As I Lay Dying (book rant)

My class has officially left Hemingway for the remainder of the semester, which means we will be spending the next nine weeks or so with William Faulkner. My last encounter was over a decade ago in Chapel Hill. I managed to make it through two novels in two semesters, hated every minute of the reading, and loved the fact that I had done so.

How I felt about a dead Mississippian in the late Nineties is beside the point.

The point is that I just finished reading this book, which has one of the most unbelievable opening scenes I have ever come across:

A woman is dying. Outside the window, her son saws away at the boards that will become her casket and holds each of them up for her approval. Mules die. A dozen narrators, one father, and a river washes the coffin away.

Streams of consciousness, broken legs and aborted abortions. Sexual assault, barns burned, the town of Jefferson. I was born in the town of Jefferson. It was snowing; Days of Our Lives was on:

I feel a strange kinship with the dead man, perhaps I've been too long in South Florida. I miss the twang, I miss the smell of autumn – no one there refers to it as 'autumnal' – how does one pronounce the word "Appalachian"?

It depends on where you're from. Inside and outside designate, simultaneously, the beginning and the end of the world. He's difficult to read, this dead man from Mississippi who wrote about a dead woman in Mississippi.

Six pills packed with talcum powder, one cellar, a seven year-old waits outside. A man impersonating a pharmacist commits rape atop a pile of sweet potatoes. I remember the words of my professor on the first day of class:

"Perversion... Depravity... Disturbing..."