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3.54 AVERAGE
3.54 AVERAGE
adventurous
challenging
dark
reflective
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I had to read this for school, and I'm usually good at giving books the benefit of the doubt when I read them for school and think about whether they might have been more enjoyable had we not aggressively picked them apart in a classroom of people who did not read/hated the book. However, this book was awful. I truly cannot understand what anyone likes about this book. It's confusing, the characters are awful, and there is nothing redeeming about any part of it. This book was terrible, and I cannot fathom how it ever became a classic or how it was chosen to be studied for school.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Death of parent, Pregnancy
Moderate: Animal death, Sexual assault, Abortion
Minor: Racial slurs
As I read, I like to make hypotheses about the book I am reading, most often to the tune of, Who Would Enjoy This Book? This is a game especially played when I am reading something I do not enjoy, or sometimes even hate (less often it is played with favorites because my silly little mind can't comprehend why someone WOULDN'T love the book I just devoured). Well, this game was the only thing that entertained me the whole of reading this book.
As I Lay Dying is my least favorite read of the year so far, and that's saying a lot given that I'm not shy in giving out a 1 star. In fact, I will go so far as to predict that this will likely be my least favorite book of the year. To be honest, I have avoided Faulkner until now, because as another reviewer said, I had an inkling he just wasn't for me. Well, I should have listened to that inkling, but the English Major in me just had to give it a shot...and now curiosity comes back to bite this kitten.
Faulkner is, quite simply, the two dreadful Ps: Pretentious and Performative. Though he couches his writing in very humble scenes and characters, his prose is anything but. The goal of a novel is to engage the reader in some act of camaraderie or commiseration; art imitating life is the ultimate form of human connection. Faulkner takes all that away by writing in such stunt-filled, repetitive, tangental language that instantly causes one to disengage and label it disingenuous. In this way, it almost feels as if he is poking fun at the story and characters he created, like he is the puppeteer and he can make them do whatever he chooses. It is then that I stop believing that the author cares about anything, his creation or his audience, and that is a cardinal sin in the reading life.
Going back to my first paragraph, when I try to think of who would actually enjoy this book, at a glance, the Goodreads reviewers back up my hypothesis: It is a mostly masculine audience. It's white, cis men at a fancy gentleman's club sipping bourbon and smoking cigars, those of the older generation who make distasteful jokes about their wives, think people should pick themselves up by their bootstraps, and congratulate themselves on their own successes, thinking they are the great masters of the world, when in reality they got a leg up in life, or were simply lucky.
When Faulkner was asked by interviewer Jean Stein, "Some people say they can’t understand your writing, even after they read it two or three times. What approach would you suggest for them?", he said, "Read it four times."
I say, you're not important as you think you are for that. I'll find a better book.
As I Lay Dying is my least favorite read of the year so far, and that's saying a lot given that I'm not shy in giving out a 1 star. In fact, I will go so far as to predict that this will likely be my least favorite book of the year. To be honest, I have avoided Faulkner until now, because as another reviewer said, I had an inkling he just wasn't for me. Well, I should have listened to that inkling, but the English Major in me just had to give it a shot...and now curiosity comes back to bite this kitten.
Faulkner is, quite simply, the two dreadful Ps: Pretentious and Performative. Though he couches his writing in very humble scenes and characters, his prose is anything but. The goal of a novel is to engage the reader in some act of camaraderie or commiseration; art imitating life is the ultimate form of human connection. Faulkner takes all that away by writing in such stunt-filled, repetitive, tangental language that instantly causes one to disengage and label it disingenuous. In this way, it almost feels as if he is poking fun at the story and characters he created, like he is the puppeteer and he can make them do whatever he chooses. It is then that I stop believing that the author cares about anything, his creation or his audience, and that is a cardinal sin in the reading life.
Going back to my first paragraph, when I try to think of who would actually enjoy this book, at a glance, the Goodreads reviewers back up my hypothesis: It is a mostly masculine audience. It's white, cis men at a fancy gentleman's club sipping bourbon and smoking cigars, those of the older generation who make distasteful jokes about their wives, think people should pick themselves up by their bootstraps, and congratulate themselves on their own successes, thinking they are the great masters of the world, when in reality they got a leg up in life, or were simply lucky.
When Faulkner was asked by interviewer Jean Stein, "Some people say they can’t understand your writing, even after they read it two or three times. What approach would you suggest for them?", he said, "Read it four times."
I say, you're not important as you think you are for that. I'll find a better book.
the backcountry learned of ratification
The people had a coffen painted black
The people had a coffen painted black
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
It took me a while to get into, but I definitely did end up getting sucked into the story and really enjoying it.
I don’t think I’m enough of an English literature academic to fully appreciate this, and I will admit I did go on sparknotes after finishing it to get some basic analysis of what was going on. And now I’ve read that I totally get it and it’s really cool!!
The main thing that attracted me to this book was the line in the blurb “as epic as the Old Testament, as American as Huckleberry Finn”, and it totally was, just not in the way I’d been expecting.
The story isn’t told in a linear-feeling way, and you sort of piece together sections to get the whole story - that’s where the Old Testament comes in. It sort of feels like reading parts of the Bible, the way that people just say things, but they’re written assuming the reader has some contextual knowledge and they really don’t. Idk if that was Faulkner’s intention or maybe I read this (and the Bible) wrong but I enjoyed it!!
I don’t think I’m enough of an English literature academic to fully appreciate this, and I will admit I did go on sparknotes after finishing it to get some basic analysis of what was going on. And now I’ve read that I totally get it and it’s really cool!!
The main thing that attracted me to this book was the line in the blurb “as epic as the Old Testament, as American as Huckleberry Finn”, and it totally was, just not in the way I’d been expecting.
The story isn’t told in a linear-feeling way, and you sort of piece together sections to get the whole story - that’s where the Old Testament comes in. It sort of feels like reading parts of the Bible, the way that people just say things, but they’re written assuming the reader has some contextual knowledge and they really don’t. Idk if that was Faulkner’s intention or maybe I read this (and the Bible) wrong but I enjoyed it!!
holy fuck this was hard to read. i had to sparknotes it all after reading it but this really was good. i’m certainly going to read more faulkner in the future.
This is perhaps my new favourite book (after finally giving it a very necessary re-read)
challenging
dark
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
For the first half of this book I was just trying to get through it. A lot of dense, nonsensical dialect isn't really my cup of tea. I would have put it down except: 1. It's a classic, it's short, I should read it and 2. The whole book is about the transportation of a corpse. I don't know that I have ever given up on a corpse book.
I'm glad I stuck with it, even though there were still some frustrating utterances of nonsense, the book really started to come together for me and create a whole picture out of a lot of loose strings. If you enjoy the hopelessness of the Grapes of Wrath with a side of corpses (well, one corpse) and are willing to work through some difficult text, I recommend this.
I'm glad I stuck with it, even though there were still some frustrating utterances of nonsense, the book really started to come together for me and create a whole picture out of a lot of loose strings. If you enjoy the hopelessness of the Grapes of Wrath with a side of corpses (well, one corpse) and are willing to work through some difficult text, I recommend this.