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Old 09-16-2012, 09:19 PM   #7
aecardenas
Kafkaesque
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In my opinion, Faulkner wrote two masterpieces: The Sound and the Fury, and As I Lay Dying.

The Sound and the Fury feels like a unintentional masterpiece, meaning I think he came to write it more naturally and more organically than his other books. It's like he was trying to tell one story...but couldn't decide on which way to tell it. He tried one way, from one perspective. Then he tried it again with a completely different point of view. Then he tried it again from someone else's eyes. Finally, he tried to distance himself and tell it from a more godlike perspective and it is this method that really makes this book incredibly powerful.

As I Lay Dying...is probably his most deliberate masterpiece. The alternate points of views in the form of internal monologues used to piece together an engrossing narrative is quite stunning. But it does feel like he actively tried to be great, and, in my mind, achieve the greatness that he sought.

Faulkner's writing is akin to a prose poem, lush and dense as a jungle, dark and mysterious as a person's soul. His use of the language is incredibly powerful and profound. The man could describe the hell out of something. So much that once you read his interpretation of something (drinking water from a cedar bucket, the fall of rain in summer, the smell of a woman's skin, the sense of fatality and time) you can't picture the object of his description in any other way than the way in which it was described. A true mark of a great artist.

Anyway, all this to just say...ENJOY! I envy you the discovery of Faulkner. Makes me want to re-read my Faulkner collection.
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