As I Lay Dying

I wanted to read The sound and the fury cause it sounded like a cool title, but reddit kindly warned me that Faulkner is a tough read and suggested this book instead as a gentle introduction.

As I lay dying was still a difficult read durr. In the beginning I was unintentionally confused as I wasn't use to the writing style. Afterwards I was intentionally confused cause the author wills it so. Actually I had to search it up later that Faulkner intended the individual (heck I would even go as far as collective) narrations to be incomplete. A review described it as reverse-foreshadowing, where events (chaotically) happen first, then a couple characters fill in some amount of detail later on.

All in all I was just confused and couldn't enjoy the book very much.

Darl's chapters can easily be transplanted into Alice in wonderland, exhibit A:

In a strange room you must empty yourself for sleep. And before you are emptied for sleep, what are you. And when you are emptied for sleep, you are not. And when you are filled with sleep, you never were. I don't know what I am. I don't know if I am or not. Jewel knows he is, because he does not know that he does not know whether he is or not. He cannot empty himself for sleep because he is not what he is and he is what he is not. Beyond the unlamped wall I can hear the rain shaping the wagon that is ours, the load that is no longer theirs that felled and sawed it nor yet theirs that bought it and which is not ours either, lie on our wagon though it does, since only the wind and the rain shape it only to Jewel and me, that are not asleep. And since sleep is is-not and rain and wind are was, it is not. Yet the wagon is, because when the wagon is was, Addie Bundren will not be. And Jewel is, so Addie Bundren must be. And then I must be, or I could not empty myself for sleep in a strange room. And so if I am not emptied yet, I am is.

How often have I lain beneath rain on a strange roof, thinking of home.

Maybe I'll try Virginia Woolf next...?