Here’s the plot: A dirt-poor Southern woman dies, and her toothless husband has promised to take her body to far-away Jefferson for burial with her kin. But the bridges have washed out thanks to flooding. So we spend nine days transporting that coffin by cart. Now…if Lazarus “stinketh” by the third day, imagineth the fun Faulkner had grossing out readers in the additional six. He had buzzards and everything.

Robert Penn Warren said of Faulkner’s novels, “For range of effect, philosophical weight, originality of style, humor, and tragic intensity, [they’re] without equal in our time and country.” True that. Still…I’m ready for the fresh air of something less macabre. Like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.