I read it in May and really loved it. I found it such a clever way of telling a story. I could see, hear, smell all the details. I could feel all the emotions. I loved it.
This is my favourite book of all times, thank you for analyzing it so dearly. I had a really troublesome time reading and understanding it, but it slowly made sense through the eyes of Darl, who (because of his brilliant character and depth of his personality) my most beloved figure in any novel I have ever read (and these are a lot, actually). What a wonderful book, it shattered my heart and blew it to bits, never to be the same again. "Why do you laugh? Is it because you hate the sound of laughing?" 10/10
I just finished this and really agree with your ending sentiment. I could hardly put the book down when reading it, loved the way it was told, enjoyed the characters and trying to decipher the metaphor. But despite all of that, I left feeling like there wasn't much to take away with me. Hard to explain. Great book overall though.
Faulkner has strong, unlikable women in his books. I like his stories, but then I like Tennessee Williams too. I'm in my 70s and I grew with these books! Your review is one of the best I've heard about Faulkner.
The Sound and the Fury is supposed to be Faulkner's masterpiece. I have read it several times and always find something new that drives me crazy, but that is half the fun of Faulkner's books. Keep the bottle of whiskey close by...you might need it!
I really must thank you! You are brilliant! I actually haven't finished the book yet but I was so confused I looked for some explanation and I was lucky to find yours! I am glad I am not the only one to be confused at the beginning! And you are very nice, too:)! Good job!!!!!!
Fantastic review. I loved the book, the depth of character described, the bizarre crew on the journey, the insights. Particularly loved the line you read from Cash about craziness. I have family who came up deep in the country like these folks, the old farmhouse stood when I was a boy, but the times had passed, the people had moved away to a more modern world. At minimum one of those folks was crazy, but she had lots of room to roam at least.
Thanks for your video. I really enjoyed the discussion of this book. It's not easy to find people who have read it or engaged in commentary, so this was a treat. I read the book a long time ago, and it was a complicated and demanding read for me as a late teen. There's so much to chew on in this novel, but the one thing I drew from it that has remained with me is that no story is just one story, or the same experience for everyone. The different narratives in the book that show the titular death is not seen in the same way by everyone, that each character is living through a different reality that this event affects, but that it is not the most important thing going on for some, it's only sort of tangential to at least a couple of them, that this death and quest to bury is incorporated into each life so differently. That's the main thing that has stuck with me.
Oh man, I cannot imagine having to read this back when I was in high school. It would have been brutal. You are spot on also. No two stories are alike even though they experience a lot of the same events. It’s fascinating. Thank you for watching.
Great video. I stopped reading after about 3 chapters. Got the list explaining the characters. And that made all the difference. Not my favorite book but pretty durn good.
Great review, thank you for providing perspective and clarity! I felt pretty similarly, finding it kind of difficult to follow at first and I felt like once I did get into it, it was almost over. The writing was good, but like you said, this one just didn't particularly connect with me; I've got more Faulkner on my list!
That’s great to hear. I’m thinking about reading Faulkner from the beginning to the end of his writing career to get a sense of the progression of his writing. Maybe I’ll reread As I Lay Dying while I work my way through it. Thank you for watching ñ.
Thank you SO MUCH for the bookmark with all the characters. It has improved my comprehension of the story since I use it. It is my first Faulkner book and my first language isn’t English so I find it challenging, but I love trying to understand this book. I will come back for the spoiler part when I’m done reading it! ❤
Great video! I teach As I Lay Dying every year in my Southern Studies course because it is the easiest (lol) of Faulkner's best books, but Absalom, Absalom! is my desert island book. It's a genuine masterpiece, with all of the amazing modernist character work brought to a critique of the South of his era. But it is also maybe the hardest novel I've ever read, so fair warning. I'd also add Light in August to your list, if ever you're going down the Faulkner rabbit hole.
Thank you! I was planning on sending myself down the Faulkner rabbit hole. I have a few of his earlier works (Soldier’s Pay and Mosquito) as well as Absolom Absolom and the sound and the fury. It sounds like I might need more whiskey. Lol!!
I first read this book knowing nothing about it. I read the first 1/3 of it and while I loved the writing, I was completely confused and decided to start over after some research of the style it was written in. The second time I read it I thought it was incredible. I then watched the movie. I read it a third time and thought it was genius. I now have read 4 of his novels and will read the rest within the next couple of years. He is for sure my favorite author now.
@@ItsTooLatetoApologize I've read (in order of which I liked the best) Absalom Absalom, Sanctuary, and Sound and the Fury and I really loved every one of them. I've heard others say that his stuff needs to be read more than once to really get it. That was the case for me with As I Lay Dying. I understood the story but didn't grasp the depth of it until rereading it and rereading it again. Pick a couple of random chapters (I like Addie's chapter best) and reread them and see if it reads different to you. He can be tough to follow. Sometimes I have to just push through a confusing part and not worry too much about grasping everything he writes. It usually becomes clear later in the book. Thanks so much for your review. The drink and the look on your face was my exact reaction when I first finished it.
Such an excellent review. I just red the book and I'm attending to read it once again without making a pause because, from the opening scene and a raw atmosphere that I felt , I knew that I will cope with in the end, and now, I just want to reenjoy in the organised haos of Faulkner's style. You helped me a lot (My apologies for mistakes , I haven't wrote something on english for a long time)
I've felt about this book exactly like you did. I Ve got so impressed about the way Faulkner was able to tell the story, I was unable to connect with it, though. But this was still awakening curiosity for his work as a writer and I'm sure I'm going to read more!
I have just finished the book and the connection I sense began from the beginning, like how it started off with Darl, the one that I see myself through. The things I personally appreciate are the growth of Cash's consciousness or like when Faulkner puts you in another angle to look at Jewel from, not as a nagger but who has misbehaved when deserved respect due to his heroic labor to get himself a horse.
I read this book for an English class in High Scool and I thought it was one of the funniest book I had ever read. I told that to the teacher who told me he thought I had a sick sense of humor. Maybe I need to read it again as an adult. Maybe this time I will feel the pathos in the book. Another good book to read is "The Confederacy of Dunces" by John Kennedy Toole which was published 11 years after his death by suicide and won him the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, posthumously, in 1981.
Thank you for the recommendation. Honestly I can see how a teenager might read As I Lay Dying as humours on a surface level because of how each character’s narrative is so eccentric and metaphor heavy. “My mom is a fish” does sound funny after all.
I just finished reading this book for the first time. I’m a 40 year old man with children and I still found it very funny at times. It’s definitely gallows humor but still humorous nonetheless. The entire premise is kind of a sick joke: a horrible uncaring mother decides she’s going to burden her family (especially anse) one last time only for the majority of the family to not care and for anse to get his teeth and a new wife. They go on this long horrific journey and persist as a family only for their father to be like: “welp, I durn got my teeth and a new wife. Let’s git on home now”. It makes me wonder if Faulkner was hinting at time being cyclical and that the whole process was going to repeat again sometime in the future. Having said that it is still very profound and moving. I especially enjoyed the Vardaman chapters. “My mother is a fish” is a simple yet heartbreaking way to express a childs understanding of death.
Lol! Oh no, it’s worth loving, I hope I didn’t tarnish it. Are you a big Faulkner fan? I can’t decide which I should read next Absolom Absolom or the Sound and The Fury. Which do you recommend next?
This is one of my very favorite books. Thank you for your perspective. You use the word "burden" many times. Of course this sense of burden in the novel is written into the family name "Bundren" as is "bund" (society) and an evocation of "children" as well. The novel is set as an epic journey, yet it's literally a "comedy", ending with a marriage. That marriage is a deliberate subversion of the epic genre, and especially on first reading forces upon the reader the consciousness of the humor running throughout, and perhaps Faulkner's laugh at the ways in which we take ourselves seriously.
Hello! Thank you for this perspective. I had another fellow reader say that they too thought it was a comedy and now you mentioning this makes me look at things in a different light. This is my first Faulkner novel so I don't have a good idea of his humor of style yet. But I do want to read more from him. It's a terrible thing to take one's self too seriously.
I haven’t read As I Lay Dying since the 80s, but I have reread The Sound and the Fury earlier this year and currently rereading Sanctuary for #FaulknerInAugust. Now I want to reread this novel, it was a very succinct summary. I found your channel through Michael K Vaughan’s JFK tag.
Thank you for watching. What did you think of The Sound and the Fury? Thank you for letting me know I’ve been tagged by Sir Vaughan; I may never have known otherwise.
Your analysis is so interesting! I hope you will do a review of The Sound and the Fury and Absalom, Absalom! Would be great to get your insights. Faulkner needs more readers like you to talk about him!!
Thanks, this was really helpful. Finished reading it this morning. Enjoyed isn't the right word for it so much as intrigued. So many perspectives and I understood maybe three of them! Suspect it's one of those books you have to read more than once to really grasp it.
Another book to add to your reading list is a Connie Willis's book " To say Nothing of the Dog" which is in a series but can be read alone. It transcends it's genre of scifi to become a unique comedic read on manners, time travel, romance, sort of like Jane Austin crossed with Ray Bradbury. It won both the Hugo and the Locus Awards in 1999 and nominated for the Nebula Award in 1998.
Hey! I'm a English student (French) and we have been assigned this book ... Well, thank you so much for your video 'cause for now I've been trying to understand what was happening in there and I just couldn't 😂 I feel it would be easier to read it from now on thanks to your review 🙌
It took me several attempts to finish the book . I kept putting it down because I found it too difficult to follow. But I kept picking it up again until I finished it. But I didn't like it. I enjoyed your review tremendously thank you
Bah hahaha! Rightfully so! I chuckled too. I thought, “This man can’t be serious. Oh no. He is serious.” Lol! This reminds me of the moment during Frankenstein when he encounters his creation after his brother was murdered, and he thinks that he will have to fight the monster in mortal combat. And all I could think of was the sound track from the 1995 video game movie where the guy yells “Mortal Kombat!!!!!!” Bah hahahahaaa! I died laughing.
I liked the ambiguity of it. I thought it was a really clever way to tell a story. If Faulkner had used the omniscient 3rd person narrative style, it would've been easier to understand, but I felt like the style he used makes the reader work harder, which was ultimately more rewarding. It was like having a flashlight in the dark, rather than being able to flip a switch and light up the entire room at once. Youre only getting bits and pieces of information, and the narrative style challenges you to put them together like a jigsaw puzzle. I also liked that it left me with questions like whether Vardaman had some kind of intellectual disability or if Dewey Dell was impregnated by a member of the family. Great art seeks to raise questions more than it does to provide answers.
It was definitely a puzzle and I have come to like puzzles more as I read more and more McCarthy. Once I’m done reading McCarthy, I’m going to read through Faulkner’s works. Thanks for watching.
I've just ended reading this book and i enjoyed your video and insight. It has helped me to understand more the meaning. Thanks. I red The sound and the fury and connected with it in some parts but Absalom, Absalom! made me cry xD hope to see your insights on those.
I'm going to finish reading all of McCarthy before I embark on reading all of the Falkner on my shelf. But I think I should get in one Falkner this year. Welcome to my channel.
Ditto…..I almost did a name list on the characters after the first few chapters, but it got better as I persisted then at the chapter of “Addie” everything became clear. Not an easy read, and I enjoyed Faulkner’s style of writing. Came to this book after The Sound of Fury. Question, I can’t figure out why Vardaman says “My motheris a fish”.
Vardaman calls his mother a fish because it is his manner of understanding death. He caught a fish, it was alive a minute ago, but now that it’s chopped up it’s no longer a fish. His mother was alive just a moment ago, but now that she’s dead she’s no longer his mother. The fish was a way for him to process what death is and means. Vardaman beats and releases Peabody’s horse because he thinks it must be the reason his mother died. He uses concrete examples to try to explain the cause and effect of things no one has power over. And in this child-like manner it makes sense to him but makes little sense to the adults around him. Or at least that’s what I thought. I’m sure there are different ways to look at it.
Hey Judith, if you look in the description box for this video you’ll see that I have the character list without any spoilers in it. If you copy and paste it into a Word document you can print it out and use it for a book mark.
Faulkner is a master class at southern gothic fiction. As I Lay Dying is one of my southern gothic novels. With it being narrated in dialogue; and Faulkner writing different for each character, each chapter has a different emotion n mood separately but at the same time the novel makes sense as a complete story. It ranges from dark comedy all the way to deepest emotions. And another thing, about this novel; it’s a picture perfect description of Southern Gothic: dark, comedy, death, supernatural, mourning, grief, anger, heartache, injuries, near death experience. The whole novel being narrated like it is, makes me think of southern gothic.
@@ItsTooLatetoApologize if you haven’t already checked these out; I would recommend: Cormack McCourthy- child of god, Zara Hurtson- their eyes were only watching god.
It seemed to me that the reason for Addie to die was to have been sexualy assaulted by her husband, as to when the boy is yelling "you kilt her!" Implicating that she got hit by the horse, he also implies he saw his father going on top of her, which then took her will to live. Theres a parallel with the 40 years of pilgrimage in the desert by the hebrews, or so it seems.
I'm a new subscriber; cool videos!! I will definitely need to add this to my collection. What collection? Why, my collection of books that are guaranteed to warp speed me to sleep. Faulkner is my favorite selection to employ when "I really, really, need to sleep!"😴😴
The first fifteen seconds of this video: amazing. 😂 Also: “..narrated by fifteen different characters….” Why I will never read Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders. I believe it has 100+ narrators. No thanks, but please review it for your subscribers. 😎 From the Penguin Random House site, about the audio version of Lincoln in the Bardo: “The 166-person full cast features award-winning actors and musicians, as well as a number of Saunders’ family, friends, and members of his publishing team.”
100+ narrators?? OMG! I can’t even! Lol!! 😂 this is my struggle with War and Peace. That novel is my Everest. One day I shall summit that beast of a novel.
There are no new stories 🤔🤕😭 I agree👌🏾💯 you got it🗝️🔑 Spoken like a true Pessimist in the Solomonic school of philosophy 🤴🏾🧐 "There is nothing new under the sun, whatever is happening has happened before, and shall happen again; this also is meaningless."
I would agree, but only in the sense that the fact that nothing is new, all shall happen again is the part that is meaningless. It doesn't matter that it is cyclical, life and death is cyclical. The shape of the repetition does not make the thing it's self meaningless. I hope no one gets caught up in the pessimism of that. Meaning is everywhere.
How do y’all like this book bru I couldn’t tell what was going on ever, but I am jus a sophmore in high school. Our teacher is crazy for making us read this
I disagree about Darl, I think his sanity and having that deeper understanding of what was going on pushed him into an absurdist break at the end, he's laughing because he knows exactly what's going on. He knows they just risked everything on a pilgrimage that was totally useless (there are cars driving by, borrow a car, guys) and it drives him to madness.
I had to laugh at your video title because it was exactly what I thought the moment I finished reading (audio listening as well) this book. I mean, why?! But I guess, in context, modernism - stream of consciousness, disillusionment, psychoanalysis, humanity's duplicity in not being truthful with itself and hiding behind God/Christianity... I assume he was a man of his times and of those particular explorations. And of course there is no closure, like why would there be? I really had the feeling that Darl went crazy because of the yeses, but perhaps he was just laughing at the irony of it all? 🤔
This is, without a doubt, the greatest Faulkner video I’ve ever seen. Absolute genius. Thank you.
Awe, thank you. I’m glad you enjoyed it. Thank you for watching.
I read it in May and really loved it. I found it such a clever way of telling a story. I could see, hear, smell all the details. I could feel all the emotions. I loved it.
I love it when that happens!
This is my favourite book of all times, thank you for analyzing it so dearly. I had a really troublesome time reading and understanding it, but it slowly made sense through the eyes of Darl, who (because of his brilliant character and depth of his personality) my most beloved figure in any novel I have ever read (and these are a lot, actually). What a wonderful book, it shattered my heart and blew it to bits, never to be the same again.
"Why do you laugh? Is it because you hate the sound of laughing?" 10/10
Darl was the best part of this novel for me. Thank you for watching.
Read it in college 53 years ago. Remember liking it but not understanding it. Guess I should revisit before I lay dying. Thanks for the push!
Your welcome!
I just finished this and really agree with your ending sentiment. I could hardly put the book down when reading it, loved the way it was told, enjoyed the characters and trying to decipher the metaphor. But despite all of that, I left feeling like there wasn't much to take away with me. Hard to explain. Great book overall though.
You and me both then. Thank you for letting me know I’m not alone. 😊
Your reflections, especially from 12:09 hit me soo hard without any warning! Loved to hear your thoughts though :)
Faulkner has strong, unlikable women in his books. I like his stories, but then I like Tennessee Williams too. I'm in my 70s and I grew with these books! Your review is one of the best I've heard about Faulkner.
Thank you fro your kind words. What is your favourite Faulkner novel? Which do you suggest I read next?
The Sound and the Fury is supposed to be Faulkner's masterpiece. I have read it several times and always find something new that drives me crazy, but that is half the fun of Faulkner's books. Keep the bottle of whiskey close by...you might need it!
@@janicecuroso1042 I think I may need some whiskey for every Faulkner novel I read. 🥃 lol!
I really must thank you! You are brilliant! I actually haven't finished the book yet but I was so confused I looked for some explanation and I was lucky to find yours! I am glad I am not the only one to be confused at the beginning! And you are very nice, too:)! Good job!!!!!!
You're very welcome! I'm so glad to help.
You're just awesome. You definitely helped me get a better understanding here. Your character list was clutch!
I love your trashcan. I love your aesthetic. I love your synopsis.
Refreshing.
Thank you for you kind words and for being here.
Fantastic review. I loved the book, the depth of character described, the bizarre crew on the journey, the insights. Particularly loved the line you read from Cash about craziness. I have family who came up deep in the country like these folks, the old farmhouse stood when I was a boy, but the times had passed, the people had moved away to a more modern world. At minimum one of those folks was crazy, but she had lots of room to roam at least.
Thanks for your video. I really enjoyed the discussion of this book. It's not easy to find people who have read it or engaged in commentary, so this was a treat. I read the book a long time ago, and it was a complicated and demanding read for me as a late teen. There's so much to chew on in this novel, but the one thing I drew from it that has remained with me is that no story is just one story, or the same experience for everyone. The different narratives in the book that show the titular death is not seen in the same way by everyone, that each character is living through a different reality that this event affects, but that it is not the most important thing going on for some, it's only sort of tangential to at least a couple of them, that this death and quest to bury is incorporated into each life so differently. That's the main thing that has stuck with me.
Oh man, I cannot imagine having to read this back when I was in high school. It would have been brutal.
You are spot on also. No two stories are alike even though they experience a lot of the same events. It’s fascinating.
Thank you for watching.
Great video.
I stopped reading after about 3 chapters. Got the list explaining the characters.
And that made all the difference.
Not my favorite book but pretty durn good.
I completely agree, and I did the same thing you did when reading it. Game changer.
Great review, thank you for providing perspective and clarity! I felt pretty similarly, finding it kind of difficult to follow at first and I felt like once I did get into it, it was almost over. The writing was good, but like you said, this one just didn't particularly connect with me; I've got more Faulkner on my list!
2nd and 3rd reading is when this story blossoms into something truly amazing and wonderful.
That’s great to hear. I’m thinking about reading Faulkner from the beginning to the end of his writing career to get a sense of the progression of his writing. Maybe I’ll reread As I Lay Dying while I work my way through it. Thank you for watching ñ.
Fantastic review, I came here because of Michael K Vaughan's video about the best and worst of booktube in 2021. Subscribed.
Thank you and welcome to my channel.
Thank you SO MUCH for the bookmark with all the characters. It has improved my comprehension of the story since I use it. It is my first Faulkner book and my first language isn’t English so I find it challenging, but I love trying to understand this book. I will come back for the spoiler part when I’m done reading it! ❤
Great video! I teach As I Lay Dying every year in my Southern Studies course because it is the easiest (lol) of Faulkner's best books, but Absalom, Absalom! is my desert island book. It's a genuine masterpiece, with all of the amazing modernist character work brought to a critique of the South of his era. But it is also maybe the hardest novel I've ever read, so fair warning. I'd also add Light in August to your list, if ever you're going down the Faulkner rabbit hole.
Thank you! I was planning on sending myself down the Faulkner rabbit hole. I have a few of his earlier works (Soldier’s Pay and Mosquito) as well as Absolom Absolom and the sound and the fury. It sounds like I might need more whiskey. Lol!!
I’m halfway through and paused to TH-cam this one to see wtf was actually going on. You did a great job ironing this mess out. Thank you
So glad I could help.
I first read this book knowing nothing about it. I read the first 1/3 of it and while I loved the writing, I was completely confused and decided to start over after some research of the style it was written in. The second time I read it I thought it was incredible. I then watched the movie. I read it a third time and thought it was genius. I now have read 4 of his novels and will read the rest within the next couple of years. He is for sure my favorite author now.
Which others of his novels have you read?
@@ItsTooLatetoApologize I've read (in order of which I liked the best) Absalom Absalom, Sanctuary, and Sound and the Fury and I really loved every one of them. I've heard others say that his stuff needs to be read more than once to really get it. That was the case for me with As I Lay Dying. I understood the story but didn't grasp the depth of it until rereading it and rereading it again. Pick a couple of random chapters (I like Addie's chapter best) and reread them and see if it reads different to you. He can be tough to follow. Sometimes I have to just push through a confusing part and not worry too much about grasping everything he writes. It usually becomes clear later in the book. Thanks so much for your review. The drink and the look on your face was my exact reaction when I first finished it.
Wow! Great review! Michael K. Vaughan brought me here, am reading this book. Subscribed!
Welcome to my channel! How are you liking As I lay Dying so far?
Such an excellent review. I just red the book and I'm attending to read it once again without making a pause because, from the opening scene and a raw atmosphere that I felt , I knew that I will cope with in the end, and now, I just want to reenjoy in the organised haos of Faulkner's style.
You helped me a lot
(My apologies for mistakes , I haven't wrote something on english for a long time)
I've felt about this book exactly like you did. I Ve got so impressed about the way Faulkner was able to tell the story, I was unable to connect with it, though. But this was still awakening curiosity for his work as a writer and I'm sure I'm going to read more!
I have just finished the book and the connection I sense began from the beginning, like how it started off with Darl, the one that I see myself through. The things I personally appreciate are the growth of Cash's consciousness or like when Faulkner puts you in another angle to look at Jewel from, not as a nagger but who has misbehaved when deserved respect due to his heroic labor to get himself a horse.
Subscribed. Thank you for taking the time to make this video. Very informative and enjoyable. Books rule!
Awesome, thank you!
still thinking about this book a year and half later
Best review I've seen on this book. Thanks
Thank you for watching.
I read this book for an English class in High Scool and I thought it was one of the funniest book I had ever read. I told that to the teacher who told me he thought I had a sick sense of humor. Maybe I need to read it again as an adult. Maybe this time I will feel the pathos in the book. Another good book to read is "The Confederacy of Dunces" by John Kennedy Toole which was published 11 years after his death by suicide and won him the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, posthumously, in 1981.
Thank you for the recommendation. Honestly I can see how a teenager might read As I Lay Dying as humours on a surface level because of how each character’s narrative is so eccentric and metaphor heavy. “My mom is a fish” does sound funny after all.
I just finished reading this book for the first time. I’m a 40 year old man with children and I still found it very funny at times. It’s definitely gallows humor but still humorous nonetheless. The entire premise is kind of a sick joke: a horrible uncaring mother decides she’s going to burden her family (especially anse) one last time only for the majority of the family to not care and for anse to get his teeth and a new wife. They go on this long horrific journey and persist as a family only for their father to be like: “welp, I durn got my teeth and a new wife. Let’s git on home now”. It makes me wonder if Faulkner was hinting at time being cyclical and that the whole process was going to repeat again sometime in the future. Having said that it is still very profound and moving. I especially enjoyed the Vardaman chapters. “My mother is a fish” is a simple yet heartbreaking way to express a childs understanding of death.
8:30 Thank you so much 😭 🙏
lol you made me question my love for this book for a hot min. Really enjoyed your review!!
Lol! Oh no, it’s worth loving, I hope I didn’t tarnish it. Are you a big Faulkner fan? I can’t decide which I should read next Absolom Absolom or the Sound and The Fury. Which do you recommend next?
@@ItsTooLatetoApologize The Sounds and the Fury is fantastic but I think Absolom Absolom is something special!
This is one of my very favorite books. Thank you for your perspective. You use the word "burden" many times. Of course this sense of burden in the novel is written into the family name "Bundren" as is "bund" (society) and an evocation of "children" as well.
The novel is set as an epic journey, yet it's literally a "comedy", ending with a marriage. That marriage is a deliberate subversion of the epic genre, and especially on first reading forces upon the reader the consciousness of the humor running throughout, and perhaps Faulkner's laugh at the ways in which we take ourselves seriously.
Hello! Thank you for this perspective. I had another fellow reader say that they too thought it was a comedy and now you mentioning this makes me look at things in a different light. This is my first Faulkner novel so I don't have a good idea of his humor of style yet. But I do want to read more from him. It's a terrible thing to take one's self too seriously.
@@ItsTooLatetoApologize Rather than the novels, for humor, there's always "The Reivers" or "The Bear".
I haven’t read As I Lay Dying since the 80s, but I have reread The Sound and the Fury earlier this year and currently rereading Sanctuary for #FaulknerInAugust. Now I want to reread this novel, it was a very succinct summary.
I found your channel through Michael K Vaughan’s JFK tag.
Thank you for watching. What did you think of The Sound and the Fury?
Thank you for letting me know I’ve been tagged by Sir Vaughan; I may never have known otherwise.
Unusual, convoluted storytelling is Faulkner's jam.
So far I agree. 👍🏼
Your analysis is so interesting! I hope you will do a review of The Sound and the Fury and Absalom, Absalom! Would be great to get your insights. Faulkner needs more readers like you to talk about him!!
Thank you for watching. I hope to get to some more of Faulkner's works in the future.
Thanks, this was really helpful. Finished reading it this morning. Enjoyed isn't the right word for it so much as intrigued. So many perspectives and I understood maybe three of them! Suspect it's one of those books you have to read more than once to really grasp it.
I agree. It could use some rereading to really flesh it out.
I here I thought Christopher Nolan was obsessed with time, William does play on time with his books very well, especially The Sound of Fury
Another book to add to your reading list is a Connie Willis's book " To say Nothing of the Dog" which is in a series but can be read alone. It transcends it's genre of scifi to become a unique comedic read on manners, time travel, romance, sort of like Jane Austin crossed with Ray Bradbury. It won both the Hugo and the Locus Awards in 1999 and nominated for the Nebula Award in 1998.
Thank you for the recommendation! That sounds really interesting.
Probably his greatest work but "light in August" is my favorite.
Hey! I'm a English student (French) and we have been assigned this book ... Well, thank you so much for your video 'cause for now I've been trying to understand what was happening in there and I just couldn't 😂 I feel it would be easier to read it from now on thanks to your review 🙌
It took me several attempts to finish the book . I kept putting it down because I found it too difficult to follow. But I kept picking it up again until I finished it. But I didn't like it. I enjoyed your review tremendously thank you
The quote about Anse sweating and dying always makes me laugh :D
Bah hahaha! Rightfully so! I chuckled too. I thought, “This man can’t be serious. Oh no. He is serious.” Lol!
This reminds me of the moment during Frankenstein when he encounters his creation after his brother was murdered, and he thinks that he will have to fight the monster in mortal combat. And all I could think of was the sound track from the 1995 video game movie where the guy yells “Mortal Kombat!!!!!!”
Bah hahahahaaa! I died laughing.
I liked the ambiguity of it. I thought it was a really clever way to tell a story. If Faulkner had used the omniscient 3rd person narrative style, it would've been easier to understand, but I felt like the style he used makes the reader work harder, which was ultimately more rewarding. It was like having a flashlight in the dark, rather than being able to flip a switch and light up the entire room at once. Youre only getting bits and pieces of information, and the narrative style challenges you to put them together like a jigsaw puzzle. I also liked that it left me with questions like whether Vardaman had some kind of intellectual disability or if Dewey Dell was impregnated by a member of the family. Great art seeks to raise questions more than it does to provide answers.
It was definitely a puzzle and I have come to like puzzles more as I read more and more McCarthy. Once I’m done reading McCarthy, I’m going to read through Faulkner’s works. Thanks for watching.
You are above average. I'm going to watch other videos of yours.
Thank you. Welcome to my bookish channel.
I've just ended reading this book and i enjoyed your video and insight. It has helped me to understand more the meaning. Thanks.
I red The sound and the fury and connected with it in some parts but Absalom, Absalom! made me cry xD hope to see your insights on those.
I'm going to finish reading all of McCarthy before I embark on reading all of the Falkner on my shelf. But I think I should get in one Falkner this year. Welcome to my channel.
Ditto…..I almost did a name list on the characters after the first few chapters, but it got better as I persisted then at the chapter of “Addie” everything became clear. Not an easy read, and I enjoyed Faulkner’s style of writing. Came to this book after The Sound of Fury. Question, I can’t figure out why Vardaman says “My motheris a fish”.
Vardaman calls his mother a fish because it is his manner of understanding death. He caught a fish, it was alive a minute ago, but now that it’s chopped up it’s no longer a fish. His mother was alive just a moment ago, but now that she’s dead she’s no longer his mother. The fish was a way for him to process what death is and means. Vardaman beats and releases Peabody’s horse because he thinks it must be the reason his mother died. He uses concrete examples to try to explain the cause and effect of things no one has power over. And in this child-like manner it makes sense to him but makes little sense to the adults around him.
Or at least that’s what I thought. I’m sure there are different ways to look at it.
Loved this review! 🎉
I believe I agree, the book made me miserable, but I have a lot of respect for his beautiful writing. like you said, very unique style.
I totally agree!
These thoughts will carry me
Through the darkest nights
While your eyes rest in mine
How can I find the bookmark list of characters?
Hey Judith, if you look in the description box for this video you’ll see that I have the character list without any spoilers in it. If you copy and paste it into a Word document you can print it out and use it for a book mark.
Faulkner is a master class at southern gothic fiction. As I Lay Dying is one of my southern gothic novels. With it being narrated in dialogue; and Faulkner writing different for each character, each chapter has a different emotion n mood separately but at the same time the novel makes sense as a complete story.
It ranges from dark comedy all the way to deepest emotions. And another thing, about this novel; it’s a picture perfect description of Southern Gothic: dark, comedy, death, supernatural, mourning, grief, anger, heartache, injuries, near death experience. The whole novel being narrated like it is, makes me think of southern gothic.
I’m new to southern gothic but I’m liking it so far.
@@ItsTooLatetoApologize if you haven’t already checked these out; I would recommend: Cormack McCourthy- child of god, Zara Hurtson- their eyes were only watching god.
It seemed to me that the reason for Addie to die was to have been sexualy assaulted by her husband, as to when the boy is yelling "you kilt her!" Implicating that she got hit by the horse, he also implies he saw his father going on top of her, which then took her will to live.
Theres a parallel with the 40 years of pilgrimage in the desert by the hebrews, or so it seems.
OK, Stellla :) you are AWESOME :)
No, you’re *awesome* ! 😉☺️
Great job. When are you going to read The Sound and the Fury and/or Absalom, Absalom!?
I plan to read them this year.
I'm a new subscriber; cool videos!!
I will definitely need to add this to my collection. What collection? Why, my collection of books that are guaranteed to warp speed me to sleep. Faulkner is my favorite selection to employ when "I really, really, need to sleep!"😴😴
Welcome to my channel! Lol! Everyone reads for different reasons. 😉😂
Faulkner ??? Great Job !
Thank you. ☺️
The first fifteen seconds of this video: amazing. 😂
Also:
“..narrated by fifteen different characters….”
Why I will never read Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders. I believe it has 100+ narrators. No thanks, but please review it for your subscribers. 😎
From the Penguin Random House site, about the audio version of Lincoln in the Bardo:
“The 166-person full cast features award-winning actors and musicians, as well as a number of Saunders’ family, friends, and members of his publishing team.”
100+ narrators?? OMG! I can’t even! Lol!! 😂 this is my struggle with War and Peace. That novel is my Everest. One day I shall summit that beast of a novel.
There are no new stories 🤔🤕😭
I agree👌🏾💯 you got it🗝️🔑
Spoken like a true Pessimist in the Solomonic school of philosophy 🤴🏾🧐 "There is nothing new under the sun, whatever is happening has happened before, and shall happen again; this also is meaningless."
I would agree, but only in the sense that the fact that nothing is new, all shall happen again is the part that is meaningless. It doesn't matter that it is cyclical, life and death is cyclical. The shape of the repetition does not make the thing it's self meaningless. I hope no one gets caught up in the pessimism of that. Meaning is everywhere.
I owe you a steak dinner...
LOL! Do you? How so?
How do y’all like this book bru
I couldn’t tell what was going on ever, but I am jus a sophmore in high school. Our teacher is crazy for making us read this
I can not imagine reading this in high school. I find the character list really helped me. Good luck!!
@@ItsTooLatetoApologize thanks bro❤️
I disagree about Darl, I think his sanity and having that deeper understanding of what was going on pushed him into an absurdist break at the end, he's laughing because he knows exactly what's going on. He knows they just risked everything on a pilgrimage that was totally useless (there are cars driving by, borrow a car, guys) and it drives him to madness.
That's fair too. But if only Darl sees the absurdity, is he the crazy one? Poor Darl. His family was crazy.
I’ve heard his novels symbolize the demise of the Post Southern plantation culture. Comments?
I had to laugh at your video title because it was exactly what I thought the moment I finished reading (audio listening as well) this book. I mean, why?! But I guess, in context, modernism - stream of consciousness, disillusionment, psychoanalysis, humanity's duplicity in not being truthful with itself and hiding behind God/Christianity... I assume he was a man of his times and of those particular explorations. And of course there is no closure, like why would there be? I really had the feeling that Darl went crazy because of the yeses, but perhaps he was just laughing at the irony of it all? 🤔
I plan on reading some more Faulkner but fist I’m going to make my way through McCarthy, I think. Have you read any other Faulkner?
read "im thinking of ending things"
Thank you for the recommendation.
I’m sorry but this book pissed me off
No need to apologize for that. I can understand it.
I Like this LADY :)
Awe shucks! :)
And when you temper with gods plan, that’s a sin
I just got introduced to Southern-Gothic and this is where I started. I’m amazed at how good it is. Incredible author!
That's awesome. What else in the Southern Gothic tradition have you read and enjoyed?
Sorry didn’t mean the dislike 👍
Life's too sh;ort.
This book sucks. It's an insult to my intelligence.
LOL! Nothing is for everyone.
Oh i haaaaated this book.
It's definately not for everyone.