There are four novels by William Faulkner in one of my books cases. All were read decades ago. I retain a general sense of The Sound and the Fury. I recall that there is a murder in Light in August. I don’t remember anything about Sanctuary. I think I will always get the creeps when I think of As I Lay Dying, published in 1930, his seventh, a grim, uncompromising, intimate portrait of a poor Mississippi family fulfilling the wish of the mother to be buried in the town where she grew up. Although the location is less than a day’s ride, the clan encounters setbacks that turn the trek into a mad odyssey. The novel is done in stream of conscious and has 15 points of view. I was riveted, especially by the image of the rotting, stinking corpse being carted from point A to B. Novels set in the south are often rich in symbolism. I was never good at the interpretation of it. I don’t care whether As I Lay Dying is symbolic of something else or not. The surface of the story is more than enough for me. On one list, it is ranked the 35th most significant novel of the 20th century. Faulkner was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1949. Last night I watched James Franco’s 2013 adaptation, courtesy of Netflix. Tim Blake Nelson is outstanding as the patriarch, whose determination is frightening, painful to watch. The rest of the cast, including Franco, are fine as well. These people are dirt poor, aged well beyond their years. They endure through the belief that “The Lord works in mysterious ways.” The work in not political, an indictment of conditions or a system, as many happy, prosperous folks are passed along the way. The focus is the unhappy family bewildered by a hard life. Franco co-wrote the screenplay with Matt Rager. The pair are working on an adaptation of The Sound and the Fury, which has been filmed before with mediocre results. It is refreshing to see young men tackle serious work, especially when the chances of earning a profit are almost nil. My only criticism of the film is the frequent use of split screen, although I realize it was designed for celluloid and not a 25 inch TV set. I was also disappointed there wasn't any closed captioning, which would have helped decipher the thick drawls. Franco gets a lot of guff in the press. Maybe he isn’t a nice guy. He certainly comes off as aloof. Maybe there is resentment of his apparent aim to be a renaissance man. He has 23 directing credits at IMDb, many of them shorts, and 16 for writing. He has written five books: a novel, two story collections, a memoir and a poetry collection. I haven’t read any, but if I come across one I will. The film is rated only 5.5 of ten at IMDb. I’d guess contributors were rating the unpleasant content rather than the quality. I rate it 3.75 of five. The title comes from Homer's The Odyssey, wherein Agamemnon, in the underworld, speaks to the visiting Odysseus: "As I lay dying, the woman with the dog's eyes would not close my eyes as I descended into Hades." (Facts also culled from Wiki)
It was spring-like in Brooklyn today, and business was good. My thanks to the gentleman who called to tell his wife, Kinesha, aka Mrs. Eclectic, I was out there. She bought six books: Hawthorne's The House of Seven Gables and The Scarlet Letter, Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, Baum's The Wizard of Oz, Irving's The Cider House Rules, and Waller's Slow Waltz in Cedar Rapids. My thanks also to the woman who purchased two large pictorials on the Pyramids and Jewish history, to those who bought books in Russian, and to all the folks who stopped to chat.
Vic's 4th Novel: http://tinyurl.com/bszwlxh
Vic's 3rd Novel: http://tinyurl.com/7e9jty3
Vic's Website: http://members.tripod.com/vic_fortezza/Literature/
Vic's Short Story Collection (Print or Kindle): http://www.tiny.cc/Oycgb
Vic's 2nd Novel: http://tinyurl.com/6b86st6
Vic's 1st Novel: http://tiny.cc/94t5h
Vic's Horror Screenplay on Kindle: http://tinyurl.com/cyckn3
Vic's Rom-Com Screenplay on Kindle: http://tinyurl.com/kny5llp
Vic’s Short Story on Kindle: http://tinyurl.com/k95k3nx
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