Introduction

Long been recognized not only as one of William Faulkner?s greatest works, but also as the most accessible of his major novels.

This Norton Critical Edition is based on the 1985 corrected text and is accompanied by detailed explanatory annotations.

?Backgrounds and Contexts? is divided into three sections, each of which includes a concise introduction by Michael Gorra that carefully frames the issues presented, with particular attention to As I Lay Dying?s place in Faulkner?s literary life. ?Contemporary Reception? reprints American, English, and French reviews by Clifton Fadiman, Henry Nash Smith, Edwin Muir, and Maurice Coindreau, among others, along with Valery Larbaud?s never-before-translated preface to the first French edition of the novel. ?The Writer and His Work? examines Faulkner?s claim to have written the novel in six weeks without changing a word. It includes his comments on the book?s composition along with his later thoughts on and changing opinions of it, sample pages from the manuscript, his Nobel Prize address, and the little-known short story in which he first used the title. ?Cultural Context? reprints an essay by Carson McCullers and an excerpt from James Agee?s Let Us Now Praise Famous Men along with other materials that address questions of Southern Agrarianism and the Southern grotesque.

?Criticism? begins with the editor?s introduction to As I Lay Dying?s critical history and scholarly reception. Eleven major essays are provided by Olga W. Vickery, Cleanth Brooks, Calvin Bedient, André Bleikasten, Eric Sundquist, Stephen M. Ross, Doreen Fowler, Patrick O?Donnell, Richard Gray, John Limon, and Donald M. Kartiganer.

A Chronology and a Selected Bibliography are also included.

Editorial Review

Faulkner's distinctive narrative structures--the uses of multiple points of view and the inner psychological voices of the characters--in one of its most successful incarnations here in As I Lay Dying. In the story, the members of the Bundren family must take the body of Addie, matriarch of the family, to the town where Addie wanted to be buried. Along the way, we listen to each of the members on the macabre pilgrimage, while Faulkner heaps upon them various flavors of disaster. Contains the famous chapter completing the equation about mothers and fish--you'll see.

Excerpt

No Excerpt Currently Available

Discussion Questions

No discussion questions at this time.

Weblinks

There are no web links at this time.

Book Club Recommendations

Recommended to book clubs by 0 of 0 members.

Member Reviews

Rate this book