Wake County’s Book-A-Day Staff Picks Blog recommended Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying to its general reading public two days ago! Included in the recommendation: “I often hear people say that Faulkner is too difficult to read. He can be difficult. As I Lay Dying is not.”
I don’t know if it’s just me that finds that statement hilarious, or just people in my senior year English class or what.
Not only did this book take years off my life, I also had to always keep it face down because CREEPY DECOMPOSING DEAD LADY
The reviewer also states that “I think the key to reading and enjoying Faulkner is to not think about it too much. We read him in English class, and spend hours examining what he was trying to say. Instead, perhaps, we should just read him.”
While this may be true of lots of books, As I Lay Dying has, among other things, a chapter that is, in its entirety:
My mother is a fish.
END OF CHAPTER
I feel like there is no way I could read something like this and NOT think about what he means. Because most of the time it’s obscured through layers of stream of consciousness rambling. Granted, about half of my thinking about it was just my repeating “What the hell? What the hell? What the hell?” over and over and over.
Sorry, maybe people do read As I Lay Dying for fun. But I still find it hilarious.
I think the explanation of that chapter is that the narrator was a fish, and that sentence is literally all that the fish had to add to the overarching narrative of the drama following the death of one’s mother.
Also holy shit did people actually used to name their children Cash?