William Faulkner: The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying: Essays * Articles * Reviews Book

First off, I only read The Sound and the Fury but by accident selected an edition that included As I Lay Dying, too. So this review only concerns the first novel, to be clear.

I am not sure where to start: it's Faulkner, what more can you say? If you know not of Faulkner there's a million things to read about him and to get started instead of this little review. It is at points confusing and difficult to get into, and the iconic, lenthy, progression of familial history is also in places a little overpowering. Still, when you meet Faulkner on his terms and get a grasp in your mind for the characters and their stories, you're good and the book is one of the most rich and vivid novels I've ever read.

I don't know how to really articulate what the book is "like" as a narrative beyond that, but to try to explain how the multiple narrators and their combined narratives function, consider in example if you've watched all of a television series'Star Trek, the Next Generation, in example'and then start talking with a friend about it: the characters, specific events, all make sense because you and your friend know the show very well. You're inside the narrative of Star Trek. Well, that's a lot what it's like reading this book: you feel like you've been dropped down into something much larger and longer already in full swing and you have to piece things together together to come to an understanding. You've entered not only a novel, but it feels like a whole canon or franchise.

No matter your expertise or involvement in literature'and in my case, I am a writer and currently write book reviews for two publications'I encourage you to approach this novel as a novel, not as a study in modern lit or whatever else. Approach it as a something to enjoy. Also, consider it a very nuanced look into the modern era of the new South. Faulkner offers some real gems in discerning how the South reconstructed itself on the family level here. You may deal with some very odd characters, but I stress Faulkner was as much if not more interested in presenting real, tangible, people as characters and looking into their lives in context as doing any types of modernistic literary experiments. He was grounded in the South and it shows in this novel.

There is no doubt in my mind this is easily one of the greatest novels of the modern era of English-language literature.