“As I Lay Dying” by Warwick Wadlington: Was it legitimate for William Faulkner (post 9) to use obfuscation as a literary technique?

Wadlington’s monograph on Faulkner’s novel is, ultimately, laudatory. He says that some people may not like it, but it is a great book if you read it with the right attitude. Here is a sample of what some people may not like:

“Our discussion has come back to one point repeatedly: As I Lay Dying is a bizarre book. This is a novel in which one of the main characters, Addie, says of her husband Anse that he doesn’t know that he is dead yet. Far more bizarre is that as we encounter this revealing statement, two-thirds through the novel, we are reading the words of a character who herself has died several days (and many pages) earlier, whose corpse has already begun to stink” (1, pp. 72-73).

While the above could conceivably have some profound meaning, or perhaps be intended as humor, the following would seem to indicate that Faulkner engaged in intentional obfuscation:

“…the manuscript of the text shows that Faulkner worked to blur the clean lines of individual identity at the level of pronoun references, often substituting unclear pronouns for the names or clear references of the first draft” (1, p. 76).

I recall that in one of my past posts on Faulkner, I quoted him as saying that he changed the ending of one of his other novels, years after it was published, because he was still in touch with the characters, and was still trying to make his novel more accurately reflect what they told him.

And so I have tried to rationalize what Faulkner did with the pronouns in As I Lay Dying as his attempt to more accurately reflect his characters, who may have told him their stories without always saying which one of them was talking. But Faulkner, unlike the reader, would have been able to know who was talking by the sound of their voices.

1. Warwick Wadlington. As I Lay Dying: Stories out of Stories. New York, Twayne Publishers, 1992.