As I Lay Dying - Faulkner
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- cdk71
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As I Lay Dying - Faulkner
When we reach it I turn and follow the path which circles the house. Jewel, fifteen feet behind me, looking straight ahead, steps in a single stride through the window. Still staring straight ahead, his pale eyes like wood set into his wooden face, he crosses the
floor in four strides with the rigid gravity of a cigar store Indian dressed in patched overalls and endued with life from the hips down, and steps in a single stride through the opposite window and into the path again just as I come around the corner.
So: what do we have here? Some all-knowing Author that exactly can see through walls, and count the number of steps taken by a friend walking through the house, while he takes steps around. How is this possible, in reality?
I really appreciate good literature. I like neat descriptions, with all senses involved. But I can't appreciate when an author tries to impose details upon me, when in reality he can't know. It's perfectly ok when he'd write as an objective tale teller. But with mixing in his personal role as an 'I', he just takes The Magic Eye and expects me to swallow all he has. I don't.
- DATo
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Where in the book is that passage? I own the book. I want to look it up but I don't want to scan the entire book for it. Number of pages in YOUR book - page number this passage is on.
There may be a reason why it is written that way, but I won't know till I read it in context. When I read the book this part did not stick out which makes me think there is something you are unintentionally omitting.
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- cdk71
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When we reach it I turn and follow the path which circles the house. Jewel, fifteen feet behind me, looking straight ahead, steps in a single stride through the window. Still staring straight ahead, his pale eyes like wood set into his wooden face, he crosses the floor in four strides with the rigid gravity of a cigar store Indian dressed in patched overalls and endued with life from the hips down, and steps in a single stride through the opposite window and into the path again just as I come around the corner.
So I remain with my feeling and appreciation. I'd be interested though in how other readers feel and appreciate, and how and why (it's been called a classic after all).
- Bigwig1973
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- DATo
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I'm thinking maybe the house was a shack with the walls (or some of them) down so he could actually see into the house as his brother is walking in "through the window". Something like that. But I know what you mean though. I see a lot of stuff that doesn't make sense in movies. Like in the Lord Of The Rings:The Fellowship - the witch king can't be killed by a mortal man --- and it was the witch king that stabbed Frodo on Weathertop --- so why did the witch king run away from Aragorn on Weathertop? Aragorn could not have killed him. I see lapses of logic all the time in movies.
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- cdk71
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To me, Faulkner just tricks upon the reader, while intermixing both the actor and observator role. That just, to me, makes it too far fetched. I don't like putting myself in a position to just take all one writes, that way. It would make me too submissive and resigned.
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