Let's Bust a Recap : As I Lay Dying

A few weeks ago, I recapped my first Hemingway and now I've also tackled my first Faulkner, and you guys, I have to say: I haven't been particularly impressed with the Jazz Age bunch.  

Way back in 2018, I read The Great Gatsby for the first time and I remember thinking, "Really? This is the book we're all lauding as one of the best offerings of the 20th century? Really??" And then I found Hemingway painful. And now Faulkner who by the end of the novel I just kept thinking, "What a pretentious prig." 

(Why am I even comparing these three authors? They were contemporaries being born in 1896, 1897, and 1899, respectively, and they are all three often lauded as some of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. Faulkner and Hemingway both won the Nobel Prize in Literature, and Fitzgerald was nominated for it twice.)

But getting back to the pretentious prig. Faulkner himself bragged that he wrote As I Lay Dying "in six weeks, without changing a word" (not true) and that he "set out deliberately to write a tour-de-force." He claimed: "Before I ever put pen to paper and set down the first words, I knew what the last word would be...Before I began I said, I am going to write a book by which, at a pinch, I can stand or fall if I never touch ink again." Oh brother. If having a total disregard for punctuation and not finishing sentences is what it takes to make a great writer, then why do we even care about education? Honestly, why? 

But I digress. All my ranting aside, I liked Faulkner the best, and As I Lay Dying is one of the most unique pieces of literature I've ever read. (But hear me loud and clear: I am not equating uniqueness with inherent goodness. Different doesn't automatically mean better.) Stream-of-consciousness is not my favorite writing technique and Faulkner was one of the pioneers of it. 

As I Lay Dying—originally published in 1930, in case I haven't mentioned it—is basically the story of Addie Bundren's death and her rural family's subsequent quest to carry her body to its final resting place in her hometown of Jefferson, Mississippi, a request she made of them before she died. The book is written from multiple points of view—no less than fifteen!—and each "chapter" (if you can even call them chapters) are narrated by different people, including a couple by Addie herself after her demise. The main characters are the Bundrens, obviously: Addie's husband Anse, and her five children, Cash, Darl, Jewel, Dewey Dell, and Vardaman. Darl probably has the most of the 59 "chapters". It's a chaotic, dark, sometimes funny, a lot of times disturbing novel. Vardaman thinks his mom is a fish. Dewey Dell is stressing over an unwanted pregnancy and trying to obtain an abortion. Addie's body isn't embalmed so the stench the Bundrens take with them everywhere is a constant topic. Anse steals from his children. Cash's leg gets broken and they try to make a cast for it out of concrete. Darl starts a fire and gets taken away to an insane asylum. I cannot over-emphasize what a strange, tragic book this is. 

How do I wrap up a review like this? I will never read As I Lay Dying again. And I wouldn't really recommend it either. But I haven't stopped thinking about it. I'll definitely read more Faulkner. But it will be a few years before I pick him up again. 

How do you feel about stream-of-consciousness writing? Do you like Faulkner, Hemingway, or Fitzgerald? And which one do you like best?

2008 : My Life In Books

 Which book should I read for 2008?

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

OR

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

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Let's Bust a Recap : Living Life Backward

"Life is gift, not gain."

If I could sum up my takeaway from Living Life Backward in one sentence, that would be it. And in my mind, I kind of chant it like the sharks in Finding Nemo talking about fish. 

Living Life Backward is David Gibson's 2017 treatise on the book of Ecclesiastes. Cody read this a few years back, and when I asked him to recommend a couple of books for my book list last year, this was the first one he pulled off the shelf. I did actually start it in November, but it got put on hold while I poured all my reading energy into finishing David Copperfield before the end of the year. And then it got put on hold again while I focused on our first book club book The Reason for God. (I usually don't like to have more than one non-fiction book going at once.) But I finally picked it back up and finished it the second week of February. 

In Living Life Backward, Gibson systematically works through the entire book of Ecclesiastes. It's easy to view Ecclesiastes through a pretty depressing lens. Some translations open with "Everything is meaningless." But Gibson's argument is that the wisdom we can derive from the book of Ecclesiastes actually frees us up to live lives that are ultimately more happy and fulfilling. The only thing we can be absolutely certain of in this life is that death comes for us all. Though we don't know when or how, we know that at some point, every one of us will die. Everything else in this life, from our perspective, is uncertain. One of the things Gibson says in his book really struck me: that we like to live as if the one thing that's certain—death—will never come, while all the things that are actually uncertain are certain for us. We spend our lives trying to figure out unknowable things, and pretend like we aren't going to die. Obviously, this sets us up for a very unsatisfying life because, like we all know deep down, we do all die. Gibson and the writer of Ecclesiastes point out that living life in light of the end—living life backward, if you will—informs our day-to-day living. 

So "life is gift, not gain"...what is that? If we live our lives constantly striving to gain more, more, more; then ultimately we will come to the end feeling like everything was meaningless. I mean, he who dies with the most toys...still dies. What were we working so hard for? Everything that we acquire can't go with us when we die and most of us will be forgotten after we're gone. But if we view life as a gift from God, we can enjoy what He's given us and not only that, we're supposed to enjoy what He gives us. By enjoying this life, we're actually fulfilling God's purpose. When I'm not afraid to die, when I live my life with open hands and a peaceful heart, people around me have to wonder, what does she know that I don't? 

I'm probably making this sound super-trite and overly clichéd, but Gibson's book was a breath of fresh air. It was a timely reminder. And it did really help me understand Ecclesiastes better. There are things in that book that can seem contradictory, but Gibson does an excellent job of breaking it all down. Don't let my cheesy review put you off. Living Life Backward is a book I highly recommend and one that I would definitely read again.

2007 : My Life In Books

 Which book should I read for 2007?

Summer at Tiffany by Marjorie Hart

OR

Fieldwork by Mischa Berlinski

OR

On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan

OR

Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay

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Let's Bust a Recap : A Farewell to Arms

Well, I've got my first Hemingway under my belt and it was, as Rory Gilmore warned us way back in 2002, painful. And I don't mean that in a good way.

A Farewell to Arms was Hemingway's second novel and first bestseller. Published in 1929, it is considered by many to be the premier American war novel of World War I, and it cemented Hemingway's status as one of the great American writers of the 20th century. 

A first person narrative set during the Italian campaign of World War I, A Farewell to Arms tells the story of American Frederic Henry's time serving as a lieutenant in the ambulance corps of the Italian army and his passionate affair with an English nurse called Catherine Barkley. The novel is divided into five different "books" and, in my opinion, it was a complete slog up until almost the very end of the third book, but then the last hundred pages or so were completely unputdownable. But like in a I-can't-look-away-from-this-absolute-trainwreck kind of way. Much of Hemingway's work was autobiographical in nature, and he drew on his own experiences living as an expat and serving in the Italian campaigns of World War I to write A Farewell to Arms. The inspiration for Catherine Barkley was drawn from his first love, Agnes von Kurowsky, who ultimately spurned him in real life. And apparently ruined him forever. Her literary counterpart meets a pretty bleak end. 

I don't know, you guys. I can see the value in A Farewell to Arms for its true-to-life portrayal of the First World War and the Italian campaigns. There were glimmers of brilliance in there. I mean, who am I to poo-poo one of the "great American writers of the 20th century" and the 1954 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature? But Hemingway's sparse style just wasn't my bag. While A Farewell to Arms wasn't sexually explicit, it felt crass to me, and Hemingway's dialogue is the thing of my nightmares. If more than two people were having a conversation, Heaven help you figure out who was saying what. His ending—which he famously rewrote some forty-odd times before landing on the one he chose—left me cold. Ultimately: not a book I'd read again and also not one I'd recommend. 

However, I have struck a bargain with my friend Jon—a literary exchange, if you will—wherein for every Hemingway I read, he will read a novel by Jane Austen. Jon has Mark Twain levels of hatred for Austen based on reading like one chapter of Persuasion over ten years ago. Given my recent discovery of my distaste for Hemingway's writing, this seems like a fair deal, and given that Jon has yet to even start one of my homegirl's most excellent works, I think I'm safe from Hemingway for a couple of years at least. 

What's your take on Ernest Hemingway or any of the "great" 20th century American writers in general?

2006 : My Life In Books

 Which book should I read for 2006?

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

OR

How To Be Popular by Meg Cabot

OR

Same Kind of Different As Me by Ron Hall & Denver Moore

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Let's Bust a Recap : The Borrowed Life of Frederick Fife

The second book chosen for our book club to read this year was this 2024 debut by Australian author Anna Johnston: The Borrowed Life of Frederick Fife. 

And what a gem! I loved this hilarious, heartfelt novel from the first word to the last. Johnston did not miss a single step in her debut, and I've already put her upcoming release on my amazon wishlist and requested that my library buy a copy even though it's not coming out till August. 

In the first chapter, we learn that 82 year old Fred has just been evicted from his home and is taking a walk along the river to find a little snatch of peace while he tries to figure out what he's going to do. In an insane turn of events that involves his uncanny doppelgänger floating away down the river, Fred finds himself being loaded into a van and taken to a nursing home where he's fed the best meal he's had in months and tucked away into a warm bed. Despite his earnest attempts to correct the mistake, Fred can't seem to make anyone believe that he isn't Bernard Greer and decides maybe it won't be so bad to "borrow" this stranger's life since he won't be needing it any more. 

While you might think you'd have to suspend disbelief to such a degree that this story couldn't possibly be enjoyable, I think Johnston actually pulls it off. She does such a wonderful job of spinning a yarn that seems like it could—believe it or not—be plausible despite how absurd it sounds on the surface. Frederick Fife is a kinder, sunnier Ove who, instead of being adopted by the people around him against his will, adopts all the people around him himself to create his new found family. I loved it so much. 

Another surprising element of The Borrowed Life of Frederick Fife that endeared me even more to this sweet novel was that I saw myself in Fred. I mentioned in one of my recent reviews that it's hard to find a novel where the protagonist is childless and content. In The Borrowed Life, Fred and his late wife very much wanted to have children but were unable to grow their family. While this was one of the harder elements of this narrative to read about (and let me just give a trigger warning for miscarriage), I felt such a kinship with this character who kept a sunny outlook and had such a beautiful and fulfilling marriage with his partner. I didn't expect the story I'd see myself in to be that of a lonely male octogenarian, but I'm so glad I found it.

Finally, I have to continue my applause for Johnston's brilliant debut by saying that I didn't see the twists coming. I certainly haven't read every book on the planet, but The Borrowed Life of Frederick Fife felt wholly original and fresh to me, and I stayed up way past my bedtime finishing this one. 

Two enthusiastic thumbs up from this reader, and I'm so looking forward to Anna Johnston's sophomore novel—coming in August!