The first one is Anse’s chapter which in my edition is p30-33. This is a rich and meaty book, and rather than give an inadequate overview I am going to home in on just two chapters. It is during this journey of about 5 days, that the trials mentioned above, plague them. Then the whole family set off with the coffin for Jefferson which is 40 miles distant. Every plank is held up to the window for Addie’s approval before being nailed in. During this time Cash, who has ‘carpenter notions’ builds her coffin. This heroic epic takes place over about 15 days. It is an Odyssey of death, flooding rains, raging rivers, drowned mule teams, unbalanced coffins, burning barns, broken limbs mended with casts of cement, an attempted abortion, circling buzzards, an increasing miasma of rotting flesh, a new set of teeth, and finally a new wife for Anse, who I think is his sister or perhaps more charitably, his cousin. Although there is the odd ironic joke in their telling of the story, they play a straight bat, as they tell of their lives and their interpretation of the realities around them. The story is told mostly (but not exclusively) through the voices of the Bundren family members. On the second reading I found it even funnier. I was struck by the burlesque nature of this book when I first read it. The answer is, I think, that it ticks all three boxes. Is it a sort of satire of Hillbilly culture? or.The main questions about this book that need answering are: I loved this book! My chapter (Williamstown) discussed it at length, but it wasn’t till I reread it at home in preparation for this review that I discovered how much I had missed the first reading. As I Lay Dying – Southern Gothic or Hillbilly Vaudeville?

Faulkner as dying