William Faulkn-er’s As I Lay Dying is wide-ly con-sid-ered one of the great Amer-i-can nov-els. Quite an accom-plish-ment, espe-cial-ly con-sid-er-ing that Faulkn-er wrote the nov-el in six weeks while work-ing at a pow-er plant in 1929–30. Read more about his day jobs here.
Thanks to Harper-Collins, you can now lis-ten to Faulkn-er, him-self, read-ing from his mas-ter-piece: .au file (4.4 Mb), .gsm file (0.9 Mb), .ra file (0.5 Mb). The audio can be a lit-tle dif-fi-cult to make out at times. But you can read right along with the text in Google Books. Enjoy. Thanks MS.
For more audio clas-sics, check out our col-lec-tion of Free Audio Books.
MS? as in M$ ?
:-)
As I Lay Dying was always my favorite of all his books. Some-thing about the sto-icism of those peo-ple reminds me of sim-i-lar sur-vivors in Texas. The diver-si-ty of what he wrote is amaz-ing.
Thanks for post-ing this. I’ll admit that I haven’t read As I Lay Dying, but I’ve always loved Faulkn-er’s short sto-ries. Def-i-nite-ly going to give this a lis-ten.
So is this a good choise to read for school or should I pick anoth-er one instead?
Machelle, I’ve taught Faulkn-er’s fic-tion all my adult life, and I sug-gest you start with anoth-er of his books. I don’t know your age and read-ing expe-ri-ence, but if you real-ly love books and have read a lot, you might start with his great-est, “Absa-lom, Absa-lom!” (It will take a while to get into it,but oh my, it’s worth it). “The Reivers” is Faulkn-er’s last book and com-ic and fun. “Light in August” is a book I nev-er can put down. I’ve nev-er under-stood why “As I Lay Dying” is the Faulkn-er nov-el taught in high schools.
THIS BOOK YOU HAVE TO READ OVER AND OVER TO UNDERSTAND IT BUT IT HAS TRAGIC AND COMIC IN IT…
Machelle, I teach this to my senior Advanced Place-ment class-es and love it for its dark humor. Faulkn-er knew what that was all about long before Hol-ly-wood exploit-ed the humor in pathos.
Love this book, which has the same effect on me as Wait-ing for Godot…sometimes laugh out loud, some-times tears stream-ing. Thank you for allow-ing me to hear Faulkn-er’s words in Faulkn-er’s voice.
My God! Faulkn-er real-ly was a South-ern-er. I can bare-ly under-stand him. His accent is thick-er than Bar-ry Han-nah’s or Flan-nery O’Con-nor’s.
It’s eas-i-er to under-stand Cash or Darl or Anse on the writ-ten page. A British crit-ic called “As I Lay Dying” a black com-e-dy, and I’m glad to read shashinyc re: its comedic and trag-ic aspects, both. It occurred to me that it ante-dates “Godot” by 30 years. I think Faulkn-er played it both ways, as both com-e-dy and tragedy. You care too much mere-ly to laugh, but the stu-pid-i-ty forces that, too. Final-ly, like Beck-et-t’s work, it address-es the human con-di-tion in all its schiz-o-phre-nia.
I found “Light in August” very mov-ing. Not over-whelm-ing at all, by which I mean that uncon-ven-tion-al 20th cen-tu-ry lit-er-a-ture can some-times be rather weighty and dif-fi-cult to com-pre-hend. Does this web-site still have the record-ing of Faulkn-er’s Nobel Prize speech?
Pre-vis-i-ble. He has a voice 4 read-ing very dinam-ic, very poet-ic. Diame-tral-ly opposed as the voice that I’ve when-ev-er I read him
I have read all of his books, some were very hard to under-stand but I would usu-al-ly read them over again.
We studing “Light in August” in high school. It was excel-lent!