As I Lay Dying

William Faulkner's AS I LAY DYING was published in 1930, exactly a year after THE SOUND AND THE FURY. A stream-of-consciousness novel narrated from 15 different points of view, AS I LAY DYING opens as the Bundren matriarch, Addie, is dying at the family home in Faulkner's fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi. (His later novel ABSALOM, ABSALOM includes a map of the place.) The novel chronicles the struggle of this clan of poor whites--Addie's husband, Anse, and their extended family--to travel to Jefferson, the county seat, to bury Addie, at her request, in the town she came from. Their hapless nine-day journey includes a flooded river, drowned mules, a broken leg, impatient buzzards circling the body, and a fire in a barn where they take refuge. Faulkner's bleakly comic novel, which explores the nature of grief, community, and family, is considered one of his masterpieces.