As I Lay Dying: The Corrected Text

A very interesting way to tell a story.

I have seen many reviews of this book done by people who were forced to read it while in high school. Unfortunately many of these rate this classic book poorly which is understandable - being forced to read a book is no way to develop an appreciation for it.This book is a great read. It does, however, require a careful and considered reading, not conducive to fast ready "just to get it over with" as might be the case with many high schoolers. Each chapter is from the perspective of a different character and are not always time-aligned. For instance, there are some flashback chapters to events that occurred before the events of the book began. If one does not pay attention this can be incredibly confusing. Additionally, each character has a different and in come cases strange perspective on events. These differences are what makes the book fantastic. The reader must piece together the first person stream of consciousness accounts to make sense of the overall story. This style is typical of William Faulkner and makes his works classic and unique.In the end the story is engaging, sad, funny (in a dark way). I enjoyed it immensely.

I have known William Faulkner to be considered among the greatest of American writers and thus have wanted to read him for a long time. I once had a short correspondence with another excellent American writer, James Lee Burke, which reaffirmed this desire. This is a part of my email to him: "My Book Club is now reading The Hamlet by William Faulkner. I wish I could say I love reading this obscure Faulkner book, but I would be lying. His run-on sentences and densely written descriptions are difficult reading and in the end, I don't care much about the characters or the plot, if one could say there is a plot. But what I have enjoyed is finding myself making the comparison of Faulkner's writing to your writing, notwithstanding what I found so difficult in The Hamlet. There have even been some descriptive words that I could have sworn I remembered reading in The Glass Rainbow. I see the similarities in both you and Faulkner when it comes to your sensibilities regarding the unfair disparity between the desperately poor and disenfranchised and the rich and powerful, who so often make their claim to what isn't theirs and keep that stake for decades. Have you been influenced by William Faulkner? Reading Faulkner and then reading Burke, one sees how much and yet how little has changed in the South (and the North, East and West for that matter). This was in August, 2010. JLB replied: "Thanks for your nice letter, Miss Sherril. I appreciate all your good words and thoughts. Regarding William Faulkner, he is probably America's greatest writer and in my opinion up there with Chaucer and Milton and Shakespeare. I don't think I was influenced stylistically by him, but as you say, my work contains themes that are similar to his, primarily because the southern story ultimately involves the issues you describe and they find their way into any southern writer's work." Though I would have to admit to not getting through all of Faulkner's, The Hamlet, I still wanted to try one of his more well known books.Fast forward to July, 2015, and my book club finally ventured on to its next, and better known Faulkner novel, As I Lay Dying. I read about 30 pages and knew I was facing a challenge. It is written in the down home, folksy, back woods, country, dare I say, bumpkin style of speech that I guess was common in country Southern diction in 1930. I couldn't follow it and I was afraid that this book may go the way of The Hamlet and that perhaps I was just not meant to read and appreciate William Faulkner. This depressed me. I felt determined to push through. It occurred to me to look for something to guide me through. As it happens, there exist guides galore. My search brought me to AS I LAY DYING: A Reader's Guide to the William Faulkner Novel by Robert Crayola (I must admit to choosing this one only partly due to the author's last name). Buying this guide on my Kindle (on which I was also reading Faulkner's book) was a stroke of genius. It helped me to understand the characters, of which there are 7 who are part of the Bundren family, 7 who are neighbors or other significant characters, who interact with the Bundren family and another 6 who are less significant characters. The book is written in the voices of each of its characters, each chapter, which is notably short (the entire book is only about 267 pages, depending on which version you read), is entitled by the character's name.Reading chapter by chapter, first that of the guide, then that of the novel, gave me a fuller picture of each person, the relationships between one to another and their motivations, which were at times deceptive, at times sincere. There are issues that come up in the book that oftentimes rock boats today, so I can only imagine how talking about adultery and abortion affected some readers 85 years ago. Other themes like religion, dysfunctional families, country vs city living and how folks in both see each other, the definition of sanity vs insanity and disability and finally nature and natural disasters vs humans, make this book current and meaningful for readers of every generation.The novel does not go in a linear time fashion and the guide helped keep that straight as well. Perhaps this review is coming across as more about the guide then the novel, but what I mean to represent here is that for the reader who is not a Faulkner scholar, As I Lay Dying is not a walk in the park and can be a trudge through thick mud, but with determination and a good guide to help you through, it just may add you to the long list of readers who begin to know and appreciate this great American gem of an author. Now that I've read some of The Hamlet and all of As I Lay Dying, I am ready for The Sound and the Fury, Light in August and who knows, maybe some day I WILL BE a Faulkner scholar. 😊

That is saying something, as Faulkner never deals with functional families. Anse Bundren is both put upon and the instrument of his own self imposed bad luck, due primarily to his condition of not being able to sweat lest it make him ill, which is unfortunate for a farmer in the deep south before air conditioning.Addie apparently hates her family, except for Jewel, the progeny of an affair. The novel opens brilliantly showing Jewel's straightforward determined character in simply how he walks. His stubborn work ethic setting him apart from Anse. Dewey Dell has her own problem she's trying to solve and Darl is the only one who really catches on but he's also crazy. Cash is just Cash; a carpenter holding up the coffin in progress for his mother to see out the window.Addie insists on being buried in Jefferson on the other side of the county and circumstances coalesce to make this the odyssey from hell. But Anse has his own plans and a kind of pride, as does Dewey Dell.I've read this novel three times and will read again. The humor (hilarity) is there as is tragedy and bad breaks (one literally) and the Faulkner trick of planting images and tableaus in your head while reading also. The Bundrens are cleverly contrasted with just about everyone else along the way who seem to have their acts together.I understand how Faulkner can be difficult at times, but this is worth reading and re-reading. I've read all of the Yoknapatawpha County novels except The Mansion and I'm half way through The Town, and this is still my favorite.The James Franco film of this is brilliant and worth watching as well. They did an amazing job of bringing this book to the screen with some creative techniques and the acting is superb.

El papel es de buena calidad, también me gustó la textura. El tamaño de la letra es adecuado. Tiene muchos modismos por lo que es recomendable tener un conocimiento avanzado de inglés

No encontrábamos la edición en inglés y esta fue la solución. Libro tipo bolsillo pero con buena letra.

I read it several years ago. At that time, I approached it after having already read "The Sound and the Fury", "Sanctuary" and "The Unvanquished". Therefore I knew what I was choosing ... definitely not an easy and relaxing book ...Jointly with "The Sound and the Fury", "Light in August" and "Absalom, Absalom!", "As I Lay Dying" is commonly regarded as one of the pillars of his literary output.To sum it up is, in my opinion, impossible.From my standpoint, it is a book which transcends time, as the author himself wanted his works to be remembered, since (to cite the Paris review) "The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life."This "motion" is the journey towards Jefferson to bury Addie (still living at the beginning), a journey through ups and downs of the Bundren family, through life and death, through faith and uncertainty, through trust and betrayal, through hope and despair, through love and loss.Definitely one of the best book I had the chance to read

It's an authentic Vintage Classic books.

book as described arrived fast