After hearing that our class was going to attempt a reading of Faulkner’s classic As I Lay Dying, I hadn’t the faintest idea what to expect. I knew nothing of the novel’s premise, and several friends of mine who had tackled the text in high school warned me to tread carefully, not because the text was an unpleasant read, but out of a dizzying sense of confusion they had found from the text itself. Faulkner’s work helped spark America’s fascination with the stream of consciousness narrative, a term coined by psychologist William James in his work, The Principles of Psychology, where he writes, “… it is nothing joined; it flows. A ‘river’ or a ‘stream’ is the metaphors by which it is most naturally described. In talking of it hereafter, let’s call it the stream of thought, consciousness, or subjective life.” This work is characterized by a sudden rise of thoughts and lack of punctuation, as the artist attempts to mimic the real life sensation of a real life mind, capitalized in works by other artists of this period like James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and others.
As I Lay Dying was published in 1930 just at the front of the Great Depression. The text utilizes this same stream of consciousness narrative in the deep south of Mississippi, which proved a difficult frame of mind to capture as honestly as Faulkner has here. But that’s not all; in just 261 pages, Faulkner presents the reader with 15 separate points of view and 59 perspective changes throughout the book, and each of those perspectives are written in the first person, with a thick Southern Mississippi slang and very little outward explanation of how the characters relate to each other. It isn’t until a good while later that you start to catch on to the greater turmoil each of these struggling Southerners are faced with, and also the ages, appearances, and jobs that correspond to each of them. Part of the joy in reading this book appears to be putting together these details for yourself long after the characters have been introduced, and then going back to earlier scenes and chapters where your newly discovered knowledge will allow you to catch on to all of the greater significance. It wasn’t until ten pages after we’re first introduced to Peabody’s character that I caught on that he was Addie Bundren’s doctor, and after that I absorbed the different conversations and character relationships involving him far more comprehensively. Though the book is a difficult first read, it’s certainly a brave attempt at putting his own stamp on the developing Southern Gothic of the age.
The problem with this brave, new world, however, comes 83 years later after the development of modern cinema, where it was often said that directors of all stripes would never be able to create an accurate representation of the classic family drama. I thought as much by the time I had reached page 25, before I even knew about all the controversy with the hypothetical screenplay for the novel. Sure, they could tell the story like they would convey any other film script, by recording the action just as it happens. But to that, devoted fans of Faulkner and his writing would say, “Where’s the fun in that?” Half of what makes As I Lay Dying such a monumental achievement is its unique writing style, the sudden leapfrogging from one mind to another, and the brutally honest rendition of what goes on in each of the character’s heads once our focus comes there. Many said it couldn’t be done.
Then along came James Franco. In 2013, he attempted what no one else thought possible and made his stab at directing the adaptation for the so called “unfilmable novel.” Casting himself as Darl, the most common presence in the novel as a character with 19 chapters, Franco assuredly has his plate full in bringing this classic Depression piece to life (unlike the characters’ plates, which likely haven’t been full for a good while). The reviewer for The Guardian, Peter Bradshaw, gives the film 3 out of 5 stars, but in the quick piece he wrote of it on the website it was still largely positive (link below – beware minor spoilers). Bradshaw describes the tough work Franco had to deal with replicating this text as a film, and says that in an attempt to recreate a similar vibe of these leapfrogging narrators, Franco decided to “match the spirit” of the novel by presenting a great deal of the film on multiple screens. He also writes, “Franco will have two different frames, left and right: sometimes they will show two differing and significant shots, sometimes hardly more than a fractured version of the same shot. Sometimes they will be two almost exactly similar shots of the same featureless sky, with the non-matching vertical join line almost invisible.”
Bradshaw admits that it might sound “gimicky” but that it is “consistently and seriously presented,” making the film worthwhile, creative, and intelligent in its replication of Faulkner’s famous work. James Franco might have seemed an unusual choice to both act and direct for such a difficult film, but it appears he was entirely committed to make his attempt and has done so with moderate success. Here it just goes to show the lengths many will strive for in order to honor such an important text, and that all of these Great American Novels, to be sure, have each earned their place as “one of the greats.”
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/may/20/james-franco-as-i-lay-dying-review
Thanks for this quick introduction to “stream-of-conscious” narration as it was described in the world of William James. You also nicely capture the frustrations of such as style–the continual deferral of sense and meaning, the expectations for diligence place on the reader. But there’s also real pleasure there, which is why we keep returning to this novel and is strategies. I appreciate the brief reflection on Franco’s adaptation. The split screens can certainly seem distracting, and, as the reviewer puts it, gimmicky at times. But it does begin to take on a certain seriousness of purpose as a filmic strategy–on that trades an emphasis on multiple overlapping perspectives along with a good deal of silence to suggest the internal verbal complexity that can never really make it into the visual medium. I embedded the trailer for you–but make sure you link the review in the text itself (rather than just including the URL at the end of the post).