As I Lay Dying

Shameful how long it's taken me to get through this, I'd hit a serious drop in reading motivation in January and February but now I'm getting back to it. Plus this book's writing style is tough to consume quickly, I imagine it like a really rich dessert. Every chapter feels like a meticulously assembled stream of consciousness that blends together to form a nightmarish odyssey in the deep south. I will definitely read this again at some point in my life, it was a really surprising book to me, I'd only heard about Faulkner and only really had the impression he's perceived as “pretentious college student” fare but had no understanding of what his writing style was like or what the story of this novel was either (I'd always thought it was a war novel from the name). It's wonderful, incredibly dark, you can feel the thick Mississippi humidity and the alienation and detachment of its inhabitants. I also never felt that the characters in the book were too “awful” to one another, as I think that's a criticism I'd seen against the book on why it's hard to read. They do treat each other poorly, but in such an unforgiving landscape it's almost assumed the people living there will mimic their surroundings, so it never felt unnecessary to me. Really it's a wonderful character study, and a novel that has no true relatable hero, Darl's chapters tend to be the most coherent and lyrical but as a character he's as off-putting as Vardaman. I think from a modern lens the certain artistic format touches Faulkner puts into his work could be seen as pretentious or superfluous (Changing fonts, big indentations for emphasis, one charming chapter from Cash's perspective that's a numerical narrative list) but really considering this was written in 1930 I'd say it's rather impressive and forward thinking. My only slight gripe would be Cash's development seems to be a slight cop out for Faulkner at the end of the novel for reasons I won't say, I guess I mean Cash seems like one person in the beginning and a different one at the end, not from a narrative standpoint but based on how the chapters are written, and it's understandable why Faulkner would do this based on the plot but still, seems to draw away from the fun. Anyhow, incredible book, apocalyptic and mesmerizing.