“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?”
Faulkner:
“Read it four times”.
"My mother is a fish"
What does a sentence like that mean? And
what do you make of a book that has a chapter containing nothing but this weird
single sentence?
It has all to do with representation I
guess; with Mimesis, as the Greeks used to call it, the perception and the rendering
of reality through fiction. Of a reality I should say, a truth,
for does the truth really exist and can we reproduce it in our
narratives?
After the dead end reached by the Realists
and the Naturalists in depicting the “real” world around them, Artists of the
late 19th and early 20th century had to try alternative ways to get
even closer to that elusive “experience of reality”. Painters were switching to
impressionism and later to expressionism and writers were looking at new ways
to tell their stories. Not only did they find new techniques, but in the
process they uncovered a plethora of philosophical issues, which today still
occupy our greatest minds.
The American writer William Faulkner (1897
– 1962) is one of the masters of these experimental writings. Through the
genius of his craft, he earned himself a Nobel Prize and a permanent seat
in the Canon of World literature.
It is therefore fitting, when appraising
“As I lay dying” to look at the “Art” first, to study the way Faulkner tells
his story before we look at the narrative that emerges from the pages of this
brilliant book.
Questioned about how he started to work on
his novel, Faulkner said: “I simply imagined a group of people and
subjected them to the simple universal natural catastrophes, which are flood
and fire, with a simple natural motive to give direction to their progress”.
That simple group of people is the Bundren
family: father Anse and the four children, the grown-up boys Cash, Darl and
Jewel, the seventeen year old daughter Dewey Dell and Vardaman the youngest.
The reason they “move” is to indulge their
deceased Mother’s last wish to be buried with her “kin” in Jefferson ,
the fictional county capital, 40 miles away from where they live.
Place? Somewhere in Faulkner’s fictional
Southern county
of Yoknapatawpha
Time? Probably in the same year as when
Faulkner wrote his book, 1929.
The Art
The most noticeable feature of “As I lay
dying” is that Faulkner uses multiple narratives to tell his story. Fifteen
characters to be more precise, all witnesses of the Brundren’s odyssey, with 15
different viewpoints, who in turn relate a part of the story as it develops.
No one tells the whole story but all of
them get their say. Each time Faulkner switches the viewpoint, he uses a new
chapter, (part is a better word), and uses the name of the narrator as a title.
Faulkner switches the narrator 59 times and the book is thus chopped up in 59
short (some very short) chapters. But rather than being cumbersome this is a
big aid to the attentive reader.
Who speaks and at what moment is important.
The voice of Darl, for example is used when
things are straightforward but in period of crisis, when all is chaos and
mayhem, when the mother dies for instance or when an accident happens, we look
at the events through the naïve eyes and thoughts of young Vardaman, which
enhances the confusion.
Darl, the second oldest boy takes the word
nineteen times and his kid brother 10 times. Together they account thus for
half of the voices of the book.
Faulkner is aware that the numerous
viewpoint technique is demanding for the reader and he takes the necessary
precautions, when we need a summary of the situation, to insert a “reliable”,
rational view outside the Bundren family group. This is the role of the
“neighbours” who offer, often un-demanded their opinions and views on what is
happening to the Brundrens. So there are Mr and Mrs Cora Tull, their immediate
and nosy neighbours ( together they account for 10 chapters ) and the different
“hosts” along the route ( 3 chapters ). The remaining chapters are divided
between the other Brundrens ( Pa, Dewey Dell and Cash ), the doctor who twice
assesses the physical damage and two voices from men who give ill advice and
take advantage of Dewey.
The most surprising of viewpoints, is the
dead Mother, who bloated and stinking in her coffin has her opinion too.
When I say that the fifteen characters
“relate” the story, it is not entirely correct. Faulkner uses even more
techniques. We are in the head of these fifteen characters, each with their own
interests and biases, and the chapters are not only relations of what they see
and what they hear but also their interior monologues, stream of consciousness,
thoughts. It is as if thoughts are being read as the characters are thinking
them. They are also not per se reliable, for the characters recall occurrences
that they didn’t witness, there are their thoughts, sometimes misbegotten,
fantasies, dreams, lies…
Finally, to complete the realistic
appearance of his book, Faulkner renders huge chunks of what the characters say
in a phonetic rendition of their simple country folk vernacular, in their
“hilly-billy language”. This is an additional difficulty for the reader and one
has to get accustomed to it.
Now does the use of these techniques work ?
Yes they do, and very much so. Faulkner’s
technique is incredibly effective. It made reading “As I lay dying”, at least
for me, into some corporeal experience, visceral and at moments literally
gut-wrenching.
The reason for that is that Faulkner
effectively bypasses the third – person omniscient narrator. The only
omniscient one in fact, is the reader himself who, if he takes the pains to
read closely and fill the gaps empathically, pieces all the voices together into
a tapestry showing his version of the “true circumstances” of the story.
Together with the omniscient narrator, the author steps aside and pushes the
reader as it were to the front row of the spectacle. Because of this, we get a
more limited but intimate perspective.
There is no one left to soften the
emotional blows between what happens to the characters and how it is
experienced by the reader.
Early in 1956, Jean Stein, the very young
editor of the “Paris Review” interviewed William Faulkner. Through his answers,
Faulkner sounds a bit annoyed, cocky, arrogant even and we cannot know if he
means what he says about his writing or if he is showing off in front of that
nice woman. Fact is that what he says in the interview and what I have
experienced while reading “As I lay dying” doesn’t really match.
Take for instance what he says about the
writing of As I Lay Dying : ". . . I wrote it in six weeks,
without changing a word." Faulkner endorsed herewith the myth he had
initiated in the introduction of the 1932 Modern Library publication of Sanctuary where
he implied that he had the whole book in his head and that he banged it
crisp and clear out of his typewriter in a handful of evenings (Faulkner had a
twelve-hour-a-day manual job during the day). This bold statement captivated
the imagination of the reading public and back-cover blurbs and admiring blogs
have since then consistently emphasized this “tour de force”.
Such remarks make Faulkner appear as some
kind of literary freak, an autistic savant who masterminded the whole
complexity of his brilliant book within his head. Even if it were true, As I
lay dying does not need the myth of an “immaculate conception” to be lauded as
a tremendous, baffling piece of literature. Even if it took a lot of work,
reshuffling the 59 chapters, checking them for the correct voice and
consistency and even if Faulkner worked with index cards, like Alain Robbe –
Grillet explained when he wrote his “Gommes”, there is no need to present
Faulkner as a freak to be impressed by the book he wrote.
When Jean Stein asked him afterwards if
there was a formula to follow to be a good novelist, Faulkner confessed:
“. . . ninety-nine percent discipline . . . ninety-nine percent work” and then he
added “…Ninety-nine percent talent…”. When questioned about inspiration, he
answered “I don't know anything about inspiration because I don't know what
inspiration is—I've heard about it, but I never saw it”.
But later he took away all confusion and
said: “Sometimes technique charges in and takes command of the dream before the
writer himself can get his hands on it. That is tour de force and the finished
work is simply a matter of fitting bricks neatly together, since the writer
knows probably every single word right to the end before he puts the first one
down. This happened with As I Lay Dying. It was not easy. No honest work
is. It was simple that all the material was already at hand.
The Story
The story that emerges form the pages of
“As I lay dying” is the story of the Brundren family. Addie Bundren, a mother
of five, has died and her husband decides to cart her coffin to the town of Jefferson
It is summer time. The hot days are cooled
by regular torrential rains that swell the river. The flood, accidents along
the road and personal matters slow down the family and turns their voyage in a
dark odyssey. The corpse of the mother starts decomposing and the stench soon
attracts scavenger birds.
Anse Bundren is adamant about burying his
wife in Jefferson and his children undergo the
terrible conditions of their trip. All of them seem to have their own agendas
as they travel toward the burial. But Anse, in his monomaniacal obsession to
execute his wife last wish, is no Ahab. In the terrible conclusion of the book we
understand that even Anse’s folly is not even genuine.
Despite the simple plot and Faulkner
diminishing his story, I found that the odyssey of the Bundren family had the
allures of a Christian allegory, the strength of a dark parable, a metaphor of
life. But is also a ghastly comedy, it is a Southern Gothic after all.
Cash, the carpenter son, just like Jesus,
is taking all the physical suffering. The family sin he suffers most from is their ignorance but
all other mortal sins are present in one way or another. Anse Brundren, who has
never seen sweating, is a personification of Sloth. The extremely fat doctor
Peabody, who has to be hauled up the hill with mules, is Gluttony. There is the
pride of Jewel, the rebel. Lust
is present too: Dead mother Addie confesses it in her oblong box. Lust is also the
cause of Dewey Dell’s misfortune and constant treat. There is the greed of the
horse trader, the Wrath of Darl and even the envy to have a toy train.
Unexpectedly, feminist themes strongly
appear. Addie Bundren’s monologue from beyond the grave touches some sobering
issues like Addie's scathing denunciation of her marriage, which is depicted as
no more than a random occurrence. There is also her ambivalent motherhood
as she appears to be as possessive of her children, as she is
repulsed by them. A steady flow of babies who arrive without rhyme or
reason has turned her into a slave of her condition.
And what to say about Dewey Dell’s ordeal?
The poor girl is pregnant, her boyfriend nowhere in sight although he has paid
her off to get an abortion. The men she sees in order to help her are useless
and even dangerous. Moseley the pharmacist refuses to help her for he fears his
reputation and Mc Gowan, a phoney doctor, tricks her in having sex with him in
exchange of abortion pills, pills which the reader knows will not work anyway.
But the main theme of Faulkner’s book, to
come back to what I stated in the opening of this review is: Does objective truth
really exist and can we reproduce it in our narratives?
While Faulkner has indeed created a certain
intimacy between the reader and the occurrences that develop through the pages,
all the information the reader gets is subjective. The wide variety of
narrators, the stream of consciousness technique, the structure of the
monologues, the disconnected speakers, the different point of views and the
many linguistic devices have all obscured whatever single truth or reality
makes up the story. Who is the real victim of this drama? The dead mother? The
father who goes to the utmost to indulge his wife last wish? The children who
suffer the monomaniac desire of the father? Again, what is the relation between
Addie Brundren and her children? How religious are these people? We do not know
for sure. Even after several re-readings we can only advance careful
suppositions. The facts, the truth is hidden by the many representations and
our poor understanding is just another, rather than explicative is nothing more
than just one additional opinion.
So we get stuck with a number of open
questions, different understandings, and tentative explanations. But paradoxically,
this body of uncertainties gives the reader a truer image of what happens to
the Brundren family. There in lies the whole genius of this unusual narrative
approach and of Faulkner’s art.
The reality, which then emerges, is that we
are all disconnected individuals, even if we live and grow up in the tight
nucleus of a family. For while the Brundren’s go through hell to burry their
mother, they all have their own reasons to sit on that coffin out of which the
decomposing stench of their mother’s body oozes. Once she is buried and the
true personal agenda’s are uncovered we have lost whatever hope we still had
for this family. By the time we understand the father’s true reason of
travelling to the capital, we have not only lost our hope but also all our
illusions.
