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As I Lay Dying
- Narrated by: Marc Cashman, Robertson Dean, Lina Patel, Lorna Raver
- Length: 6 hrs and 51 mins
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Publisher's summary
Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time
From the Modern Library’s new set of beautifully repackaged hardcover classics by William Faulkner—also available are Snopes, The Sound and the Fury, Light in August, Absalom, Absalom!, and Selected Short Stories
One of William Faulkner’s finest novels, As I Lay Dying, originally published in 1930, remains a captivating and stylistically innovative work. The story revolves around a grim yet darkly humorous pilgrimage, as Addie Bundren’s family sets out to fulfill her last wish: to be buried in her native Jefferson, Mississippi, far from the miserable backwater surroundings of her married life. Told through multiple voices, As I Lay Dying vividly brings to life Faulkner’s imaginary South, one of literature’s great invented landscapes, and is replete with the poignant, impoverished, violent, and hypnotically fascinating characters that were his trademark.
Along with a new Foreword by E. L. Doctorow, this edition reproduces the corrected text of As I Lay Dying as established in 1985 by Faulkner expert Noel Polk.
Critic reviews
"For range of effect, philosophical weight, originality of style, variety of characterization, humor, and tragic intensity, [Faulkner's works] are without equal in our time and country."--Robert Penn Warren
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Let Nick Adams introduce you to Ernest Hemingway
- By Paul on 04-04-12
By: Ernest Hemingway
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Their Eyes Were Watching God
- By: Zora Neale Hurston
- Narrated by: Ruby Dee
- Length: 6 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Their Eyes Were Watching God, an American classic, is the luminous and haunting novel about Janie Crawford, a Southern Black woman in the 1930s, whose journey from a free-spirited girl to a woman of independence and substance has inspired writers and readers for close to 70 years.
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perfection
- By Mel on 04-06-15
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Cane
- By: Jean Toomer
- Narrated by: Sean Crisden
- Length: 6 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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First published in 1923, Jean Toomer's Cane is an innovative literary work powerfully evoking black life in the South. Rich in imagery, Toomer's impressionistic, sometimes surrealistic sketches of Southern rural and urban life are permeated by visions of smoke, sugarcane, dusk, and fire; the northern world is pictured as a harsher reality of asphalt streets.
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When Robots Read, and I'm a Fan of Robots...
- By Jonathan on 03-26-13
By: Jean Toomer
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The Long Valley
- By: John Steinbeck, John H. Timmerman - introduction
- Narrated by: Holter Graham
- Length: 8 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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A Penguin Classic. First published in 1938, this volume of stories collected with the encouragement of his longtime editor Pascal Covici serves as a wonderful introduction to the work of Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck. Set in the beautiful Salinas Valley of California, where simple people farm the land and struggle to find a place for themselves in the world, these stories reflect Steinbeck’s characteristic interests: The tensions between town and country, laborers and owners, past and present.
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Generally Good Stories, Some are Great
- By Michael on 06-18-13
By: John Steinbeck, and others
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Drums Along the Mohawk
- By: Walter D. Edmonds
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall
- Length: 21 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Drums along the Mohawk, Walter D. Edmonds' masterpiece, is not only the best historical novel about upstate New York since James Fenimore Cooper, it was also number one on the bestseller list for two years, only yielding to the epic Gone with the Wind. This is the story of the forgotten pioneers of the Mohawk Valley during the Revolutionary War. Here Gilbert Martin and his young wife struggled and lived and hoped.
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Wonderful
- By Robert on 09-06-15
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Cataloochee
- By: Wayne Caldwell
- Narrated by: Scott Sowers
- Length: 12 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Debut novelist Wayne Caldwell's Cataloochee -a rich, vivid, arresting work beginning at the dawn of Reconstruction - sprawls across the succeeding generations like the vast green mountains of its rural North Carolina setting. Best-selling author Charles Frazier calls it "a brilliant portrait of a community and a way of life long gone, a lost America." This enthralling saga evokes the full color spectrum of mountain life, from lights to darks and every shade in between.
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Love It!
- By Cynthia J. Hakansson on 02-27-09
By: Wayne Caldwell
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Chasing the North Star
- By: Robert Morgan
- Narrated by: Kevin R. Free, Carra Patterson
- Length: 10 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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On a moonless night in the spring of 1851, a young slave makes a bid for freedom with only the North Star to guide him. Best-selling novelist and historian Robert Morgan returns with a stunning new work of historical fiction.
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Not what we thought
- By bds on 05-07-19
By: Robert Morgan
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A Different Drummer
- By: William Melvin Kelley
- Narrated by: Jay Smooth
- Length: 6 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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June 1957. One hot afternoon in the backwaters of the Deep South, a young black farmer named Tucker Caliban salts his fields, shoots his horse, burns his house, and heads north with his wife and child. His departure sets off an exodus of the state’s entire black population, throwing the established order into brilliant disarray. Told from the points of view of the white residents who remained, A Different Drummer stands, decades after its first publication in 1962, as an extraordinary and prescient triumph of satire and spirit.
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A wonderful and moving story
- By E. on 10-25-19
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Sunset Song
- By: Lewis Gibbon
- Narrated by: Eileen McCallum
- Length: 11 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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The most acclaimed Scottish novel of all time, Sunset Song is a powerful portrait of a land and people in turmoil, seen through the life and struggles of its heroine, Chris Guthrie. In the years up to and beyond the First World War, Chris' resilience, like the land itself, endures despite everything and is portrayed with a lyrical intensity that echoes through the years and still resonates today.
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Absolute masterpiece!
- By Jeff Koeppen on 03-03-18
By: Lewis Gibbon
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The Sound and the Fury
- By: William Faulkner
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- Length: 8 hrs and 51 mins
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The Sound and the Fury is the tragedy of the Compson family, featuring some of the most memorable characters in literature: beautiful, rebellious Caddy; the manchild Benjy; haunted, neurotic Quentin; Jason, the brutal cynic; and Dilsey, their black servant. Their lives fragmented and harrowed by history and legacy, the character’s voices and actions mesh to create what is arguably Faulkner’s masterpiece and one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century.
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Hang in
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Absalom, Absalom!
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Absalom, Absalom! tells the story of Thomas Sutpen, the enigmatic stranger who came to Jefferson township in the early 1830s. With a French architect and a band of wild Haitians, he wrung a fabulous plantation out of the muddy bottoms of the north Mississippi wilderness. Sutpen was a man, Faulker said, "who wanted sons and the sons destroyed him". His tragedy left its impress not only on his contemporaries but also on men who came after, men like Quentin Compson, haunted even into the 20th century by Sutpen's legacy.
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A long, enjoyable listen
- By pilot on 01-08-09
By: William Faulkner
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Light in August
- By: William Faulkner
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 17 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Light in August features some of Faulkner’s most memorable characters: guileless, dauntless Lena Grove, in search of the father of her unborn child; Reverend Gail Hightower, who is plagued by visions of Confederate horsemen; and Joe Christmas, a desperate, enigmatic drifter consumed by his mixed ancestry.
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Simply great.
- By Jamie on 08-18-05
By: William Faulkner
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Light in August
- By: William Faulkner
- Narrated by: Will Patton
- Length: 15 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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An Oprah's Book Club Selection regarded as one of Faulkner's greatest and most accessible novels, Light in August is a timeless and riveting story of determination, tragedy, and hope. In Faulkner's iconic Yoknapatawpha County, race, sex, and religion collide around three memorable characters searching desperately for human connection and their own identities.
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so large, so powerful, so conflicted
- By Darwin8u on 09-17-17
By: William Faulkner
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The Sound and the Fury
- By: William Faulkner
- Narrated by: Deaver Brown
- Length: 9 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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A deep American South novel about a black & white intertwined in a relationship living in one house with various goings-on Southern style.
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Narrator sounds drunk
- By LT on 07-11-24
By: William Faulkner
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Collected Stories of William Faulkner
- By: William Faulkner
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer, Susan Denaker, Scott Brick, and others
- Length: 31 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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This magisterial collection of short works by Nobel Prize-winning author William Faulkner reminds listeners of his ability to compress his epic vision into narratives as hard and wounding as bullets. Among the 42 selections in this audiobook are such classics as "A Bear Hunt", "A Rose for Emily", "Two Soldiers", and "The Brooch".
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Audiobook Table of Contents (by Chapter)
- By Anonymous User on 09-27-20
By: William Faulkner
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The Sound and the Fury
- By: William Faulkner
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 8 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The Sound and the Fury is the tragedy of the Compson family, featuring some of the most memorable characters in literature: beautiful, rebellious Caddy; the manchild Benjy; haunted, neurotic Quentin; Jason, the brutal cynic; and Dilsey, their black servant. Their lives fragmented and harrowed by history and legacy, the character’s voices and actions mesh to create what is arguably Faulkner’s masterpiece and one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century.
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Hang in
- By W.Denis on 07-11-05
By: William Faulkner
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Absalom, Absalom!
- By: William Faulkner
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 12 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
-
Story
Absalom, Absalom! tells the story of Thomas Sutpen, the enigmatic stranger who came to Jefferson township in the early 1830s. With a French architect and a band of wild Haitians, he wrung a fabulous plantation out of the muddy bottoms of the north Mississippi wilderness. Sutpen was a man, Faulker said, "who wanted sons and the sons destroyed him". His tragedy left its impress not only on his contemporaries but also on men who came after, men like Quentin Compson, haunted even into the 20th century by Sutpen's legacy.
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A long, enjoyable listen
- By pilot on 01-08-09
By: William Faulkner
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Light in August
- By: William Faulkner
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 17 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Light in August features some of Faulkner’s most memorable characters: guileless, dauntless Lena Grove, in search of the father of her unborn child; Reverend Gail Hightower, who is plagued by visions of Confederate horsemen; and Joe Christmas, a desperate, enigmatic drifter consumed by his mixed ancestry.
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Simply great.
- By Jamie on 08-18-05
By: William Faulkner
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Light in August
- By: William Faulkner
- Narrated by: Will Patton
- Length: 15 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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An Oprah's Book Club Selection regarded as one of Faulkner's greatest and most accessible novels, Light in August is a timeless and riveting story of determination, tragedy, and hope. In Faulkner's iconic Yoknapatawpha County, race, sex, and religion collide around three memorable characters searching desperately for human connection and their own identities.
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so large, so powerful, so conflicted
- By Darwin8u on 09-17-17
By: William Faulkner
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The Sound and the Fury
- By: William Faulkner
- Narrated by: Deaver Brown
- Length: 9 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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A deep American South novel about a black & white intertwined in a relationship living in one house with various goings-on Southern style.
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Narrator sounds drunk
- By LT on 07-11-24
By: William Faulkner
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Collected Stories of William Faulkner
- By: William Faulkner
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer, Susan Denaker, Scott Brick, and others
- Length: 31 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
This magisterial collection of short works by Nobel Prize-winning author William Faulkner reminds listeners of his ability to compress his epic vision into narratives as hard and wounding as bullets. Among the 42 selections in this audiobook are such classics as "A Bear Hunt", "A Rose for Emily", "Two Soldiers", and "The Brooch".
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Audiobook Table of Contents (by Chapter)
- By Anonymous User on 09-27-20
By: William Faulkner
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The Reivers
- By: William Faulkner
- Narrated by: John H. Mayer
- Length: 11 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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One of Faulkner's comic masterpieces, The Reivers is a picaresque story that tells of three unlikely car thieves from rural Mississippi. Eleven-year-old Lucas Priest is persuaded by Boon Hogganbeck, one of his family's retainers, to steal his grandfather's car and make a trip to Memphis. The priests' black coachman, Ned McCaslin, stows away, and the three of them are off on a heroic odyssey.
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4 days in the life of an eleven year old
- By ruth a anderson on 11-17-09
By: William Faulkner
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Intruder in the Dust
- By: William Faulkner
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 8 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Intruder in the Dust is at once an engrossing murder mystery and an unflinching portrait of racial injustice. Set in Faulkner's fictional Yoknapatawpha County, it is the story of Lucas Beauchamp, a black man wrongly arrested for the murder of Vinson Gowrie, a white man. Confronted by the threat of lynching, Lucas sets out to prove his innocence, aided by a white lawyer, Gavin Stephens, and his young nephew, Chick Mallison.
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Excellent characterization, fine suspense
- By Doug on 05-14-09
By: William Faulkner
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Sanctuary
- By: William Faulkner
- Narrated by: Stephen Hoye
- Length: 9 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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A powerful novel examining the nature of evil, informed by the works of T. S. Eliot and Freud, mythology, local lore, and hard-boiled detective fiction, Sanctuary is the dark, at times brutal, story of the kidnapping of Mississippi debutante Temple Drake. She introduces her own form of venality into the Memphis underworld where she is being held.
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disappointment
- By Dana on 10-20-10
By: William Faulkner
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The Hamlet
- By: William Faulkner
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 14 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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The Hamlet, the first novel of Faulkner's Snopes trilogy, is both an ironic take on classical tragedy and a mordant commentary on the grand pretensions of the antebellum South and the depths of its decay in the aftermath of war and Reconstruction. It tells of the advent and the rise of the Snopes family in Frenchman's Bend, a small town built on the ruins of a once-stately plantation.
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The Long, Hot Summer
- By W Perry Hall on 07-30-17
By: William Faulkner
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The Town
- A Novel of the Snopes Family
- By: William Faulkner
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 13 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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The story of Flem Snopes' ruthless struggle to take over the town of Jefferson, Mississippi, this is the second volume of Faulkner's trilogy about the Snopes family, his symbol for the grasping, destructive element in the post-bellum South.
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Accessible Faulkner
- By Doug on 03-28-11
By: William Faulkner
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The Wild Palms
- By: William Faulkner
- Narrated by: Marc Vietor
- Length: 10 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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In New Orleans in 1937, a man and woman embark on a headlong flight into the wilderness of illicit passion. In Mississippi ten years earlier, a convict risks his one chance at freedom to rescue a pregnant woman. From these separate stories Faulkner composes a symphony of deliverance and damnation.
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Deserves attention
- By Kate on 05-27-12
By: William Faulkner
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The Unvanquished
- By: William Faulkner
- Narrated by: Kevin T. Collins
- Length: 8 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Set in Mississippi during the Civil War and Reconstruction, The Unvanquished focuses on the Sartoris family, who, with their code of personal responsibility and courage, stand for the best of the Old South's traditions.
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Humorous and poignant
- By Doug on 02-17-11
By: William Faulkner
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Mosquitoes
- By: William Faulkner
- Narrated by: Nick Sullivan
- Length: 11 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Faulkner’s second novel follows a bohemian cast of artists, socialites, and dilettantes as they set sail on a four-day excursion aboard the Nausikaa. Faulkner’s quick wit and endless appetite for satire make this audiobook a fascinating exploration of character, as well as a rare glimpse into the author himself. The novel explores questions of sex and sexuality, as well as the societal role of the artist. Inspired by his own participation in the arts community in New Orleans, Mosquitoes is an engaging and delightful novel from one of America’s greatest writers.
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Early example of Faulkner's writing. Made you realize how bad his writing could be.
- By Alan M on 01-29-24
By: William Faulkner
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The Mansion
- By: William Faulkner
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 15 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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The Mansion tells of Mink Snopes, whose archaic sense of honor brings about the downfall of his cousin, Flem. "For all his concern with the South, Faulkner was actually seeking out the nature of man," noted Ralph Ellison. "Thus we must turn to him for that continuity of moral purpose which made for the greatness of our classics." This volume includes a new introduction to the trilogy by acclaimed novelist George Garrett, author of Death of the Fox and The Succession.
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Mink Cometh
- By daniel fam on 11-01-12
By: William Faulkner
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A Fable
- By: William Faulkner
- Narrated by: Kevin Pariseau
- Length: 20 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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An allegorical story of World War I set in the trenches in France and dealing ostensibly with a mutiny in a French regiment.
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Bad Production and Direction
- By Andy Curry on 05-08-17
By: William Faulkner
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For Whom the Bell Tolls
- By: Ernest Hemingway
- Narrated by: Campbell Scott
- Length: 16 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1937, Ernest Hemingway traveled to Spain to cover the civil war there for the North American Newspaper Alliance. Three years later he completed the greatest novel to emerge from "the good fight", For Whom the Bell Tolls.
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Don't "Clean Up" Hemingway
- By John W. Aldis, MD on 08-13-09
By: Ernest Hemingway
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A Farewell to Arms
- By: Ernest Hemingway
- Narrated by: John Slattery
- Length: 8 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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The best American novel to emerge from World War I, A Farewell to Arms is the unforgettable story of an American ambulance driver on the Italian front and his passion for a beautiful English nurse.
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This is not unabridged
- By Valerian on 06-17-11
By: Ernest Hemingway
What listeners say about As I Lay Dying
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
- Emeritus
- 03-26-07
Listening to a Play
The multiple voices are simply wonderful and, having read this in hard copy many times over the years, I had some trepidations about listening. However the words are as powerful as they are in print and have the added quality of staying as the voices of a "play" in your head. Terrific.
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37 people found this helpful
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Overall
- MichelleStrobel
- 10-31-08
Clarity
I use this "tour de force" novel in my high school English class, and I've found that the audio helps the students follow the story better. I personally enjoy the narrators who with their use of dialects are able to add life to the characters, even Addie, who is dead for most of the novel.
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29 people found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 09-19-20
great ensemble performance of an American classic
really enjoyed this reading. all performances are fantastic. very theatrical rendition of this American classic.
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- Olivia Berry
- 03-03-16
awesome!!
this book is so amazing. I read it with my AP English class and it is just such an amazing story with layers of symbolism and character depth. I highly recommend it to anyone who loves American literature. it's not too long and easy to understand!
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- Chris Reich
- 07-30-12
You Have to "Get" Faulkner
Faulkner is not an easy read. Expect to go back often and really listen to the story. Expect to look up some notes and commentary to grasp what the hell is going on. Expect to struggle with lines like, "My mother is a fish"
Expect to WORK through this book.
And expect the best of literature and performance. Expect to learn. Expect to expand your insight into frustration and futility. Expect to feel pain.
This is a great piece of literature and it's very well delivered.
Worth the effort.
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46 people found this helpful
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- ImprovErgoSum
- 12-18-19
Excelent performance, amazing direction
This is my first audio book from a classic author I listen to. I have mixed feelings about my experience. On the one hand, I went through a work of literature that I wanted to read for a long time.. But with the way information abounds now a days, I doubt that I could have ever read the novel entirely in book form. That makes me happy. On top of that, the performance, adaptation and direction were quite excellent. I mean, really, really enjoyable and as close as what the author might have had in his mind as you can guess. The voices of the performers were well selected and the actors did a wonderful job. I wish that, in the past, I had experienced more books like this. I "reckon" that my imagination would not have given me the richness and variety of voices and accents that this audio work provides.
On the down side, listening to the book, you miss the opportunity to go back to the passages of pure poetry or some kind of feat in language that the author may have written and you could miss it just listening to the audio. What is poetry to the director or the actor may not be so to you and vice versa. I mean it is hard to describe, but I am veteran reader of classic literature and I just know that by not reading the page, I missed the elegant delivery of William Faulkner some how. It is just something about the page on a book that you can mark and comment, and go back even years later that the audio version would not facilitate.
Still I am really happy that I listened to this work, I get it, why they offer a kindle version of the printed book along with the audio; it makes sense. But money wise, it is just more expensive. Besides, my purpose of becoming an audible member was to make better use of my commute time.
I look forward to enjoy other works of this kind of literature here in audible.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Geese Howard
- 03-07-17
Made the narrative and story clearer
with different voice actors it became more clear what people are saying and how they were behaving. Being an audible book help me out a lot with this book while when I read it myself I get struck. Seriously, how is Jewel's mother a horse?!
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Overall
- Tad Davis
- 06-28-11
Beautiful, grim, and hilarious
The multiple narrators of this audiobook bring the story to life: a grim tale of poverty and death with an unexpected dash of hilariously dark humor. A woman is dying and is finally dead, and her husband and children set out with the coffin on a journey to her home town. The language is colorful and concrete and filled with incantatory repetitions of certain phrases. It's the ultimate jinxed road trip, cursed at times with what appear to be all the plagues of Egypt. Without giving away too much, I'll just say, to paraphrase the Bible: where there's a dead body, the vultures will gather. This saying may have originally been intended as a metaphor, but in Faulkner's beautifully poetic prose, you can hear the flapping of wings.
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20 people found this helpful
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- Barry
- 12-14-12
Ain't no end to bad luck when once it starts
What makes this book interesting is not the story. The story is pretty banal. What makes this book interesting is the characters, and the insight into how people feel and think, and the dynamics that develop within a family or any other group of people. Faulkner was a brilliant innovator of stream-of-consciousness and other modern narrative devices. I appreciate him more the more I read of him. A lot of writing presupposes that people think in words, but Faulkner tries to express the non-verbal feelings we have drawing from the words we would use if we had the time and the vocabulary to sort them all out. I think this accounts for some of the poetical imagery we get from characters who would not otherwise think some of the thoughts Faulkner ascribes to them.
The travails of the Bundren family are painful to watch. They all have their secrets from each other. They are all flawed individuals. They have barely held together as a family. Watching them all stumble through the trial of dealing with Addie's death makes you wonder how they can possibly all stay together much longer. But there are counterforces at work too.
One thing I cannot understand is how a 270 page book can be narrated in under 7 hours. I guess I will have to go look at a paper copy and try to figure it out.
The use of 4 readers for this book is extremely helpful in sorting out which of the 15 narrators is speaking at any given time. In general I give them high marks for conveying Faulkner's language and coping with the ambiguities of stream-of-consciousness writing. The one exception I have to comment on is the voice chosen for Dewey Dell. The reader chooses to make Dewey Dell into a kind of wispy, ethereal, dreamy teenager. She fails to capture any of the sullen, angry adolescent that Faulkner constantly hints is at the core of Dewey Dell's character.
However, that minor complaint in no way detracts from the overall quality of this audiobook. It's not about Dewey Dell, any more than it is about Anse, Cash, Darl, Jewel, Vardamon or even Addie. It's ultimately about something else. Something I don't know how to express. Faulkner knew how to express it, but it took him a whole book to do it.
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19 people found this helpful
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- Jeffrey
- 01-16-12
A True Classic
Where does As I Lay Dying rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?
It was near the top.
What other book might you compare As I Lay Dying to and why?
Tobacco Road, because they both deal with a poor rural southern family. However in this case the family seems to genuinely care about each other and are not starving.
Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
Yes, I had insomnia one night and listened to the entire book
Any additional comments?
Faulkner is difficult for me to understand without a study guide. Following it with a study guide it was an enjoyable experience.
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1 person found this helpful