I've realized over the last couple of years, that my definition of literature, having attended primary, secondary, and post-secondary schools in Canada, is distinctly Commonwealth/British. I took one American lit class as an undergrad (and loved it! but that's because the prof was amazing - too bad he moved on to bigger and better things). But aside from that, most of the American lit I've read is SF or other popular fiction. There's a huge segment of literature written in English that I know little of. Hence, reading Faulkner.
Since a colleague and good friend is teaching a Faulkner class, it seemed the perfect opportunity to read at least some Faulkner, and start expanding my American lit repertoire beyond SF.
As I lay Dying employs multiple narrative voices, and Faulkner is able to balance those voices in such a way that they each project a unique image of the character who speaks them, but he also makes each narrative work to fill in gaps left after the narratives of other characters. Case in point: The "I" of the title is Addie Bundren, who dies in the first 20 pages; from there, the story follows her family's journey with her body to her hometown where they intend to bury her.
The narration moves between (I think 17 total) narrators, but primarily through her children, which means that most of your impression of Addie comes from her family, people who presumably have either affection for her, or a sense of obligation toward her. As each narrator takes his/her turn, the reader begins to develop a sense of what this family is like. Dysfunctional isn't the right word for it, since 'dysfunctional' implies a kind of active inability to function, an attempt to function that goes awry. These characters are far too lackadaisical, particularly Addie's husband Anse, to be described like that. A better description may be "inertia-sensitive" since when they are at rest, they tend to stay there, but when they get going, they stubbornly continue going despite good advice against such action.
The family's sensitivity to inertia and the dearth of emotional expressions of mourning, make them seem cold-hearted in the face of their wife/mother's death. Until Addie narrates her own story.
Then the reader realizes that the feeling is mutual. Addie never cared much for her husband or for her family, and her response (after a brief affair) seemed to be to distance herself from everyone around her, including her family. The only time she seems connected to them is through bodily pain or suffering.
This revelation, which comes at the center of the book, and is the only time Addie speaks, changes the reader's perception of her family's narrations till the end of the book.
In the undergrad class that I sat in on (the one my friend is teaching), they seemed to think that Anse's actions at the end of the novel were justified, or at least that they could empathize with his decision. I was disturbed by what I saw as his callousness however. Is that because as a mother I could understand Addie's attitude to her family? Is it because I'm older? What is it that I bring from my own experience, whether personal, or my experience of reading other books, that compels me to read Anse's final actions of the book as a betrayal, rather than a suitable ending that they seemed to see? Perhaps not all of them felt that way, or perhaps they discussed the ending more when I wasn't there, but I certainly had a different opinion of the ending when it came up in the discussion that I attended.
I will admit it was a difficult book for me to get into. If I'd been browsing in the library and picked it up, I would've put it down again because it took me a while to get into it, but the multiple voices of the text started to fascinate me and kept me going through the rest of it. I'm glad I read it.