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Episode 347: 'As I Lay Dying' by William Faulkner
00:33:18
John J. Miller is joined by Nick Ripatrazone to discuss William Faulkner's 'As I Lay Dying.'
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- [00:07]
John J. Miller
Hello and welcome to the Great Books Podcast. Today we'll talk about As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner. I'm your host, John J. Miller of National Review, and you're listening to a production of National Review. This episode is sponsored by St. John's College, and I'll tell you more about that in just a few minutes. Our guest is Nick Repatrizone, an author whose books include the Habit of the Literary Lives of Nuns in Mid Century America and Longing for an Absent Faith and Doubt in Great American Fiction. He's the culture editor of the journal Image and a columnist for the Catholic Herald, and he's podcasted with us previously on the Power and the Glory by Graham Green. He joins us by Zoom as we record from Hillsdale College's campus radio station, WRFH in Michigan. Nick, welcome back to the Great Books Podcast.
- [00:58]
Nick Repatrizone
Thank you. Great to be back with you again.
- [01:00]
John J. Miller
Why is As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner a great book?
- [01:06]
Nick Repatrizone
I think As I Lay Dying is one of Faulkner's best, and I think it's a great book because 20 years after it was published, Faulkner won the Nobel Prize for Literature. He gave a great speech in Stockholm where he essentially called for writers to reach beyond their present moment rather than stay in the ephemeral moment. He wanted. Wanted them to engage with eternal truths and struggles, and he knew it wasn't easy, but his hope was that by reaching toward those eternal truths, that writers could both sort of become immortal themselves, but become immortal through their art. And I think as I Lie dying of all his novels, even though he has many good ones, for me, it is the prototypical Faulkner novel. It is the book that best exemplifies and almost elucidates that Nobel Prize speech and sort of his. His artistic vision overall.
- [02:04]
John J. Miller
We're gonna talk about this book, the story, its characters, why it's such an innovative book. Also, William Faulkner, the man and his legacy, where he fits into the story of American literature. Nick, let's just go right into this book here. This novel, As I Lay Dying, is full of short chapters with lots of narrators, and the first one is Darl, kind of like Karl, but with a D. Who is he and why does the story begin from his perspective?
- [02:35]
Nick Repatrizone
Darl is one of the sons of the Bundren family. There are several sons and a daughter. Darl is a really interesting character. Faulkner alludes to the fact that he is a veteran of the First World War. He is a more worldly character than the other members of the Bundren family, many of whom really haven't gone far beyond the family home in Mississippi. Darrel's narrative style is quite interesting in the sense that he varies the register of his language quite frequently. It's almost as if Faulkner himself can speak through Darle in a way that maybe he can't through the other characters. And for that reason, Darl is a great entry point into the book. But he's also a character for whom Faulkner can get into abstract thought and create just sort of a fascinating layer to the story that is very literal in some ways, but also, I think, becomes epic and tragic in other ways.
- [03:37]
John J. Miller
In this opening chapter, Darl describes Cash, his older brother. Cash, he calls a good carpenter. And he's doing something astonishing. At least it was to me when I read it. He's building a wooden coffin for their mother, who is still alive. And then there's a line quote. Addie Bundren, that's the mother. Addie Bundren could not want a better one, a better box to lie in, unquote. That's a startling moment early in this book.
- [04:08]
Nick Repatrizone
It absolutely is. And as you say, it kind of punctuates that first short chapter. Cash is another excellent character of this novel, and he is, in many ways, her craftsman. He is someone that is responsible. And as you note, she sees him building the coffin, which. It's interesting. There's another Southern writer, Andre DeBue from Lafayette, Louisiana, and Debut had requested that his. His son essentially do the same thing, build his own coffin. So there's an interesting kind of subtext or sort of subcategory in Southern fiction of this burial action as being witnessed. And Addie is dying at the start of the book, and she sees and hears all of this happening.
- [04:55]
John J. Miller
And she wants to watch this, Right. She knows she's dying and she wants to monitor the building of her coffin.
- [05:03]
Nick Repatrizone
Absolutely. This vantage point that she has. And it's interesting because Darl essentially walks us quite literally down a path to the house so that we arrive via that walking, but also the sound of the building of the coffin. And Addie's about to leave this world, and she has had a life of struggles with some joy, and she is watching her son essentially prepare her way to eternity.
- [05:33]
John J. Miller
So while she's watching the building of the coffin, she's dying. She knows it doesn't take long for her to die in this book, yet she remains the central figure of the story, this dying wife and mother. What happens after she dies?
- [05:48]
Nick Repatrizone
Yeah, her death is rather early in the novel. And the novel unfolds with a few Things. First of all, the economic realities of these characters. They are rather poor and just about every decision they make is weighing sort of the necessities of do they have enough money to do this thing or that. Addie, though, did leave behind a family that was very much fractured. Her husband, Aunts is kind of famous in literature for being a character who doesn't sweat. He doesn't want to work, he doesn't want to move. He wants to have his children kind of do his bidding. And with her death, it leaves this incredible opening where he has to make a decision. Her dying wish was to be buried in Jefferson. And it's a journey that is going to be arduous and it's going to be risky, and he has to decide whether he's going to undertake it or not.
- [06:46]
John J. Miller
And so they go on a journey. The whole family goes on a kind of pilgrimage to a burial place.
- [06:53]
Nick Repatrizone
Exactly. I think pilgrimage is a great word because Faulkner creates this kind of protracted plot element where we are moving a body and it's hot and the characters are not prepared for this in any way, so they are struggling. And it creates a multi layered kind of conflict. People bury a matriarch. But how do you reconcile that with grief?
- [07:23]
John J. Miller
This is the central activity then of. Of the novel as this family moves the body from one place to another. And you mentioned the town of Jefferson. They're headed toward the town of Jefferson in Mississippi. This is a fictional town. And of course, Faulkner was famous for a fictional setting, a certain county that he invented in. In Mississippi. And Nick, I'm going to invite you to give us the name because I find it unpronounceable. But tell us about this setting. What is it and how does it play into the story? And indeed in Faulkner's body of work.
- [08:02]
Nick Repatrizone
Sure, Yachna, Porter county is a fictional area. Faulkner created a whole cloth, but he did take some components of Mississippi landscape. And according to him, at least, when he was at Virginia, it is a Chickasaw Indian word that means water runs slow through flat land. Which is a really interesting thing to think about considering that a river crossing scene is central to Asalie dying. But in this land, essentially, I think Faulkner was able to create an ancient identity for his American South. Nearly all of his works are set there. And one of his great novellas, the Bear, is almost one of the best examples in this county because it's a place where the wilderness outlasts man. And in the wilderness, I think Faulkner had his perfect Southern ancient myth. I think the best corollary to think about is James Joyce. And in many ways, Faulkner, of course, was influenced by Joyce, but it allowed Faulkner to create a mythos, an ancient, wild place that he could put these really fascinating characters there.
- [09:22]
John J. Miller
And so this county in Mississippi that he invents is based loosely on the actual Lafayette county and the city of Jefferson, the town of Jefferson is based loosely on Oxford, Mississippi. And we have a kind of Faulkner universe, don't we? We have characters who recur in other stories. They, they, you know, across his works, you. You see. You see references to this place and indeed to a few characters.
- [09:45]
Nick Repatrizone
You're right. It creates this kind of architecture in his novels. And there are characters who are secondary characters who pop in and out of different books and they're referenced. It gives a historical kind of heft to the works that he wrote.
- [10:00]
John J. Miller
And As I Lay Dying, they're traveling across this county, headed toward Jefferson on this pilgrimage as a kind of travel story. The title As I Lay Dying comes from Homer, Homer's Odyssey. That's a travel story too. What is the reference here?
- [10:17]
Nick Repatrizone
It does. The great Carvel Collins, who was a fantastic Faulkner scholar, he was the one who kind of pinpointed a particular translation from Oxford University Press in 1925 that he believed was Faulkner's reference point. It comes from the 11th book of the Odyssey, and it's a visit to the underworld. And the lines from this translation are, I, as I lay dying upon the sword, raised up my hands to smite her, and shamelessly she turned away and scorned to draw my eyelids down or close my mouth, Though I was on the road to Hades House. And what Collins thought, and I think he's absolutely backed, is that Azalie dying is in a way, a hellish milieu. The landscape itself is troublesome, but there's this series of characters essentially on the precipice of death. And that phrase as I lay dying is a unique one. There's a border that a character, so to speak, is straddling. And the characters in As I Lay Dying first, Addie. But I do think characters like Darl seem to be on that precipice as well. And it creates a very interesting, intense moment for this book.
- [11:51]
John J. Miller
This is a classical reference, a reference to classical literature. Of course, Faulkner is often regarded as a modernist writer. He's an innovator. There's some stream of consciousness in this book. Nick, what is modernism? Is that a good way to think of Faulkner?
- [12:09]
Nick Repatrizone
I do think it is. And I guess I would say first that it's really important to think of him as a Southern Gothic writer, as a way to get to modernism. The term Southern Gothic was actually coined by another Southern writer, Ellen Glasgow, who wrote an essay in 1935, five years after Hazeli dying. And in coining that term, she was specifically talking about William Faulkner. She described his work as, quote, fantastic nightmares. Now I hear that phrase and I love it. But she was not too keen on Faulkner. She was ultimately pretty dismissive of his scandalous writing. She thought that Southern writers should turn away from that style. And that Southern Gothic approach, which very much feels violent, horrific, and, as she said, nightmarish, is coupled with his modernist method. And modernist writing does tend to be characterized by fragmented stories. They feel like they are broken apart, but they ultimately can be unified. And I think the big difference between modernist writing and the postmodern style that would follow is that in postmodern writing, that fracturing never quite is healed. The stories remain disparate, they remain confusing. I think As I Dying is a challenging book, but as a modern witnessed work, I think it all comes together in the end.
- [13:44]
John J. Miller
This book is fractured into 59 chapters. They're short. Each one's named after a narrator. You don't get a chapter title. You get the name of the character from whose perspective this chapters told. There are lots of narrators, there are 15 of them with shifting perspectives and so forth. Nick, is this just a chaos of voices? Or as you say, are they oddly united with this story they tell about this pilgrimage with this dead body?
- [14:13]
Nick Repatrizone
I think even though at first it might feel like a cacophony of voices, Faulkner's genius was creating a profluent, forward moving narrative. Despite these shifting characters and narrators, he has other wonderful novels, Sound the Fury among them. But As I Dying is a direct arrow of a plot, and the shifts that occur mold and sort of move into each other quite nicely. So I think the fracturing reflects the grief. It reflects the dissonance and the strife, really, of the family. But ultimately, as a book, it moves quite literally forward through the landscape, ultimately to Jefferson.
- [15:00]
John J. Miller
You're listening to the Great Books Podcast, a production of National Review. And I want to tell you about our sponsor Today, which is St. John's College, the nation's great books college, where students explore 3,000 years of human thought across multiple disciplines in just four years or two for graduate students on campuses in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Annapolis, Maryland, encounter history's most influential works from the Western canon or the Eastern canon. In this vibrant community of learning, where students grapple together with fundamental Questions that confront us all as human beings. Learn more about St. John's undergraduate and graduate programs, including low residency graduate options at sjc.edu. that's SJC. So, Nick, let's move into the story now a little bit further. You've already mentioned Ants Bundren, the husband of Addie. Or he becomes the widower of Addie, who has died, whose body is in the coffin they're transporting to Jefferson. As you see, he's kind of a lazy guy who doesn't like doing a lot of things, but he has taken it upon himself to do an important thing, which is to move this body from one place to another. He seems determined to get this done. Where does this determination come from?
- [16:22]
Nick Repatrizone
The determination really comes from a selfish desire. Ants want something. In Jefferson, He. He wants new teeth. And he will use this essentially tragedy, this excuse, this death as a way to justify that trip and that travel. And he puts on airs of being in grief and speaks of God, but he's not quite a believer. And he does that, I think, in order to convince people that he really is feeling something. But he does have a selfish reason for what he does. And I think Faulkner sometimes offers us characters like that who might, on the surface, seem to be doing the right thing, but there is really a deeper and a maybe nefarious reason for it.
- [17:12]
John J. Miller
This caravan accompanying the coffin is a bunch of family characters in it. One of them is Vardaman. He's the youngest child of the family. Who is he and what's his role?
- [17:25]
Nick Repatrizone
Vardaman is, as you say, quite young. And Faulkner oftentimes settles into a very kind of juvenile syntax. It's very often literal and kind of like scattershot. He sees one thing, he sees something else, reacts to them quite emotionally. And yet in a sort of unusual twist, I guess, in the narration. Sometimes Faulkner steps into Vardaman's perspective and uses diction and references that would be surprising for Vardaman to see. And I think there's a complex reason for that. You know, any of us who have children, you know, around kids, you know, they sometimes have these incredibly profound observations that come out of nowhere, and then the next moment they could be crying about something. And I think that complexity captures Vardom. And his mother has died, and yet her body's there. So he is trying to make sense of her lack of animation, the fact that she is gone, but she's there, and he struggles to do so. And I think Faulkner portrays him as somebody who tries to figure that out throughout the book.
- [18:43]
John J. Miller
He has a bizarre line in this book, which is, my mother is a fish. And in fact, that is the entirety of one of the chapters. Those five words. My mother is a fish. What's that all about?
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Nick Repatrizone
Yeah. Vardaman is trying to create analogies, to try to understand how something can be there but dead. And in the same way a fish is there and dead and can be cut up, his mother's body is something that he's trying to make sense of. And in Faulkner's world, there is no really easy solution to this grief. The body cannot be buried right away because it must go to Jefferson. So Vardaman is almost stuck seeing this object in front of him, what is now a body without a spirit, without an animation. And he's kind of grasping a straw. He's trying to think of things in his life that it could be compared to. And you're right, that is a. One of the best short chapters, I think, in all literature.
- [19:50]
John J. Miller
Well, it's certainly pleasingly short for those of us who like, like short chapters. And what is and what is not, you know, a short book. It's not. Not a very. Not a very long book. So they're on this journey, and then an important challenge involves a river crossing. What happens in this moment?
- [20:07]
Nick Repatrizone
They are trying to cross the river, and in doing so, they are trying to get the coffin across as well, of themselves, and they are failing. Faulkner writes this scene almost through different perspectives. It is at times quite confusing and disjointed. It is almost Joycean in its long and layered sentences. And I think that calls back to Faulkner's deep interest in ancient storytelling. And part of the reason, possibly, why he took those lines from the Odyssey, because in that text, this idea of a river that must be traversed and water and blood as ways to unite death and life. And it's an incredibly dramatic and traumatic moment. And Cash becomes incredible, quite injured in that moment. It really shakes the characters to their core and I think, affirms the fact that there's not going to be a good end to the story.
- [21:21]
John J. Miller
We've talked about a couple of the sons. There's also a daughter called Dewey Dell, the daughter of the dead mother, daughter of Ants, sister of Cash and Daryl and Vardaman. And she's in a bit of trouble herself and has another reason of her own for wanting to get to Jefferson. Who is she and what's she trying to do?
- [21:43]
Nick Repatrizone
Do? Videl is a young woman. She is pregnant. And her boyfriend, who kind of disappears from the novel, Leif, gives her a few Bucks and leaves. And she is trying to deal with the fact that she's pregnant and her mother is gone and there's no one to support help her. It's a really sad character, a sad situation that she is in. And Faulkner, with Addie, has a central female character, but as you know, Daddy has passed. So Dewey Dell, other than Ora, is really one of the only women in this book. And she has some very troubling encounters in Jefferson as she seeks to deal with what is going on with her. And it does create one of the. More, I think, troubling moments of the novel in a later scene.
- [22:43]
John J. Miller
And so she's seeking an abortion. Ultimately, she wants pills for a miscarriage. And you're sympathetic to her to the extent that she's been abandoned by her man. She does not have a mother to turn to. This is a woman with really very few resources and just is desperate. What happens in.
- [23:02]
Nick Repatrizone
In Jefferson, her desperation leads her to being taken advantage of. She is hurt by someone else. And you're right that that kind of sympathy that it creates is significant. Faulkner creates a scene where this happens in the cellar. I mean, the imagery is pretty heavy there with the hellish undertones. And she really can't escape this. What has happened to her. And the fact that he was able to create a female character that has these kind of struggles, I think is a testament to his ability to write many different types of characters in the same book.
- [23:46]
John J. Miller
I don't want to go down a rabbit hole here and talk about abortion politics, but is there a message about abortion? Is Faulkner trying to tell us something about desperate women in bad situations, about life, about death? Is there. Is there. Is there a message here?
- [23:59]
Nick Repatrizone
I think Dewey Dell is someone who needs people to love her and to help her, and she doesn't have that right now. And I think that is the closest thing I see Faulkner to saying about abortion and pregnancy that we support is necessary. Love is necessary. Understanding is necessary to help people through these very difficult moments.
- [24:24]
John J. Miller
What does this book say about faith? And I want to quote what I think is maybe the best known line from the novel. It's from Addie, who's the dead wife and mother. She narrates a couple of the chapters, including after she is deceased. But she has this interesting line where she says, quote, I could just remember how my father used to say that the reason for living was to stay dead a long time. Which is funny. It's a bit of black humor. But what is this book saying about faith or the afterlife? Or is it Saying anything at all.
- [25:01]
Nick Repatrizone
Faulkner's. Faulkner's religious sense is complicated. He, by all accounts, was well versed in the Bible and like other writers of his time, writes with, I think, a certain, at times, Old Testament almost syntax. His view of God comes through in this book, I think, based on the fact that, as we discussed in the first scene, a death is imminent. We're all going to die. You know, it's a simple reality of existence. And faith is a way, I think, for people to deal with that, not to make it easy, because grief never is. But this is a story of a protracted, affluent and itinerant grief that, as we are moving, this death is weighing on Daryl and Jewel and Dewey Dell and even Ants as maybe unlikable as a person. He is, you know, in the back of his mind, it has to be there. The characters know that Andy has passed, and yet she's physically still present with them, and it's not until she is buried that something can happen to transcend that. So Faulkner doesn't really give us, I think, an exuberant sort of conclusion. He gives us a reality that I think if we can reconcile ourselves to that mortality, you know, the life that we live, in a way becomes even more significant.
- [26:33]
John J. Miller
And, of course, burying the dead is a corporal work of mercy. We are obligated to do it, you might say.
- [26:41]
Nick Repatrizone
Absolutely. And that's why, although Ants is selfish and his maybe ancillary reason for doing it, they're still doing it and they're still making the journey. And the journey was difficult, but that is what we must do to put those that we love to rest.
- [26:59]
John J. Miller
The body starts to stink toward the end, and the characters can't ignore it. It's just happening because the burial is delayed because of the journey. They finally do make it to Jefferson, where we have, I don't want to say some resolutions to the plot, although there are some developments. What. What happens at the end? How does Faulkner wind up this novel?
- [27:24]
Nick Repatrizone
When they reach Jefferson, Ants gets his new teeth, but he also gets a new wife. And it was something that he was thinking about and wanted. And it leads to this kind of classic final moment where they meet the new Mrs. Bundren. It's an emotionally complicated conclusion because these characters have been through so much. And then to end on that point is, in a way, I think maybe appropriate for Faulkner because, as I had said, it's messy. Life is messy, and this ending is rather messy. And at the end, Anse is the most confident he has been in this whole book. Faulkner describes him as hang dog and proud with his teeth and all. But then he adds, even if he wouldn't look at us. So there's a certain shame as he acknowledges his new life.
- [28:23]
John J. Miller
And you read the last paragraph, except for the last line. The last line of As I Lay Dying then is a quote from Ants. He says, Meet Mrs. Bundren. This is the new mom, the new wife, the new member of our family. It's really striking. It'd be striking in the middle of a book, but that's how he ends the story.
- [28:46]
Nick Repatrizone
Yeah, let the dead bury the dead, I guess. I mean, yeah, it's a striking conclusion.
- [28:53]
John J. Miller
All right. So that's how the story wraps up As I Lay dying, published in 1930. William Faulkner, born 1897, died 1962. As you say, he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1949. Nick, who was he in the Grand Story of American Literature? We do think of him as one of the great novelists of the 20th century, of course, but where do you fit him into this tradition? And where does this novel fit into the Faulkner legacy?
- [29:23]
Nick Repatrizone
Faulkner was a wonderfully ambitious writer, and his books are. Are big, even when they're short. They are part of, as we talked about, this kind of broader mythology. And it's impossible to talk about Southern American literature without really putting him in the center. Faulkner, I would say, is shoulder to shoulder with people like James Joyce. He is one of the great American stylists. So at the sentence level, there is a crispness and a unique approach to his language that sets him apart. He also, and I think this is really shown well in Azelai, Dying creates these kind of timeless, tragic books. As I Dying, as much a prototypically American Southern book as it is, almost feels like a Greek tragedy. It feels like something that is outside of time. And I think that was one of Faulkner's great abilities, is that he saw, as he talked about in his Nobel speech, these eternal truths as being the most important things to reach for as an artist and as a writer. And throughout his career, whether he was writing short stories, novellas, or his novels, I think he was able to accomplish that.
- [30:45]
John J. Miller
How did you discover As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner?
- [30:49]
Nick Repatrizone
The novel was assigned to me when I went to Susquehanna University, which is a small school in. In the middle of Pennsylvania, and I read it in a fiction writing course. My professor was a novelist named Tom Bailey, who just happened to be from Mississippi, who sounds, as much as anyone can sound like Faulkner. It was a treat to hear him read this book. And Tom Bailey owned a farm by the campus, and he wore his work boots to campus. So as he was reading, he had his boots up on the table, and all of the sort of detritus and mud and hay from the farm is up on his feet. It was the perfect kind of setting for me, as someone from New Jersey and not the south, to encounter Faulkner in a very authentic way.
- [31:41]
John J. Miller
Nick, what's the case for reading As I Lay Dying right now? Does it have a special resonance for us in the 2020s?
- [31:49]
Nick Repatrizone
I think this is an economic book. I think it's a book about people who are struggling to survive, who have to deal with emotionally and financially enormous change to their life, and in doing so, they have to make selfless and selfish decisions. I think that's the reality of the world that we're in right now, is that we have to make sacrifices. We have to do things that we might not want to do. And there is an economic reality that really controls what is happening to us. And the other parts of life don't stop. Grief doesn't stop. Love doesn't stop. Fear doesn't stop. And. And that's one of the great challenges of existence. And I think that's why novels are an essential art form, because we see other people living in a way that sometimes illuminates our own existence.
- [32:50]
John J. Miller
Nick Repatrizone, thanks so much for joining us and telling us all about As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner.
- [32:57]
Nick Repatrizone
Thank you. Great to talk with you again.
- [32:59]
John J. Miller
You've just listened to the Great Books Podcast, a production of National Review. Please subscribe to the Great Books Podcast and leave reviews of the show that helps us keep this podcast going. Send me your ideas for future episodes. You can reach me through our website, heymiller.com on Twitter. My handle is heymiller. And last of all, special thanks to all of you for listening. We'll be back next week with a new episode of the Great Books Podcast.