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As I Lay Dying Paperback – January 15, 1996

by Faulkner William (Author)

4.3 4,032 ratings

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The death and burial of Addie Bundren is told by members of her family, as they cart the coffin to Jefferson, Mississippi, to bury her among her people. And as the intense desires, fears and rivalries of the family are revealed in the vernacular of the Deep South, Faulkner presents a portrait of extraordinary power - as epic as the Old Testament, as American as Huckleberry Finn.

Print length

208 pages
Language

English
Publisher

RANDOM HOUSE UK
Publication date

January 15, 1996
Dimensions

5.98 x 0.63 x 7.8 inches
ISBN-10

0099479311
ISBN-13

978-0099479314
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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ RANDOM HOUSE UK (January 15, 1996)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 208 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0099479311
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0099479314
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.98 x 0.63 x 7.8 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,109,948 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2,106 in Classic American Literature

Customer Reviews:
4.3 4,032 ratings

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BookSumo Press
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BookSumo Press is a publisher of unique, easy, and healthy cookbooks.
Our cookbooks span all topics and all subjects. If you want a deep dive into the possibilities of cooking with any type of ingredient. Then BookSumo Press is your go to place for robust yet simple and delicious cookbooks and recipes. Whether you are looking for great tasting pressure cooker recipes or authentic ethic and cultural food. BookSumo Press has a delicious and easy cookbook for you.
With simple ingredients, and even simpler step-by-step instructions BookSumo cookbooks get everyone in the kitchen chefing delicious meals.
BookSumo is an independent publisher of books operating in the beautiful Garden State (NJ) and our team of food lovers are here to teach, eat, and be merry!
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William Faulkner
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Born in 1897 in New Albany, Mississippi, William Faulkner was the son of a family proud of their prominent role in the history of the south. He grew up in Oxford, Mississippi, and left high school at fifteen to work in his grandfather's bank.
Rejected by the US military in 1915, he joined the Canadian flyers with the RAF, but was still in training when the war ended. Returning home, he studied at the University of Mississippi and visited Europe briefly in 1925.
His first poem was published in The New Republic in 1919. His first book of verse and early novels followed, but his major work began with the publication of The Sound and the Fury in 1929. As I Lay Dying (1930), Sanctuary (1931), Light in August (1932), Absalom, Absalom! (1936) and The Wild Palms (1939) are the key works of his great creative period leading up to Intruder in the Dust (1948). During the 1930s, he worked in Hollywood on film scripts, notably The Blue Lamp, co-written with Raymond Chandler.
William Faulkner was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1949 and the Pulitzer Prize for The Reivers just before his death in July 1962.
Photo by Carl Van Vechten [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.
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4.3 out of 5

4,032 global ratings

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Kindle Customer

Great Read!!!!

Reviewed in the United States on April 9, 2023

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This was my first time reading Faulkner. I found the plot and all the twists, hardships, and sarcasm, very readable. It was sometimes hard to find the rhythm in the beginning but I picked it up fairly quickly. Definitely recommend it to anyone else who is new to Faulkner. Finally, it's a short story, so no huge investment of time.

3 people found this helpful

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Fanatic

As described & timely delivery.

Reviewed in the United States on February 25, 2024

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The book was as described. The delivery was timely.

One person found this helpful

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Sherril S-K

Who Knows, Perhaps Someday I Will Be a Faulkner Scholar

Reviewed in the United States on July 17, 2015

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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. 😊

20 people found this helpful

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Kent Nelson

Faulkner's Best Dysfunctional Family

Reviewed in the United States on March 29, 2022

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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.

13 people found this helpful

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Nate

A Shallow Read

Reviewed in the United States on May 10, 2023

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Told in varying perspectives from a host of first person narrators, As I Lay Dying is all dialogue. It’s a good story, more of a novella than a novel and little longer than a good short story. Although it has a good punch at the end, it takes too long to get there. This story could have been at least 1/3 shorter without significant loss. Don’t expect to peer behind a curtain concealing some great truth. You won’t find it here. What you will find is a backwards family living way out in the country. There are a few glimpses into country nuances but overall, the writing is short, clipped to the tones of country folk talking. Repetition occurs throughout as the relative naivety of each person is expressed through their superficial observations and interactions with other people. One thing that is notable is that each voice is distinct. I’ll give Faulkner that. Although each narrator shares some common patterns of speech, each perspective is unique, distinguishable from the others. This accomplishment might be the best part of the writing. The rest of it lacks elegance and poise. Only one narrator gives Faulkner room to run. The rest of his characters are stunted and do not provide any room for him to write as we all expect him to have written. I give it 3 stars because the vehicle of delivery, namely the host of Bundren characters lack sufficient development to allow him the freedom to write. Instead, we get a clipped story told in short, often non-sensible sentences. The story leaves you feeling that you should have picked up another of his works to read because this story does little but hinder his creative license.

5 people found this helpful

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PoisonOaky

Buena relación calidad precio

Reviewed in Mexico on February 15, 2024

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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

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JH

Persevere. One of the Great American Novels.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 10, 2023

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I thought I had bought another stinker with this one such was the struggle with the first few chapters. But then I discovered "Spark notes" and separated out the characters and the voices putting flesh onto the bones of narratives. Lo and behold I was hooked and in I went - under the water of the flood, broken levee, drowned mules, escaped horses, broken legs, abused women and a corpse so stinky it had vultures following the trail. Always looking for the Great American Novel - Faulkner vies with Steinbeck and outdoes Fitzgerald and Hemingway.

3 people found this helpful

Asturias

Buen producto

Reviewed in Spain on May 6, 2023

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

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Stefano Valente

powerful and riveting

Reviewed in Germany on April 16, 2022

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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

One person found this helpful

Warak ki Kavi

Authentic

Reviewed in India on October 10, 2021

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It's an authentic Vintage Classic books.

One person found this helpful

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