A Momentary Taste of Being

William Faulkner Audio Archive

Faulkner is one of my favorite authors for a great many reasons.  And As I Lay Dying is nearly the perfect introduction to Faulkner.  It is simple enough in approach for a High School Student to read it--I did.  But it is deep and complex enough to keep an adult mind ruminating for several says on the Bundren family--Darl, Jewel, Dewey Dell, Vardaman. It's also near and dear to me because my family life recapitulates an episode from it.  (Horrifying to think about isn't it?)  When my grandmother died in Florida, my grandfather transported her back to northern Ohio for burial.  He drove the route and stopped by where we were living in Virginia, at which time we were introduced to the woman who would become our new "grandmother."  The story goes on, but I won't regale you with the details. CAVEAT LECTOR: Please note that these notes consider the book in some detail and may contain elements you'd rather read about after partaking of the book itself. ...

A series in which I treat The Unvanquished (as fine and simple an introduction to the main lines of Faulkner as one could hope for) and Absalom, Absalom! (a book that rose almost to the heights of Ulysses in my estimation). The Unvanquished  on November 28, 2007 7:25 AM   Having already begun the inextricably intertwined premier book of this civil war diptych ( Absalom, Absalom ), gives some perspective on this work of William Faulkner. This is, by far and away one of the most accessible of Faulkner's works. While there are some subtleties and complexities in the prose, the stream of consciousness approach is filtered through the mind of a highly educated adult, even in the early parts of the book which are told from the point of view of a child between the ages of 10 and 12. The novel originated as a chain of short stories published during the time Faulkner was writing Absalom, Absalom, and people more knowledgeable about Faulkner as a writer and a person might say t...