William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying

[nolabear]

1. Yes, and also desperate and tragic. Faulkner tried to write from the inside.

Not that he could so much, being from a privileged family, but his characters weren’t the way they were from nothing. They were doomed and ill equipped and they did terrible things because they couldn’t do otherwise.

I’ll give you two more books. They are incredible. Salvage the Bones and Sing, Unburied, Sing. They’re Jesamyn Ward’s work. She may well be the best author of Mississippi African American experience I’ve ever read. If you can love her people you can get a really great handle on those whose actions you would never take, but can have some empathy for.