As I Lay Dying

Review

I’ve put off reading this for months. Cormac McCarthy is probably my favorite writer, and I’ve read him described as “Faulkner’s heir” without having a context for what that means. Sparse language? Esoteric vocabulary? A distaste for little punctuals, smudging up the page?

I hope it goes further than having hick characters talk like hicks. I say that as someone who grew up in rural Illinois and spoke plenty of hick then and sometimes now.

Part of my love of McCarthy is that his dialogue always rings true for me. Either alone or at the least within itself. I find that mostly true of this Faulkner, though sometimes it becomes a writerly task of onomatopoeic spelling: “hit” “durn” and whatever others. A friend was riding next to me on the metro one day and looked over to see the “Vardaman” chapter heading and could not have guessed it as a name.

I think I liked the book. It is a bit like a very dark Seinfeld episode: a collection of intermingling troubles and foolishness and hints of depravity. But I’ve little idea what I got out of it. There were parts I found gripping, but sitting here now, a morning after finishing, I can’t remember them in great detail. Should the specific scenes of the barnfire, which I read less than 24 hours ago, stand in stark relief?

It does feel like a book that’d reward a re-read, with its disinterest in handholding and retreading from different perspectives. Though, not sure I will ever get around to it.

Perhaps the greatest treat for me is that my copy, purchased from Thriftbooks, came annotated. Sandra Nelson, Durham, NC. She put her address and phone number in the book. I suspect she annotated this some 30 years or more ago, I suspect very strongly that she is or was an English teacher. One of her notes addresses the contents of a subordinate clause, and her clear penmanship is a giveaway, too. She has clearly studied the book, and her notes were a great friend to read along with.

Notes