As I Lay Dying

Amazon.com

Faulkner's distinctive narrative structures--the uses of multiple points of view and the inner psychological voices of the characters--in one of its most successful incarnations here in As I Lay Dying. In the story, the members of the Bundren family must take the body of Addie, matriarch of the family, to the town where Addie wanted to be buried. Along the way, we listen to each of the members on the macabre pilgrimage, while Faulkner heaps upon them various flavors of disaster. Contains the famous chapter completing the equation about mothers and fish--you'll see.

Book Description

At the heart of this 1930 novel is the Bundren family's bizarre journey to Jefferson to bury Addie, their wife and mother. Faulkner lets each family member--including Addie--and others along the way tell their private responses to Addie's life.

Customer Reviews:

Confusion about ordering.......2007-09-27

I liked the book a lot but was unhappy about getting (and paying for) two copies rather than just one. I ordered one copy via the one-click method but there was no evidence that the order went through. Then I ordered again and the second time I got the usual confirmation. I was surprised when two separate deliveries came with the same book! Now I'm wary of using one-click ordering.

Some will say "tragic" -- some "hilarious".......2007-09-22

I am of the latter group. I love Faulkner's brand of humor. One could look at this as early "mississipius peccadillus" and be right on the money. Certainl the poor folks of Mississippi had layers of problems back in the early 20th Century (and as they do today!) and this family was no exception. Maw dies, but before she does, she forces Paw to promise that he'll bury her where she wants to be buried -- far away! They have neither money nor viable means to get her there but the old man tries his damndest to make good on his dubious promise.
I should say that this work is VERY much akin (a pun there) to Jesse Stuart's "Taps for Private Tussie" in both subject matter and in Flavour as well. So if you end up loving this one you may as well grab "Tussie" too!
This one is a hoot, albeit, some folks will say I'm a sicko for saying that. One of Faulkner's best and true to his bizarre writing style.

The dialog is like "music" and you hear it. A stream of Consciousness, first class approach to telling a story.......2007-09-08

The story is set in Yoknapatawpha County. As you begin to read you seem to step into a different time and place. It is the dialog, the tone, and voice presented that makes this book such a positive experience.
This is the story of Addie Bundren, the mother, and of her family and how they wait and then deal with her death. It also is the struggle to bury her and how that struggle is met with by each of the characters. It starts out with her lying on her bed waiting to dye. Close by her son Cash is sawing and hammering together her coffin. Another son Darl talks another brother Jewel into going to get a load of lumber for the coffin.
The events are told over 59 chapters from the point of view of 15 different narrators. Each chapter is the point of view of one character-narrator. By the time you get through the trip and events you have heard the points of view of all of them and even the thinking of Addie from inside her coffin as she lay then dead.
It is the approach and style of telling the story that is most interesting. The words bring the characters to life. Each seems to compliment each other is rhyme and tempo but each looks at the events different.
The writing style is called "stream of consciousness:" and it is a method where you feel the inner thinking and reactions of the narrator who points out much more than the simple events in the words they express. You seem to hear their inner thoughts.
This book is considered Faulkner's best novel. It is not easy to read. It may take several readings and it is better read slowly trying to listen to the words.

Faulkner was no fish .......2007-08-26

This breakthrough novel written in 1929 and published in 1930 tells its story through multiple- narrators each of whom has his or her own distinctive character , perspective and style. The technique used here is also used in a more perfect way and with more distinct voices in Faulkner's greater masterpiece , "The Sound and the Fury". Here Addie Bundren the mother of the family lies dying.(The title is taken from Agamemmon 's words in the Odyssey, "As I lay dying, the woman with the dog's eyes would not close my eyes as I descended into Hades".)
She insists as act of revenge upon her selfish, lazy husband Anse to have her burial in Jefferson. The story the book will tell will be the journey towards that burial. Addie's children Darl, the most sane at first and Cash the skilled carpenter who dries to build her coffin in a way easy for her to rest in, Jewel the illegitimate one and her favorite the son of the preacher she has had an affair with, Dewey Dell the only girl who herself is in a compromised position, pregnant by her boyfriend Larl, and Vardamon the youngest who sees all of reality unclearly in mixed- up pictures, each tell the story as stream- of - consciousness narrative. Each of the fifty- nine chapters has a character doing the telling in its own way. Through this technique we get to see more intimately each character and their relations with each other. The story not an easy one contains violence greed lust and disruption, but also in certain relations and moments signs of more caring relations, as in Darl who eventually goes mad feeling for his mother, or Dewey Dell's caring for all the children.
This is one of Faulkner's most famous novels and if not in the very first rank is still a remarkable, powerful, innovative and passionately alive one.
Faulkner was no fish.

a Faulkner for the masses.......2007-08-22

I enjoyed this one a lot more than The Sound and the Fury - it didn't make me want to pound my head on the wall in the least.

The short chapters kept the pace going, and once I got a feel for the characters the different viewpoints in each chapter worked very well.

The foreshadowing of events through hints from different perspectives kept the interest up until the action in question was fully revealed.

Not a "dumbed-down" novel, but much more accessible and enjoyable to read.

Average customer rating:

Get cliff notes as a reading companion.
Huh?!
Want to know what's inside Faulkner's head?
You've got to be kidding
Great book - top ten of all time

The Sound and the Fury
William Faulkner
Manufacturer: Vintage
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0679732241
Release Date: 1991-01-30

Amazon.com

The ostensible subject of The Sound and the Fury is the dissolution of the Compsons, one of those august old Mississippi families that fell on hard times and wild eccentricity after the Civil War. But in fact what William Faulkner is really after in his legendary novel is the kaleidoscope of consciousness--the overwrought mind caught in the act of thought. His rich, dark, scandal-ridden story of squandered fortune, incest (in thought if not in deed), madness, congenital brain damage, theft, illegitimacy, and stoic endurance is told in the interior voices of three Compson brothers: first Benjy, the "idiot" man-child who blurs together three decades of inchoate sensations as he stalks the fringes of the family's former pasture; next Quentin, torturing himself brilliantly, obsessively over Caddy's lost virginity and his own failure to recover the family's honor as he wanders around the seedy fringes of Boston; and finally Jason, heartless, shrewd, sneaking, nursing a perpetual sense of injury and outrage against his outrageous family.

If Benjy's section is the most daringly experimental, Jason's is the most harrowing. "Once a bitch always a bitch, what I say," he begins, lacing into Caddy's illegitimate daughter, and then proceeds to hurl mud at blacks, Jews, his sacred Compson ancestors, his glamorous, promiscuous sister, his doomed brother Quentin, his ailing mother, and the long-suffering black servant Dilsey who holds the family together by sheer force of character.

Notoriously "difficult," The Sound and the Fury is actually one of Faulkner's more accessible works once you get past the abrupt, unannounced time shifts--and certainly the most powerful emotionally. Everything is here: the complex equilibrium of pre-civil rights race relations; the conflict between Yankee capitalism and Southern agrarian values; a meditation on time, consciousness, and Western philosophy. And all of it is rendered in prose so gorgeous it can take your breath away. Here, for instance, Quentin recalls an autumnal encounter back home with the old black possum hunter Uncle Louis:

And we'd sit in the dry leaves that whispered a little with the slow respiration of our waiting and with the slow breathing of the earth and the windless October, the rank smell of the lantern fouling the brittle air, listening to the dogs and to the echo of Louis' voice dying away. He never raised it, yet on a still night we have heard it from our front porch. When he called the dogs in he sounded just like the horn he carried slung on his shoulder and never used, but clearer, mellower, as though his voice were a part of darkness and silence, coiling out of it, coiling into it again. WhoOoooo. WhoOoooo. WhoOooooooooooooooo.

What Faulkner has created is a modernist epic in which characters assume the stature of gods and the primal family events resonate like myths. It is The Sound and the Fury that secures his place in what Edmund Wilson called "the full-dressed post-Flaubert group of Conrad, Joyce, and Proust." --David Laskin

Book Description

First published in 1929, Faulkner created his "heart's darling," the beautiful and tragic Caddy Compson, whose story Faulkner told through separate monologues by her three brothers--the idiot Benjy, the neurotic suicidal Quentin and the monstrous Jason.

Customer Reviews:

Get cliff notes as a reading companion........2007-07-15

I read a lot and I like to think that I am pretty smart. I thought I could read and understand this book on my own. That was a bad idea. 4 chapters with four different narratives. The first chapter is narrated by Benjy, a mentally retarded individual who has no concept of time. As a result his narrative shifts all over a thirty year period. Faulkner goes out of his way to make things confusing by not always indicated when the time shifts occur. I swear Faulkner made the book difficult for the sake of making it difficult. For example, one of Benjy's brothers is named Quentin, which is the same name that his sister has given his niece. The second and third chapters become progressively easier to understand, however, I found the fourth chapter quite confusing. While you can pick up the overall themes of the novel and what Faulkner is trying to convey, it wasn't until after I got the cliff notes that I fully understood all of the details. If I had the cliff notes before hand it would have made the book more enjoyable. Probably 4-5 stars if I had the cliff notes as I was reading.

Huh?!.......2007-06-01

I absolutely enjoy reading classics and because this was mentioned on the great 100 books list, I thought i might give it a shot.
My GOD it was so hard to read. I truly do enjoy challenges but i couldn't understand what the heck was going on through most of the first half of the book.
I do understand the purpose of Faulkner writing in so many different dialects/styles however it was painful to read. I finally had to set the book aside and read a synopsis of the book to really understand what the heck was going on and even after reading that, I seriously questioned how one could possibly pick up on those nuances from reading the book.

This book is impossibly difficult to read and frankly, for what the actual plot ended up being, really not worth it. I am still confounded as to why this book is even considered a classic.

Want to know what's inside Faulkner's head?.......2007-05-15

William Faulkner's "The Sound and the Fury" is one of the most difficult books I've had read. First allow me to explain the reason or at least what I think is the reason for this book being extremely difficult to me. I am only on my second semester of English (ENG 101). All my schooling prior to this one was done in Mexico. "The Sound and the Fury" is set in the Deep South, a region known for his accent among other things. So adding the accent from the Deep South plus the fact they also speak Ebonics on top made my reading a lot more difficult, especially Benjy who happens to be retarded. Faulkner's style of writing and how he unfolds this drama surrounding the Compson family share many similarities with Shakespeare style. I never knew or heard of Faulkner's work before reading this book, but through research I learn he has had a prolifically career as a writer. Faulkner has gone to write best seller books such as "As I Lay Dying," "Light in August" also award winning novels like "A Fable" and "The Reivers."
"The Sound and the Fury" is full of amazing characters. Caddy is the main character of the book. She is the object of fixation by her brothers. Her character seems to speak through actions instead of words. (Example: squatting on the branch with muddy underwear looking through the window at her grandmother's funeral...). Benjy the retard, only notice things happening around him, and has no emotions or thoughts. Jason, evil Jason has an obsession with material things. There is also Mr. Compson with his inability to be a father at all levels. Mrs. Compson the mother who can't take care of herself or her family. And finally there is Dilsey the house keeper who is the responsible kind and always looking up for the family.
Regardless of all the trouble I went to finish this book; I highly recommend it reading it. This is definitively not your weekend book, so be ready to get a pencil and paper to get a better understanding of it. Faulkner use of symbolism makes it harder to understand that's why the need to pick up a pencil and paper. But once you get pass all the symbolism and get comfortable with his style of writing it all makes sense.
Done by: Jose G Flores

You've got to be kidding.......2007-05-12

Please, don't insult my intelligence. Faulkner was a Jamnes Joyce wannabe; his characters are poorly-educated, racist and revolting, they have no thoughts worth following anyway. And his writing style is a very poor imitation of Joyce's with its split-time and stream of consciousness. Both Dashiell Hammett and Jack Kerouac could write rings around Faulkner.

Great book - top ten of all time.......2007-04-02

This is an amazing, crazy book that takes a lot of work to read, but it is absolutely worth your effort. In fact it will be impossible for you to grasp every part of the story during the first read. It is told from the point of view of four people who live in a small southern town, set in about the 1930s. The first section is told through the viewpoint of a mentally challenged guy named Benji... you just won't be able to understand everything, nor is the reader meant to understand everything, upon a first casual read. Anyway, this made my top ten of all time list. Great book... the one-star reviews are that way because (and I can sympathize) the reader wasn't able or didn't put forth the effort to read the whole book. Maybe glance at a cliffs-notes type of review before reading, so you can understand the structure of the book... check it out though!

A Summer of Faulkner: As I Lay Dying/The Sound and the Fury/Light in August (Oprah's Book Club)

Average customer rating:

Great American literature
Challenging and thought-provoking
O Oprah
Quite a challenge for the average reader
Not for me.

A Summer of Faulkner: As I Lay Dying/The Sound and the Fury/Light in August (Oprah's Book Club)
William Faulkner
Manufacturer: Vintage
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0307275329
Release Date: 2005-06-03

Book Description

The 2005 Summer Selection is available in an exclusive three volume boxed edition that includes a special reader’s guide with an introduction by Oprah Winfrey.

Titles include:
As I Lay Dying
This novel is the harrowing account of the Bundren family’s odyssey across the Mississippi countryside to bury Addie, their wife and mother. Told in turns by each of the family members–including Addie herself–the novel ranges in mood from dark comedy to the deepest pathos. Originally published in 1930.

The Sound and the Fury
First published in 1929, Faulkner created his “heart’s darling,” the beautiful and tragic Caddy Compson, whose story Faulkner told through separate monologues by her three brothers–the idiot Benjy, the neurotic suicidal Quentin and the monstrous Jason.

Light in August
Light in August, a novel about hopeful perseverance in the face of mortality, features some of Faulkner’s most memorable characters: guileless, dauntless Lena Grove, in search of the father of her unborn child; Reverend Gail Hightower, who is plagued by visions of Confederate horsemen; and Joe Christmas, a desperate, mysterious drifter consumed by his mixed ancestry. Originally published in 1932.

Take a seat in Oprah’s Classroom and sign up for Faulkner 101 on www.oprah.com/bookclub.

Customer Reviews:

Great American literature.......2007-06-28

The Oprah's Book Club is a great, inexpensive way to own these literary pearls. If you do not know what you are getting into I suggest you read first Light in August, then As I Lay Dying and finally, after bracing, The Sound and the Fury. I found the second a tad too dry and dark, but that's Faulkner. The last one is a book you will eventually reread. The first reading could be helped by the many high quality institutional web sites where this masterpiece is dissected and even rearranged for ease of approach. I am witholding a star simply because I have formed the opinion that Faulkner is, to put in mildly, racially biased or at least wrote for the racially biased. I would love to hear what Oprah thinks about this aspect of Faulkner's but I do not have the time. Enjoy.

Challenging and thought-provoking.......2007-01-05

These novels are not to be read for sheer pleasure, but rather for the challenge and the depth. They are not easy to read, though *Light in August* is the easiest of the three. The prose is so difficult at times that I needed to reread again and again. I had to stop and take numerous breaks because my brain got twisted around.

I strongly suggest getting research materials from a university librray if at all possible to help navigate the stories. In the end, the depth of these novels is profound and extremely rewarding. It was only after I finished them (and read a lot of extra research articles) that I truly appreciated them. These novels are definitely amazing and a great account of southern life in the early part of the 20th century (and after the civil war), and I admire Faulkner more than I ever thought I could.

If you thought James Joyce was complex, try Faulkner!

O Oprah.......2006-08-27

AS I LAY DYING by William Faulkner

I respect what he did, but I read about 15% of this one before I got bored. I don't agree with Oprah that he's difficult. I knew exactly where he was coming from and where he wanted to go. Many relevant themes and he was a damn fine wordsmith. But it's old news to this jaded old redneck. I don't know why. I realize I just dismissed an author who deserved his Pulitzers and his Nobel Prize, in a single short paragraph, but please hold back on the hate mail.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

THE SOUND AND THE FURY by William Faulkner

Ditto. You hate me, don't you?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

LIGHT IN AUTUMN by William Faulkner

Ditto. Hoo boy, now you want me dead.

Quite a challenge for the average reader.......2006-07-25

Quite a challenge for the average reader.

I want to say something like, "you owe it to yourself to read these books."... and perhaps you do. I, however, don't get it. I read the insert by Opera, and all the scholars, I read As I Lay Dying, like I was supposed to, and I simply don't get the allure of Faulkner.

So reader beware. It is a challenge to read Faulkner, not because his ideas are so very profound, but because his writing style leaves me unable to care for any of his characters in any meaningful way. The dialogue is far too folksy, and though I fully realize what he is doing (presenting to us the depth of the human experience by showing us the trials and tribulations of poor folk who are just trying to make a living) I found I had no time to plod through anything more than the first 100 pages.

I realize mine is just one opinion, but think before you buy. In the reader's guide that accompanies the books, Opera suggests that you are not really a reader unless you have read Faulkner. Please take that with a grain of salt and give yourself a break... Faulkner just might not be for you.

Not for me........2006-02-22

I tried, really I did, to read these books. They were very difficult to understand. I even did an online discussion with "experts" to try to figure out what was going on, but it just didn't happen. I read "As I Lay Dying" entirely & the story behind the story told by the "experts" was okay, but did not make the read worth the time. The 2nd book, I couldn't get past the first few chapters & by the third book, I had given up. Definitely not my style.

Average customer rating:

Eleven Days In August
Wonderful writing, sad and fatalistic story
Fine characterization
Major but Flawed
The book for the first time Faulkner reader to start with.

Light in August (The Corrected Text)
William Faulkner
Manufacturer: Vintage International/Random House
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0679732268
Release Date: 1991-01-30

Book Description

Joe Christmas does not know whether he is black or white. Faulkner makes of Joe's tragedy a powerful indictment of racism; at the same time Joe's life is a study of the divided self and becomes a symbol of 20th century man.

Customer Reviews:

Eleven Days In August.......2007-08-12

This book has been touted as being Faulkner's most accessible. Although a bit easier to follow having less stream of consciousness it still requires some patience and appreciation for nuance. Further, if you take the story at face value you will be missing out on 90% of what it has to offer. The themes run deep and the characters symbolic. I'd recommend reading exerpts from One Matchless Time by Jay Parini who provides some good insights into Faulkner's life and his writings. I'd also read the review written by A.Mason (below). This was one of the more violent and sexual books that I have read of Faulkner. Although I was surprised, I was in awe of his tact and style in portraying these events in a subtly gruesome way that takes the reader off gaurd. The climactic scene of Joe Christmas's undoing was Faulkner at his best. I'd recommend this book to anyone who loves good writing and is fascinated with the tragedy of the post-Civil War southerner.

Wonderful writing, sad and fatalistic story.......2007-02-08

This book was my introduction to Faulkner, based on a suggestion by my well-read aunt.

It is certainly possible to recognize the skill of a writer without necessarily finding the story he tells endearing. That was the case here. Faulkner's prose is often like poetry and his use of the language is unquestionably masterful. He shows his talent not so much in the words he uses - the vocabulary is actually quite plain - but rather in the way he combines those words. Simple adjectives are used to create compelling scenes and even more compelling characters.

Faulkner strikes me as the consummate observer. He doesn't moralize, he doesn't become overwrought, he doesn't offer judgement. He simply observes the way things are, not the way we want them to be, and there is a sense that we are being propelled towards not tragegy but simply reality in his writing.

Light in August is ostensibly about Joe Christmas, a headstrong and mysterious drifter in the 1920s deep South, but surprisingly we aren't introduced to him until several chapters into the book. The book chronicles the intersecting people and events that surround Joe Christmas in Faulkner's fictional town of Jefferson, Mississippi. However, the author introduces us to so many other non-incidental characters that it is often hard to separate the leading from the supporting cast.

If I had to describe the characters in this book in a single word it would be "trapped." There is an overwhelming sense of stuck-ness we get in observing their lives. One does not necessarily get the impression that they saw themselves as stuck and hopeless - indeed many seemed to exist in frustrating ignorance of reality. But for the outside observer to whom Faulkner tells this story using his rich narrative, it is obvious that to a person, every character in this book is indeed on a treadmill. Slavery may be over, but the people that populate these pages are in very real servitude to themselves and their pasts.

The book is a glimpse at the deep South immediately prior to the depression era. We're presented with a culture that still hasn't quite come to grips with life on the other side of the Civil War and racialism is so deeply ingrained that although slavery is no longer law, the caste system it birthed lives on in the arrogant attitudes of the whites and the subservient squalor of the blacks.

The loyalties and alliances and relationships in this book are complex, as are the characters, and more than once I found myself wanting to slap these characters into sense. Without exception, each was their own worst enemy and managed to almost single-handedly sail their lives into the rocks. Although many were admittedly pointed rock-ward via their upbringing, they had ample opportunities to change course but continued sailing directly for the cliffs.

Although I have not yet read other books by Faulkner, I'm told this is the most approachable of all his writing, reading the most like a traditional novel. There is plenty of tension in the story, as the saga of Christmas and the other characters unfolds dramatically. Consequently, most people will find themselves turning the pages in anticipation of what happens next. Faulkner takes the reader on numerous side journeys, showing how the characters came to be what they are, and those characters often share certain aspects of their history in common, not just their present circumstances.

As the book draws to a close, the treadmill keeps turning with characters trudging futilely into the sunset, still stuck in the same ruts in which the beginning of the story found them. I'll say little more. To do otherwise is to risk spoiling the plot.

I can perhaps describe the overall experience here as bittersweet. The writing sweet, but the tale itself thoroughly bitter.

Fine characterization.......2007-02-07

I enjoyed this book much more than I expected. It explores the questions of race thoroughly without hitting the reader over the head with it. The characters seem real, neither demonic nor angelic. The impact of race is ultimately devastating to Joe Christmas and many of the people around him.

Major but Flawed.......2007-01-20

Faulkner's was a self-indulgent, irresponsible, uneven gift. But at his best, as sometimes in these pages, he is a poet and rhapsodist without equal, and we continue to read him. As a rational thinker he was a nullity; he had no practical insights, no social program, no agendum, no framework that could serve as a starting point toward a solution of the problems he so tellingly describes. This became abundantly clear around the time of his winning the Nobel prize for literature, when he disappointed and exasperated followers who were looking to him for guidance as to a beacon. At least Faulkner had the self-knowledge to know that he did not know, did not in fact even want to know. For knowledge was inimical to his art, not-wanting-to-know a precondition for it. That, and bourbon. The bourbon released his inhibitions and silenced his inner editor (its voice had never been loud), unleashing a torrent of words, much of it bilge but some diamonds too. The result in Light in August is an exasperating novel that contains some thirty scattered pages of the highest poetic value and one potentially great character in the person of Joe Christmas. I say this as a man of 54 who has read the book five times in the course of his life, having been introduced to it in high school. Of course I didn't understand much of it then, but its inimitable style and voluptuous confusion have beckoned me back to it.

One is attracted above all by the descriptions of the simple processes of life in all their earthy particulars, the negro cabins, the town lights, the smells, everything rank and dark and elemental. Except for Joe Christmas and possibly Gail Hightower, the characters are all stereotypes, especially the women. Intellectually, there is little of substance in the novel, its appeal is entirely emotional. There is a clean, bracing no-nonsense description of hypermasculine elements and experiences to which Joe seems to gravitate naturally. For instance, of McEachern's harness strap ("clean, like the shoes, and it smelled like the man smelled: an odor of clean hard virile living leather") and Joe's rapt expression when being beaten by it; of Joe's preference for the clean, hard air of men. Given his latent homosexuality, one feels Joe would have done much better as a votary of the strap. But there was a problem. Biologically he was wired for pussy, and no mistake. Even as a child in the orphanage with the dietician he showed this susceptibility: "On that first day when he discovered the toothpaste in her room he had gone directly there, who had never heard of toothpaste either, as if he already knew that she would possess something of that nature and he would find it." He was still too young to understand what Charley was enjoying, but when he came of age he learned that it too, like the toothpaste, was not always sweet ("periodic filth between two moons suspended"). Unfortunately, Joe had no use for the rest of the package and never learned to like and appreciate women as people. This was the root of his troubles with women and by cutting him off from a source of life helped to seal his doom.

Several reviewers have stated that Joe had some negro blood. This is an error and is refuted by the evidence given in the book, although it suits Faulkner (if not Joe) to make Joe out as a possible negro and even to foist him off as one. I think Faulkner's device here, of using the negro as the ultimate symbol of the outcast, is a dreadful mistake, so serious as even to call into question his integrity as an artist and his understanding of his greatest character. Why? Partly because it is too easy, too cheap a shot. It's also overkill, since Joe's alienation has already been powerfully delineated by other, artistic means. But the main, the fatal objection, is that raising the N question does great damage by introducing confusion precisely where the novel demands clarity and restraint -- it entangles Joe's problem of identity with something completely separate and other. This other is a serious communal problem in its own right and certainly should not be abused as a symbol in the way that Faulkner abuses it (neither should the word Christmas). Faulkner is monkeying around with things bigger than himself, things he does not understand, in an attempt to endow his work with a greater significance than he was capable of developing on his own horsepower as a creative writer; this is what I mean when I say he is irresponsible. Joe's problem is in fact his alone. Damaged in childhood and partly cut off from the sources of life, he has to renew and rebuild himself to a degree not necessary to his complacent countrymen, who by virtue of their utter mediocrity are granted automatic membership in small, stultifying, inbred towns like the one in which the action unfolds. Faulkner's punishment is swift and certain -- it is precisely here in the book that he begins to stumble, to overreach for a grand synthesis that isn't there. The performance is increasingly over-the-top until eventually artistic control is lost. He doesn't seem to grasp the limitations of his creations, and the book becomes a stew. Faulkner was nothing if not confused, and here alas the confusion damages the work. Where was that inner editor?

After the murder, a building momentum sweeps the reader on to the end. However, there is no true catharsis and no real tragedy, only an overreaching for a grand synthesis that fails. The reader is struck by the feeling that something has gone wrong, and on going back finds he has been the victim of a swindle. The book closes with that sucker Byron Bunch in tow with his damaged goods in the form of Lena Grove and her bastard infant. Faulkner seems to be saying that in spite of some mistakes, life has returned to its immemorial path. But if this is salvation, one must be glad for Joe that he is safely dead and out of harm's way. Not everyone is cowed by the eternal feminine, and Joe himself would have no trouble giving the Lena Groves of the world what they deserve -- the back of his hand.

So after forty years and five attempts at this book, what of value can I take away? Perhaps some thirty pages of beautiful poetry, and the memory of Joe Christmas. He sought to rebuild and renew himself through the transformative power of hard physical labor and I would like to leave him there, continuing now and forever on the roads he freely chose for himself, that run "through yellow wheat fields waving beneath the fierce yellow days of labor and hard sleep in haystacks beneath the cold mad moon of September, and the brittle stars."

The book for the first time Faulkner reader to start with........2007-01-15

Light in August by William Faulkner is the book for the first time Faulkner reader to start with. The book is very readable. Unlike some Faulkner stories, the story line is easy to follow. His verbosity is not as apparent in this work as in some of his others where lengthy sentences and tangent monologues within the story derail the reader. The plot is more typical than any of his other works. The average reader will appreciate the book and get a hunger to dip into other works by this southern master writer.

Read and reviewed by Jimmie A. Kepler

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A Fourteen Way Of Looking At A Blackbird
Absalom, Absalom
Unreliable Narrators, Dated Anxieties, An Empire Collapses
It is a masterpiece, though not easy to understand.
Like 10,000 cheese cakes

Absalom, Absalom!
William Faulkner
Manufacturer: Vintage
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0679732187
Release Date: 1991-01-30

Book Description

The story of Thomas Sutpen, an enigmatic stranger who came to Jefferson in the early 1830s to wrest his mansion out of the muddy bottoms of the north Mississippi wilderness. He was a man, Faulkner said, "who wanted sons and the sons destroyed him."

Customer Reviews:

A Fourteen Way Of Looking At A Blackbird.......2007-04-17

This is a dark, convoluted, complex novel written in a stream of consciousness text that can easily confuse and scare the casual reader away. For the serious reader who is willing to put the time and effort into this work of art you will not be let down. First, however, you must read The Sound and the Fury (SAF). If you work your way through that novel and you "get it" and love it, then Absalom is a absolute must. But be prepared. T.S. Eliot once said of the book that it communicates before it is understood. Typical Faulkner. It takes some fortitude and a little background. Let me help with a little background. For starters, The title comes from an the Old Testament (2 Samuel 13). Absalom, one of David's sons kills his brother Amnon for raping their sister Tamar. Hence the title and a clue. The book is full of clues and in a sense can be taken by the reader as detective story full of mystery and revenge, suspense and gothic drama. This is the story of Southern tradgedy and the fall of the House of Sutpen. The central character is Thomas Sutpen who is the fountainhead of the southern, self-reliant man seeking to reach the American dream through creating a grand design of dynasty. To pass his dynasty on to his eldest legitimate son is part of the design and part its downfall. The story takes place before, during, and after the Civil War and issues such as race, miscegenation, class, economy, worker's rights, women's rights are all spun into the story that is a portrait of Southern realism. The story is told by four narrators: Quentin Compson (from SAF), Quentin's father, Quentin's roomate Shreve, and Miss Rosa Coldfield. Quentin however is the central narrator and by reading SAF one can better understand the issues facing Quentin and the reason he struggles so much with this story. Absalom is very much the story of Quentin's hatred for the bad qualities in the southern country that he loves. Much of the story as told by Quentin and Shreve is purely imaginative construction of what could have been as they speculate on the enigmatic drama that unfolds. In the back of the book is a genealogy and chronology which is extremely helpful as the story often jumps from one time period to another and from one character to another. Work on keeping it straight and reread if necessary. The book doesn't get any easier as it moves toward the conclusion. Do trust Faulkner. If you pay attention, he pulls it together and you will discover why this novel is, in my opinion, the greatest American novel of the 20th century.

Absalom, Absalom.......2007-04-10

Absalom, Abasalom is high Faulkner. It looks into the themes that he usually covers: the South and racism and other types of evil and abnormality. The method of exposition is one Faulkner used before in The Sound and the Fury, but here Faulkner's use of multiple points of view and the stream of consciousness technique attains a more highly developed, indeed baroque, level. Faulkner drops the relevant details of the plot into the stream, usually with no great fanfare, so this book must be read closely even to understand the basic information of who did what. Discerning these details involves reading a lot of sentences like the following one and, occasionally, encountering a valuable clue:

"Or perhaps it is no lack of courage either: not cowardice that will not face that sickness somewhere at the prime foundation of this factual scheme from which the prisoner soul, miasmal-distillant, wroils ever upward sunward, tugs its tenuous prisoner arteries and veins and prisoning in its turn that spark, that dream which, as the globy and complete instant of its freedom mirrors and repeats (repeats? creates, reduces to a fragile evanescent iridescent sphere) all of space and time and massy earth, relicts the seething and miasmal mass which in all years of time has taught itself no boon of death but only how to recreate, renew; and dies, is gone, vanished: nothing- but is that true wisdom which can comprehend that there is a might-have-been which is more than truth, from which the dreamer, waking, says not `Did I dream?' but rather says, indicts high heaven's very self with `Why did I wake since waking I shall never sleep again?'"

This novel is art, even great art, but is it a good read? In my opinion, no. This is a book that really must be studied rather than read, preferably with pencil and paper at hand to keep track of the relationships between the characters. (Faulkner helpfully ends the book with a chronology and a list of characters. I discovered this too late and at any rate the chronology is not complete.) For me, the effort required to get through this book somewhat outweighed the rewards. Doubtless other readers would disagree.

Unreliable Narrators, Dated Anxieties, An Empire Collapses.......2007-03-05

ABSALOM, ABSOLOM! tells two intertwined stories. The first is the story of Thomas Sutpen, born a poor white in West Virginia, who creates a great estate through sheer determination and eventually becomes an elite in the Antebellum South. Through Sutpen, Faulkner once again explores the quest for money and respectability in the rich imaginary world of Yoknapatawpha County.

The second braid of this story is slavery and its historical repercussions. In this case, Sutpen, a slave owner and plantation master, fathers two mixed race children. Ultimately, it is Sutpen's unwillingness to treat a son with "black blood" as a man and equal that destroys what he has achieved. This son is the Absalom of the title.

To tell this story and explore these themes, Faulkner creates a series of unreliable narrators who have exaggerated views of Sutpen. One is Miss Rosa, who is outraged by his sexual unscrupulousness, as well as his ability to pull an empire from the wilderness. (Her own devout Methodist father was a failed businessman.)

Then, there are the highly rhetorical Mr. Compson and Shreve. Both of these narrators approach Sutpen with amazed and fascinated speculation. A modern parallel to their voices might be celebrity interviewers who wait outside the theater at the Oscars, savoring every detail about the stars. But if you don't share their obsession? Then, their hyper focus and passionate conjecture simply seem weird, and not a little pathetic.

For me, the amazed and obsessive speculation of these voices seemed out of proportion to the faults and actions of Thomas Sutpen. I think, in part, this shows that Faulkner's theme--race, miscegenation, and its historical consequences--are no longer viewed as cataclysmic threats to American society. This is a great and positive change from the Jim Crow climate in Oxford Mississippi in the 1930s, when Faulkner wrote and where defeated Confederate soldiers and freed slaves still lived.

This is not to say that we've become a race-blind society. But the concerns that animate Mr. Compson and Shreve--Interracial sex! We'll all have black ancestors in a thousand years!--no longer brew that muddled hysteria that energizes their narrative voices, especially that of Shreve.

In my opinion, this challenging book is Faulkner-for-professors. I still prefer THE HAMLET.

It is a masterpiece, though not easy to understand........2006-12-23

Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner. I "read" this book the first time in college in 1972. I recently reread the book after several attempts. The length of the sentences at first overwhelmed me. The first sentence in the book was 70 plus words long. It is a masterpiece. It is both troubling and satisfying. The level of literary intensity and imagination is extraordinary. Faulkner's gives a great look into the depths of the human heart. This is not an easy book to read and understand. The book teaches much on love. It also teaches much on hate. You see much about the racial struggle of that period. You also get an interesting view into the old southern United States. This book is not for everyone. It requires a great love of reading and concentration. If you read the Nobel and Pulitzer winners, this is a must read.

Reviewed and read by Jimmie A. Kepler.

Like 10,000 cheese cakes.......2006-12-07

Every sentence in this book is like a baroquely and exhaustively decorated slice of magically fortified cheesecake-Cheesecake so excruciatingly rich as to be nigh inedible (so rich in fact that it is inevitable that a slice must be regurgitated and re-eaten(often regurgitated and re-eaten, gagging, multiple times)-accounting for the bitter and bilous taste in the occasional one or two star bestowing readers mouth and review) but if you can stomach it- to stomach often necessitating that the reader push themself away from the table-also powerfully nourishing so that by the time you finish the book it is as though you have somehow eaten the titular ten thousand cheese cakes and are therefore full beyond comprehension but satisfied beyond comparison.

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good but needs updating
Easiest MRI review ever
a must have
mri for idiots

Review Questions for MRI
William H. Faulkner , and Carolyn Kaut Roth
Manufacturer: Blackwell Publishing Limited
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0632039051

Customer Reviews:

good but needs updating.......2007-01-10

This book is a good review but there are some questions that could use some more up to date information. The answer key could use some more explination to the answers given. The questions could cover more information and with the updated info more questions could be posed. Overall the book is a good review but should not be the only one used.

Easiest MRI review ever.......2007-01-04

I have several of these review books covering several modalities. I like this one the best.

a must have.......2001-07-16

This is a must have for all MRI Technologists, price here is higher than most bookstores. If you only get one book in MR review, this is it

mri for idiots.......2000-03-27

a felow technologist recommended this as a study aid for the registry exam last fall. it was a definite life-saver. easy to understand; and practical questions. i don't think i could have passed the registry without this book. very highly recommended.

Rad Tech's Guide to MRI: Basic Physics, Instrumentation and Quality Control (Rad Tech Series)

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Rad Tech's Guide to MRI: Basic Physics, Instrumentation and Quality Control (Rad Tech Series)
Rad Tech's Guide to MRI: Basic Physics, Intrumentation and Quality Control
Exellent little book
MRI basic Physics....

Rad Tech's Guide to MRI: Basic Physics, Instrumentation and Quality Control (Rad Tech Series)
William H. Faulkner
Manufacturer: Blackwell Publishing Limited
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0632045051

Book Description

This new edition to the "Tech's Guide" Series provides an overview of equipment, physics and clinical quality control for MR imaging, which represents material covered in the first half of the ARRT certifying exam for MRI.

Concise, easy-to-read text

Bullet-point format

convenient, portable size allows for quick reference

Customer Reviews:

Rad Tech's Guide to MRI: Basic Physics, Instrumentation and Quality Control (Rad Tech Series).......2007-01-05

Faulkner is easy to follow and understand. This book is just the right size to carry around with you to use as a reference,also.

Rad Tech's Guide to MRI: Basic Physics, Intrumentation and Quality Control.......2005-10-02

Very useful, great supplement to MRI in Practice. Worth the price.

Exellent little book.......2004-01-13

Beleive me this is THE best little MRI review book I have ever seen so far. It is very easy to undersand and very concise. IT covers everything in an easy to understand way. I really helped me.

MRI basic Physics...........2003-06-13

A must have book for the MRI technologist that is new or is seasoned. Written so you understand it, a must have for the registry.

Average customer rating:

City of Man, City of Nature
Opaque and Exuberant
Beautifully Written but Fragmented
Beautiful, and occasionally readable
Good Picture Words, Weak Story Line

Go Down, Moses
William Faulkner
Manufacturer: Vintage
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0679732179
Release Date: 1991-01-30

Book Description

Faulkner examines the changing relationship of black to white and of man to the land, and weaves a complex work that is rich in understanding of the human condition.

Customer Reviews:

City of Man, City of Nature.......2007-02-09

The Southern landscape of field and swamp and woods becomes a prominent character throughout these rich, complex stories. Indeed, I'd imagine most of Go Down, Moses could provocatively serve an environmental history class. 'Pantaloon In Black' is perhaps my favorite here; this haunting tale, full of powerful, archetypal imagery, is mentioned far less often than some of the other, more well-known works, but it struck me immediately. 'The Bear,' with that sprawling coda tackling humankind's relationship with the land, is rather a reading experience unto itself.

Opaque and Exuberant.......2005-06-21

Go Down Moses was my latest stab at Faulkner. I'd certainly recommend, as someone before me has, a college course or reading group study of this book, and just about any other great Faulkner work. That being said, even a marginal understanding of this book (like mine) is worth the time and effort.

Go Down Moses is a collection of temporally fragmented novellas and stories concerning the McCaslin family's past, present, and future legacy in a southern town. Thematically, Faulkner tackles a bevy of issues--race, slavery, paternity, masculinity, the natural and supernatural. The stories are loosely centered around Isaac McCaslin, descendant of Carothers McCaslin--a plantation owner.

The best regarded and most complex story is considered to be "The Bear." Over a hundred pages long, it follows (often meandering) the hunting team that includes young Isaac, ex-Civil War officers, and a half Choctaw/half African hunter (Sam Fathers) as they obsessively pursue the invincible bear Old Ben through the years. Bursting with imagery and symbolism, "The Bear" will please Faulkner fans and hunters alike.

My personal favorites are "Was" and "The Fire and the Hearth." Lucas, half-black and the oldest living McCaslin save Isaac, searches for buried gold on Carothers Edmonds's plantation, where he farms, while his wife, fed up with his mania, gives him an ultimatum. An unlikely and graceful story of marital bonds and family values, and the triumph of humanity and dignity over birthright

Beautifully Written but Fragmented.......2004-12-15

This is in my opinion, not one of Faulkner's best books. It is, however, a beautifully written story of generations of a single exstended family. Because the book is written in that it is made up of several short stories instead of chapters, the story can seem fragmented at times, leaving you wondering what happened to the characters in the last piece. It is difficult at times to keep characters straight, but the best story in the book is by far "The Fire in the Hearth" which follows the Lucas and Molly, this part of the book is often overlooked in the shadow of the long and tedious "The Bear"- but should be read and enjoyed.
Overall the book is a good introduction to Faulkner, but may be a challenging read to some.

Beautiful, and occasionally readable.......2004-06-24

Faulkner's writing is very often beautiful. Maybe even unceasingly beautiful. But for most readers, it will only occasionally be completely readable.

Despite frequently inaccessible language and structure, the text will still likely be worthwhile to pretty much anyone fluent in the language simply because what can be read and can be understood is just that good. But ideally, a review shouldn't have to begin with the word 'despite.'

A style of writing accessible only to the author is literary (...). Joyce does a far better job of earning that description, but Faulkner isn't far behind.

Sometimes, a great writer will come along, who can relate deep meaning through simple, every day language. That's not Faulkner.

You may have to read through some of the passages in Go Down Moses three or four times in order to figure out exactly what's going on. And an absolutely fundamental plot point might be contained within three words of an almost nonsensically drawn-out sentence of otherwise little relevance.

Deriving the full meaning of a Hemingway story will probably take you a third the time deriving half the meaning of a Faulkner story will. Is it worth three times the effort to hear half the story in Faulkner's words? That's up to you.

Good Picture Words, Weak Story Line.......2004-05-26

"Go Down , Moses" was formed out of the melding of a series of short stories into a novel about the McCaslin family of Jefferson, Mississippi. Extending through the life of Ike McCaslin, his youthful experiences help him to later face a crucial test about his family's legacy. The complex racial relations of Faulkner's novels introduce the reader to a world which most of us could never understand or even imagine.

Like other Faulkner novels, I find the dialogue and stream of consciousness to be the most alluring qualities of the book. The thoughts of the characters, the descriptions of the scenes and the dialogues paint mental pictures of the action in which the reader can feel himself to be a part.

Customer Reviews:

The complexity of Faulkner in a straight forward novel.......2007-08-24

William Faulkner is one of my all time favorite authors, one who I greatly admire and love. His writing always seem fluid in its movement from paper to mind, giving up such a full picture of what is going on. The Reivers is yet another novel that draws you in and makes you feel as though you are right there with Lucius, Boon and Ned as there adventures lead them to Memphis.

All, of course, did not go as planned. Lucius Priest, an elven year old boy, is persuaded by Boon, a character we've seen in other Faulkner novels (such as Go Down, Moses), to "borrow" Lucius' grandfather's car. Eventually the star of the book, Ned McCaslin, is discovered and the adventure soon took a decidedly different direction.

The Reivers is a great comic, picaresque novel that is one of Faulkner's easier novels to read. This does not distract from the novel and, in a way, lends the story its credibility. At times we see the naive and ignorant young Lucius, then we meet the older narrator Lucius. Boon the mastermind, only to be usurped by Ned. The morals and the justice of the story all come together nicely by the end.

Faulkner is one to be admired, and I have yet to pick up one of his novels and not be impressed. Although some find his novels too complex or confusing, this one is a much easier read and allows the reader to enjoy the complexity of Faulkner in a much more straight forward manner.

5 stars.

A great comic adventure!.......2007-01-04

Faulkner's "The Reivers" is a great comic adventure about the early days of automobiles, when it was rare to see one. The story is about a misadventure that a young boy, and two of his father's employees get into when they 'borrow' his grandfather's car for a joyride from rural Mississippi to Memphis, Tennessee.

Loved it.......2006-11-04

The Faulkner I've previously read explores mans' imperfections and failures. This book celebrates them. The story is told from the perspective of a young boy, and his sentence structure and punctuation takes getting used to, but it's worth it. The book is beautifully and joyfully written.

Faulkner's last novel.......2006-07-10

Although I had read Faulkner's other major works, I only just recently got around to completing this novel. As students of Faulkner know, this book is not--nor did its author intend it to be--a major work of literature. For those just beginning to read Faulkner, it will prove much more accessible than the classic texts (like The Sound and the Fury), and it will introduce them to some of the author's characters and themes--but it won't introduce them to important elements of his Modernist technique.

The novel has a great deal of charm, however, and I will take this opportunity to suggest that it be assigned as summer reading (do they still do that?) for students in about 10th grade. It's a coming-of-age story that has to do with responsibility. At the end the grandfather says to Lucius following the boy's adventure in Memphis: "A gentleman can live through anything. He faces anything. A gentleman accepts the responsibility of his actions and bears the burden of their consequences, even when he did not himself instigate them but only acquiesced to them, didn't say No though he knew he should" (p. 302).

Trying to finish it.......2006-01-13

This book is very hard to read. Excruciatingly painful in dull plot as well as the overly wordy text. I am going to finish it as an exercise in tenacity.

Average customer rating:

A Rose for Emily
Wow! Readable Faulkner!
Wonderful
STRONG AND POWERFUL
The American Author

Collected Stories of William Faulkner
William Faulkner
Manufacturer: Vintage
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0679764038
Release Date: 1995-10-31

Book Description

This magisterial collection of short works by Nobel Prize-winning author William Faulkner reminds readers of his ability to compress his epic vision into narratives as hard and wounding as bullets. Among the 42 selections in this book are such classics as "A Bear Hunt, " "A Rose for Emily, " Two Soldiers, " and "The Brooch."

Customer Reviews:

A Rose for Emily.......2007-01-18

This short story is twisted, but that's why it's so great. The story is dark and gloomy, but it is really interesting. A Rose for Emily recounts the story of an eccentric spinster, Emily Grierson. An unnamed narrator details the strange circumstances of Emily's life and her odd relationships with her father, who controlled and manipulated her, and her lover, the Yankee road worker Homer Barron. When Homer Barron threatens to leave her, she is seen buying arsenic, which the townspeople believe she will commit suicide with. Faulkner based the story upon a true incident. The rose indeed was for his friend, Emily Grierson. In the story, the townspeople's points of views on Emily actually reflect the society's value at that moment to some extent. Emily feels that she is released when her father is dead.
However, I do not recommend this book if you might get scared easily. The ending might come as a surprise, but that's suspense. Go read it, if you like it a bit twisted.

Wow! Readable Faulkner!.......2006-09-11

As someone who read Flannery O'Conner before ever getting near Faulkner, I must say that he does hold his own with these stories. For better or worse, Faulkner will always be near the top of great American authors. I say for better or worse, because some people can be greatly turned off by his novels, and the difficulty in reading them. While I've been greatly critical of him in the past, I'm still trying to learn and understand his modus operandi. It's been a rewarding learning experience, but one that hasn't been without some exasperation.....I still like O'Conner better!

Wonderful.......2003-11-21

After reading "A Mule in the Yard," "That Will Be Fine," and "That Evening Sun" I was reminded of why this guy is one of the greatest storytellers ever. I know, his writing can be dense and even a times nearly unintelligible, but patience and concentration pays off with Faulkner. And his use of point of view is amazing.

STRONG AND POWERFUL.......2002-09-17

Amasing, strong and powerful. What else can one say about one of the best writers of the world?

The American Author.......2001-12-21

The first Faulkner book I read was in my junior year of high school. When I consulted my teacher about whether I should choose Faulkner or another author to read, she told me something along the lines of, "Faulkner's regionalistic and enigmatic style is interpreted two different ways by two different types of people: One think that he is symbolic and profound, the other think that he is not and rather full of it." Well, I do feel sorry for the 'other' group, because to not reconize the depth behind his more-poetic-than-most-poets words is just plain out wacky. I will say that he is not your typical fiction writer, his books do not have action oriented plots (or even any action in some cases), but he still somehow manages to catch your interest. I have never fell asleep while reading a book or story by Faulkner, and not many authors have earned this distinction. He also leaves you with a sense of reflection, again something distinguishing him from many others. Personally, I prefer short stories to novels, I find that my focus to the point and plot of the story is less distracted by the end as with a novel and I typically find that I retain more. I do enjoy Faulkner's novels and have read quite a few, but this collection of short stories is just brilliant beyond brilliant. His words are potent and sharp in all of them, even if his point and meaning is more elusive. I completely and totally recommend that everyone read this collection of stories. Everyone. Really. That means you too.

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